Collaboration and conflict

MN State Fair Fine Arts Project

During my annual trip to the Minnesota State Fair, I walked through the Fine Arts building and stumbled across this piece located opposite the information desk. At first, I chuckled. After all, the purpose of working together should be towards a common goal, not conflict.

I was so enthralled by this piece, I took a picture (was I supposed to do that?) and made it the background image on my iPhone. Since then, I've had more time to reflect and I've come to this piece with a renewed perspective.

When we work together, we create conflict. 

The inverse of this statement could be "When we work alone, we create agreement." This is also a true statement because working alone only creates harmony with the individual doing the work.

So, if we accept proof by inverse, then this statement must be true. But why do we create conflict? Conflict can arise from a number of different areas: ideological, procedural, political, and/or knowledgeable. Republicans and Democrats work together and create conflict all the time, mostly on ideological priorities. Developers and Operations work together and create conflict based on technological or procedural guidelines.

So if working together creates conflict, how do we resolve that conflict? That's the 21 Trillion dollar question for political discussions. For technology conversations, resolving the conflict between the development and operations is a much lower stakes answer. Tomes have been authored on Dev and Ops but the answer is very simple: shared goals and expectations. When you understand what the intention of the action being taken is and the expected result, then the opportunity for conflict is lessened.

If you start with the premise that working together will create conflict, then the first step should be removing any ambiguity from the goals and tasks at hand to move forward. Repeat the goals and objectives regularly, so that everyone knows them. Once that understanding is brought into the group's collective consciousness, then they will stop working as individuals and begin working as one; and the inverse proof continues to be true.

[10/30 edited: fixed some spelling ]