Decision-Making in the Trenches : How To Confront Polarized Views at Work
Breaking Through Stuck Positions and Navigating Polarized Views
Even if you live in a Neanderthal cave, you must have noticed that we live in a world of polarized views.
It happens all the time with political or societal issues. We either quickly take sides with one of two binary views or end up engulfed in never-ending debates on who’s right or wrong.
Unsurprisingly, this happens in the corporate world, too.
We often camp in our positions and get stuck while losing respect for the other side. And chances are it adds zero value.
I’ve had my share of such situations and eventually found out how to resolve them best.
I particularly remember one situation where we faced significant issues with our distribution channel. In other words, we needed to simplify and reduce business costs with them.
My team’s goal – somewhat imposed by senior executives- was to rationalize the channel to the extreme and divide the number of distributors we had to work with by four (from 100 to 25).
The number was aggressive yet backed by a “what-if” analysis with our finance team. We had built a 360-degree view for each distributor with their historical revenue, by product down to the model level, and their level of profitability by product, too.
The sales team was highly concerned. It took them years to build trusting relationships with these channel partners, and they considered our analysis was off. They were adamant that we couldn’t exceed a 25% reduction (from 100 to 75) without endangering the revenue. However, their analysis mainly was on soft facts and did not provide much data.
After more back and forth, we realized we were stuck with these two polarized views, unable to make any meaningful progress and reach a resolution.
So, what should we do, then?
Escalate the issue and have a senior executive make the call?
Or sort it out ourselves and organize a facilitated discussion where each team could present their arguments and share supporting evidence?
I trust you’ve answered #2!
We had a declared crisis and needed to tackle it. At that stage, to accelerate resolution, we decided to move to a multi-day in-person working session with all relevant players from both teams, plus business and financial analysts.
During the session, we left no stone unturned. Both teams started to openly share more details with additional dimensions like product lifecycle or profitability thresholds. We began to better discern between valid and invalid arguments and overcome our respective biases.
Our critical thinking was on steroids. And as we exposed ourselves to the roots of these differing opinions, everyone developed a more nuanced understanding of the issues at hand.
Ready for more informed decisions, we looked into multiple revised scenarios together. And we soon landed an agreement that met the overarching goal of much-simplified distribution management and improved profitability.
Interestingly, our decision was close to the more aggressive original scenario. Yet, we had incorporated key risk factors.
Our agreed-upon timeline was more flexible, with a 2-year plan that would progressively get us down from 100 to 25 on select product lines.
We also built a continuous evaluation with regular check-in meetings to assess actual performance vs. plan and make any necessary refinements along the way.
I often think about this channel project when seeing polarized views and stuck positions.
It shows you can unlock a situation with the right mindset by fostering open communication, promoting information sharing, seeking compromise, and prioritizing data-driven decision-making.
It can be challenging as it requires strong cognitive and emotional intelligence. You have to be ready to challenge your opinions.
But with experience, you can develop that alternative viewpoint that will benefit all.