Post a cohesive response based on your analysis of the Learning Resources and your professional experience. Be sure to discuss the following “See attachment”:
3 -4 paragraphs
Topof Form
Discussion: Picking a Fight
What is the source of the conflict? A conflict in any organization to which you belong may have a root cause in the issues identified in the Boundary Model. And, the sources of work conflict identified in the text exist in most organizations, be they volunteer, home associations, schools, or places of worship, to name a few.
Take a moment to reflect on the personal approach to conflict you have been developing in your coursework. While this course has attempted to give you the tools necessary to detect confrontations before they arise, not all disagreements are avoidable. Sometimes an argument becomes inevitable, and when this occurs, it is important to remember the old admonition to pick your battles carefully. As a leader, it would be foolish to pursue an all-or-nothing strategy, taking on anyone who thinks differently than you do just to win the point. So, where do you draw the line? What is important about the change you are trying to make, and how much are you willing to invest in it?
For this Discussion, using a new conflict that may have recently surfaced, you will assess whether it is worthy of a fight.
To prepare for this Discussion, pay particular attention to the following Learning Resources:
· Review this week’s Learning Resources, especially:
· Cahn, D. D., & Abigail, R. A. (2014). Managing conflict through communication (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
· Joni, S.-N., & Beyer, D. (2009). How to pick a good fight. See attachment
· Segal, J., Robinson, L., & Smith, M. A. (2020). Conflict resolution skills. Retrieved from
· The Boundary Model – See Attachment
Cahn, D. D., & Abigail, R. A. (2014). Managing conflict through communication (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Bottom of Form
Assignment:
Post a cohesive response based on your analysis of the Learning Resources and your professional experience. Be sure to discuss the following:
· Identify an element you would like to change at work or on a social change project. This change should affect other people’s work, not just your own, and improve everyone’s ability to get work done. Using the sources cited in Chapter 12 of the Managing Conflict Through Communication textbook, identify the source of this conflict.
· Analyze the differences between functional and dysfunctional conflict and explain which type your conflict falls under.
· Using the assessment tool in the article by Joni and Beyer (2009), work through the set of questions. How well would your planned change measure up in the three areas described?
· Whether or not you deem this conflict worthy of a fight, assume that you will engage in it. Segal and Smith (2018) list skills that might turn conflict into opportunities. Analyze which of these skills might you use to transform this conflict into an opportunity? Explain your rationale for your selections.
· 3 -4 paragraphs
· No plagiarism
· APA citing
HBR.ORG DECEMBER 2009
REPRINT R0912D
How to Pick a
Good Fight
Strong leaders create the kind of conflict
that can spark creativity and innovation.
by Saj-nicole A. Joni and Damon Beyer
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2 Harvard Business Review | December 2009 | hbr.org
W
Ja
so
n
L
e
e
Strong leaders create the kind of conflict that can spark
creativity and innovation. | by Saj-nicole A. Joni and Damon Beyer
How to
Pick a
Good
Fight
WHEN DICK FULD took over at Lehman Brothers in 1994, he
inherited a contentious culture. Traders and investment bank-
ers would not share ideas and competed for business, putting
their own interests above the firm’s in nearly every instance. In
Fuld’s own words, published in Knowledge@Wharton in 2007,
“The early Lehman Brothers was a great example of how not
to do it. It was all about me. My job. My people. Pay me.” But
by the mid-1990s, the financial services industry had shifted to-
ward an integrated sales model, and such blatant disregard for
teamwork didn’t fly any longer. Fuld made unity and collabora-
tion priorities at the firm, nudging them along with employee
incentives. By the time of its collapse, in 2008, Lehman report-
edly had one of the strongest cultures of teamwork and loyalty
on Wall Street. As Fortune had noted in April 2006: “Fuld has
incongruously turned Lehman into one of Wall Street’s most
harmonious firms.”
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How to Pick a Good Fight
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The effort to eliminate discord at the firm had
backfired. Lehman’s board of directors and manage-
ment team became too agreeable – and too loyal,
content to follow even when they knew better. In
2007 and 2008, numerous signals indicated that
the firm was heading into a crisis, but insiders who
paid attention to them were afraid to point out the
elephant in the room. It turned out that loyalty
meant loyalty to Fuld, according to accounts from
former employees. That loyalty led Lehman execu-
tives to an almost willful blindness. Nobody wanted
to disrupt the peace.
The problem is that a peaceful, harmonious work-
place can be the worst possible thing for a business,
according to consultancy eePulse, which conducts
in-depth surveys that measure employee engage-
ment. Complacency, in fact, is the single greatest
predictor of poor company performance. The sec-
ond greatest? An environment in which employees
are overwhelmed. In the first case, employees are
reluctant to rock the boat. In the second, the level
of employee satisfaction is low and the amount of
dysfunctional fighting is high. In
both situations, low energy levels
and fear of political fallout curb
action that might address any
looming crisis. At Lehman, many
alums told us, raising difficult
questions could kill your career.
Most leadership experts ar-
gue that the best way to manage
change is to create alignment, but
our research indicates that for
large-scale change or innovation
initiatives, a healthy dose of dis-
sent is usually just as important.
Within an acceptable range of
competition and tension, science
shows, dissent will fire up more
of an individual’s brain, stimulat-
ing more pathways and engaging
more creative centers. In short,
more of what makes people
unique, innovative, and passion-
ate is available for use.
Many successful companies are
known for their stressful work en-
vironments. Microsoft, in its early
days, had one of the most conten-
tious, high-strung, and fast-paced
corporate cultures in the United
States. Bill Gates and Steve
Ballmer were famous for yelling
at people. Food distributor Sysco, an unusually suc-
cessful company built on roll-ups and acquisitions,
dismisses district managers who don’t meet annual
productivity targets – a pretty tough standard for
an operating company with thin margins. Market
leaders Goldman Sachs and McKinsey are notori-
ously competitive, hard-driving places to work. Not
places you’d go if you were looking for polite and
equal regard for all voices.
We’ve seen this phenomenon play out over and
over in our work advising CEOs and senior execu-
tives. (Full disclosure: We have done consulting
work for some of the companies described in this
article.) So it’s time to stop candy-coating what’s
taught to executives and their direct reports. It’s
time to stop pretending that conflict-free teamwork
is the be-all and end-all of organizational life. It’s
time to own up to the truth that the right balance
of alignment and competition is what pushes indi-
viduals and groups to do their best. It’s time to push
employees into the right fights.
Let’s be clear – alignment is important. But the
purpose of alignment is not harmonious agreement.
It is to sustain an organization’s ability to fight for
what really matters, and to pull everyone together
again once the fight is resolved.
Which Fights Should You Take On?
Not all kinds of conflict promote a successful cor-
porate environment. We have all seen organiza-
tions that were poisonously political. We have all
watched otherwise rational people go to extreme
lengths to sabotage their colleagues or to retaliate
against fellow employees who offended them in
some way. And we have all seen people fight dirty
when they believed that straight shooting wouldn’t
get the job done. Those kinds of fights are purely
destructive – and are not what we recommend.
Conflict is healthful only when people’s energies
are pointed in the right direction and when carried
out in a productive way.
Not all issues merit a fight. We’ve identified
three principles that will help you choose the right
battles:
Make it material. Before starting a fight, be sure
that the stakes are high enough to motivate em-
ployees. Fight only over issues with game-changing
potential. No matter how conflict averse they may
be, most people are willing to fight for things they
truly believe in. A fight is material if it creates last-
ing value, leads to a noticeable and sustainable im-
provement, and addresses a complex challenge that
has no easy answers.
» A peaceful, harmonious work-
place can be the worst thing
possible for a business. Research
shows that the biggest predictor
of poor company performance is
complacency. Conflict can shake
things up and boost your staff’s
energy and creativity.
» Not everything is worth fighting
over, however. Before girding for a
battle, make sure it involves an is-
sue that affects the future and has
game-changing potential. And if
your fight has a noble purpose – if
it’s about, say, improving the lives
of customers – that’s even better.
» It’s also critical to make the fight
fair. Opponents should have an
equal shot at winning.
» Leaders should structure fights
through the formal organization
but allow contestants to use in-
formal connections. Good leaders
also will help the losing parties
turn their pain into opportunities
for development.
IN BRIEF
IDEA
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In the mid-1990s, Charlie Feld, a former CIO at
Frito-Lay who formed an IT consultancy, got into
a material fight for his first major client. It was a
railroad then known as Burlington Northern (BN),
which became Burlington Northern Santa Fe after a
1995 merger. When Feld visited BN, he was shocked
at the state of its scheduling systems. In his words:
“I used to be able to tell you where every bag of
Doritos was in the country, and BN lost locomotives.
How is that possible? They’re big, smelly, and they
sit on a track with only a limited number of places
where they can go.”
One of the key problems was that BN was run-
ning trains using processes and systems designed
for hauling coal and grain. It didn’t make much dif-
ference to the coal or the corn whether the train
showed up on Monday or a week from Monday. But
it made a difference to then-chairman and CEO Jerry
Grinstein, who had a big vision for the company.
Grinstein wanted to expand its intermodal busi-
ness and compete with truckers to transport inter-
national cargo containers from U.S. ports. Knowing
that the U.S. economy would increasingly rely on
imports, Grinstein planned to turn BN into a gate-
way for Asia. If you’re picking up containers from
shipyards and delivering them to factories, you have
to be able to commit to a schedule. You have to
know where every train is at all times and where
every train will be in the coming weeks and months.
For clients moving coal and grain, an unpredictable
schedule was offset by the cost advantages of ship-
ping by rail, but the weakness of BN’s systems was
a major drawback with intermodal shippers. The
fight was material because the status quo was a bar-
rier to growth.
Feld had to declare war on the existing systems.
One of his first steps was to reorganize the com-
pany’s siloed systems into one centralized opera-
tion. IT professionals who’d been responsible for
designing routing systems identified with their silos,
however, and revolted against the idea. But if they
couldn’t or wouldn’t get with the program, they
were out of a job: Feld replaced more than 80% of
BN’s top IT managers in his first 90 days.
The next big battle for Feld and Grinstein was
persuading the company’s conservative board to
approve an investment of more than $100 million in
an 18-month overhaul of the company’s technology
infrastructure – a staggering sum for BN, double its
usual annual IT budget. They also fought to bring
in a high-powered team of outside IT professionals,
who had very little railroad experience, to map out
and build effective scheduling systems.
We can state confidently that it was a right fight.
At the company today, GPS trackers on rail cars al-
low dispatchers to keep tabs on trains’ locations, di-
rection, and speed. After fueling significant growth
for a decade, BNSF’s intermodal business is large
and profitable and continues to gain share from
truckers in everything from UPS Christmas ship-
ments to cars off Toyota’s Asian assembly lines. And
the railroad has fundamentally repositioned itself
against its closest competitor, Union Pacific Rail-
road. Though their stocks were at nearly identical
points in 1994, BNSF’s stock price has almost tripled
and is currently 40% higher than Union Pacific’s.
Focus on the future. Forget the past and power
struggles that are history, and don’t bother appor-
tioning blame. Leaders in viable, vibrant organiza-
tions spend most of their time and energy looking at
the road ahead, not in the rearview mirror.
That’s easier said than done. Our research shows
that senior leadership teams around the globe typi-
cally devote 85% of their time to the wrong fight.
They examine their past numbers, try to figure out
what went wrong or dissect what went well, and
assign blame or recognition – but they spend virtu-
ally no time talking about the future. They waste
energy, brainpower, and resources that they could
instead be investing in future returns. If business
leaders could redirect the conversation so that peo-
ple spent even half their time talking about the fu-
ture, companies could see incredible improvements
in performance.
A good future-facing fight has three
qualities: It speaks to what is possible,
it’s compelling, and it involves uncertainty.
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How to Pick a Good Fight
6 Harvard Business Review | December 2009 | hbr.org
The most common mistake leaders make is go-
ing from the “we missed our numbers this quar-
ter” past to the “so we’re going to cut our costs to
make up margins” present without stopping to set
a clear context for a worthwhile future. Such an
approach often sends performance into a death
spiral. Though it’s OK for executives to engage in
a moderate fight about short-term results, they
should do so only in the context of a plan for long-
term success.
A good future-facing fight has three qualities.
It speaks to what is possible, shifting the debate
away from what happened to what could happen.
It is compelling, focusing people so intently on real,
achievable benefits that they are willing to work
through any associated costs and controversies.
And it involves uncertainty, because if things are
certain, there’s no need to fight.
When Rolf Classon first became a CEO, at a com-
pany in the health care industry, he quickly found
himself in a major future-facing fight, a royal battle
that would significantly affect the future of an ap-
proximately $40 billion business. At the time, the
company was considering a sizable acquisition in
a sector where it already had a small presence. The
deal had been vetted and set into motion by the
former CEO and his leadership team. If completed,
it would create a new entity capable of dominating
the sector. But in Classon’s first few weeks on the
job, a member of his senior team privately confided
that he was unsure it was the right move, and it was
keeping him up at night.
Classon realized that his colleague’s honesty had
taken a lot of courage, so he decided to take another
look at the proposed acquisition, though opening
the inquiry would be tricky. How could he make
it clear he was looking for a genuine answer, not
just a ratification of existing opinion? How could
he avoid alienating the executives who had cham-
pioned the deal? After conferring with a few other
executives and finding that some also had private
doubts, Classon knew he had to act.
His board supported him, and over several long
weeks the executive team conducted a loud and
heated debate. The division head who would have
integrated the acquisition was furious; he’d been
working on the deal for a long time, and it meant a
great deal to his career. Classon took pains to make
sure the division head had not only a voice in the
fight but also access to the board, essentially giving
him permission to go around the usual hierarchy.
Classon also actively solicited many opinions and
refrained from taking a side before it was time to
come to closure; he made it a point to be a scrupu-
lously fair referee.
In the end the company decided not to pursue
the deal, despite the likelihood of positive financial
results, because the move wasn’t a great fit with the
firm’s strategic objectives. But the fight had been
fair. Classon kept his team focused on future possi-
bilities, instead of allowing them to fixate on all the
work that had gone into preparing for the acquisi-
tion. He asked the division head who would have
overseen the acquisition to take over another major
division – an assignment that made it clear that
Classon valued and respected him and that stop-
ping the deal was not a vote of no confidence.
The fight was compelling because it helped the
leadership team improve its shared understanding
of the firm’s strategic direction. And it was certainly
conducted in the context of real and consequential
uncertainty. Classon was new to the CEO role, didn’t
know the territory intimately, and had only weeks
to research and make a decision about something
vital to the organization. What enabled his success
was his genuine curiosity, his commitment to open
and dissonant dialogue, and his focus on building
strategic intent into sustainable reality. This fight
paid off handsomely. Within the next two years, a
much more strategic opportunity appeared. Had
the company acted on the first one, it would not
have had the cash or bandwidth to do the deal that
ultimately repositioned it for healthy long-term
growth.
Pursue a noble purpose. Make your fight about
improving the lives of customers, for example, or
changing the world for the better. The right fight
connects people with a sense of purpose that goes
ASSESSMENT TOOL
WHEN TO
PICK A FIGHT
How do you know when an issue is worthy of a
fight? With your team, state the issue as specifically
as you can and then ask a series of questions, struc-
tured around our “right fight” principles. If an issue
passes each stage of the test, it merits a right fight.
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hbr.org | December 2009 | Harvard Business Review 7
1 MAKE IT MATERIAL
2 FOCUS ON THE FUTURE
3 PURSUE A NOBLE PURPOSE
VALUE Does the fight
involve something that has
the potential to…
>> save 15% or more of your
resources or time for a year?
>> allow you to charge at least
10% more than you now do?
>> grow your sales or share
of customers faster than the
market?
If you answered yes at least
once, the fight passes the value
test. But if not, you should ei-
ther restate the battle in bolder
terms or address the issue with
traditional alignment tools like
quarterly plans.
COMPLEXITY Can you
resolve the issue by…
>> relying on routine processes
and common skills?
>> calling in an expert to solve
it for you?
>> holding different people or
parts of your organization ac-
countable for separate pieces
of the problem?
If you responded yes at least
once, the issue probably isn’t
that complex and doesn’t jus-
tify the stress of a right fight.
However, the fight will pass
the complexity test if you
answer one of the following
questions affirmatively:
Does resolving the issue
require…
>> careful balancing of multiple
perspectives?
>> different people to lead the
process at different times?
>> mutual accountability for the
answer?
If the issue passes the value
test but not the complexity
test, try to settle it in a routine
fashion.
CHANGE Will the solution
require…
>> the organization to work in a
fundamentally different way?
>> a new way to integrate
big-picture perspectives with
specialized local knowledge?
>> new real-time information
flow between different parts
of the organization?
If you answered yes at least
once, the change warrants
a right fight. If your answers
were all negative, it’s probably
time for a task force, not a fight.
POSSIBILITY Is the issue
about…
>> sorting out the details of
what happened in the past?
>> determining blame or ac-
countability for the organiza-
tion’s current circumstances?
A yes answer to either ques-
tion is a red flag. Right fights
should speak to what is pos-
sible, not what is past.
To see if an issue passes
the possibility test, ask the
following:
Do we have an opportu-
nity to…
>> avoid the mistakes of the
past and improve current
circumstances?
>> choose a course that
increases the possibility of
success?
>> find the best way to turn a
vision into a reality?
CHARISMA Does the
opportunity…
>> require that significant in-
novation take place?
>> create a vision that is
exciting enough to get people
to take risks and embrace
change?
One yes answer here means
that the possible benefits are
real and achievable enough
to compel people to work
through the costs and contro-
versies associated with a right
fight.
UNCERTAINTY Does the
issue in question…
>> require you to respond to
wild cards like new regulations
or dramatic economic shifts?
>> demand a response to
unexpected changes in cus-
tomer preferences, disruptive
technologies, or channels?
>> present choices where the
best way forward is not clear?
If you answered affirmatively
at least once here, a right fight
is appropriate. But if the way
forward is obvious, debate will
just slow you down.
CORPORATE VALUES Does the
challenge…
>> speak to more than making money?
>> reflect a larger cause that is central to
your organization’s mission?
>> flow directly from the values of the
organization?
If you can’t answer any of these
questions affirmatively, see if you can
translate an uninspiring objective into
something more noble.
URGENCY Will the process of solving
the challenge…
>> motivate employees to go above and
beyond their ordinary responsibilities?
>> generate plans that people throughout
the organization can embrace?
>> seem important enough that people
are willing to dissent?
The more affirmative answers you get
here, the more likely it is that people up
and down the organization will work to
find the best solution.
RESPECT Will a solution to the issue…
>> win respect and admiration from
stakeholders outside the organization
(including opponents)?
>> produce an outcome that the average
worker will be willing to bring up with
friends?
>> generate positive external press or
recognition for the group?
At least one yes here indicates that you
have a noble purpose. If you’ve gotten
this far, your challenge has all the mak-
ings of a right fight.
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How to Pick a Good Fight
8 Harvard Business Review | December 2009 | hbr.org
beyond their own self-interest, unleashing profound
collective imagination and abilities. A good fight
isn’t just about money or profits.
When Doug Conant left his job as president of
Nabisco to take on the CEO role at Campbell Soup
in 2001, he stepped into a wrong fight. Campbell
was one of the world’s poorest-performing food
companies, and its managers were consumed by
infighting over who was to blame. They were also
exceptionally focused on the present – aggressively
slashing costs to counter declining performance, to
the point where they were systematically cheapen-
ing the brand, eventually even taking the chicken
out of the chicken soup.
Such cuts were perfectly sensible in the short
term; they raised the company’s earnings and
cooled some of the heat coming from Wall Street.
But they had disastrous implications for the long
term; a once-revered brand began to rapidly lose
its appeal. Sales faltered and the dismal numbers
continued.
Conant understood that his immediate priority
was to manage the internal and external tensions
the company was facing, while fundamentally re-
building employee morale. In his first 90 days he
set out to create what he called a broad “tapestry
of expectations,” so everyone in the organization
could know where the company was going. Work-
ing with his leadership team, he wrote a mission
statement that defined Campbell’s purpose as
“nourishing people’s lives everywhere, every day.”
Revenues and margins were and still are unassail-
able priorities, but this noble purpose became the
company’s true north.
To help the company realize its new purpose, Co-
nant needed to restore alignment and foster pro-
ductive debate. An early step was to rearrange the
organization into a matrix, so that no single leader
would have complete control over any part of the
business (ensuring that someone else would notice
if executives tried to cut their way to prosperity) and
no employee would have a single boss (making it
safer to disagree). To instigate conversations about
restoring the brand’s reputation with both custom-
ers and employees, Conant asked executives to draft
plans that went beyond their own departments.
The atmosphere at the company became rife
with tension. Investors got nervous in the short
term, and the stock price fell 30%. Conant replaced
300 of the top 350 leaders, mostly people who
weren’t able or willing to play by the new rules.
But even after ejecting those who weren’t comply-
ing, he found himself fighting within his own team
about the pace of change; some of his top execu-
tives argued that he wasn’t moving quickly enough.
But the Campbell family, who still owned a signifi-
cant amount of stock, stuck with Conant. They, too,
wanted to rebuild the brand rather than continue
to slash and burn.
Slowly the investment began to pay off. Product
quality improved, pricing came back in line with
quality, and the company restocked the innova-
tion pipeline. Campbell introduced new product
lines in accord with the greater purpose – Select
Harvest Light Soups, for example, and whole-grain
Pepperidge Farm breads. Consumers began to as-
sociate the brand with better nutritional benefits,
as well as quality and convenience. And financial
performance increased six years in a row. In Octo-
ber 2009, Campbell was named to the Dow Jones
Sustainability Indexes in recognition of the com-
pany’s top performance. It is also now in the top
quartile of Fortune 500 companies when it comes
to employee morale. Conant’s fight was noble but
not altruistic.
What’s the Right Way to Fight?
Choosing the right fight is only half the battle. At
least as important is how you conduct the fight.
Three principles will help guide you:
A good fight isn’t just about money or
profits. It connects people with a sense
of purpose that goes beyond their own
self-interest.
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hbr.org | December 2009 | Harvard Business Review 9
Make it a sport, not a war. Even though busi-
ness fights are tough and can get ugly, good leaders
establish themselves as referees who see that things
don’t get out of hand. Fights must have rules, and
those rules shouldn’t change. Opposing sides should
be reasonably matched. And the leader must define
the parameters so everyone involved understands
how to participate and what it takes to win.
For a classic example of a sporting fight, look at
the process that Jack Welch, the former head of GE,
conducted in identifying his successor. Each of the
three finalists for the job – Robert Nardelli, James
McNerney, and Jeffrey Immelt – was impressive in
his own right, making it a truly difficult choice. So
Welch launched a competition among the three
in which each would lead a major cross-company
initiative, while at the same time running one of
GE’s businesses and training his own replacement.
Welch declared that there would be no dirty politics.
Inevitably, tensions rose from the executive suite on
down, but it was an open and clean fight, playing
out over six months, complete with new alliances,
speculation, and angling for position.
Was it a fair fight? It might not have felt that way
to the three men, who had different strengths and
weaknesses. And only one – Immelt – would come
out on top (though the other two quickly got other
offers). Was it a good use of company resources?
Definitely. GE needed the best possible successor
to Welch – and the company got terrific work out of
the three as they competed for the job. Was there a
better way to do it? We’d argue that GE’s approach
was more efficient and a better predictor of success
than the traditional exhaustive rounds of interviews.
Welch consciously raised tensions, but he created
rules of the game to mitigate the consequences of
those tensions. It was a high-stakes decision, worth
a good fight.
Set up a formal structure, but work informally.
Most employees can describe their company’s for-
mal organization – who reports to whom. But often
it’s the informal processes – involving hallway con-
versations, personal favors, and relationships that
cross official boundaries – that accomplish goals the
formal structure cannot.
Successful leaders structure fights through the
formal organization, yet allow people to take ad-
vantage of personal and professional connections
that don’t necessarily make the org chart. One ex-
ample of using informal structures to fight a good
fight comes from Patrick Cescau’s first move in 2005
as group CEO of Anglo-Dutch consumer packaged
goods company Unilever. Until then Unilever had
HOW WELL
DO YOU
FIGHT?
An Eye-Opening
Team Exercise
ONE OF THE MOST EFFECTIVE TOOLS we use to diagnose
weaknesses in an executive team’s “fighting” skills is
the following exercise: We observe the team in action as
members debate important agenda items or strategies,
taking detailed notes about who said what, when it was
said, how long a particular conversation took, what the
group’s reaction was, and so on.
When we feel we have a good sense of the group
dynamic, we stop the meeting and have a conversation
among ourselves but in front of the group. We assess how
they are doing in relatively explicit terms. We discuss
what the established norms of the group are and whether
people are adhering to them. We examine the role of the
leader. We note evidence we’ve seen of informal influence
techniques and of efforts to go out on a limb and try new
things. We mention the contributions, strengths, and
weaknesses of individual team members, including the
leader. We keep our comments as objective and factual as
possible, quoting team members directly and reporting
specific reactions from the group – “Did you see Helena
roll her eyes when Hans made the point about the finance
numbers being unrealistic?”
The feedback we get is amazing in its consistency
across business groups and cultures. We almost always
do the exercise as a surprise, so usually there is shocked
silence. But soon the silence gives way to relief, laugh-
ter, and good-natured agreement. By objectively calling
out problem areas we can give people permission to try
new behaviors with their peers. Invariably, after one of
these sessions, quiet people will speak up, someone new
takes a pen to a flip chart, individuals catch themselves in
behavioral quirks, and everyone has a good laugh. But the
meeting almost always becomes more productive.
We knew we had struck upon a winning formula when
the only complaint we got about the exercise was that we
had left some people out of our feedback. We now keep a
running list and make sure we mention every person. It’s
a simple enough technique to apply with your own group,
but it often helps to invite a couple of trusted outsiders
to offer a brutally honest but well-intentioned critique of
group behaviors.
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How to Pick a Good Fight
10 Harvard Business Review | December 2009 | hbr.org
operated as two holding companies – a food busi-
ness and a home and personal care products busi-
ness, with two chairmen and two brand organiza-
tions worldwide. Each company managed its own
P&L and did most of its brand development within
local markets. This system was highly inefficient,
since it meant, for example, that there were more
than 50 varieties of Unilever vanilla ice cream in
Western Europe alone.
Cescau’s initial fight was in tilting the organiza-
tional matrix in favor of global brands and catego-
ries. The goal: bigger, bolder innovations from the
center, with local markets focused on brand build-
ing and delivery. The new operating framework was
controversial and created huge tensions through-
out the 170,000-plus-person organization. To set
the stage, Cescau asked several emerging leaders to
work out the details of the formal shift in roles but
to maintain strong relationships with other execu-
tives who would inevitably take a different point of
view on country and brand priorities. In effect, he
was setting up informal fights in the trenches.
Take Vindi Banga. He had run Hindustan Lever,
a joint venture between Indian shareholders and
Unilever shareholders, and then the global home
and personal care category before taking over
the global foods category. Conventional wisdom
said that although there were underlying global
trends in demand for laundry detergents, soap, and
deodorants, food was essentially a local business.
Upending conventional wisdom always presents
a fight, but Banga used his deep personal network
to advance the cause. For instance, at one point it
became apparent during a global foods team meet-
ing that the marketing budget needed to be cut by
€20 million. It was a relatively small reduction in
the scheme of things, but the individual category
leaders were reluctant to raise their hands to lower
their expense allocations. Banga announced to the
group that he would think about it over dinner
and present his cuts to the team the next morning,
knowing full well that the category and brand lead-
ers would resolve the issue among themselves over
drinks that evening rather than have the decision
made for them. The informal structure worked
perfectly.
In every fight there are losers. Good leaders
find a way to turn disappointing news into
an occasion for personal development.
RULEBOOK
>> Are there clear
boundaries for conduct
and behavior?
>> Are people with
dissenting points of
view encouraged to
speak up?
>> Are mechanisms
in place to keep the
debate on a profes-
sional level?
REFEREES
>> Is the leader neutral
or genuinely open
to differing points of
view?
>> Does the leader
keep the debate on
track and enforce the
rules?
>> Does the leader
create the sense that
competition is fact
based and fair?
PLAYING FIELD
>> Does each side of
the debate have a real-
istic chance to win?
>> Is it clear how a
resolution will be
reached – by a decision
from the top, a majority
vote, or consensus?
GAPS TO EXPLOIT
>> Do different groups
have different agendas
based on their roles?
>> Does each group
have a specific objec-
tive to champion?
RELATIONSHIPS
>> Is there trust that in-
dividuals will deliver on
their commitments and
behave with integrity?
>> Will leaders through-
out the organization
test perspectives
up and down the
hierarchy?
ENERGY LEVELS
>> Are tension levels
high enough to
promote optimal
performance?
>> Do leaders have a
good sense of what
people care about,
and are those passions
used to motivate
performance?
>> Do leaders routinely
take the temperature,
and if necessary,
adjust goals and as-
signments to rebalance
tensions?
OUTCOMES
>> Can the leader give
people bad news with-
out damaging personal
relationships?
>> Is there dignity in
losing, and is risk tak-
ing rewarded?
PRINCIPLES OF ENGAGEMENT
To determine how well a battle is being fought,
ask yourself the following questions:
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hbr.org | December 2009 | Harvard Business Review 11
Turn pain into gain. In every fight there are win-
ners and there are losers. Not all ideas are good
ideas, and not all strategies work. Communicating
the outcome to the losers can be hard – and can
damage relationships. Good leaders find a way to
turn disappointing news into an occasion for per-
sonal development.
Arguably the best way to turn pain into gain is
to give people manageable challenges that stretch
their skills – and open up opportunities in the fu-
ture. Looking back to Jack Welch’s horse race, we
can imagine that neither Nardelli nor McNerney
was very happy when Immelt got the job, though
both men reacted well publicly. But Welch had
been up front from the start about the race, and
he kept a promise he had made, which was to see
that the runners-up would make successful transi-
tions to the chief executive’s office somewhere else.
After their six-month trial by fire at GE, Nardelli and
McNerney were tapped almost immediately for the
top jobs at Home Depot and 3M. (Both have since
moved on.)
Of course, leaders usually don’t have the option
of sending losers off to another top job. They do,
however, have other ways to soften the blow. They
can, for instance, find ways to help people adjust to
a strategy they don’t agree with or use connections
to help displaced employees find new positions that
better match their skills and preferences. When
people deliver results and fight the right fights to
the best of their abilities, they should gain some-
thing real and valuable, even when they end up on
the losing side. To get people to step up and take
risks, you have to reward risk taking itself, not just
successful outcomes.
• • •
Harmony has tremendous appeal. But good lead-
ers ask hard questions about how an organization
could be doing a better job, and great leaders con-
sistently fight for what they believe in. Fighting the
right fight is a discipline, not an event. When one
fight ends, the best leaders will be looking for the
next fight. That’s not to say the workplace should
be an environment of constant turmoil; great lead-
ers also know when to give people a rest. But they
continually seek ways to push people to the point
where they find their energy sweet spot, without
subjecting them to unbearable tension.
Saj-nicole A. Joni (saj@camix.com) is a business
strategist and adviser to top executives around the
globe. She is the CEO of Cambridge International
Group, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the
author of The Third Opinion: How Successful Lead-
ers Use Outside Insight to Create Superior Results
(Portfolio, 2004). Damon Beyer (damon.beyer@
booz.com) is a senior executive adviser with Booz &
Company in Houston and a founding member of the
Katzenbach Center, which promotes organizational
innovation.
Reprint R0912D
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