Five Steps to Reaping the Most Out of Organizational Conflict (Pt 2)

The next step in harvesting the very best out of organizational tension is:

2.  Assemble the Right People

We must have the right people involved if we’re going to come up with a killer solution that will be widely owned and broadly adopted.  In my experience, a group of  3-8 people is about right.  Less than that and it’s likely more of a personal issue between you and one other person, rather than an organizational one.  More that than and it’s hard to get anything done.  With that in mind, who are the right people to speak into this?  Consider the following four questions as you determine whom to invite to the table:

• Who best represents the functional areas impacted by this issue? I usually look for the person who is directly impacted the most, and invite them to participate.  In my work place, many issues impact the Campus Pastors, but it isn’t practical to invite them all to participate in most problem solving scenarios.  I’ll pick the one who is most impacted.
• Who are the creative problem solvers? Creativity is important because if tried and true methods would have worked, we most likely would’ve already done that.   We need fresh thinking and innovation from those willing to question everything.
• Who are the positive people? Nobody benefits when negative people drag down the group.  I’m not suggesting that you go without critical thinkers who will ask the tough questions about “How are we going to do that?”  I’m only saying that if we always let that question stop us from exploration, we’ll never go anywhere.  Make sure you include some dreamers.
• Who are the decision makers? There are two ways to do this.  You can have the actual decision makers in the room so that you can make a firm call and move forward.  This has the benefit of immediate buy-in, but often it takes a lot more time to get on their calendars in the first place.  Another approach, one I often opt for, is to get the functional representatives together with the idea of developing a proposal, which will be presented to the higher level decision makers at a later date.

Tomorrow I’ll tackle step three:  Gain Consensus on Guiding Principles.