Dividing Limited Resources Appropriately!

How do we react to limited resources/win-lose scenarios?

Performance bell curve is a classic limited resource example. 

There are only a few slots for top performers- usually a manager wants just a tad bit more slots for his/her top performers and a tad bit less slots for his/her low performers.

What are different ways of dealing with this situation? Two obvious ways are:

• ·         Give limited resources proportionately to each team – everyone gains or loses equally.

• ·         Give limited resources appropriately to each team – some teams may get more than others.

Usually a leaders´ decision (1^st line of authority that both/multiple teams report up to) is required to drive non-proportionate/appropriate division of resources amongst different teams.

What happens when a leadership decision is not possible ?–maybe because leader isn´t there.  Is only solution to delegate decision higher up in hierarchy?

I would place responsibility on manager of each team. They have to come together and discuss allocation of resources. 

What are imperatives in such a process?:

• HR is facilitator in this process. I might be asked to recommend appropriate division of resources. But that makes it easy for managers to abdicate responsibility for decision taken. I would put responsibility squarely back on shoulders of managers – it´s your teams and you have to take a decision.

• Before we start discussion division of resources, managers have to debate and agree on principles on basis of which resources would be divided appropriately.  When there´s no principle, it´s difficult to find agreement.

But what does a facilitator do when he finds managers not willing to come on table and discuss?

• First, it´s a symptom of managers behaving ´territorially´.

• In such a case, discussion needs to be taken a notch higher. Discussion is no more about merits of coming to table and discussing.  Discussion should be about exploring with each manager ´why is s/he not coming on table and how might s/he being perceived because of that´. That is not an easy discussion but is certainly a necessary one. A Type A (go getter) person might respond to this process. Would a Type B person respond to this kind of a process? I think discussion with a Type B person would be about what is right thing to do.

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Sourav

Inter-Dependent Groups and Conflict

So here I was in a group of about 45 people. It was the 1^st day of a workshop that was to span across 2 days. The seating arrangement was different. We were to sit on mattresses placed on the floor in U shaped arrangement. There strangely seemed to be no PPT.

Most of us knew each other but still there was this anxiety and excitement on what lay ahead. I was aware that there was this group of some 10 participants who had participated in a planning workshop before. I had heard, through informal networks, good reviews of the planning workshop. I, and the other first time participants, were curious to know what had transpired there.

The facilitators found a unique way of transferring context from one group to the other. They 1^st called in the “experienced” group to sit in a circle, within the U, and share their experiences of their experience of the first workshop and Appreciate Inquiry discussion they would have had with their subordinates (a planned post workshop event). The first time participants sat in the outside U and could comment/ pitch in anytime we felt like.

After those in the inner circle were done sharing their experiences, we were called in to the inner circle to share what we had felt while we had heard the 1^st group sharing their stories.

At the end of these 2 sharing sessions, all of us were on almost common ground.

At the start of the 1^st day, there were 2 specific groups in the room. There was a need to bring them to common ground. The facilitators acknowledged this need and found a creative, experiential way to bring the groups together.

What might have happened had this initial exercise not being done? The presence of the 2 groups within the same room might have been a White Elephant- something no one speaks about but is present and influences all interactions within the room.

What are the other situations where different groups need to be brought to common ground? I can think of inter-dependent departments (e.g.- production and maintenance, sales and commercial, research and marketing). Even mergers and acquisitions would come under this realm. What seems to go wrong in these situations? Why do we frequently see friction and heartburn in these integrations/inter-dependent relationships? What can be done about them?

I think the answer lies in ‘speed’ and ‘norms’ of the different teams.

Different teams have different ‘speeds/flows’ in which they work. A simple manifestation of this would be the turnaround time for any query which flows into the team-some teams may respond in 24 hours; others may take 48 hours. Another manifestation would be what is meant by a project timeline- an IT team might be used to working on year long projects while a sales team would talk in terms of quarters.

Different teams also have different ‘norms’ – these would be in terms of decision making, communication, rituals, etc. Sales might prefer things to be done over phone, while accounts might need everything written down and documented.

Many a times these differences in ‘speed’ and ‘norms’ are not acknowledged leading to continuous and, at times, caustic friction between inter-dependent teams. Acknowledging these differences and making the teams take conscious steps towards reaching common ground on ‘speed’ and ‘norms’ would be the first step in ensuring effective collaboration.

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Sourav