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Brighton Landing West 10 Guest Street Boston, MA USA 02135 www.vantagepartners.com This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, or in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission. Copyright © 2012 by Vantage Partners, LLC. All rights reserved.
The Myths of Collaboration
Elizabeth Rayer, Principal Carol Bonett, Senior Consultant
Mission: Drive measurable business results by transforming the way companies negotiate and manage relationships with key business partners
Practice Areas: Strategic Alliances, Sourcing and Supplier Management, Corporate Education, Sales Effectiveness
Spin-off of the Harvard Negotiation Project
Faculty at Harvard University, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and the US Military Academy at West Point
Leaders in international conflict resolution through CMG (now part of Mercy Corps) Arias Peace Accords Post-apartheid South African constitution
About Vantage Partners
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Vantage Partners publications
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Type in one or two words that come to mind when you think of collaboration within your organization?
What does collaboration mean to you?
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Matrix Corporation is the world's top provider of products and services. Among the leaders in almost every market in which it competes, the company focuses primarily on its growing services business, which accounts for well over half of sales.
Welcome to Matrix Corporation
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Meanwhile…
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How can we serve complex accounts that require seamless internal collaboration?
For any given sale, four or more lead salespeople and their teams have to agree on issues of resource allocation, solution design, pricing and sales strategy
Boots-on-the-ground view of Matrix’s challenges…
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Sales people from eight of Matrix’s product and service groups have been called on to design and sell integrated solutions to their customers
The answer…
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Better Collaboration!
Matrix finds that a large sale generates so much internal conflict its actually getting harder to close deals
Results: wasted time and damaged relationships
This just isn’t working!
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What’s the right result and how do we get to it?
In an attempt to avoid conflict people begin to avoid having to collaborate at any cost
Or they become confrontational, fighting over who’s right and who’s wrong or haggling over small concessions
The Results? No real value gained as people either “split-the-difference” or find themselves in outright deadlock
Frustration takes over…
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Matrix makes a plan to improve collaboration
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They run hundreds of managers and individual contributors through an intensive two-day training on teamwork.
“Teamwork” training
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Breakdowns occur not on actual teams but in the rapid and unstructured interactions between different groups within the organizations
Breakdowns almost always result from fundamental differences among business functions and divisions. Teamwork training offers little guidance on how to work together in the context of competing objectives and limited resources
People who need to collaborate more effectively typically don’t need to align around a common goal. They need to quickly and creatively solve problems by managing inevitable conflict
Myth 1: Effective Collaboration means “teaming”
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Sales people will receive bonuses not only for hitting targets for their own division’s products but also for hitting cross-selling targets
Staff in corporate functions like IT and procurement will have part of their bonuses determined by their ability to get positive feedback from their internal clients
So teamwork training didn’t get the results Matrix hoped for…
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Let’s try a new incentive system to encourage collaboration.
Sales people still focused on the sale of their own products to the detriment of selling integrated solutions
Employees continued to perceive IT and procurement as difficult to work with - too focused on their own priorities
Why? Individuals believed if they performed well in their own
departments/operations they would be “taken care of” by their bosses
The costs of working with individuals in other parts of the organization – the extra time and aggravation – greatly outweigh the rewards for doing so
Myth 2: An effective incentive system will ensure collaboration
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New structural and procedural solutions: Cross-functional task forces Collaborative “groupware” Webs of dotted reporting lines
on the org chart to create greater internal collaboration
So the bonuses didn’t help either…
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Let’s try restructuring. That will help them to
collaborate more.
Matrix decides to form cross-unit account teams to drive collaboration
Account Management, Delivery and Service are redeployed to form a core team to service key accounts
This new structure will serve to mitigate intra-department conflict and increase cooperation
The core team will now be able to prioritize projects and optimally deploy resources
Results are disappointing To avoid conflict around prioritization, core team members quickly learn
to bring their requests to their own solid-line managers The extra layer of dotted lines adds complexity to decision making
without any measurable productivity gains
Myth 3 – Organizations can be structured for collaboration
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You can’t improve collaboration if your goal is to eliminate conflict
Recognize that efforts to increase collaboration (especially in the case of restructuring) will mostly likely produce conflict
Conflict is inevitable and important Disagreements sparked by different perspectives, competencies,
access to information, and strategic focus within the company actually generates much of the value that can come from collaboration across organizational boundaries
Root cause?
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Clashes between parties are the crucibles in which creative solutions are developed and wise trade-offs among competing objectives are made
Instead of trying to simply to reduce disagreements, Matrix Senior Executives have decided to embrace conflict, and institutionalize the mechanisms for managing it
Matrix’s new perspective…
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Manage conflict!
Strategies for managing disagreements at the point of conflict
1. Devise and implement a common method for resolving conflict
2. Provide people with criteria for making trade-offs
3. Use escalation of conflict as an opportunity for coaching
Strategies for managing conflict upon escalation
1. Establish and enforce a requirement of joint escalation
2. Ensure that managers resolve escalated conflicts directly with their counterparts
3. Make the process for escalated conflict resolution transparent
Six Strategies for Managing Conflict
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Establish a companywide process for resolving disagreements Reduce transaction costs (wasted time, accumulation of ill will) Increase chances of innovative outcomes
Clear step-by-step process
Integral part of existing business activities
Strategy 1: Devise and implement a common method for resolving conflict
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Provide a common method for solving conflict…may still need to make zero-sum trade-offs between competing priorities
Top management needs to clearly articulate the criteria for making such choices (not easy but worth it)
Even if its not straightforward, guidelines can foster productive communication
Example: tell sales people that five points in market share is more important than a ten point increase on in customer satisfaction on a survey
Strategy 2: Provide people with criteria for making trade-offs
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Starting point:
At Matrix, employees learned the best thing to do with cross-unit conflict was to toss it up the management chain
Managers at Matrix spend much of their time playing the organizational equivalent of hot potato
They take a quick pass at resolving the issue, but being busy themselves, they typically toss the problem upstairs
Senior managers are a number of steps removed from the source of the controversy and rarely have a good understanding of the problem…and subordinates have little opportunity to learn how to deal with conflict
Strategy 3: Use escalation of conflict as an opportunity for coaching
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Coaching for conflict: Executives get training on conflict management and are offered online resources to help them coach others.
Strategy 3: Use escalation of conflict as an opportunity for coaching
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One tool on the corporate intranet walks managers through a variety of conversations they might have with a direct report who is struggling to resolve a dispute
Equipped with common conflict resolutions, trade-off criteria and supported by systematic coaching…but certain complex disputes will inevitably need to be decided by managers
Matrix managers needed to make sure that, upon escalation conflict is resolved constructively and efficiently
To avoid hearing “one-sided” stories and the subsequent deadlock, subordinates must present a disagreement jointly to their boss or bosses
Goal: reduce or eliminate the suspicion, surprises, and damaged personal relationships associated with unilateral escalation
Strategy 4: Establish and enforce a requirement of joint escalation
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Managers refuse to respond to unilateral escalation
Subordinates must jointly write up a description of the problem, what has been done so far to resolve it and its possible solutions
Send it to their bosses and stand ready to appear together to answer questions
Result? Requirement of systematically documenting the problem helped people think through and solve the problems themselves with fewer needing to be escalated
Strategy 4: Establish and enforce a requirement of joint escalation
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Starting Point:
Not unusual for Matrix managers to escalate problems that had been brought to them
In the end the decision was usually made unilaterally by the senior manager with the most organizational clout, which bred resentment back down the management chain
A sense of “we will win next time” took hold
Set a poor example and wasted time
Strategy 5: Ensure that managers resolve escalated conflicts directly with their counterparts
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Commitment by managers (codified by a formal policy) to deal with escalated conflict directly with their counterparts
Created standing calls for managers from across the company to discuss and resolve cross-unit conflicts that were hindering important sales e.g. the difficulty sales people faced in getting needed technical resources from overstretched product groups.
Strategy 5: Ensure that managers resolve escalated conflicts directly with their counterparts
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A problem is escalated, solved jointly and the decision is delivered down the chain of command…then what? How was this decision made? Based on which assumptions?
A frank discussion of the trade-offs involved provided guidance to people trying to resolve similar conflicts in the future
Clear communication about the resolution of a conflict can increase people’s willingness and ability to implement decisions
Strategy 6: Make the process for escalated conflict resolution transparent
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On a scale of 1 – 10, how well is your company using these six strategies?
Poll
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Conflict is a valuable resource to be managed and exploited
Recognize patterns and trends from recurring disputes as unaddressed strains within an organization
Conflict can provide new perspectives on a variety of issues
Key Takeaways
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We are undertaking a study about the dynamics of working in a matrixed organization and the prevalence and effectiveness of different influence strategies, and welcome your participation
This survey is completely anonymous; responses will only be reported in aggregate and will not be attributed to any individual or company
The survey will take approximately ten minutes to complete and you will receive a complimentary report of our findings
www.surveymonkey.com/s/Vantage20130409
Working in a Matrix – Survey
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A spin-off of the Harvard Negotiation Project,
Vantage Partners helps companies achieve breakthrough
business results by transforming the way they negotiate with,
and manage relationships with, their suppliers, customers,
and alliance partners — and enhancing collaboration across
internal organizational boundaries.
Vantage Partners
10 Guest Street Boston, MA 02135 USA T: +1 617.354.6090 F: +1 617.354.4685
www.vantagepartners.com
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