Confrontation

How do you get people to work together across internal boundaries within an organization? As competitive pressures continually force organizations to do more with less, few managers have the luxury of relying on their own dedicated staff. Instead, most must work with and through people across the organization, many of whom have different priorities, incentives, and ways of doing things. Attempts at collaboration, however, usually result in confrontation, with most managers focusing on symptoms rather than the root cause of failures. For example, a sales person does not work well with an engineer, because there is a disconnect. The sales person is incentivized on closing a deal to achieve his or her financial goal, thus resulting in a year-end bonus. The engineer may have a monetary incentive at the end of the year as well, but perhaps with an emphasis on research and development. Generally, the mindsets of a sales person and an engineer are on different levels, hence the disconnect that may result in conflict.