On my most recent assignment, I was involved in a conflict with a supplier that ultimately broke down into bickering and squabbling. A skilled facilitator was brought in to help us resolve the issue. He started by having us talk about our concerns:

• "I'm concerned that without a better level of support we won't be able to innovate."
• "The amount of time we spend on these back and forth issues is huge and is wildly inefficient."
• "If they do what they're proposing, I can't maintain the security of the system."
• "I don't even feel comfortable with this conversation- why can't they just get along and work together?" 

A key principle from Permaculture is "the problem is the solution," meaning that when we really understand the problem, the solution becomes clear. It also means that solutions are patterns that are not separate from the problem, but that the problem can be seen as a conflict of forces within a particular context. Thus the problem doesn't disappear, but is resolved by the solution. The approach to conflict resolution applied in this case was one of the most creative and positive I've experienced.

From the list of concerns, now populating a cloud of terms on the whiteboard, the facilitator asked the combatants to acknowledge each others' concerns. Thus everyone felt heard and not shut out of the process.

Next, the facilitator (let's call her F.) wrote the words "Personal Control" in with all the other concerns. While acknowledging that everyone in the room had this concern, F. pointed out that it was the thing preventing progress, and so crossed it out.

From the list of concerns, we could quickly see that these formed into values and then into chains of values. In fact two of three of the company's stated key values were in this list, a good gut check to see that we weren't completely disconnected from reality in our stated values.

These concerns being raised indicated the real values that various members of the group were operating under. Now everyone in the group could see them. The values could then be linked into linear chains: connectedness leads to teamwork leads to relationships leads to fun. I don't quite buy this, but the idea was to focus on the base or starting place in each chain, so that achieving connectedness theoretically brings the others along for the ride. Finally, for each chain, a natural champion emerged (the one who raised the concern in the first place!).

So in a very short period of time, we were able to use the conflict as raw material to:

• improve and expand communication so everyone could empathize with each other's positions,
• identify the real concerns of various parties and acknowledge them as a basis for this communication and
  
• identify champions or owners of the value chain.
  

In a future post, I'll talk about the next steps of cross linking the positive and negative feedbacks within and across various value chains.