leveraging conflict for more passionate and creative results

original article to the point and well worth reading

participants need to feel safe enough to argue with ideas, not with people

only then can you have world class performance, just "profitable" can be achieved without collaboration

in wibe terms you need several well formed arguments for and against. when voted on and sorted by energy you get a clear view of what direction is winning

clipped from www.innovationtools.com Why management by consensus is killing innovation One management issue that could be killing innovation efforts is an obsession by many managers that a decision can’t be reached unless a team of people comes to agreement. Alfred Sloan of the "old GM" insisted that if his key managers came to agreement too quickly, or came to agreement at all, that they defer making a decision until a higher level of conflicting views were offered to the discussion. There are two issues that seem to contribute heavily to the current state of "can’t we all get along" management. First, people are engaged in win-lose competition with one another on a team. If a suggestion or idea is posed, other team members will jump on the person making the suggestion in order to discredit him or her rather than looking at the idea itself. Managers are not trained to look at conflict as a positive state, but without conflicting ideas all that is offered to customers are stale and uninspired offerings.