You must transform conflicts, if you don’t want to remain with just smoking ashes of your business

There’s a lot of talk about conflict, or conflict management, in the world of business, nowadays. however, it is very dangerous to deal with them without a thorough knowledge of their dynamics. The risk is to overlook the most relevant, or to just work on effects without addressing their causes. It is common to consider a conflict as a friction between people, which is manifested through difficult relationships, mobbing or more blatant behaviors like bullying and direct aggressive confrontation. With this in mind, all attention is dedicated to bring peace between the people involved. There’s nothing bad in trying to bring peace wherever we want, but: what if conflict was just the apparent symptom of a deep illness of the organization?
The answer comes from anthropology and mathematics: indeed it was the anthropologists who unveiled the conflict dynamics, studying the innate human predispositions, while the Theory of Games gave experimental evidence of them. Without going too much into detail, we must know that conflict is for humans an unnatural way to resolve divergences and when used it is because that is fostered by the context. There may be external or internal factors, usually both, but in any case it is possible to act in order to resolve the situation at a root cause level and restore conditions of effectiveness. Provided one knows where to put his/her hands.
A first step, which is usually overlooked, is that of finding out at what level the conflict lays, so as to act in the most appropriate way. Let’s take as example a very common conflict between production and sales in an industrial company, which manifests itself in ongoing discussions between the respective managers. I am thinking of a real case (see my website for the real CASE history). If the problem is at the organizational level, there is no point in insisting to resolve it at the interpersonal level between the two managers. Action restricted to the people will bring only temporary results, because the organizational problem persists and the problem will re-emerge in the future. Action has to be taken at the direction’s level, e.g. changing the way the sales budgets are set, investing in the production development, changing the procedures for personalized orders and so on.
Conflict is a symptom, not the pathology: the latter needs to accurately diagnosed so as to resolve the root causes and avoid relapses. Otherwise the organization will incur uncontrollable costs and losses – in the example reduced productivity, late delivery penalties, product defects, dissatisfaction of customers. A chronic conflict is a deadly threat for the organization because it tends to spread like metastases and attack other “organs”. It can cause financial problems due to delayed income, loss of market share, depart of key collaborators and so on.
An accurate diagnosis needs a Method to find out the true roots of the conflict, in order to achieve the transformative solution, one with which all the conflict parties see their needs matched: but which ones? Certainly not the one to see the counterpart humiliated, or unreasonable pretenses due to an oversize ego, even less requests originated from incompetence. A reliable parameter is needed: personally I have overcome this problem by developing The CASE® Method, which considers the Basic Needs of the human being, based on 50 years of thorough research on conflict. Conflict scholars know that no one enters a conflict without feeling a threat to something profound, be it a conscious or unconscious feeling.
The CASE® Method makes the discovery of the Basic Needs of people and organizations easily accessible to everyone: matching such Needs is something acceptable by nature by all parties in a conflict. This has nothing to do with mediation, which is something typical of when one tries to “bring peace” between two people who have a conflict. The transformation of a conflict aims at the removal of obstacles to the complete expression of the potential of the organization and of its components. That’s why the CASE® is first and foremost an effective Leadership tool.
In the example, implementing The CASE® implies to consider the Basic Needs of both managers, of the functions they represent and of the whole company. There is a point of convergence between the Needs of all the parties and this is what has to be found, so that finally the company’s objectives can be attained with the best efficiency.
To achieve such a result knowledge of the Method and of its implementation is certainly needed, along with the more neutral and acute look at the situation that is typical of someone who has developed a thorough awareness of him/herself and a balanced judgement. This is the reason why quite often it is better that the transformative process is assisted by someone who is external to the conflict process. The approach of the CASE® consultant doesn’t provide ready-made solutions, instead it helps the people/functions involved in the quest for solutions that are appropriate to them and to their actual context. This is the best guarantee that such solutions will be feasible and will resist the test of time.
Finally, as conclusion to the above considerations, I believe that a thorough conflict transformation competence should be in the toolbox of every executive or manager. Besides the fact that it would be useful for everyone, since conflict is, alas, a daily nuisance for most of the people.
Find out more about The CASE® Method by browsing through the CASE History section of this website or sending me a direct email. Ask also for the conditions to organize a meeting by your organization and find out what The CASE® can do for you.