A mobilizing post continues to vibrate. Befriending conflict allows people and organizations to develop and grow from an expanded perspective by promoting diversity in all its forms.

By Martin Padulla* for staffingamericalatina

A few days ago, I made a post of a tweet that generated some repercussion and then sparked comments on staffingamericalatina’s Linkedin. It was very simple. It showed graphically how organizations become more complex when they grow in structure. How many possibilities of social interaction exist and how many ways of not understanding each other can occur in each of them. It was interesting (through social networks) how both phenomena occurred.

The focus was on latent conflict, waiting for its opportunity in a very fertile field. It emphasized a counter-cyclical concept for the time: it gave entity to the conflict and also raised the need to make friends with it. Enhancing our ability to deal with difficult situations and personalities is a must in the world of Work 4.0. Not only is it essential, but it is also urgent, since in our research on skills gap analysis in the region we have always found a consolidated deficit of this skill. The absence of conflict is not harmony but apathy, and this is the germ that leads directly to organizational death.

A conflict can be a starting point to develop talent and to grow as an organization. Why does this mobilize? What is an organization today? What messages prevail?

The recurring narrative, in my opinion, describes a minority reality. It speaks to a large company and to a person who works with a contractual link for an indefinite period of time, who was trained in a traditional way, who has a set of benefits and who develops in a closed environment, without contact with the World. This is no longer observed in the reality of the majority. Organizations are open and expanded, they have different sizes and structures, they are connected with others from different geographies, people interact in multiple ways, they have been formed through various devices, they have different formal or informal contractual links with the company and what is crucial for the perspective of this analysis is that the interconnection is total.

It is here that we must introduce a key concept: culture. Organizational culture is a company’s way of doing, thinking and feeling. It is unique and unrepeatable, it is shaped and consolidated every day. It is a social construction, it has codes and symbols and it is what makes professional intervention in each organization so exciting.

The graph illustrating this column does not refer, as many have interpreted it, only to internal communication in a large company. That is one of the different views. It also illustrates all the possibilities that exist in the interaction between diverse people, formed from different formats, linked through different types of jobs, with different personal and family histories, business cultures, languages, traditions and goals in life.

The technological revolution has made this possible. The connection between people has become very fluid geographically, but it cannot solve, per se, the complexity of social interaction.

In some organizations that try very hard to be sexy, there are people who I suppose will have superpowers because they have roles whose mission is to manage happiness. A first superficial analysis of these roles reveals the poor intellectual level and/or the dubious ethical standards of those who have designed these structures. A second analysis reveals the impossibility of these organizations to grow by denying the possibility of conflict. A deeper analysis of Happiness Management would be enough for another column.

In these lines I will only state that I agree with the philosopher Fernando Savater; the word happiness is too pretentious. No one can be happy if they think they can stop being happy. “To be happy would require being invulnerable,” says the Spanish thinker.

For an organization to perceive itself as invulnerable is extremely dangerous. An organization is made up of people who by definition are vulnerable, with conflicts, in constant interaction. They must (with them) build, achieve goals, reach objectives, keep it alive and vibrant.

I prefer, closing any possibility of being original, to relativize the idea of happiness. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, for example, channels this idea through human ingenuity and practical prudence as a means of finding rules of conduct that lead to relative happiness.

Relative happiness in an organization is to grow, to be competitive and profitable, a reference where talent chooses to develop, to include, respect and promote diversity in all its forms, to care for the community and the planet. Without conflict there is no vital impulse, there is no margin for creativity and without it, there is no innovation.

Complexity is an opportunity, it implies living and interconnected organizations, learning, unlearning and relearning from diversity. With latent and manifest conflicts, far from empty roles and superficial concepts; close to objective knowledge and subjective reality.

*Sociologist (USAL)- MBA (UCA)