The power of disagreement

Yesterday the partners’ team went for dinner for the 3rd year in a row. It started as the Christmas dinner but at the end each year we do it later and later. I guess we find it each time more difficult to connect our agenda with all the traveling we do. Secondly no matter what the situation is each year there is always something that worries us as management and that make us want to celebrate last year success but also some to think how to manage the different clouds that may be at point or another in any of our 2 business and always to be cautious about not celebrating too much

Case in point and as mentioned on an old post more than 18 months ago, celebrating success is key as we put lots of effort on growing the business, our people and ourselves as individuals and no matter which difficulties we may face in the future we have done a good job in the past. Secondly dedicating so much time to our business if we can’t feel good about what we achieve little by little then it will probably be not worth it to keep going
It was a very friendly dinner, nice conversations and relax atmosphere. What makes this interesting is that that very same morning 2 of us were having an email exchange where we were not agreeing and have very different points of view on how to deal with an important matter. But that should and does not have an impact on our overall relationship. Where I am going?

As Fran mentioned on our last partner meting (we meet on a biweekly basis for about 4 hours to review both consulting and mmchannel businesses) sometimes we have become too polite with each other, too politically correct and the fact that we have 4 intelligent, creative and adventurous people in the room makes for discussion where different points of view make at the end better ideas. This is also more interesting as I hold the believe that deep inside us most people try to avoid conflict or are not capable to build out of a conflicting situation. However I truly believe in constructive conflict and the power of disagreement as one of the most powerful ways of team management and ideation and better problem solving