Yes, there are many benefits to conflict. It is often necessary to struggle through normal stages of family business, partnership, department or company growth. The value is in understanding conflict and learn how to harness the elusive powers of this sometimes volatile force. As with most challenges, the key is in catching it quickly so you control it before it goes underground (the grapevine) and cause more problems. Or worse, become part of your company culture. Many owners, leaders, managers and employees cant seem to function without drama and conflict and over time; conflict just becomes a way of life. Unless, something significant is done to turn the tide.

I specialize in helping people learn from and move through conflict to create long-lasting, sustained, “win-win” outcomes for you, your family business, partnership, department and company.

In over two decades consulting with family businesses and organizations, I have observed three major types of family business or workplace conflict:

Task Conflict Task conflict arises among members of work teams and affects the goals and tasks they are striving to achieve. Differences in vision, intentions, and quality expectations often lead to task conflict. Family or employee relationships may initially appear to survive task conflict, but an important project may not. It is essential to channel task conflict so that these differences become complementary and improve the way the family or team thinks about accomplishing current and future tasks.

Process Conflict This form of conflict centers around the steps or methods used by a family or work-teams to reach a goal. One person might like to plan 100 steps ahead, while another might like to dive in head first. Process differences can lead to communication breakdown and ultimately result in conflict. Like task conflict, process conflict can be useful if managed correctly. Healthy differences in process often lead to an improved way to achieve goals.

Relationship Conflict Often misunderstood, relationship conflict undermines and tears at the fabric of an organization, department or team’s ability to achieve its goals. Relationship conflict penetrates all aspects of an organization. When people in a workplace environment fail to communicate effectively, teams, departments or even an entire organization will suffer. Relationship conflict will quickly consume all the attention and energy of an organization, leaving little time to accomplish profitable tasks.

What can we do to bring conflict to a reasonable resolution? How might our resolution be beneficial to everyone involved? The ultimate goal of conflict resolution is to increase one’s understanding of what happened, why it happened, and how we can learn from it so we don’t become victims to it in the future. Conflict isn’t bad. In fact, it is a vital part of a successful family business or organization. Knowing when to encourage conflict – in a manageable and productive way; knowing how to spot it early and slow it down if need be; and knowing the natural stages of conflict’s life cycle can all lead to highly productive outcomes. Both this knowledge about conflict and the skills needed to manage it successfully are needed to get the best out of your people.

The benefits of professional conflict resolution are great:

• Resolves current conflicts and maximizes innovation, productivity and profits
• Teaches independence and ownership of the skills to effectively and creatively turn future conflicts into profitable opportunities for improved communication and learning
• Improves organizational decision making
• Inspires family members and employees who are able and interested in articulating and clarifying their ideas and positions toward the organizational goals
• Increases innovation, creativity, and forward thinking
• Improves individual, family business and company performance

Over and over people bemoan, “Things are changing faster than ever.” Changes in what we do, how we do it, and who we do it with can leave employees out of breath and overwhelmed. Because employees and family members often feel caught in the middle of all of these changes, leadership needs to know what people are experiencing and what to do to assist them. All will benefit when guided respectfully through the predictable reactions to the various stages of change. The reactions may include conditions such as debilitating stress, poor morale, attitudes of non-commitment, and reactionary impulses, just to name a few.

The ineffective “olden days” when top leadership mandated, “Jump!”, and all employees responded with, “How high?” are gone. Companies nowadays have to change their focus quickly to excel through these more complex times. From the mass production models of the industrial revolution to today’s technology-based, high-speed information systems to the rapid-fire future issues of our global economy that are just around the corner, it behooves all of us to find a systematic way to grow ourselves and our people. The secret is to take the time to realign, rebuild, and recharge our departments and divisions, as well as to empower and revitalize those seemingly tired, angry employees to go forward, step up, and successfully meet the challenges that come with any change. Experiencing any major change process, like a merger or family succession plan, for example, is similar to experiencing a surgery. Like with surgery, every decision that is made before, during, or closely after the experience will likely do one of two things: improve your condition or worsen it. The challenge is, you had better be very confident in your objectives and methods before you make that first cut. or things will go down hill very quickly.

Let me show you today how you can improve your family business and increase market share by implementing these three crucial elements:

1. Leading, managing, and coaching family members and employees through the ten stages of change; understanding the behaviors that individuals, families and organizations go through during a major change process. We will then focus on the management techniques necessary for meeting your objectives.
2. Leading and managing people through various forms of feedback.
3. Creating buy-in; giving the various family members and employees a voice so they will develop the intrinsic ownership of the vision which will be necessary for a successful merger or family succession plan.

Careful and considerate Merger Facilitation and family succession plans can give your family business and organization a clear direction — and truly redefine your company’s objectives. Contact me today to see how I can help you profit through improved communication before, during, and after your merger or family succession plan.

My experience with successful organizations has led me to focus on the dynamic tension between leaders’ ownership of the strategies for change and their key stakeholders’ acceptance and buy-in of the plan. (Key stakeholders here are those who are crucial to the successful implementation of the desired change.) Often, there is a dynamic gap between these two entities that must be bridged successfully if the desired change is to proceed effectively.

The process I recommend can be used with internal and/or external stakeholders, as well as for regular feedback on many topics from strategic planning to mergers and change management.

In reality there are eight parallel process steps necessary to bridge the gap between those who lead change and those who implement it. Any mis-step or short cut will inevitably lead to breakdowns later in the process and require extensive duplication of work and a slowing of the project. Briefly, I will describe how vitally important real-time meetings held with leadership and key stakeholders prove to be an integral step in this process. For a more in-depth explanation on this process and how we may partner on your implementation project, please contact Kelly@InternalBusinessSolutions.com

The purpose of real-time meetings is twofold:

1. to share information and provide feedback to the core leadership team in order to troubleshoot and improve the plans, and
2. to gain understanding, acceptance (i.e., buy-in), and commitment to the overall direction and implementation of the plan.

One important factor to remember is: people support what they help create. Thus, it is crucial to involve key stakeholders early on in the planning and change process. If this crucial step is omitted or briefly touched on, long term organizational outcomes will pay the price. Poor stakeholder motivation or ambivalence later on is an expensive problem to fix. It is much more effective to alter a plan before it is put into place, rather than try to turn back time and re-work a process mid-stream.

Successful leaders plan ahead for their organizations strategic and human change needs. Even though change is inevitable, in order to be efficient and effective, managing successful change takes preparation and planning. Simply put: investing in and creating buy-in and ownership at all levels pays off.

Whether I call it a strategic plan for larger organizations or a plan of attack for smaller mom and pop businesses, the foundational elements are the same. Having a clear plan on where your business is going and how to successfully and consistently achieve goals, so that all of your employees, managers and leadership fully understand their respective duties on how to get there, is paramount. The most pivotal aspect of this entire process rests on the ability of leadership and every employee under them to implement the strategic plan so that actions, statements, and behaviors result in improved conditions at all levels within your organization. When this takes place, your internal and external customers will benefit greatly and your competitors will try to emulate; resulting in your leading and your competitors following.

In my experience, however, working with National and International companies, approximately 95% of them have strategic plans, but only 3 to 7 % implement them consistently and effectively; most of these beautifully made documents start collecting dust after a mere 4-6 weeks after their launch. For example, and this represents the majority, not the minority; I had one President share with me that his organization had just completed a yearlong, mid-six-figure, strategic plan creation project; and it was a work of art housed in a leather bound embossed casing. However, when I asked him what he intended to do with it, he replied with a deer-in-the-headlights expression, “I don’t know.” Many of the problems surrounding implementation don’t stem from lack of trying, but rather from lack of understanding. Company leadership either believes the creation of the plan is enough and implementation will automatically take care of itself, or they confuse general strategic plan knowledge with the processing of the plan. In other situations, I have found they have gathered inaccurate information or no information at all, which they base their strategic plan on. Successful strategic plan implementation requires that your leadership team have skills, knowledge and experience, which creates competency when faced with follow-through.

A plan will not and cannot do anything but suggest a way to go; its a map. It does not promote ACTION. People promote action but usually don’t know what actual steps they need to take next because it requires them to do and be different than who and what they were 5 days before and leadership doesn’t know how to help model new behaviors. There are a lot of steps and stages that must be taken and met for a strageic plan can do you and your organization any good. The first step in this process is to determine if everyone on the leadership team and then within the organization knows about the plan, understands the plan and then knows what steps THEY must take to help implement the plan. This quick and easy assessment will help you determine how well the plan is understood.

Leadership Team Competency

These questions will help you and your team discover if you are ready to implement your strategic plan or if you must slow down and make sure everyone knows what the objectives are and their place in helping the company achieve those objectives. So many times I witness leadership going in one direction only to turn around and watch the rest of the company heading off in an entirely different direction–strange but, unfortunately very true.

Now for the assessment:  For ease of wording I use the term “leaders.” I suggest you mentally use all people of authority in your organization including executives, supervisors, directors, managers, assistant managers and so forth. I suggest you use a 0-5 Lickert Scale, where zero means “none of the leaders” and five means “all the leaders.”

1. Your leaders understand the strategic plan and are able to successfully set department goals in support of the strategy?
2. Your leaders lead meetings in which strategic issues are discussed in relation to operations?
3. Your leaders, if asked, could provide a priority list of issues directly related to strategy implementation for which they are responsible?
4. Your leaders set their subordinates’ goals and objectives according to the strategic goals that relate to their operations?
5. Your leaders evaluate, reward, and promote their people with strategic goals in mind?

Working Hard vs Working Smart

Working hard is needed, but working smart is required and nothing is more important to business success than working toward a specific destination and making sure you and your team have the fundamental skills, knowledge and competency to create and implement a useful strategic plan. For additional information on any or all of this material, please contact Kelly@InternalBusinessSolutions.com so we can schedule an appointment for you and i to speak about how to improve you and your company.

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During difficult times, why do some firms grow and prosper while others decline and die out? I believe the answer lays in the ability to manage change. Some people see threats and change as what they have to give up. Others see them as opportunities. These “opportunists” see change as a time when things are stirred up causing an abundance of possibilities. These opportunists take proactive steps, push past the fear of the unknown, calculate the prudent risks and take action instead of bemoaning the pressures or trying to avoid them.

One important consideration in this opportunity-focused process is to “take off your blinders” and clearly define your desired end-results despite current conditions. With those refined goals clarified in your mind, imagine all possibilities that might lead to that outcome. What do your internal and external customers need from you in order to achieve this goal? Suspend disbelief and don’t limit your thinking.

A great example of this kind of courage and innovation can be seen in the work of Malcolm P. McLean of North Carolina during the depression of the 1930s. McLean, a truck driver with a vision, saw a need in the shipping industry and consequently invented containerized shipping boxes. Still used today, he created a technology that modernized the shipping industry. Before those big shipping containers were standard, it would take up to two weeks to unload a ship. With shipping containers, the time to unload was reduced to 24 hours! McLean focused on filling a need through innovation despite horrendous economic conditions.

Another important consideration is this: stop trying to solve problems. Yes, you read that correctly—don’t try to solve problems. Problem solving is reactionary. Moreover, problem solvers tend to search for problems. In this way, they tend to focus on what does not work, which leads to blame, finger-pointing and scapegoating. Look instead toward innovations and successes. Given a clearly defined long-term goal and an awareness of how best to succeed at each step of the way, work backward from the desired end-result. In this way you will frame each necessary step needed to achieve your goals by way of successes, not problems. Yes, this will require a paradigm shift and change to the status quo and, as you know, some people may not necessarily like that. But, change, whether good or bad, at some point will be inevitable. You might as well embrace it and use it to your advantage.

Excerpts taken from Alan Weiss PhD in 2004 about innovation and how a leader can help turn a challenge into a gift. These exercises take energy, time and dedication, but the riches gained from the work will greatly benefit leaders and organizations facing economic challenges:

1. Explore your unexpected past successes. What happened? Find out how and why that experience became a success. Then, refocus on what worked.

2. Explore your unexpected failures. If you have the guts and fortitude to look past the pain, the lessons that come from failures will be great gifts.

3. Analyze unexpected events in your professional life. As leaders it is your job to take the time to look at unexpected events in the world and in your industry and glean from them the nuggets that lay just under the surface.

4. Process through what you perceive as weakness. Find the weak link or missing link in your process, your skills or your organization.

5. Stay up with changes in industry and/or notice changes in market structure. Vacuum tubes were replaced by transistors and then by micro chips. Those companies who didn’t look at and invest in the new technology were left behind. CEO’s who kept their noses to the grindstone and just redoubled their efforts to improve on the vacuum tube were also left behind. Stay ahead of the curve. Embrace and learn to leverage the changes that are coming. “Familiar” or “tried and true” aren’t always the best indicators of success.

6. Stay alert of high-growth business areas. This one seems obvious, but most people jump on the bandwagon too late because they were working hard instead of working smart. Great business people are often 180 degrees off from what everyone else is doing. When most people were buying real estate a few years ago, the smart people were selling off their inventories. Now their coffers are full and these wise individuals are waiting to buy back many of those same properties for 40 and 60 cents on the dollar. Is that luck or just anticipating change and leveraging it?

7. Converge complementary technologies. Individual technologies may not represent opportunity by themselves, but when taken together they may represent substantial opportunity for those willing to look for it. Computers were cool toys for a select few until the right software came along to make them a mainstay of our world.

8. Be aware of demographic changes. This can mean people moving into an area or industry or out of an area or industry. This can refer to age, education, race, income distribution, buying habits, etc. For an example, think of the recent increase in the piercing or tattoo industries.

9. Give unbiased consideration to changes in perception. Changes in perception are not changes in the facts themselves but rather are changes in the way people choose to interpret the facts. Perception is reality.

10. Gather new knowledge. What trends and information are out there regarding your industry, specific business, departments and processes within your business? Look out to the world as well as inside your business for these answers.