Business Case Studies, Executive Interviews, Jonathan Hughes on Collaboration

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Executive Interviews: Interview with Jonathan Hughes on Collaboration
March 2008 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary


Jonathan Hughes
Partner at Vantage Partners, a consulting firm.


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  • You have observed, "clashes between parties are the crucibles in which creative solutions are developed and wise trade-offs among competing objectives are made. So instead of trying simply to reduce disagreements, senior executives need to embrace conflict and, just as important, institutionalize mechanisms for managing it." What is the role of conflict in making collaboration efforts successful?
    Fundamentally, collaboration is the process by which two or more parties, whether colleagues within a company, a customer and a supplier, or partners in a joint venture, come together and achieve results that would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve on their own.

    Inevitably, the value that is created through collaboration is a function of the fact that the parties involved have different knowledge, different skills, different ideas, and often different needs as well. Without such differences, there is notmuch benefit to collaboration in the first place. So the value of collaboration stands or falls on whether or not parties can engage their differences constructively. This means being willing to disagree and able to learn from disagreement and use those new insights to come up with creative, innovate solutions.

  • What are the potential areas of conflict in any collaboration initiative? Where do disagreements stem from? From your research have you observed any specific patterns may be to do with age of executives, nationality of executives, specific industry, depth of talent pool in any company, sharing of corporate vision, etc?
    As I've noted, any differences in national culture, between large and small companies, between engineers and salespeople, between customers and suppliers, and so on create, on the one hand, the potential for learning and innovation. At the same time, those very same differences create the potential for misunderstanding, conflict which may be poorly handled and lead to mistrust, and ultimately an inability to work together.

    A basic framework for spotting and analyzing conflict in a collaborative initiative is to determine whether those involved are in conflict over goals, or inmeans for achieving goals, or whether conflict is a function of interpersonal issues for example, as a result of one or more parties feeling mistreated or disrespected by others. More often than not, significant conflicts involve all three of these dimensions, and effective resolution requires clarifying and understanding what is driving conflict along each dimension, and addressing each of those root causes.

  • What are the differences between strategies for managing disagreements at the point of conflict and strategies for managing conflict upon escalation up the management chain? Are there any, according to you, untouchables in the sense, in any disagreement management strategy, are there any sacrosanct principles in managing disagreements?
    On the one hand, I would say that effective collaboration depends upon a willingness and ability to engage in disagreement about anything. That said, at some point, decisions need to be made and executed. So, within teams, or between corporate partners, my basic advice is: create space for disagreement, have open debate, and then make the best choice you can based on a full airing of the information and ideas of all those involved. Once that decision is made, part of collaboration means that everyone lines up behind the decision, even if they would have preferred a different outcome, and does their best to implement it successfully. Now, if circumstances change, or new information comes to light, it may indeed be appropriate and useful to reconsider the decision. As to sacrosanct principles, I would say "Disagree, but without being disagreeable" a concept articulated by my partner Bruce Patton and his co-authors in Getting to Yes. Thismeans being able to argue, passionately but respectfully, and without attacking the integrity, competence, or fundamental worth of those with whom you disagree. It requires having confidence that your own ideas have merits and are worth advancing, while being both humble and self-confident enough to realize you could be missing something, and that the ideas of those with whom you disagree likely have some merit as well.

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