The Power of Constructive Conflict

When I teach seminars on teamwork, I usually break people into small groups and give them a few minutes to come up with what they think are the five most important aspects of a high performing team.  What would you say?

Usually groups come up with lots of good ideas, but almost never do they list the importance of “constructive conflict.”  Yet, the research on teamwork tells us this is a very important ingredient for a high performing team.  Why?

Imagine this.  A team is having a meeting and “Billy Bob” has an idea.  “Sally Mae” thinks it is a bad idea, but not so bad that she wants to “rock the boat.”  She doesn’t say anything, the idea does not work, and it wastes a lot of time and money.  This happens every day in organizations and bad ideas get implemented because someone won’t speak up.

Or maybe it goes down like this . . . . . Billy Bob’s next idea is SO bad that Sally Mae can’t stand it.  “Billy Bob, that is an idiotic idea.  Are you trying to destroy this organization!?!?”  And that’s what we call negative conflict – and you have seen the results of that.

What is needed is a “norm” of valuing constructive conflict and developing a team competency to disagree without being disagreeable; to collaborate and create better ideas together.  The lack of constructive conflict leads to mediocre or even disastrous decisions.  It can lead to “Groupthink” which has been blamed for causing such tragedies as the Challenger explosion.

I’m oversimplifying (it’s a blog), but here’s the advice:  don’t be overly polite, but don’t be a jerk, and don’t get upset if someone respectfully critiques your idea.

How do you develop the competency of “constructive conflict” within your organization?

Of course you could hire a great consultant to come in and do a workshop for you.  But if you want to try something on your own, I suggest buying the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni for everyone.  Lencioni’s formula for a high performing team, which is backed up by the research, is:

*They trust one another

*They engage in unfiltered conflict around ideas

*They commit to decisions and plans of action

*They hold one another accountable for delivering against those plans.

*They focus on the achievement of collective results

Bring your team together and ask these questions:  Based on what the book says about teamwork:

*What are we doing well?

*What’s not working?

*How can we make what’s not working, work?

This will give you the beginning of a dialogue that you will have to reinforce over time to develop the competency of constructive conflict and the other four competencies.  Over time you can develop your group into an even higher performing team.

Try it for your next off site or summer staff retreat and practice disagreeing . . . without being disagreeable.  It will help your team make even more of a mission impact.

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

The Four Fundamental Questions

If you want focused, effective, coordinated action from the people in your organization, then every one of them should be able to answer these four fundamental questions:

*Why are we here? 

*What do we stand for? 

*Where are we going? 

*How are we going to get there?

Why are we here?  This is the mission question.  But we don’t need to make people memorize the mission statement.  It’s much more important that everyone can, in their own words, explain the impact your organization intends to make and for whom.  Invite people to practice doing this with one another at your next staff meeting.  It will help them the next time someone they meet asks what you do.

What do we stand for?  If you don’t have a list of articulated values of your organization, then add this to your “to do” list.  But don’t just check the box when you are done and file them away.  Regularly – maybe quarterly – refer to them and ask one another how well your organization is living up to them.  How well have you navigated the inevitable ethical challenges that have come along?

Where are we going?  Can everyone state the organization’s most important goals for the coming year, and for the next five years?  And what about your vision for the future?  Have people been given a chance to share their dreams and contribute to creating a shared vision for the organization?  Allowing people to participate in crafting the future of their organization can help develop a more empowered team.

How are we going to get there?  This is, of course, the strategy question and most people in most organizations cannot articulate this.  Writing in Harvard Business Review in 2008, Collins & Rutland made this observation:

“Leaders of firms are mystified when what they thought was a beautifully crafted strategy is never implemented. . . .  They fail to appreciate the necessity of having a simple, clear, succinct strategy statement that everyone can internalize and use as a guiding light for making difficult choices.”

Make the four questions a topic for your next staff meeting or go even deeper on them at your summer staff retreat.  The questions are also a great topic for employee orientation.  When everyone can clearly answer these questions you have a much greater chance of coordinating action and making even more of a mission impact.

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

The 7th Deadly Sin of Nonprofit Strategy: “Not Ambitious Enough”

A strategy and its associated goals and plans should be focused on a vision that is big, bold, and inspiring. 

Many strategies are based simply on an analytical forecast of the way things are currently headed.  How dull.  It was Goethe who said:

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”

In his presidential run, Robert Kennedy used to quote George Bernard Shaw at the end of his speeches:

“Some men see things as they are and say ‘why,’ I dream of things that never were and say ‘why not.’”

The way to tap into dreams is through Vision.  One of the very important steps in the strategy process I use is for a nonprofit to focus on its commitment to fulfilling its unmet mission needs (aka Mission Gap) and then dream about what the organization would look like in an ideal state – so that it could close its Mission Gap as effectively as possible.

We need to let people dream these big, bold visions.  They want to be inspired by something.  Ask your stakeholders about their dreams.  Ask them what your organization would look like if they could have it any way they wanted it – so they could make even more of a difference for those they serve.

Ask, listen, share your own dreams – and create a vision with others that inspires you all.

I am often told that this approach to dreaming an ideal is a totally unreasonable way to go about creating a strategy.  When I am told that, I enthusiastically agree!  And then I share another quote by George Bernard Shaw:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in attempting to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

We need big, “unreasonable” visions because – face it – we are trying to solve big, challenging problems.  And incremental improvement is just not satisfactory.  Not for me, at least.  Whether your passion is providing affordable housing, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, or something else – we need organizations to build capacity to address these needs.

Doing this is important because vision – based on the opportunity to close a Mission Gap effectively – drives strategy.  And it ignites the “out of the box” thinking that everyone talks about.

Resist the temptation to create a vision you are sure you can achieve.  And remember the words of Nelson Mandela:

“Your playing small does not serve the world.”

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

The 6th Deadly Sin of Nonprofit Strategy: “No Annual Review”

A major complaint about strategic planning is that it is not worthwhile because no one can predict the future – so why try to set a five year strategy?  People who think this way don’t understand strategy correctly.

A strategy should not attempt to tell you specifically what you will “do” during the second week of the tenth month of the third year of the strategy time frame.  That would be kind of goofy, right?  And yet, when some people hear “strategic plan,” that’s what they think.

As I said in my last blog “a strategy is a general explanation of how you are going to guide your organization’s performance into the future – from here to there.  It includes ‘themes’ the organization is going to follow, not exact detailed plans.”

But this explanation is based on certain assumptions you make.  And the strategy is also based on your understanding of your internal and external environments – as captured in your SWOTs (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).  Therefore, an organization needs to regularly monitor its assumptions and its SWOTs for significant changes.  This needs to happen at least annually in a formal way.  And senior leaders in organizations need to be thinking about these things on a regular basis.

What if assumptions prove to be incorrect or the SWOTs change significantly?  Call a time out!  It is unlikely that there have been enough changes in the environment that you need to totally revisit your mission and vision.  You may need to adjust some of your goals.  But then you should rework your SWOTs to see if the strategy you had set still works.  If not, then make a new strategy!  A strategy is not set in stone.

The other thing to check regularly is your performance on your mission metrics.  If your strategy is not providing you with improved results, then – once again – call a time out.  Re-examine what you are doing.  If you think that you have given the strategy enough of a chance and it is not working, then you need a new strategy.

My favorite story about this is when I was doing some research on Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  The group I was studying was very clear on their metrics – they were (and are) committed to reducing the number of deaths from drunk driving crashes.  They had a strategy in place and they were following it.  But after two years the results were not what they wanted.  “What did you do?” I asked.  “We called a ‘time out’ and got everyone together to make a new strategy.  If the drunk driving death numbers are not going down as fast as we want then we need a new strategy.”  Indeed, if the strategy is not producing results then you need a new strategy.  These MADD leaders adjusted their strategy and the numbers started going down faster.  Of course an organization can only do this if it has done the hard work necessary to design those mission metrics.

No one can see into the future when developing a strategy.  And we don’t have to.  All we can do is make certain assumptions that we check regularly.

The final deadly sin will be out soon:  “Not Ambitious Enough”

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.

The 5th Deadly Sin of Nonprofit Strategy: “Lots of Plans, No Strategy” aka “What is Strategy Anyway?”

When I ask for a copy of a strategy or a strategic plan, I usually get a lot of paper with plans and lists and budgets and – sometimes – a few vague goals.  But rarely do I see a “strategy.”

So what is a strategy anyway?  Keeping it simple, a strategy is a general explanation of how you are going to guide your organization’s performance into the future – from here to there.  Essentially it is a “performance story.”  It includes “themes” the organization is going to follow, not exact detailed plans.  A strategy is like a tune played by a jazz group; everyone knows the tune to follow even though the exact notes aren’t scripted.

The first problem I find is that most “strategic plans” don’t tell you where the organization is going.  What future are you pursuing?  What is your vision?  What are your goals?  Where are you going?  These questions are usually not answered.

Once you state the future you are heading toward, then you need to explain how you are going to get from here to there.  To do this, you need clarity on your current reality – which we usually do by assessing your SWOTs (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).

Then it is time to create your strategy.  Ask yourself these questions:

*How are we going to leverage our strengths to help us best pursue our future?

*How are we going to fortify our weaknesses to help us best pursue our future?

*How are we going to leverage our opportunities to help us best pursue our future?

*How are we going to block our threats to help us best pursue our future?

Once you have answered these questions, themes will arise – a story will emerge.  You will begin to see which of the SWOTs will play more or less important roles in allowing you to most effectively pursue your future.  Those themes begin to help you build your strategy narrative – your story of how you are going to pursue your future for the next five years or so.

Once you have a concise strategy narrative – of no more than three to four paragraphs – then it is something you can easily share within the organization and help make sure that everyone is following the same strategy.  And what a great idea that would be!

I’ve been very simplistic here so this can be digested in a blog.  If you want to read more, I have a couple of free articles on my web site or if you are really intrigued you can send $26.10 to Amazon for a copy of my book and read about this in more detail.

The 6^th Deadly Sin is next:  How can you keep a strategy relevant?

For more ideas on how you can lead breakthroughs in your organization, follow this blog and check out my web site at www.SheehanNonprofitConsulting.com   You will find free resources you can download, including a Breakthrough Strategy Workbook that you can download at no cost.  You can also check out my book, Mission Impact:  Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits, and buy it if you are interested.  And you can follow Sheehan Nonprofit Consulting on Facebook.