It's Us Against "The Business"
An approach to reducing division in the workplace.
We, humans, are a highly social, cooperative species. Our cooperation networks expand as our technology improves and we connect larger groups. However, it is unreasonable to expect an overnight change to 195 000 years of Homo Sapiens’ evolution and the negative aspects of tribalism against “out-groups”.
One such example I frequently encounter professionally is the divide between developer or engineering teams and “the business”. “The business” doesn’t know what they’re doing. “They” don’t get how things work, and so forth. These expressions are usually uttered with frustration or outright anger.
OK, so it is possible to find yourself in an organisation that processes information pathologically as a personal resource used in political power struggles (see Westrum’s Typology of Organisational Cultures for power-oriented cultures). However, in most other cases, I think it is safe to assume that different parts of your organisation want you to succeed as much as they want to be successful so that we all win.
Nevertheless, we often find ourselves seemingly at cross-purposes with our colleagues, and framing the issue correctly is one way to reduce compartmentalised division: “Sales committed to x and therefore we need to get it done” is going to elicit a very different response in an engineering team than “Sales is driving hard to increase market share, to do so they were forced to agree to some tricky requirements, and they need our help to deliver”. Of course, you won’t eliminate all the frustration of having to crowbar that half-baked feature in at the last minute. Still, you’d hope that most professionals can relate to compromising to make progress.
Approaching frustrating or seemingly unreasonable expectations and requirements in this manner reduces friction between teams. By extending your colleagues the courtesy of believing they want you to succeed (at least until proven otherwise), you open the door to further communication and improved understanding of the overall context, which may even improve the odds that you will ultimately be successful.
Our species rely on cooperation to survive and thrive. Only in the most tragic instances is “the business” your enemy.
Image credit: https://library.osu.edu/site/40stories/2020/01/05/we-have-met-the-enemy/
Until next time.
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