I’ll never forget a question I kept getting from an Associate. I never had a good answer (or an answer at all). The question stuck in my brain: “What does MBM have to say about conflict resolution?” It’s only in the past couple of months that I’ve heard stories about conflict resolution in an MBM organization. These are “sea stories” told around various groups, so I didn’t experience them personally. They serve as illustrations of how one might handle conflict resolution not detailed instructions.

Conflict Resolution: When Two People Don’t Like Each Other and Everyone Knows It

Imagine a workplace where there are two people who don’t like each other and everyone knows it. It’s commonplace to joke about “John” and “Jane” fighting like cats and dogs. One day the situation boils over. There’s yelling, tears and aggressive body language. The supervisor stops everything and takes “John” and “Jane” into his office.

Once “John” and “Jane” have calmed down a bit, the supervisor pulls out the MBM Guiding Principles. He tells them to take a few days off of work, read the Guiding Principles and to come back 3-4 days later only if they agree to act consistently with the Guiding Principles. “John” and “Jane” leave the work site immediately. There’s no conversation about who is to blame or the past wrongs.  Four days later, both “John” and “Jane” are back at work. It’s not that they are best friends, and I would wager there was lingering tension. However, from that point forward, their supervisor could hold them accountable to the Guiding Principles instead of being an umpire.

Conflict Resolution: When Two People Don’t Like Each Other and (almost) NOBODY Knows It

Imagine being a part of a project team with a strong leader. Let’s call her Abby. Abby is experienced and knows her stuff. As a part of the project team is a more experienced and equally capable long-term employee. Let’s call him Jay. The project has a lifespan of about six months. The team works well, exceeds expectations and hits the deadline. You’re impressed by the culture of the team, especially when it comes to challenge. To celebrate, you invite everyone out to dinner. When talking to Jay, he asks you if Abby will be attending. When you say she will be attending, you can tell Jay takes that under serious consideration.

Later, you tell one of your co-workers about Jay’s strange reaction. This co-worker has been around for awhile and tells you that Jay and Abby don’t like each other. It’s shocking to you. When you say, “They work so well together!” Your co-worker responds, “Years ago, they admitted to a personality conflict, but committed to work together… AND they take the Guiding Principles of Respect and Humility very seriously.” The person who told me this story was shocked the two didn’t like each other because they treated one another so well.

Have you heard stories about using the tools and/or principles of MBM to resolve conflict? Leave your stories in the comments or send me an email.

conflict resolution, culture, Guiding Principles, Humility, Respect

Trying to keep up the “sea stories” in the blog, I was recently reminded about two examples of using “vision” in real life.

Call it “mission creep.” Call it a lack of discipline.  Call it a failure to follow unclear objectives.  Whatever you call it, sometimes it’s tempting to make a short-term decision that doesn’t fit long-term goals.  The business that caters to customers who aren’t in their niche; the non-profit that begins working on any issue vaguely related to its core cause; the government agency that expands it scope beyond its original mandate–all are probably failing to keep a clear “eye on the prize.”

About a year ago, I was fortunate to work with a group that was starting up a new 5k race.  I was impressed with how they handled a particular issue.

This 5k group was forming a cause-related race, with a theme relating to freedom and free markets.  This cash-strapped team was approached by a vendor who wanted to do two things.  First, he wanted to give them free t-shirts–thousands of dollars of something they needed badly–that would be branded with the race logo.  Second, in exchange, he wanted a booth at the event to promote his company.  The booth would have a “buy American” theme and emphasize how his shirts were “made in the U.S.A.”

The group was faced with a dilemma.  One the one hand, a vendor was offering thousands of dollars of something they needed when their total budget was incredibly small.   On the other, their race was free-market themed; in their eyes, a “only buy from one country” slogan didn’t fit with their message of improving people’s lives through free trade between any individuals, no matter what country they happen to live in.

Fortunately–according to this group–they had had many conversations about the vision of their race and the objectives they wanted to achieve.  After a tough conversation, they decided to turn down the help and find other options that were in line with their goals.  I’m happy to say that the race went off without a hitch, and with plenty of vendors, t-shirts and runners.

Another example comes from my business experience, and it’s unfortunately a failure to make the right call.  In a previous life, I had a math-tutoring corporation.  Early on–and similarly strapped for cash–I was approached by a father whose son had Asperger’s syndrome.   He wanted me to tutor him in social interactions.  Needless to say, the hours that I spent researching Asperger’s and developing lesson plans for the child were not hours and money spent on making the company better at our core focus–tutoring individuals in mathematics.  Though personally rewarding, I think those diverted resources limited our ability to improve the lives of other students and my impact on this student was limited due to my inexperience. 

When is going after a non-traditional project or customer an “experiment” or “being advantageous,” and when is it not following the vision?  Is a “vision” and a focus on “capabilities” the only guiderail we have to keep us from drifting away from our core value-creation strategies?

5k, mission creep, tutoring, vision

Every now and again I pop over to Stanford’s ECorner to see what’s new. Here are a few new clips from the past 4 months or so.

First, here’s Bill Gross talking about “Motivation Through Equity and Risk-Taking.”

Next, Guy Kawasaki suggests you “Conduct a Pre-Mortem Meeting” as one way to facilitate the challenge process.

Jack Dorsey explains “Payments as a Form of Communication.”

What do you think about these clips? What parts of these clips seem to align with MBM? What parts don’t align with MBM?

Our company had followed a typical pattern: a start-up tech company with a hit product which sold a gazillion copies. Stock price continually rising, making many early employees moderately wealthy. Follow-on product is also a big success and morale is generally very high.

But then, whether through complacency, hubris, or just market competition, we hit a rough patch. The new version of the product takes longer (much longer) than forecast – and when it is released it quickly gains a reputation for bugginess. Sales skid, followed by the stock price, and then morale.

Executive management is in full command-and-control mode. More importantly, the executive responsible for engineering has a bad habit of tearing a new one for anyone who brings him bad news (and there is a lot of it). In some ways, software engineers are no different than anyone else – we’re averse to pain. So naturally, engineering managers become increasingly reluctant to bring up problems hoping they can resolve them before they are discovered or hoping that someone else will report them. This leads to a downward spiral because, while the pain is postponed, when the problems do come to light the chewing out becomes even more vicious.

Finally, the executive realizes he has a serious knowledge problem on his hands and decides to confront it head on. He gathers the entire engineering management team into a large conference room and without preamble tells us that he’s heard people claim we have a “shoot the messenger” culture. “Is this true? Do people really believe this?” he demands.

Of course by now the executive has sealed himself off from reality. Anyone who believed there was a “shoot the messenger” culture was not going to confess to the executive and risk getting shot. He had a classic “collective action problem” on his hands, which the company eventually resolved in dramatic fashion by replacing much of the executive management team in order to usher in a new era – and a new culture. But it’s too little, too late and the company becomes just another chapter in “In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters.”

Collective Action Problem

For those who think the central planning conceit of socialism is a dead issue in contemporary politics, I offer this implementation diagram of the new health care law:

Can you get a better, more compelling visual of Hayek’s Fatal Conceit?

After seeing this diagram, I had flashbacks to an incident in my own corporate history. At the time, I was part of the software engineering team at one of the most successful consumer software companies around. We had grown quite large – several hundred engineers and product managers – and our senior management team was struggling to manage the product development process.

No one on the management team had experience guiding an organization of this size so they turned to management consultants for help. Over the course of several months, the team of consultants “rationalized” our product development process. They produced a diagram similar in complexity to the new government health care law which they proudly erected in the lobbies of all our software development facilities on both the east and west coasts.

Once I saw the chart, I knew we were doomed. Or at least the Senior VP in charge of engineering was doomed. The internal “regulatory” hurdles for launching new services – the multiple layers of reviews and approvals – almost assured that innovation would be killed in its cradle.

Stephen Spielberg gave us an even more dramatic example of corporate hubris when he translated Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park to the screen:

Ian Malcolm, the chaos mathematician played by Jeff Goldblum, has a couple of classic lines that evoke Hayek’s fatal conceit. Among my favorites: “The lack of humility before nature that’s being displayed here, uh, staggers me.” And: “God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers.”

On a more encouraging note, Jurassic Park had another tagline that my old boss used to invoke whenever we discussed the corporate impediments to launching new products: “Life finds a way.” And we did find a way to continue innovating until the new process was quietly discarded.

For Jurassic Park fans, here’s a humorous re-enactment of a key scene:

(h/t to Andy and Ann for the Jurassic Park references!)

Fatal Conceit, Hayek, Humility

This is a sea story by one of our alumni. This alumni continues to be amazed at how much he has to learn about applying MBM through his role as a trainer.  Prior to that experience, he was moonlighting in the commercial Property/Casualty insurance industry.

It was the summer of ‘97. The weather was hot, the pools were packed, and there were lawns that needed tending. That summer four friends thought they might stretch their entrepreneurial muscles and try their hands in the lawn care business. We knew our market, each of us had plenty of contacts in the large neighborhoods we lived in, and we could undercut our competition by working at reduced rates at nearly any hour of the day. We also knew what we were good at; each of us had years of experience cutting and trimming the lawns of our families. After investing some upfront cash to acquire the necessary equipment, 3BR was born.

At first, our model worked flawlessly. We started with a core group of customers (mostly family friends), and then slowly expanded our reach as we built a reputation for getting the job done. In no time, our upfront investment was paid for and we were starting to make money. 

Then we took a different type of job from a neighbor. He needed his entire front yard cleared with the leaves and brush hauled away. We didn’t know how to price the job and undercut ourselves by nearly half of what the neighbor had been willing to pay. That said, we ended up finishing the project in nearly half the time expected. 

Impressed with the work we had done, the neighbor recommended us to a colleague who needed work done with landscape timbers. While lawn care might fall under the general heading of landscape work, we were by no means seasoned professionals and ought to have realized this job might be more than a stretch for us. The owner wanted us to frame some of the trees in his back yard with timbers nailed together. The ground around the trees was uneven and the area that needed boxed in was not nearly square. Despite some misgivings on our part, the owner was very excited to have us take the job, especially at what must have been a shockingly low price (did I mention that we weren’t great at pricing jobs?).

Nightly we would be over at the house trying to cut and connect the timbers while our other business went neglected. We ended up having to purchase additional timbers to make up for the many mistakes we made and frequently found ourselves arguing with each other. By the end of the project, two of the four original “entrepreneurs” had all but walked away from the business, and the two of us left continued for fear of what people would say about us personally if we abandoned the job. 

When the project was finished, we had managed to go well over budget on materials and had easily put in four times as many hours as we had originally estimated. Had the work turned out respectable enough, we might have been able to advertise the project to future clients, but the end result looked so bad, I found myself avoiding my neighbor from that point forward for fear of what his colleague had told him about the work we had done. The project was a failure, and it all but killed our company. The rest of the summer saw the slow death of a company that had held so much promise only a few months earlier.

See the lessons this alumni learned from this experience below the page break.

Read the rest of this entry »

Application, high school, landscape, lawn care, lessons, Value Creation

I’ve mentioned before that I love stories. Stories help us transmit knowledge and are generally awesome. Those of you who have hung out with the regular MBM bloggers know we all pretty much love the book Corps Business (the stories and lessons in it are fantastic). Corps Business describes one way Marines transmit knowledge: sea stories. Sea stories are real stories about Marines who take action. The Marine Corps trainers view sea stories as a serious knowledge transmission mechanism. On pages 74-75 of Corps Business, the author describes how sea stories are part of the training agenda.

At The Basic School nearly three hundred hours over the six months are set aside for captain-instructors to break off with small groups of second lieutenants specifically for the purpose of sharing such stories. ‘The captains here tell stories about Liberia, the majors about Desert Storm,’ says Lee. ‘Put something in a lecture or a handout or a book, and the student might or might not remember it. But put it in the context of the U.S. embassy burning down in Pakistan, and he’ll remember.’ Call it an oral, informal case study method in which people’s lives are staked on the outcome.

With the Marine Corps sea stories as inspiration, I am calling for your sea stories that can help us learn about MBM. They can be tales from every day life. I have a feeling many of us can learn from stories of sports teams and other non-work situations. Later today, I’ll feature a sea story from a time before the person even knew what MBM was, but upon reflection can see lessons learned that help him apply MBM now.

Be on the look out for the title “Sea Stories” in the coming weeks and send me your sea stories for potential posting (ann.zerkle (at) cgkfoundation.org).

Corps Business