Does Your Organization Have Enough Conflict?

Too much conflict is bad. It can lead to hurt feelings and long-term damage to an organization's culture. 

However, a total lack of conflict is also bad. 

When different people work together, there should be some conflict. There is even a related Chinese saying: If two people think the same, then one of them is unnecessary. People should be allowed and perhaps even encouraged to disagree with each other as this results in better thought-out decisions.

But what if there is no conflict? No conflict is just as dangerous as too much conflict.

Dr. Ichak Adizes, founder of the Adizes Institute, draws an analogy between conflict and water. If you have too much water you have a flood. But if you do not have enough water you die. The same is true of conflict. Too much conflict and you damage your organizational culture, but if you do not have enough conflict, that can mean something even more dire. 

Conflict comes from change. If you want to stop conflict just stop changing. Do not make any big strategic moves. The level of conflict in your life and organization will reduce significantly. Compare that to making big changes in your life, like moving homes, or changing business strategies. The moment you start to create change you will find resistance, you will find conflict. 

Thus, if you find that you do not have enough conflict in your organization it could mean that you have stopped changing. This happens with many aging organizations. Mesmerized by their past success, and with so much to lose, no one wants to rock the boat by creating change or even talking about what is really going on. Conflict gets buried and the organization becomes frozen. 

When an organization stops changing, especially in this dynamic volatile world, it starts dying. Change or die, is an often-quoted axiom. 

Other reasons why you may not have enough conflict include:

Maybe your meetings were just talk and no action. You don’t have conflict because all you did was dream. You never woke up. No one intends to implement anything. It was a fun exercise but no one intends to change anything and again, without change, there is no conflict. 

Or, 

Maybe you have too many yes-men. To help make sure you do not make a bad decision you should consult someone who sees the problem or opportunity you are dealing with differently than you do. The more differing the viewpoint, the better understanding you will have of the situation and thus the better decision you will be able to make. However, differing viewpoints do come with conflict. If you do not have that conflict it may mean that you are not working in a complementary team. You are working with people who think like you, making them unnecessary and depriving you of the information you need to make a better decision. 

Or, 

Maybe key people or voices were missing in the conversation. Perhaps they were not invited to the meeting or maybe they did not feel safe enough to speak up. 

Or, 

Maybe your organization has been burned by destructive conflict in the past to the extent that now the organization fears and thus avoids conflict. Patrick Lencioni, author of the book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, even listed “fear of conflict,” as one of those dysfunctions. To paraphrase Lencioni, when organizations do not deal with conflict, but rather avoid it, they do not get the necessary level of commitment for a decision. This results in an avoidance of accountability and inattention to results. Further, when you do not get the results you expect, it results in a loss of trust, which is the most devastating of all the five dysfunctions. 

It is important to remember that your job as a manager is not to stop conflict, just like it is not the job of a civil engineer to stop the rain. Rather, like a civil engineer’s job is to build all of the levies and infrastructure needed to channel water so that it results in electricity, crops, and universal in-door plumbing, rather than floods, your job as a manager is to build the relevant infrastructure to assure that the conflict in your organization is constructive. This will help you make better decisions, gain higher rates of commitment, and ensure that your organization can continuously evolve and adapt to a rapidly changing market.

The absence of conflict is not a sign of a harmonious organization; instead, it may indicate an underlying issue of stagnation or fear. Embrace conflict as a catalyst for positive change, innovation, and growth. As a manager, your task is not to eliminate conflict but to channel it constructively, ensuring it becomes a driving force for better decision-making and continuous evolution. When properly managed, water can be a source of life; when harnessed effectively, conflict becomes a source of organizational vitality and success.