CHAPTER 3

Constructive Conflict

The Innovation Code is an argument waiting to happen. Put an Artist, an Athlete, a Sage, and an Engineer in one room, and give them a problem to solve; things will get messy. When four intensely different—and in many ways opposing—viewpoints come together, conflict is a given. But conflict doesn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, conflict is the very force that will bring about the best outcome in almost any given innovation initiative. The only way to create unlikely yet groundbreaking, provocative, and winning solutions is to build a team that doesn’t agree—a team that challenges each other by combining deeply dissimilar worldviews.

The Innovation Code is less like fission—the separation of a heavy, unstable atom into two smaller ones—and more like fusion, the merging of two different atoms into a bigger one. It’s no coincidence that fusion produces so much more energy than fission that it’s enough to power the sun: bringing together instability is more powerful than breaking it apart. Just consider the example of Devi.

Example:
The Doctor Who Hated Procedures

Devi was a doctor who hated procedures. She’d gone into medicine to discover something new—not repeat the things that every other medical professional had done before her. A practitioner with the experimental ambitions of an inventor, sometimes even an artist, Devi was the most creative physician in her class all through medical school. Although she went to a prestigious university and was schooled in the most advanced surgical techniques and cutting-edge drug therapies, she traveled the world to learn about alternative treatments from midwives and medicine men.

In her residency, Devi stirred the pot. The attending physician who supervised her wasn’t impressed or amused by her adventuresome approach to the healing arts. He called her out when he thought her treatment plans were too unconventional, and she fired right back with brilliant justifications for her nonstandard strategies.

The back and forth made things perpetually tense. Devi almost always had to follow the orders of the attending doctor. Quietly seething, she got through her residency with the knowledge that she’d one day get to do things her own way. Her superior constantly advised her to be more accepting of the status quo, but he never totally silenced her: he admired her superb diagnostic skills and her excellent bedside manner.

At the end of her residency, Devi couldn’t be more hopeful for the future. Filled with high ideals and enthusiasm that she could introduce new approaches to traditional Western medicine, Devi went to work as a general practitioner in a holistic physician’s practice group. At first, it was fantastic. There were few policies and procedures and little bureaucracy to get in the way of attending to patients. Devi and her colleagues saw little need for appointments, scheduling, or lengthy legal forms. She worked arduously to create a medical practice that treated the whole patient.

Devi dreamed of an office that felt more like a comfortable home than a series of waiting rooms. So she and her colleagues reinvested most of the money they made into the purchase of a lovely old manor house and moved all of the staff across town to the historic district. With every year came new ventures: a homeopathic pharmacy, a neuromuscular therapy clinic, and acupuncture services. Devi’s creative ventures had worked so well that they made her the managing physician.

There was just one problem—and it was a big one: Devi wasn’t a manager. The medical practice had grown so large that Devi couldn’t run it effectively. Scheduling snafus and insurance errors abounded. And since each doctor practiced their own form of alternative medicine, cost overruns left the practice unexpectedly strapped for cash. Meeting after meeting, Devi tried to get the doctors to make decisions, but their shared stubbornness and divergent ideas for improvement left the doctors in a deadlock. Devi knew she had to step up and take action to save the practice.

With a disconcerting sense of déjà vu, Devi realized that she had to seek out the very things she had worked so hard to avoid: policies, procedures, and bureaucratic systems. She had to hire the types of people she’d always been most uncomfortable around: financial officers, systems operators, and lawyers. Her new recruits asked her to invest in an integrated array of technologies and accounting systems. It took a while to get used to all of the rules and to get over her fundamental aversion to rules themselves, but eventually Devi came to admire and depend on the professionals she had nothing in common with. She saw that they made it possible for her to do what she did best—heal patients.

Devi is an unwitting testament to the underestimated, often misunderstood power of constructive conflict. It’s a statement we’ve all heard, but it’s never more true than when it comes to innovation: too much of the same thing isn’t good. A medical practice full of Devis—Artists—is, in the long run, dysfunctional. A medical practice full of doctors like the attending physician she couldn’t stand—Engineers—is, in the long run, too functional, slick and smooth at the expense of new ideas and approaches.

Devi’s story turns us back to the paradox of dominant worldviews that started this book: because our dominant worldviews influence the way we see everything, we need to work with people who have different dominant worldviews than our own, to add nuance, thoughtfulness, and surprise insights to our own perspectives. It’s not about avoiding extremes—it’s about putting extremes together and generating something productive from the way they clash.

Two Forms of
Constructive Conflict

There are two major kinds of constructive conflict that propel innovation at the personal and organizational level: the disharmony between Artists and Engineers (as evidenced by Devi’s story) and the tension between Sages and Athletes.

The two struggles correspond to the two different dynamics of innovation: magnitude and speed. When it comes to the magnitude—or the intensity—of an innovation, Artists drive Engineers to be more radical while Engineers rein in Artists, bringing some pragmatism to their visions. When it comes to the speed of an innovation, Sages slow Athletes down, encouraging them to build a culture that will last for generations, while Athletes keep the Sage’s head in the game, calling attention to quick wins and short-term strategy.

While these two forms of conflict are the fundamental dissonances that propel innovation and growth, it’s crucial that all four of the dominant worldviews interact with each other. The ideal team or organization contains Sages, Artists, Engineers, and Athletes. The key is not to strike a balance but to know when you need more or less of each approach.

The Developmental Phases of Growth
From Artist to Athlete to Sage to Engineer

The need for each approach depends on where your team or organization is in the developmental phases of growth. At their onset, groups need more Artists and Athletes. Artists will give a young company a creative edge, while Athletes come up with a playbook, a way of getting finances and resources together to prevent the Artists’ great ideas from imploding. With Artists and Athletes working together—two externally-facing forms of innovation, looking for new markets and technologies—the organization begins to grow very fast. This is called the sigmoid “S.” Organizations don’t grow in nice, smooth lines—they grow ballistically (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1. ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH CYCLE

As it starts to grow, the organization has to get the right people and community involved and develop the best customer relationships. This is when the company needs Sages. Finally, when the organization gets really big, it needs structure, processes, and hierarchy—the gifts of Engineers.

At the Point of
Creative Destruction

When an organization matures, it typically stalls. This is called flatlining. The sigmoid “S” suddenly starts to decelerate. This is where most organizations die—at the point of creative destruction. At this moment, the organization needs to find a way to reinvent itself. The company must overcome its dominant worldview and identify the form of innovation that it needs more of. Instead of maintaining the same ratio of different kinds of thinkers, the organization needs to incorporate more Artists or Athletes or Sages or Engineers, whichever form will add more variance to the current situation.

The key is in knowing where to look for the right people to recruit and how to recruit them. Seek out people with extensive experience in their fields. Experience can come in many forms—from the theoretical knowledge of a researcher to the practical mastery of an engineer. Remember that experience does not necessarily mean age. In fact, if you were building a project around an emerging trend or a new market, youth would be an asset on your team.

The goal is to assemble a diversity of perspectives and expertise. Recruit individuals who have different visions of your company—some who see it as a radical organization moving toward the future, others who see it as a highly efficient operational machine, and yet others who see its internal culture.

Where to Find Your
Future Collaborators

Look in both likely and unlikely places for your future collaborators. They might be inside your organization—but they might also be elsewhere, out in the real world. Everyone is a superhero in some context—and inept in a different context. A Harvard PhD candidate in Medieval History who’s recently become a mother could benefit from talking to a stay-at-home father of five children. That same father, who wants to finish his novel-in-progress, could benefit from talking to the PhD candidate’s good friends who work in publishing.

Every kind of thinker has a different way of speaking—and when we approach people who aren’t like us, we need to adapt to their mode of communication. We need to speak their language. Appeal to their values and interests and present questions and projects in their terms.

Artists engage in experiments and express themselves in creative outlets, so be enthusiastic and energetic when talking to them. Ask open-ended questions. Stress the radical potential and possibility of new solutions that comes with your project.

Engineers share data, so give them statistics and concrete information when describing your project to them. Offer them a sense of the step-by-step process behind your initiative. Provide details and explain things in a sequential order.

Athletes get to the point, so frame your initiative to them as a win-or-lose situation with a concrete payoff. Use quantifiable facts to illustrate your point. Show the logical necessity of your project.

Sages gather together and talk about their feelings, so take your time and get to know them on a personal level. Put them at ease and talk about life experiences. Establish a sense of community when asking them to join your team.

An Inside-Out
Perspective on Innovation

As an innovation leader, you will find it important to take an inside-out perspective in developing your team. First, look at your own skills and decide objectively where you think you might be incompetent. Give those kinds of tasks and responsibilities to another member of your team. Next, look at the areas where you are merely competent and assign these actions to other members of your team to supplement your own competency. Then, find the areas where you are masterful and choose a member of your team whom you can train as your understudy in those tasks. Finally, determine the areas in which you are unique—your one-of-a-kind gifts or skills. Here is the part of the innovation leadership proposition that you need to focus on. This is the way to maximize your own value to the team.

Teams are works in progress. They are dynamic groups that you need to add to and take away from as you move along in your project and see what you need more and less of. The same people who are great at starting a project are not the same people who are great at getting the project to scale.

Conflict is inevitable when you put such a wide variety of perspectives on one team—and that’s a good thing. The ugliest word in innovation is apathy. When an Engineer clashes with an Artist or an Athlete butts heads with a Sage, resist your impulse to bring about peace. Engage. Dwell in the conflict. See what happens when opponents push each other to their limits. For that is when the game-changing hybrid solutions you never could’ve foreseen on your own arise. The best hybrid solution is a temporary one. In solving the immediate conflict, it sets the stage for the next better conflict. Like a boxing match with infinite rounds of ever-escalating intensity, innovation is a year-round sport.

Summary

The two main forms of conflict are the ones between Artists and Engineers (over the size of innovation) and between Sages and Athletes (over the speed of innovation). At different moments in the life cycle of an innovation initiative, different dominant worldviews must come out on top: Artists and Athletes are great at launching an innovation while Sages and Engineers can establish the long-term environment for sustaining an innovation.