Can Harmony harm an organization?

Many cultures, especially the Indian culture, have an undertone of “integration” in all walks of life.  Harmony is to be preferred.  Avoid conflicts.  Many a times this is so overemphasized, that we even close over eyes to the need for natural conflicts, which are innate, nay necessary in situations.

Take for example the Production Manager and the Quality Control Manager.

What if these people decide “Let’s not create any conflict.  Let’s be friends.  Let’s have peace.”

Would this be right?  Imagine what would happen if they indeed became friends?

                                          

QC is passing all sub-quality products which the market will ultimately, and sometimes catastrophically, reject. The company is doomed.   

Life teaches us that conflicts are natural and necessary for growth.  

The conflict between Production & QC are “Role Conflicts” which are necessary for hygenic growth of a company. These need to be addressed, not suppressed.   But since these Roles are performed by human beings, there is a tendency to personalize these.

Next, life also teaches us, there is a constructive way to harness conflicts.

The inability of people to deal with conflicts constructively makes them suppress it, all in the name of promoting friendship and brotherhood.  India is highly susceptible to this.

Managerial Training imparted to managers does not often deal with developing such skills and even if they do there are very few who can do it effectively, sustainably.

Even the offsite “team building” programs cannot develop this emotional maturity.  Why?  Because climbing a mountain together on a weekend may give a temporary feeling of unity, but what happens when the Production Manager and QC Manager are back in their work “environment” , that is their plants/offices on Monday morning? 

Just thinking.

Shridhar

PS : To keep digging deeper into this rabbit hole , please watch the video “What is a Leader” by Dr. Ichak Adizes : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obVFglp2Oh4

[Note : Adizes programs help organizations deal with seven sources of conflicts.  This insight deals with just one of these seven – the “Role Conflict”]