1. PATHS TO HARMONY Working with Conflict among Groups Frank OConnor NZ Psychological Society ~ Annual Conference 2009 Palmerston North, Aotearoa / New Zealand Developing Organisations & Leaders Improving Business Performance & Management Moa Resources, 103 Overtoun Terrace, Hataitai, Wellington, New Zealand 6021+64 21 386-911[email_address]

2. CONFLICTS WITH MAJOR EMOTIONAL AND COMMERCIAL ELEMENTS

• Conflicts between two or more parties of disparate power

• Issues addressed

• • goal and role confusion

• • responsibility overlaps or underlaps

• • process mismatches

3. UTILITY OF APPROACHES

• Theories and approaches designed to assist understanding and intervention are noted

• • Game theory

• • Family therapy

• • Motivation and efficacy work

• • Group dynamics

• But utilitys low from participants perspectives

• • Watch for their comments: they balance effort with achievement

• • Much theory seems unhelpful: it takes too long to see progress

• • Specific situations, issues or behaviours that exemplify the conflict

• Examples compare aspects of legalistic and other paths to improvement

• • Clients calls for help seems better met by small changes now than by deeper analysis

• • Best approaches make change quickly

4. CONSEQUENCES OF PATH CHOICE

Some consequences

• Choosing a collaborative path after failed earlier attempts to find an improvement path

Well look at

• Impact of readiness, willingness and ability of participants

• Timing and extent of benefits

5. NOTHING WRONG WITH MY IDEA 6. HEALING PUBLIC HEALTH

• Two previously competing health service units, one publicly owned and the other from the private sector, were committed to a joint venture in delivering a range of community and public heath services

• • This joint venture could only succeed if longstanding differences in work priorities and operating style were resolved

• • Levels of manager commitment varied, as some had not been involved in the bidding process that won the contract

• Aided participants in leaving past differences behind by clarifying common goals for overall businesses, objectives shared in specific service areas and operational issues to be resolved

• • Assisted working parties in defining practice standards and work processes and then timetable tasks allocated to specific people so business as usual would continue during the transition

• Participants reported confidence in being able to advance with the agreed programme by the end of the planning workshop

• • Follow-up over subsequent months reported regular achievement of standards

7. A HARD POSITION TO MOVE FROM 8. PARTNERSHIP LUBRICATION

• A dozen players:

• • A District Council (as contract client)

• • Their contract consultant

• • Their lead contractor

• Expectations:

• • Clients contracted deliverables

• • Reasons deliverables were wanted

• • What would make achievement unacceptablefailure factors

• • Perspectives from consultant then contractor

• Participants discovered their differences:

• • Much more on the things each group expected to achieve

• • Not things they really needed to avoid (delays and death)

• The similarity of these failure factors made it easy to agree risks

• • A clearly understood single page of tangible partnership objectives

• • Aligned to the business goals and obligations of the three parties

• • Says What we want to happen and What we dont want to happen

9. AS LONG AS WE KEEP TALKING 10. PUBLIC HEALTH REGULATIONDISPUTE RESOLUTION

• The Minister of Health requested mediation services

• • A protracted dispute between a health sector regulatory authority, the leading relevant professional association and the primary tertiary education institution providing professional training

• • The dispute had seen more than $250,000 spent on lawyers without improvement and was seen to be adversely affecting the professions ability to safely deliver its services to the public

• A process of structured conversations

• • Enormous amount of getting ready to talk confidence rebuilding

• • Improved communication increased mutual understanding

• • Participants relationship styles shifted in a constructive way

• • Hearing all the grievances was crucial action on each was not

• In five months

• • agreed to leave the dispute behind them

• • forged a binding Memorandum of Understanding & Commitment (their choice of title) to guide their interactions over the years ahead

11. GETTING MY MESSAGE ACROSS 12. PUBLIC WORKS 1 RELATIONSHIP BREAKDOWN

• Shortfall in communication and ease around the delivery sought by both parties

• • territorial local authority (asset owning client)

• • commercial engineering service contractor

• Essential points of the commercial contract were being met

• • Both parties agreed to assistance in clarifying the issues is there something wrong with the contract?

• Survey showed their interface not working smoothly

• • Many examples of good performance

• • Expected work not being completed to mutual benefit

• • Issues needing resolution not addressed fairly and promptly

• • Some of the people, some of the time, just didnt get on

13. PUBLIC WORKS 2 TANGIBLE INDICATORS OF DIFFICULTY

• Contractor: increased staff turnover, especially in hard-to-replace experienced staff

• Client: increasing public concern about timing and quality of work, especially where it caused disruption to citizens activities

• Both: low confidence in the other group

• • Small topics of disagreement were difficult to resolve

• • Negotiations on substantial matters were stalling and inflexible

• Direct cost incurred by the scrambling: $100,000 per month

• • Operating loss for the contractor

• • Recurring rework and repeated communications for both

• • Real money: We could have used that time to do profitable work!

14. PUBLIC WORKS 3 RELATIONSHIP RESTORED

• According to the client:

• • Id like you to meet our marriage guidance counsellor he has saved our relationship

• According to the contractor:

• • The increase in understanding of the our needs and effort perspective was made possible by open discussion of business drivers and styles we got listened to

• Review after six months

• • Client: happy with work quality, rate and style

• • Contractor: Monthly commercial loss turned round and each month now showed a small profit, due in part to improved collaboration and in part to renegotiated rates for some work

• • All staff reported improvement in clarity of expectations and ease of getting work done the goals of the intervention

• Discomfort remained in parts of the interface

• • Awkward relationship remains personality transplant?

15. TENSION PEAKS AT BREAKING POINT 16. TELECOMMUNICATIONS 1 NETWORK CONSTRUCTION

• A three year $250M project designed and built a new telecommunications network

• • Support was provided at the commencement of the project, with frequent refreshers, to ensure that the planning, staffing and focus of the joint project team was sufficient for the task

• Effort had been kept up to clarify evolving roles, responsibilities, management practices and key processes

• • Many meetings between the partners were facilitated, to promote a united approach and to plan and agree on the actions and responsibilities for work programmes with high complexity or high risk of conflict

17. TELECOMMUNICATIONS 2 NETWORK BREAKDOWN

• The partnership between the network owner and a key technology provider was suffering from exhaustion

• • Much had been achieved

• • Differences of opinion about work to be done and quality of work delivered were requiring more and more management conciliation

• • Confidence between the two parties was falling as the public launch approached

• Conflict flared between the parties and the project leaders sought reorientation of staff to the task in hand, and a collaborative charting of tasks critical to the projects completion

18. TELECOMMUNICATIONS 3 CRITICAL CARE

• After extensive preparation

• A two day conversation involving seventy people

• • Cleared the air Without prejudice

• • Refocused on the goal shared and tangible vision of success

• • Developed action plans through to operational completion

• Relationships were reoriented

• • capability of people valued Well only get there together

• • technical failures and delays acknowledged and prioritised for fixing

• Reorientation held through to the completion of the project

• • Launch was achieved on schedule within budget and without public problems

• • The projects leadership was recognised by national awards.

19. GETTING IT TOGETHER 20. CHILD YOUTH AND FAMILY 1 SERVICE NON-DELIVERY

• Field service delivery performance being compromised by the apparent inadequacy of information systems

• Technical review demonstrated that the systems were largely functioning as expected and the specialist team knew what they were doing

• However, relationship between business management and the IT service team were characterised by buck-passing and blame-shifting

• Both parties believed they were being reasonable but the other party would not allow a compromise to be reached

21. CHILD YOUTH AND FAMILY 2 GETTING AROUND THE SAME TABLE

• Negotiated attendance of key players at a workshop

• • Defined issues

• • Agreed priorities

• • Established joint action plans

• • Documented responsibilities agreed

• Properly heard, both parties found more common ground than was expected

• • Priorities were sorted out together

• • Interface protocols were understood by the little people

• • Food was enjoyed

• Monitored action plans for three months to ensure issues arising were addressed

• • Resulting effectiveness improvements and consequent benefits in business performance were reported in a paper jointly presented by representatives of the delivery and IT teams at the annual conference of the New Zealand Computer Society

22. UTILITY RECAP

• From participants perspectives

• • Watch for their comments: they balance effort with achievement

• • Much theory seems unhelpful: it takes too long to see progress

• • Specific situations, issues or behaviours that exemplify the conflict

• Clients calls for help seems better met by small changes now than by deeper analysis

• • Best approaches make change quickly

23. FAVOURITE REFERENCES

• • Argyris, C. and Schn, D.A. (1974)Theory in practice: increasing professional effectivenessSan Francisco: Jossey-Bass

• • Argyris, C. and Schn, D.A. (1978)Organizational learning: a theory of action perspectiveNew York: McGraw-Hill

• • Leng, Russell J and Wheeler, Hugh G (1979) Influence stategies, success and warJournal of Conflict Resolution23 p 655