Saturday, May 31, 2008

Resolve Conflict Productively

Conflict in high performance organizations is unavoidable and can often lead to reduced productivity and ineffective employee teamwork but successful organizations are effective at resolving conflict and building on it. Too many owners and senior managers instill conflict so that they keep their organization on the edge. However, pointless and intentional conflict is non-productive leading to organizations that are ineffective, breeding mistrust and insecurity.

Several years ago client complained of a recurring incident with one of his key field project managers over what he considered to be core performance issue. I was familiar with the project manager and when I approached him on the subject he viewed the incident from a completely different perspective which revealed an obvious communication problem. I invited both the owner (my client) and the project manager to a breakfast meeting along with another peer project manager. I described the issue that was a concern to the owner and both project managers immediately described a broader set of circumstances that the owner was not considering when looking only at the one issue.

To his credit the owner recognized the problem immediately. While he was upset over the issue he had never taken the time to sit down and explain his reasoning on why he felt it was a job requirement that the project managers should perform first over all other priorities. His past method of dealing with it when he observed this occurring was to get excited and to take over instead of sitting down and going through what he felt should have been done and to understand why it had not been performed.

The project managers commented after the meeting that it was the first time that they had really talked about the business with the owner and that they now felt they had a good base line on which to discuss other issues with the owner instead of experiencing a blow up and confused signals as they interacted with him in the field.

Six months later I asked the owner how things were going with the project managers and he said that as a result of the breakfast meeting many other issues had been dealt with and the project mangers were doing very well and were now managing more project dollars – cost effectively – than they had before.

The key here was resolving the conflict quickly and establishing a foundation for communication and implementing a policy to resolve misunderstanding rather than carrying frustration and mistrust about on a daily basis. Resolving conflict is not a function of who wins and who loses but the company being more effective and productive with employees who are confident that they can interact effectively in demanding situations and when needed quickly get to the bottom of conflict issues, resolving them efficiently and in the end building a stronger organization.


If you are the owner of a company or senior manager look for ways to reveal conflict in your organization.

  • Make contact with your employees informally so that they can see that you are approachable and can share issues of concern.
  • Be proactive in discussing "conflict" issues that will encourage feedback and identify who and what are at issue.
  • Follow-up to make sure that the conflict has not resurfaced under different cover.
  • If necessary, remove chronic sources of conflict through reassignment, reorganization or release from the company.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Know Your Customer

Too often as business owners we believe we know our customers but too often knowledge of your customer is the result of "crisis" contact when something unexpected occurred or when you wanted something - like an order. Consequently our impressions of the customer’s “need” can be blurred due to the immediacy of the moment and not the result of a conscious effort to sit down and discuss what customers are really challenged with and what important needs are poorly met or not at all.

When we want to get market information necessary to define a new product or service specification our impulse is to talk to customers, but do we have the right contact in the company to get valuable information. A recent client of mine wanted to undergo a Voice of the Customer process which is by definition dependant upon valid customer input. However, the majority of the contacts within their prime customers were those who processed orders today who were not in positions to provide input on where the needs of their customers were taking them over the next planning horizon.

Developing trusted relationships with your key customers takes time, initiative commitment and perseverance.

  • Customers are also busy and are not interested in wasting their time so make a customer contact worthwhile in not only getting information that you desire but also sharing information that is of value to the customer.
  • Customers will rarely invite you to their door so it will take initiative to overcome the competing priorities for their time to schedule time with you.
  • Do something with the results from your meeting so that the customer can see that there is a productive reason to make time to see you.
  • Seek your customer out and do not take refusal to meet as personal rejection but as the mark of a busy person particularly in the early stages of building your relationship.

Conducting a proactive relationship with your customer opens the door to feedback that you might not always get through normal communication and company contacts. A customer once told another client of mine about a circumstance with their product delivery that obviously was not what the client wanted the customer to experience. When he pursued why they did not learn of it earlier he was told that until he showed interest in “knowing” them they assumed that he and his staff were satisfied with a mediocre company performance and as a result they were actively seeking other companies to provide better service..

A healthy customer relationship will over time result in a trusted partner relationship where valuable insights can be gained that will allow you to adjust your product or service offering to meet the changing demands and directions of your current customers and those companies that you would hope to do more business with.

Know your customer!