Brazen Entrepreneur Innovation Blog. Contact us to set up a phone or skype appointment.

More From Saj-nicole Joni

A word - "It bears mentioning that of all the books and workshops on leadership and innovation by guru's I've attended over the years, Saj-nicole has written THE most important work on the subject. All other works are impotent in the wake of her "on spot" percepts. Don't be misled by the title. As Leadership + Dissent + Creativity + Integrity = Innovative Competitive Advantage. I'd appreciate your feedback. Jim"

Coming full circle in my own career, after leading global organizations in key executive roles, I've spent the last decade and more as a confidential strategy advisor to chief executive officers and their teams. There, too, the path forward is always complex, with great uncertainty and considerable risk. Working with many different CEOs and C-suite executives, I've seen with certainty that you can't create and sustain breakthrough performance without productive dissent, conflict and diversity of views.

Yet no one talks about this. There are hundreds of books and workshops about how to get people working together--building trust, molding teams, creating shared vision and purpose. That isn't wrong; but it's only half of the equation. You can't win with a team that is badly aligned. That's like sailing in a boat where the mast isn't properly stepped. The problem is that alignment is not sufficient. Achieving alignment is not the end of a leader's job. It's merely the beginning. Because without the tensions of wind on the sail, and the passions of the crews that make it happen, you will never get anywhere useful, let alone win the race.

Worse yet, I saw that good leaders everywhere were afraid that conflict and dissonance meant that alignment was broken and should be fixed.

Getting this right matters. The executives at Toyota ( TM - news - people ) seem to have been aligned around the goal of protecting their company when reports of gas pedal acceleration were surfacing. They should have started a right fight to use every resource they had to find out what was wrong, stop selling flawed cars and save lives. Instead, they chose the wrong fight of convincing people that the problem was only about floor mats. Today, innocent people have been hurt and killed, sales have dropped dramatically, and Toyota could be facing the biggest auto recall in history. Think about it. Do you trust Toyota today?

Anyone reading this has probably worked in organizations where you've seen office battles that were wasteful, all about self-interest and sometimes even mean. You probably hated it. Those were wrong fights.

But what about fighting for something that really matters? Something like brand integrity, or innovation, or safety or the environment? Tension, difference and conflict are fundamentally human. Competing ideas and actions, when focused on important causes, with dignity and fair play, can lift all participants to achieve great things. Those are right fights.

 

To arrange for Jim Woods to speak to your organziation on reducing costs and improving meaningful productivity through engagement, contact us at 719-358-6962 or email: jim@mckinleywods.com. Thank you.