In the Country of "We," it's Still "Us" vs. "Them"

I had dinner last week with counsel for an entertainment production studio. How was he liking the transition from private practice to in-house law?

A lot, except for the task he's been laboring at for the past several months -- devising a system to coordinate the licensing of IP rights among the studio's various divisions -- television, DVD sales, video games, international film distribution and the like.

"Surprising," I said, "that a media company in 2007 wouldn't have long ago implemented the best available technology to track its licensed IP."

He laughed. "Here's how it works. A video game manufacturer calls someone in Division A to ask for the right to use a marginal character from, say, Harry Potter, in its new fantasy video game. The request is shuttled to legal with that division's paper file. Legal writes a memo, sends it back to the division head and there the memo rests. Two years later, a doll manufacturer calls someone in Division B to ask for the right to make and market a Harry Potter doll. The request is shuttled to legal with that division's paper file. Legal, oblivious of the prior memo, researches and writes a new one, sends it back to the division head and there the memo rests. And so on infinitum."

At the time I was shaking my head about organizations' failures to use the vast technological resources that have been available to them for the past, oh, twenty years.

But then last night I had dinner with my old social psych professor to talk again about our planned book on the social psych dispute resolution technology that is available to help organizations maximize profit by minimizing conflict.

The story my friend the studio lawyer told me the previous week came immediately to mind. Maybe his problem wasn't simply pre-Cambrian information technology, but pre-Jurassic conflict resolution technology.

All of which leads me this morning to Leading and Creating Collaboration in Decentralized Organizations by Harvard Professors Caruso, Rogers and Bazerman.

Creating "We" in an "Us vs. Them" Organization

Caruso, Rogers and Bazerman open their compellingly useful article with the greatest collaboration failure in the history of American intelligence operations -- the CIA's and FBI's failure to "integrate knowledge of the looming threats that existed prior to September 11th, 2001."

After much beneficial discussion of in-group and out-group dynamics, all of which can be found in the linked article, they go on to suggest that the same barriers to inter-group collaboration that contributed that catastrophic failure of intelligence before 9/11 are at work undermining the efficiency of commerce of a daily basis.

"Optimal patterns of . . . collaboration" they write, can be "depressed" by "three key barriers,

[1] the psychological bias towards favoring members of one’s ingroup;

[2] territoriality by, or on behalf of, organizational groups; and

[3] flawed, value destroying approaches to cross-divisional negotiations.

Their strategies to overcome these barriers?

First, by linking specific group goals to the broader goals of the organization, leaders can balance the motivational benefits of divisional-level goals with cooperative benefits of shared organizational-level goals.

Second, by framing collaboration as an opportunity for groups to enhance and secure their places in the organization, leaders can inspire organization members to more eagerly explore other divisions’ territories.

Finally, . . . to enable and encourage effective negotiation [, leaders should be trained in] value-creating approaches to negotiation (like those widely taught at business schools today), and to develop strong explicit organization-wide norms that support information gathering, disclosure and constructive criticism.

Check it out.