Diamonds to You

Conflicts, Cliques, Family Feelings & Turf Wars

Every organization, big or small, experiences all of these some of the time and some of these all of the time. How are they typically handled? By ignoring them until they become so bad that someone explodes, gets fired, or leaves the company.

Is the reason for ignoring them, as so many CEOs and managers suggest, because management is busily focused on the day to day tasks, the nuts and bolts of the business?

Or, is it, as I suspect, because like ostriches they bury their heads in the sand since they are afraid of conflict or even emotion, and are professionally unable to ameliorate festering situations.

Supposedly, resolving interpersonal problems is the responsibility of HR in big companies and “someone else” in smaller ones. Usually that means no one has the time or skill to really provide the time it takes to learn what’s causing the problems and/or dispute resolution. So, problems go from bad to worse.

Let me share a few stories from some of my client experiences.

I was called in to a semiconductor company to resolve a series of conflicts that the Senior VP of HR couldn’t resolve. In each of these three cases the resolution was simple once I listened and took the complaints expressed seriously.

We hate the Engineers

A group of women were actively complaining about the selfishness and annoying behavior of some of the engineers in their organization. They were so upset that they became uncooperative. They couldn’t tell me why. There was no particular incident that had set them off. So, I observed for a while. What I noticed was that this group of engineers cut through the work area occupied by these ladies and in so doing, would pick up a phone, a pen, a pad, or whatever else they needed as they were paged. They were encroaching on the ladies space without even realizing it.

My intervention was simple. I had the furniture re-arranged slightly to create a path that avoided the work areas of these women and had a small table and chair with a phone, pads and pencils installed in a convenient location on this path. Now, when any one of these engineers passing through (and they do frequently) is paged, he walks over to his own “space” and answer the phone.

Management of the wafer fab line is crazy!

Since it took an hour to two hours to set up the wafer fab operations for a particular run, the operators couldn’t understand why they were forced to change the configuration for another order in the middle of the run. They thought management was being arbitrary, capricious and decidedly inefficient. I asked one of the Senior Salesmen to come into a meeting with these operators and explain.

Bob’s explanation satisfied the operators. What he said was that sometimes in order to get a big order he, and the other sales staff had to promise a small amount of wafers the next day. That was the reason for the rush to get a new run in the middle of a previously scheduled one. Sometimes, said Bob, it isn’t the price, but the timeliness of getting much needed product to the customer that gets the order.

Too many cigarette breaks

Six previously productive and loyal employees were now found to be taking frequent breaks out in the parking lot. Their work was suffering and others were starting to talk about them. When I met with them for the first time, we couldn’t identify the problem. The second time we met, it was in their designated work area. They were working in a windowless room, with bare walls. Because the room was fairly large, it was also used for storage and there were boxes stacked everywhere. The people forced to work in this room had become claustrophobic and hadn’t realized it.

I had the boxes removed. We bought some large posters of mountains and oceans which were installed on the walls and the problem went away.

My interventions in a large software development company were quite different. In their case I needed to bring three ‘it’s not us, it’s them” warring groups together to help them learn to take overlapping responsibilities and make shared and compatible decisions together where applicable. It took several group sessions before they really learned to cooperate. Prior to these interventions they were even designing different icons for the same usage.

Another CEO brought me in because he couldn’t get his upper management folk to stop posturing, protecting their turf, and exaggerating. They acted as adversaries instead of as an executive team.

I learned that these executives had their staff members prepare power point presentations for their participation at executive staff meetings. Then, instead of talking to each other, they talked to their slides. There was no interaction and they were forced to steadfastly protect the positions they were taking in the formal presentations.

I forced them to dispense with the prepared presentations altogether. I asked them to suggest topics that were meaningful for them to discuss together and facilitated their monthly meetings for several months.

When I left them they were a dynamic and cohesive team and they had taken their company to the next level.

Some of my clients through the years have been small family owned businesses. They have their own sets of problems because everyone in the family has the expectation that he or she deserves the highest positions in the company. Personal feelings cloud many decisions and problems that happen in the office often spill over into damaged family relations at home.

Should the eldest son become CEO when his father retires? Should the sister automatically be relegated to administration, or HR? When husbands and wives work together, how do they delegate responsibilities and decision making authority so that they stay separate from each other?

The management consultant working with families in a family business needs also to be a family therapist. Much more so than in other organizations, these family owned businesses have feuds that are fueled by emotions.

The moral of the story: When you listen and learn how to deal with the underlying personality, psychological and emotional issues, many problems can be resolved long before they escalate.

My advice: Don’t ignore the small stuff, help people actually deal with them before they become big piles of you know what!

Workshops and Speeches

Speaking Engagement

August 19 at Santa Clara University: I will be speaking about child-raising during an all day conference called Autonomy in the Family. The public is invited (for a small fee).

August 24 at Cucina Restaurant in San Jose, I will be offering a workshop called “Do you really know how to grow your business? Together we can develop strategy, tactics, goals and resources.” For more information please contact cplata@muybueno.net

September 11 at Hobee’s in the Pruneyard, I will be speaking on making powerful professional images. For more information, please go to Women in Consulting’s website.

Corporate Workshops

I am currently offering a series of management training courses to my organizational clients. The courses are for managing people, products and processes and are highly interactive. They have been very successful and references/testimonials from satisfied C level executives can be found on my website, or by contacting me directly.

Another series of workshops is on Legal Compliance Issues regarding personnel and includes training about diversity, discrimination, sexual harassment, safety, drug-free workplace, and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Either of these workshops can be offered to your employees in groups of 15–25 people. The management training courses generally require 12 three hour sessions, but can also be broken down into one day per month sessions for 4 months. The Compliance Issues workshops range in time depending on the needs of the company, the level of knowledge and professionalism of the employees being trained, and the prior training received.

Some other speeches and workshops that are available to your organization are:

• Managing Organizational Change—for H.R. professionals and managers
• Dealing with Conflict in the Workplace
• Silos and Unhealthy competition—how to get back to being one solid organization of people working together for common goals
• Communication—how to handle different needs and styles in this highly diverse global economy

Recent Publications

• “Make it Rewarding,” Veterinary Economics, August 2006, I am being quoted by Kim Seidel.
• Kim is also quoting me in her article about Board Evaluations which will be published in the Membership Management Report.
• Susan Ladika is quoting me in PM Network Magazine’s annual Leadership Edition.
• ADA Compliance Guide published my article “Ketra and the Professional ‘Helpers’” in their July 2006 edition.
• “Handling Stress in Law Firms” published in the June issue of Law Firm, Inc.
• “Finding Success Through Succession,” which had been published in Security Management, will be used by Hunter College in New York as part of their on-line training modules for Job Placement Strategies, for their federally funded Employment Services Systems Research and Training Center.
• “Change Cultures”—I’m being quoted in Insight Magazine, the magazine for the Illinois CPA Society.
• Other articles and articles in which I have been quoted recently can be found by a Google search.

Also, of course, there are the two books—which my publisher tells me are selling well—available at www.productivepublications.com:

• Training Your Board of Directors: A Manual for the CEOs, Board Members, Administrators and Executives of Corporations, Associations, Non-Profit and Religious Organizations
• The “Please” and “Thank You” of Fundraising for Non-Profits: Fifteen Essential Ingredients for Success

So, how can I help you?

Let me again quote a client:

Your workshop…was invaluable. Your knowledge and skills are excellent. We enjoyed your quick wit and the support materials were terrific. I personally learned a great deal and the [participants] are still asking if we can’t please have you here on a permanent basis.
    You might consider changing the title of your seminar to “How to figure out where you are, how you got there, where you want to be and how to go about making the most of your talents and how to zero in on the needs of your clients to best serve them, while enjoying the process.”
    – P.M. Vice-President

Let me be your Aufin—your advisor to Kings.

ArLyne Diamond, Ph.D
ArLyne@DiamondAssociates.net