Arguments are opportunity

I’ve been lucky enough to have a situation where my people have been arguing.  Classic stuff too – the Sales Manager arguing that the Operations Manager isn’t delivering while the Operations Manager argues that the Sales Manager is selling what can’t be done.

Both are strong people who have an excellent feel for the overall business, and run their departments well.

Why am I lucky?

Because we’ve uncovered a genuine strategic question, which is: should we be in that market at all?

Reminds me of a great scene described in Robert Pirsig’s classic book Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance where a fellow college teacher asked him what the noise coming out of his classroom was about.  He calmly answered “we’ve come across a genuine question, and the shock of it is hard to recover from”.

The noise coming out the offices of my people shows me that we have ourselves a genuine question.

Arguments don’t sound nice, and trigger some sort of natural parental urge in the manager to ‘sort them out’.  To go in and see what the issue is, decide an answer and expect everyone to move on.  Perhaps afterwards the two people might be spoken to individually about playing nice, or the ‘right way’ to argue.

Managers need to go deeper or they’ll miss the chance they’ve been given.

If two intelligent and dedicated people are arguing to the point their relationship is breaking down, then you owe them much more than some sort of short-term relationship advice.  You owe them direction.  The reason the relationship is breaking is because both genuinely believe they are doing what they have been asked to do.

There is a big difference between two people arguing over the best way to achieve a goal versus arguing over what the goal should be in the first place.  When its the second one, and you’re the manager, you need to have a good listen, a solid think, and work out what part of the goals of your area  you haven’t communicated.  Or importantly, it might be time for a rethink.

Making the final call on questions relating to the objectives of the team is bread & butter manager work whether your team consists of frontline consultants or the five CEOs of each country your business is in. Communicating these decisions requires much more than a one-off presentation to announce the new direction, it needs tending just like a garden.  The big presentation is nothing more than the initial planting, after this comes meetings, casual conversations, and if you’re lucky, you’ll hear an argument.

What happened in my situation?  We uncovered the need for more detailed  analysis across all of our products so dusted off good old Peter Drucker and his classic ‘Managing for Results’.  End result is that we have much better plans for each of products and can now move the business into a much better position.

Here’s to arguments!