Arbitration & Mediation

Negotiating War: a "False and Sloppy Consensus"

By Victoria Pynchon

Let's take a workplace teaching moment from the Obama-McCrystal dust-up as provided to us by the New Yorker in this week's Talk of the Town piece, Team Effort.  In reporting the dysfunction on Team Afghanistan (McChrystal vs. American Ambassador Karl Eikenberry with President Karzai as a manipulative by-stander) the NY'ers George Packer recalls a description of governmental decision-making provided by Obama's special representative for the region, Richard Holbrooke, last year:

People sit in a room, they don't air their real differences, a false and sloppy consensus papers over those underlying differences, and they go back to their offices and continue to work at cross-purposes, even actively undermining each other.

If that defines your workplace, it's time to have some difficult conversations in which a genuine consensus is negotiated among those in power, all the while remembering that everyone is afraid of the scary HR lady down the hallway.  As the recession appears to deepen and run American business off the rails, its time we get real, get smart, get efficient and get right with one another.  If not, next thing you know, you'll be learning to spell Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E yourself, wondering how the heck such a profitable enterprise could meet such a messy and costly end.

Here are some resources:

Difficult Workplace Conversations by Conflict Zen blogger Tammy Lenski - an old post but a timeless one.

Bursting the Bubble, Cultivating Dissent in the Workplace by mediator and negotiation trainer and consultant Diane Levin of The Mediation Channel.

Resolving Conflicts at Work by Ken Cloke and Joan Goldsmith.

The Martial Art of Difficult Conversations by Peter (why I returned my iPad) Bregman at the Harvard Business Review

Toward a Theory of Managing Organizational Conflict by M Afzalur Rahim (for the academically-minded)

And, last but not least, the google book site for the Art of War

And remember . . . . never ever ever get comfortable with a reporter around.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on July 01, 2010 (boomark / email).