New Release: Essay No. 3 on Conflict Systems and Good Conflict

We all have conflict systems, but we didn't build them on purpose, and that's a big problem.

I am excited to release my third Essay: The Good Fight: How Good Conflict Systems Deliver the Power of Good Conflict. I started my career in the conflict resolution field more than 30 years ago. I’ve provided training in conflict resolution for decades. Throughout my consulting career I’ve facilitated numerous tough conflict conversations. I’m a conflict guy.

But in the last year or so, I think conflict has become a lot more important. It seems at every level of society we’re handling conflict poorly, and with the pace of change increasing exponentially (much of that to do with AI), the need to work through conflict quickly and effectively is on the rise. This is a bad combination.

The spark that generated this Essay was my realization that better conflict skills by themselves are not going to get us out of this. We need to think systemically. Organizations all have a system of conflict that determines which conflicts get air time, who’s involved in the conversation, how the conversations are handled, and what resolutions are considered fair—yet none of us built this system on purpose. Yes, we probably need better skills too, but they won’t matter if we don’t fix the system.

I’m posting the full introduction of the Essay below so you can see what’s inside. I dug deep into this one—it’s 30 pages long. I wanted to give full treatment to this system, because I think it has been invisible to so many people.

After the introduction, paid subscribers will see a link to download the Essay (feel free to scroll down and download it, as the intro is in the PDF as well). As a reminder, the paid subscription ($12/month or $120/year) includes access to the Essays, periodic subscriber-only live meetings (the next one will be soon, focusing on Q&A and discussion of the new Essay), and access to my current research projects.

Introduction: Wait, I Have a Conflict System?

As soon as human beings started living in communities of a certain size, they encountered a problem that we still have today: flooding.

You get too much rain, and suddenly there’s a lot of standing water everywhere, which makes living in the community challenging. Getting around is hard, agriculture suffers, diseases can spread, etc. As our communities grew larger over the centuries, this episodic standing water became more and more problematic, impacting more and more people, so we addressed the problem by creating drainage systems. The complex cities most of us live in have very complex drainage systems (thankfully), so a heavy rain doesn’t completely shut us down.

This point may not surprise you, but then again, when’s the last time you actually thought about how the drainage system in your community works? You are probably aware of sewer grates and such, but do you really know all the components and how they work together? I doubt it (me neither, for the record), and that’s fine. You don’t have to know how the system works, as long as you have faith that the people that designed and built the system did a good job.

When the system is good, heavy rains don’t cause problems or do damage, which is important, because heavy rains are a natural and unavoidable aspect of life. But if your system is ineffective, those same heavy rains cause innumerable problems and do great damage. In other words, heavy rain is not the problem here—the quality of the system you created to deal with the heavy rain is.

Now swap the word “heavy rain” with the word “conflict” and think about it in the context of your organization.

Conflict is not the problem here—the quality of the system you created to deal with the conflict is.

When I completed my master’s degree in conflict resolution, I learned early on that conflict, as much as people tend to hate it, is a good thing. It’s a natural part of every living system, and it’s an important aspect of things like learning, innovation, and even our growth and development as humans. Conflict that is not managed well, of course, can be incredibly destructive, so conflict isn’t always “good,” but just like heavy rain, it’s inevitable.

So just as communities must create drainage systems to make them livable for residents, organizations must create conflict systems to make them bearable for employees. Interestingly, I’m 25 years into my career consulting with organizations, and I have not heard one leader make reference to their conflict system. If I were a betting man, I’d wager most don’t even realize they have a conflict system.

But they do. Every organization has a conflict system, just like every organization has a culture, even if the leaders don’t pay any attention to it. And, like culture, the organizations that are intentional about their conflict systems nearly always outperform those that let it develop organically. This essay will introduce you to the conflict system you didn’t even know you had, and provide guidance on how to create an effective one.

Here’s my definition to get us started:

A conflict system is a set of internal capacities, processes, governance rules, and accountability mechanisms that determines which conflicts emerge, when they are addressed, who gets involved, how fast they get resolved, and the quality of the resolutions that are achieved. Effective conflict systems consistently generate what I refer to as “good conflict.”

The capacities, processes, governance, and accountability are the components or mechanisms of the system. That’s how it works. The who, what, when, how fast, and quality pieces represent the outcomes. They are the results of the system in action. The qualitative piece at the end—good conflict—is what you get when you do it right.

Again, you probably didn’t realize you even have a conflict system. So take a step back and think about it. What does your current conflict system reward? Does it reward surfacing issues early or staying quiet until something breaks? Does it reward direct conversation or back-channel politics? Does it reward resolution or does it reward avoiding discomfort?

Yeah. Perhaps it’s more important than you thought. At this very moment, your conflict system is driving behaviors in your organization that are impacting results, so now is the time to get on top of it. In this Essay, I’ll break it all down for you. I’ll start with clarifying the outcomes produced by a conflict system, and then I’ll spend a little more time on the components, because that’s where you’ll do the work to improve the system. I then give you a simple maturity model to help you figure out where you need to focus, and the conclusion will explore the broader implications of what I call “good conflict” and how it can help break organizational gridlock.

OUTCOMES: The Results of the System

The first chapter focuses on the outcomes of your conflict system, because my hypothesis is that most leaders don’t realize that the outcomes are the result of a system in action—they think they are the result of individual choices. Choices and behaviors matter, but we know enough about systems to realize that system dynamics are, frankly, more powerful. They drive the choices and behaviors.

Your conflict system shapes whether the right issues surface at the right time, whether the right people engage in productive conversations, and whether resolutions are fair, effective, and appropriately paced. For each of those outcomes (issues, time, people, conversations, resolutions, and pace), I’ll show you how your system can actually nudge people toward the behaviors that generate the disappointing outcomes you may be experiencing.

COMPONENTS: How the System Works

This chapter is a bit longer, because it digs into the nuts and bolts of the components, or mechanisms, that make up the system. The Outcomes chapter may have shined a light on where your system is falling down—this chapter will show you the levers you can pull to address those failings.

There are four components: capacity, process, governance, and accountability. I start with capacity, because, frankly, that’s where most leaders start when they seek to produce better conflict outcomes—they train their people. But capacity by itself won’t get you very far, so I then dive into the processes that need to be in place, the governance rules you must establish, and the accountability mechanisms you must implement to ensure that the system is operating effectively. For each component, I’ll reveal key decisions and changes you’ll need to make to make the component functional and effective. Remember: all these components already exist in your organization—they just evolved organically, so they may be lacking.

MATURITY: Evaluating Your Current System

Before I get to the Conclusion and talk about the end result of “good conflict,” I wrote a short chapter that gives you a roadmap you can use for figuring out where you are on the conflict system journey. I created a simple maturity model for conflict systems that shows a progression from beginner (building skills) to intermediate (building the infrastructure) to advanced (integrating with other systems).

There are six individual levels in the model (accidental, capable, developed, managed, optimized, and integrated). I’ll show you what it looks like at each level, the real costs of staying at that level, plus some advice on how to move to the next level. This will help you zero in on the parts of your conflict system you need to work on first.

GOOD CONFLICT: Your Ticket to Breaking Organizational Gridlock

In the Conclusion, I’ll reinforce why we’re talking about conflict systems to begin with: good conflict and organizational gridlock.

Good conflict is the result of an effective conflict system. There’s a lot written out there about “good conflict,” most of which refers to conflicts that support learning and innovation, or conflict that is constructive rather than destructive, or conflict that makes relationships stronger. All of that is 100% true, but I think truly effective conflict systems go farther than that.

Conflict systems produce the kind of conflict that breaks up organizational gridlock. Good conflict eliminates the small behaviors of conflict avoidance and incomplete conversations that render our whole organization ineffective.

We need this now more than ever. A few years ago, gridlock was an inefficiency, but in today’s pace of change, it could mean the difference between success and failure.

Again, paid subscribers will be able to see the link below to download the full Essay.