After the Furlough: Recognizing and Managing Conflict on Your Team

A broken government

We are now in the third week of a government shutdown and if you are a contractor working with the United States government you are probably tired of this madness and wondering when you will be back at work so that you can provide for your family and pay the stack of bills that are piling up.  The House has approved a bill that would provide furloughed government employees with 100% of their pay for the time spent, in essence, doing nothing retroactively.  But what about government contractors who provide essential government services and without whom government employees could not do their jobs?  Well, we are left to fend for ourselves.  The majority of us are  either burning all of our earned vacation days or we are being furloughed without pay and without the prospect of getting any pay retroactively.

If you are a manager of a team of government contractors have you thought about how you will manage your team once Congress gets their act together and the government reopens?  There is sure to be animosity between government contractors and their government employee counterparts.  A friend of mine who happens to work for the GSA asked the question “Why would contractors be upset at government employees?  They should be upset with Congress!”  Be that as it may, we are all humans and human nature will dictate that people who feel wronged will act out against those who are treated differently.  As a manager of a team of government contractors, you must be prepared to deal with the aftermath of the shutdown and find creative methods to make your employees feel whole after this disastrous episode with Congress. You must recognize signs of conflict and develop methods to manage the conflict, both direct and passive-aggressive, that may arise due to members of your team feeling relegated and dismissed by your client, the United States government.

I have always believed in a “results oriented work environment” or “ROWE” and after the government reopens and we are all back to work, I am going to double-down on establishing ROWE in my work place.  You may be asking “What is ROWE?”  A results oriented work environment is where employees are evaluated based on their work and work products and not artificial indicators of their work such as when they arrive at the job site or where they work (onsite or remotely).  Managers who embrace ROWE place greater emphasis on the team members’ abilities to get the job done and ensure that the client is 100% satisfied with the work products and solutions delivered and they do not sweat the small stuff like where the work gets done or when it gets done.  It is up to the team member to manage their time and work to ensure the work gets done and like self-managing teams, it is the manager’s job to act as a gate keeper to keep obstacles out of the way.

I anticipate that due to the government shutdown that there will be a significant dip in contractor job satisfaction due in part to going weeks with the uncertainty of the shutdown and then suffering the effects of a furlough.  Contractors contribute significantly to the success of every government organization and to have Congress dismiss these contributions does not inspire loyalty.  Government employees do not carry the weight of public service alone, but yet they are all but assured of receiving a 100% paid vacation while the Democrats and Republicans try to figure out how to govern.  Managers of contracting teams should not dismiss the effects this shutdown will have on their teams.  It is imperative that managers engage their teams and develop creative ways for combating the negative conflict that will arise when contractors and government employees are back working side-by-side pushing this government forward.

The problem with Matrix Organizations – from Office Space

This sums up how frustrated employees feel in a matrixed environment:

Peter Gibbons: I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?

Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.

Bob Slydell: Eight?

Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

AgileDC 2013

Discussion of The Benefits of Dedicated Teams at the AgileDc 2013 Conference.

AgileDC 2013 – The Benefits of Dedicated Teams

AgileDC 2013 – The Benefits of Dedicated Teams

Yesterday I spoke at the 2013 AgileDC conference at Gallaudet University.  It was a great experience!  The AgileDC folks did a great job organizing the conference.  My presentation was titled “The Benefits of Dedicated Teams:  How Agile is Changing the Structure of Service Organizations”.  This was my first time presenting my research study to the public outside of my dissertation defense.  The presentation and topic were well received.  I had quite a few people follow up with me and want to discuss my experiences and study results in more detail, so there was some genuine interest in my area of research.

Here is a link to my presentation.  If you attended, please let me know what you think!  Is employee job satisfaction and communication just as important as productivity?

Are you really “Busy”?

I recently read an article where the topic really hit a nerve.  The article, The Worst Word in Business: “Busy”, discusses people’s obsession with appearing “busy” at work and the perception that in order to be effective one must always be “busy”.  Throughout my career I have always place more value on working smarter, not harder.  I place a higher value on customer service and in my opinion, the way to provide my clients with a high level of service is to be flexible and respond to the client proactively rather than reactively.  In order to be proactive, one must have control of their time, schedule, and to a certain extent, their tasks at work. 

I have managed teams ranging in size from 2 to 45+ individuals, so I can say that I have pretty much seen/heard it all when it comes to the way team members interact with each other and perform their jobs.  Each team member joins a team with different expectations.  The most effective team members are proactive and seek to understand where they are needed and what tasks they can take that provide the most benefit.  These team members seek to control their schedules.  Other team members are reactive and wait for the boss to assign them tasks.  Once assigned, the team members do their jobs, seek to fill their schedules, and come back looking for additional work when complete.  The effective team members seek to create or expand upon their tasks to add benefit to their clients. 

When I approach effective team members with new work, I have never once received a response that they are too busy to take on additional tasks.  Effective team members seek to discuss and strategize how to fit the work into their schedules and what can be moved around or prioritized to ensure that the important work gets done first.  They realize that not everything is a priority and can distinguish between what needs to be done now versus what can wait.  This is a talent that I wish everyone I work with would have, but sadly, a lot of people still cling to the idea that in order to be effective at work, one must be “busy” and make sure everyone knows that they are “busy”.

Organizational Change

A large portion of my research has been focused on what happens to a company and its employees when the leadership all of a sudden decides to implement a reorg and change the fundamental structure of the organization.  Why does leadership choose to implement a matrix structure?  How do they go about preparing for such a massive shift in dynamics?  Well, I have found that normally, these types of changes at companies usually get short changed by the leadership.  Surprisingly, these changes are often based on a leader’s past experience.  If a CEO has had a good experience at company X with a matrixed structure, then they will bring that experience with them to company Y and start lobbying for the same organizational structure to be implemented at company Y, even though company Y may be half the size of company X and it doesn’t make any sense to invest in the change a this particular time.

 Ron Ashkenas recently blogged about the challenges of organizational change.  He mentioned that leaders first inclination when sales drop or performance is not what it should be is to implement a reorg and shift people around.  Ron advocates looking at the existing organization and working within the current structure.   I’ve been at a few companies where the leadership gets spooked and they do not even conduct cursory analysis to see if the managers were setting realistic goals for their departments or teams.

This leads to making sure that your organizational structure is aligned with the company’s strategy.  In this day and age, corporate strategies are changing rapidly.  It is management and leaderships responsibility to keep the organization moving forward and anticipate those changes.  It is even more important for leadership to conduct a thorough analysis before investing resources in a poorly thought out change plan.

Leaders can end up wasting more money executing a poorly thought out organizational change than they would have saved just by thinking about the organization’s goals and objectives and aligning their underlying strategies with the goals and objectives.  Changing the company’s organizational structure is not a panacea for all that ails and leaders need to start realizing that planning and analysis is key to establishing the ground work for a successful change.

Collaboration and Conflict

Today I read a great blog article on why teamwork in the office is so difficult and ways to try to ease collaboration with your colleagues.  Whitney Johnson describes 4 easy, no-nonsense rules to follow when working in a team environment.  The 4 suggestions are meant to build trust between team members so that communication and ideas can begin to flow freely.  According to Johnson trust is the key to avoid negative conflict in collaborative environments.

What do you think?

http://blogs.hbr.org/johnson/2011/06/collaboration-is-risky-now-get.html

Dealing with a rude co-worker

Practically everyone has been forced to work with someone that for one reason or another annoys them.  Maybe this colleague just annoys you or, more than likely, they annoy everyone around them, too.  It is important to face these issues head-on before they start to negatively impact your work.

 This article outlines some important methods that one should investigate when this type of organizational conflict begins to impact your work environment.

Team Performance at Blackboard

According to Northouse (2007), the use of teams has led to higher productivity, greater use of resources, more effective decision making and problem solving, and greater innovation and creativity.  The team approach contributes to effective decision making and higher levels of communication throughout the organization and it is important that the project teams within the Global Services department at Blackboard communicate well in order to maintain a high level of customer service.  The project teams are fairly small (5-15 members) and maintain a high level of communication with minimal communication gaps.  The leader develops a communication plan for internal and external communication at the beginning of each project that is followed as closely as possible.  Developing a communication plan at the beginning of the project ensures that the project objectives are known and understood by both the Blackboard team and the client and ensures that team members are following organizational objectives.

The roles of a leader change within an organization that implements the team leadership model (Northouse, 2007).  Northouse (2007) notes that effective team performance begins with a leader who can take a mental model and effectively assess the situation.   The leader must be flexible, highly communicative, and willing to listen, while the project team members must have a high degree of technical skill, willing to listen and follow directions closely, and analytical when troubleshooting product issues.  The team members must also be able to effectively communicate to the leader as well as the client to relay important project information. According to Flood and McCarville (1999) it is important for service consultants to be able to effectively communicate internally as well as externally in order to avoid potential issues before they become problems for the team.

In order to achieve a high level of performance, it is the team leader’s responsibility to assign project tasks and ensure that the tasks match the consultants’ abilities.  Failing to appropriately match consultants skill sets with project tasks can lead to poor performance, execution, and lower client satisfaction (Flood & McCarville, 1999).  Additionally, failing to appropriately assign tasks to team members could lead to overloading certain team members which leads to poor performance and even conflict among team members (DeChurch & Marks, 2001).  Although a project manager is ultimately responsible for client satisfaction, project teams are held jointly accountable for performance and project success.

Effective Teams

There are five characteristics of effective teams (Northouse, 2007):

Clear, Elevating Goal

• Clear so that one can tell if performance objective has been met
• Is motivating or involving so that members believe it is worthwhile and important

Results-Driven Structure

•  Need to find the best structure to achieve goals
• Clear team member roles
• Good communication system
• Methods to assess individual performance
• An emphasis on fact-based judgments

Unified Commitment

• Teams need a carefully designed and developed sense of unity or identification (team spirit)

Collaborative Climate

•  Trust based on openness, honesty, consistency, and respect
• Integration of individual actions
• Leaders facilitate a collaborative climate by:
• Making communication safe
•  Demanding and rewarding collaborative behavior
•  Guiding the team’s problem-solving efforts
• Managing one’s own control needs

External Support and Recognition

• Teams supported by external resources are:
• Given the material resources needed to do their jobs
• Recognized for team accomplishments
•  Rewarded by tying those rewards to team member
• Performance, not individual achievement

The infrastructure and support mechanisms at Blackboard are in place to support Northouse’s five characteristics of effective teams noted above.  By having these support mechanisms in place that allow teams to have the resources necessary to perform their jobs and recognizing team achievements and performance, individual team members demonstrate a high level of enthusiasm toward their jobs, the projects, their company, and the clients, thus allowing a productive team atmosphere to flourish in the Global Services department.

Summary

The majority of project teams at Blackboard can be classified as demonstrating the characteristics of a real team.  This means that the team members hold each other accountable for success or failure and work toward common goals.  While the majority of Global Service teams at Blackboard have not yet reached the level of a high performance team, the infrastructure and support mechanisms described by Northouse (2007) are in place to fully realize and allow teams to grow into high performance teams given the additional time needed to continue to work together and mature.

References

DeChurch, L. A., & Marks, M. A. (2001). Maximizing the benefits of task conflict:  The role of conflict management. The International Journal of Conflict Management, 12(1), 4-22.

Flood, C., & McCarville, R. (1999). Lessons from a successful service quality initiative: A case study in organizational change. Journal of Park & Recreation Administration, 17(4), 102-113. doi: Article.

Northouse, P. G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice, 175, (4th Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Blogging about Organizational Conflict

Welcome to a new blog that will cover topics around organizational conflict and performance management.  My experience is gained from over 16 years advising and consulting with companies from all over the world and ranging in size from 10 employees to 100,000.

Please use the “About” tab above to find out more about me and my personal and professional interests.  I hope you enjoy and find useful the content on this site and please feel free to pitch in and contribute or ask questions.

The first topic I’ll cover is how team performance was impacted by the structure of the Global Services organization at Blackboard, Inc., a successful education software company.

Sincerely,

–Todd.