Learn how to manage executive egos to achieve high-performing teams and corporate success.
Interview
The Harder They Fall:
Wrestling With Executive Conflict
Eric Schoeniger
With Howard M. Guttman, Author of When Goliaths Clash
The big office is often home to a big ego. After all, it takes vision, passion, and confidence to lead an organization to greatness. But what should an organization do when clashing egos get in the way of corporate success?
Howard M. Guttman provides answers in his recent book, When Goliaths Clash: Managing Executive Conflict to Build a More Dynamic Organization (Amacom).
A former Johnson & Johnson executive and principal of Guttman Development Strategies (Ledgewood, N.J.), Guttman has helped market leaders such as Campbell Soup, Colgate-Palmolive, and Pfizer resolve conflicts and build high-performance teams.
Q: How do power struggles in the corner office lead to poor corporate performance?
Power struggles delay decision-making, create silos in the organization, and breed underground behavior. It affects the organization in terms of the time and effort needed to get things done. It also creates a model of dysfunction that the organization then mirrors because the corporate office sets the performance model for the rest of the organization.
In addition, when there are competitive problems within the organization, people's focus turns inward, and they start competing with themselves rather than with the marketplace. It breeds an internal focus that doesn't support the organization's mission.
Q: What are some of the issues that lead to executive conflict?
Lack of agreement regarding strategy or goals is a major issue. This leads to competition for resources, especially at key decision points, such as the annual budget cycle or when major new initiatives are undertaken. Another issue involves disagreement about roles and accountability, so people's expectations of one another are unfulfilled. Then there is the helter-skelter activity that occurs when there are no protocols or rules of engagement around decision-making and communication.
Q: You say the key to managing conflict is to embrace it. Can an organization that actively engages in conflict be successful?
Yes, as long as it has three things:
Right mindset. People need to understand that conflict is not negative but simply a fact of doing business.
Skills set. They need to know how to successfully manage conflict.
Protocols. There must be ground rules enabling people to understand their options when they don’t get closure on an issue.
As long as they know the rules of engagement and have the skills to play it out, conflict can be a positive force.
Q: How do you convince executives that what's best for the company is best for their area of responsibility?
Executives must feel like owners of the business. For example, if you're a member of a senior team in charge of operations, do you see yourself as a member of the senior team who happens to be an operations person, or do you see yourself as an operations person who occasionally interacts with the senior team?
People need to attach themselves not just to their function but also to the level they belong to. That’s a high-performance team approach. Aligning the compensation system to this larger sense of ownership is critical, along with effective performance management.
Q: What about an executive whose division is outperforming the rest of the organization and who therefore feels justified in pursuing their own agenda?
There's an old line: "What you permit, you promote." If you allow a leader to prioritize their division over the organization, the whole structure eventually falls apart like a house of cards.
A key attribute of a high-performing team is that what’s best for the team supersedes functional self-interest. If a senior team decides to go in a direction that one executive disagrees with, their options are to renegotiate, let it go, or leave the organization.
No one can be allowed to hold the organization hostage.
Q: You suggest that organizations should align teams with business goals. Isn't that easier said than done?
The senior team must first determine the organization's key priorities. From those priorities, they should define which part of the pie each team member owns and communicate this judgment clearly down the line.
This requires transparent communication of goals and translating them collectively and individually across the organization. It often doesn’t happen because the senior team fails to align around goals, roles, and responsibilities. Any dysfunction elsewhere in the organization is merely a symptom of the dysfunction at the top.
Q: How has electronic communication affected executive conflict?
E-mail messages can act like Scud missiles, arriving with explosive force. E-mail also allows people to hide, disengage more easily, and avoid responsibility due to the lack of face-to-face dialogue.
The solution is to encourage more face-to-face or phone interaction and establish ground rules for the "battleground" of electronic communication.
Q: Can you give an example of a company that faced a serious power struggle and was able to resolve it?
We worked with a major pharmaceutical company experiencing severe power struggles. The top leader was conflict-averse, leading executives to act like feuding Greek city-states and causing the entire organization to work in silos.
The senior team addressed the situation by establishing clear rules of engagement or protocols for functioning as a high-performance team. Once protocols were in place, the board removed the top leader who had held the organization back.
Q: We've talked about protocols. What kinds of ground rules should organizations establish for resolving executive conflict?
How to move forward as a team despite disagreements.
How to escalate a disagreement between two executives.
Guidelines for decision-making: unilaterally, consultatively, or by consensus.
Clear, specific, and agreed-upon ground rules for decision-making, issue resolution, and communication are essential.
Eric Schoeniger is an award-winning freelance writer specializing in business and technology, based in Lower Gwynedd, Pa.