1: Skip was complaining to his boss, Fred Kofman, that he wasn’t getting the service he needed.
Earlier in his career, Fred Kofman had cofounded Axialent, a consulting firm. Skip was the manager of the Sydney-based Asia Pacific subsidiary.
“The firm’s operations center was located in Buenos Aires,” Fred explains in his book The Meaning Revolution, “where we ran administration, finance, marketing, executive assistance, and materials production. It was an arrangement that allowed us to serve our worldwide clients efficiently and at low cost.”
Skip wasn’t feeling it.
“Due to the eleven-hour time difference,” Fred writes, “coordination was sloppy, materials were not ready on time, scheduling client appointments took forever, and communications in general were extremely cumbersome—squeezed to a one-hour window that was awkward on both ends.”
2: Skip knew how to solve the problem: He wanted to hire someone to focus on administration responsibilities, he told Fred.
The problem? Charlie, who managed the operations center in Buenos Aires, refused to agree.
“Okay,” Fred said. “I’ll talk to Charlie.”
Which he did. Charlie responded by calling Skip “a backstabbing son of a bitch.”
Fred continues: “Then Charlie proceeded to remind me that it was company policy to centralize operations in Buenos Aires, and that this policy was decided (by me, mainly) for many good reasons: it was cheaper, it was better for managing operations employees, it created a sense of community among them, and it allowed us to leverage them as they could shift from one region to the other when there was some peak in demand, and so on.”
All right then, Fred responded. “Let me talk to Skip.”
Which he did. And then he talked to Charlie. And then he talked to Skip. No progress.
There had to be a better way.
“I realized my managerial process was flawed,” Fred recounts. “I was sick of the virtual shuttle diplomacy between Buenos Aires and Sydney, of escalating conflict between Charlie and Skip, and I resented having to come up with a solution myself.”
By discussing the problem with each party individually, “I was getting only biased, incomplete information,” Fred notes, “and putting myself in between two people who’d never learn to work through their differences together.”
3: The solution?
Step 1: “When people can’t agree,” he writes, “they must escalate the issue collaboratively” by both parties organizing a three-way conversation conversation with their boss, in this case, Fred.
Step 2: During the three-way meeting or call, the parties share the ideas they have to resolve the situation as well as the trade-offs.
In this case, Skip said: “We talked about hiring someone in Buenos Aires but put them on a different schedule. This person could come into the office at 5 p.m. Buenos Aires time, which is 6 a.m. in Sydney. They could spend an hour with the rest of the operations crew to coordinate things with them, and then stay till 1 a.m., which is 2 p.m. in Sydney. This would give them plenty of time to connect with the Asia Pacific employees and clients.”
Charlie then shared his perspective: “The problem is that we can’t leave the office open till 1 a.m. with a new person. And it would be depressing for them to be alone in such a big space. In addition, the part of the city in which we have the office is not the safest at night. I wouldn’t want one of our employees on the street after business hours.”
Before Fred could respond, Skip jumped back in: “Wait a second. I don’t really need this person to be physically at the office. They could just as easily work from home. If there are things that the person we hire needs from the office, we could have them sent to their house, or maybe they can pick stuff up in the afternoon.”
Fred then spoke up: “Whoever we hire would still full-line report to you, Charlie with a dotted line to Skip, but they’d work from home mostly focused on the needs of Asia Pacific. Would that work for you?”
Charlie paused. “It could work, but I don’t have the budget to hire an additional person. Right now the regular crew manages Asia Pacific’s requests during business hours. I don’t have a dedicated person whom I could ask to switch schedules, and I don’t feel like letting go of any of my staff as they are working well serving operations in America and Europe.”
Fred then asked Skip if he would fund this employee from his budget. “It would be much cheaper for you to hire someone in Argentinean pesos than in Australian dollars,” he added.
“I would,” Skip replied, “but then I’d want them to be full line to me and dotted line to Charlie. If I fund that hire, I want to be able to assign work according to my priorities.”
“I can live with that,” Charlie said.
Fred concludes: “In the end, we hired an Aussie woman who had moved to Buenos Aires after falling in love with an Argentinean. She worked out so well that we implemented a similar system for our European offices. Skip and Charlie ended the conversation on good terms, feeling that their needs had been met through a fair process, mostly led by them.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Think back on when I attempted to work out a solution between two parties. How did it go? Was I negotiating with each party independently or together at the same time?
Action: During my next negotiation, insist that all parties be present on the call or in person.
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