We live in perilous times. People are angry. We know someone in our circles who is angry. Anger surrounds us and is aroused by many things affecting our lives. People are angry about so many issues that an attempt to list the causes of the anger would be an exercise “in futility and perpetuity”. Issues causing anger are so many that it would be best not to focus on what makes people angry, but on what is left that makes people happy. By Nimroth Gwetsa, 29 June 2015

Conflict surrounds us. Tensions range from dealing with racial, political, economical, social, territorial and ideological conflicts to issues of spirituality and other beliefs.

Forget death and taxes as sure things in life. At least we know that some goods are exempt from tax and history tells us some people never faced death but were raptured. Notable examples of people who never died include Enoch (Genesis 5:21-24) and Elijah (2Kings 2:1-12). We are also told some people in future would not face death but would be raptured (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51-54). On this basis, death is not a sure thing for some.

With death and taxes not being sure things for some in this life, we need to find other sure things for everyone in this life. Tension and conflict are such sure things! Even newborn babies are not immune to experiencing it. Tension and conflict are bound to be with us in this life forever, at least until the “Messiah’s second coming“.

We need not be paralysed by such depressing certainty. Tension is a symptom of a problem and like all other problems, spurs us to find new solutions. Great inventions came from great discomfort. If we could find it in us to change our outlook on life in our conflicting situations, we could master our prosperity. The key question is not about why we are in conflict and experience intense tension, but why we can’t seem to be getting along.

Ancients are onto something by their saying, “good fences make good neighbours”. Those fences are personal boundaries that could either be virtual or real. Virtual in the sense of exercising personal mastery and self-control, and pursuing vision-filled life just as the first Adam likely did. I still feel our benchmark to living rich and fulfilling life is Adam’s. Adam had no one to blame for anything. No one to rely or depend on for grants, no human-being to promise him “free this and that” yet did what he did to makes sense of his world. Other than the serpent’s actions, no one was “hell-bent” on harming or cheating or robbing him.

We can still try to learn from history and our perpetual conflicts to give getting along a chance.

But where do we start?

Let us, for now, confine our discussion to the conflict and tension experienced in the business environment. This entails tension and conflict about business priorities and support and allocation of resources. Like social conflicts, there are internal business conflicts in all businesses of different shapes, sizes and sectors. Whether internal or external, there is conflict. The lexicon, “corporate politics” explains such conflicts in large corporations.

Take modernisation, for example. Modernisation is promoted on the basis that it would enable the organisation to take advantage of technological developments to improve business sales and customer services. Throughout my corporate and management consulting career, I have been asked for advice about the best strategy for modernisation. I can bet you a question like this predates my existence and will surpass it. Many future generations would still be asked this question. Future generation would also fail to learn from the past and would face the same question as if the occurrence of their situation is unique.

Large corporations have different types of offerings from different business units and departments. Like most things in life, large corporates have the so called “black and white sheep” businesses in their corporate family. As in the animal farm analogy, some business departments “are more equal than others”. Such is life and in the spirit of Donald Trump’s mantra, “it’s not personal. It’s business!”

Such is the fate of some business units struggling to secure internal support to grow business share of revenue and customers. There would be an unfair focus and support on some business departments at the expense of others, with the “white sheep” receiving all the attention while the “black sheep” considered by their “stewards” to have greater potential to flourish if supported, being “ignored” and left to fend for themselves in their highly competitive environment. Further compounding the back sheep business departments’ problems would be “corporate politics”, camouflaged as corporate standards and policy. The implementation of these policies and standards would prevent struggling business departments from adopting their preferred solutions and workarounds to take advantage of business opportunities.

While there is value in pursuing shared, common business architecture and one firm strategy, such decisions should be taken carefully. Uniformity excludes diversity. Business leaders need to reflect deeply on strategies that would best work for their businesses.

Indeed, there are many benefits derivable from consolidated strategy and solutions. But these come at a price too. As the market goes through different cycles of “plenty to recession”, where “survival is likely to be of the fittest”, leaders should take care that their businesses are adequately flexible to accommodate changing business landscape. The emergence of smaller companies often poses a threat to smaller business departments within larger established enterprises. Smaller companies often don’t have the “legacy drag” and can capture significant portion of the market with their “nimble offerings”.

We are told by economists that in low growth economies such as ours, one other way of achieving higher growth rates could be through the development of and support for SMMEs.

In large corporations pursuing one vision and underlying business capabilities, would it not make “business sense” then for them to promote diversity in what is presented before different customer base yet maintain uniformity in what is “behind the scenes”? Won’t having different front and (to a lesser extent) mid-tier operations to allow more flexibility and responsiveness for businesses to accommodate the smaller departments’ needs, offer a better “win-win” outcome without compromising on the complete strategic intent of pursuing one vision strategy? Would not such a compromise ensure that smaller internal business departments are prevented from being suffocated by the complex and time-consuming implementation of consolidated offerings?

The dual strategy for divergent profitable customer base should not imply “unilateral declaration of independence” by smaller business departments. It should mean having two distinct offerings integrated by a common thread interface to offer compelling profitable propositions to their divergent customers. Such diversification could be likened to a wheel and its hub, where some parts closer to the axle move faster than the outward ones. Those parts of the wheel would still be joined to the same hub and axle, and would still form part of the same wheel. The key differentiator would be a strategic move to allow differently positioned parts of the wheel to move at different speeds, though combined to produce the same objective.

Pursuing one consolidated strategy should not imply suffocating smaller business departments by forcing them to move at the same pace as larger parts of the organisation. It should be about allowing smaller parts closer to the high paced changes characterising their business environment, to move as fast as their environment allows, while not going off track the larger parts to which they are connected.

For such business departments, the “glue holding them together” and ensuring movement in the same direction as the larger parts could imply giving them access to a small portion of dedicated resources to enable rapid response and development of their needs. This could further include the possibility of having own front-end capabilities. The dual-strategy acknowledges the different constraints of catering for a customer base and market sector driven by factors different from those affecting larger business areas.

Nothing is without risks or consequences. Likewise, the dual strategy has its own drawbacks. The drawbacks need to be weighed against the benefits to be derived. The obvious drawbacks include the introduction of complexity and possible creation of another “beast”, by running parallel offerings and having to integrate offerings. The other issue concerns the availability and capacity of resources to sustain dual strategy. The minimal availability of resources could result in “shortcuts” being taken and prevalence of ill-discipline in enforcing governance.

Dual strategy should not be pursued in an environment characterised by poor maintenance and enforcement of architectural discipline to ensure parallel offerings do not move excessively apart from the main objective of one vision and one corporate strategy.

Ultimately, every decision and aspect of business has a financial impact. It makes sense that benefits and risks be measured against the impact on business “financial bottom-line performance”. If the returns match expectations, finalisation of the business investment decision would be obviated.

My advice to large companies would be to avoid adopting the “one size fits all” strategy if they could use the dual strategy to attract new and smaller customers. Once attracted, the focus should be on helping new customers “grow their business” a little faster so they could be promoted to use higher offerings where one vision and strategy capabilities are made available. Perhaps this is an academic view, far from reality. The truth though is that even those “large scale one vision, one strategy” initiatives never get completed. Technology changes rapidly, yet large scale implementations take time to accomplish meaningful change. By the time such change is introduced, the underlying technology has become obsolete. Even if the technology does not become obsolete, the cost of technology ownership would become exorbitant, making it difficult for companies to sustain the implementation of such initiatives.

If I were a decision-maker in a large corporate, I would choose to leverage my backend legacy capabilities more, and focus my efforts on changing the front-end and somewhat the “middle area”, where business rules are enforced. This should not imply that I wouldn’t one day overhaul my backend to replace with modernised offerings. However, I wouldn’t take lightly, the decision to replace the backend.

Decisions to replace backend capabilities should be avoided as much as possible, because of the disruptive nature of their replacements. For such efforts never end and would never end because of the “many moving parts” to which any organisation has no control of. Not only would they “sap” resources and energy in an unprecedented way, they would disrupt other areas.

This would mark “the beginning of the never ending vicious circle” most businesses today find themselves in. When that happens, do not be surprised when employees “stop working” and start “corporate politicking“. That’s when people would start looking back at the perceived “good ol’ days”, now wondering “why everyone can’t seem to be getting along”.

Be warned. The Messiah’s second coming may not necessarily be that near. You may be forced to endure the hardship for a long while still.

Learn from others. “Curb your enthusiasm”. Be more discerning and go in with full awareness of the impact and consequences of your decision.

I agree with the adage that “… there is nothing new under the sun.” Nature teaches us that core structural elements remain the same. Try, in your modernisation efforts, to find ways of keeping the backend intact, while modernising the front and mid-tier levels to take advantage of new business opportunities.

Stopping conflict in the workplace is an exercise requiring considered response to divergent needs of different business areas.

Let there be Peace!