Please Remove My Appendix

Carole noticed that Cliff was checking his watch again. "Got somewhere to go?" she asked. "We all do, you know, but unless we can get these people to stop bickering and start engineering, nothing else matters."

"I know, sorry," Cliff said. "But I'm out of ideas. They all believe they aren't the problem."

Carol, Cliff, and Daryl sat silently for a minute, though it seemed longer. Then Daryl had an idea. "What about conflict training? I hear from HR that they have someone and people say he's pretty good."

Cliff really had given up. "I can hear them now: 'Oh, training. Another day lost.'"

But Carole was more optimistic. "Let's do it. We've tried everything else. Maybe it'll help."

In desperation, and with good intentions, Carole, Cliff, and Daryl are about to deal with a team conflict problem with conflict training.

Training rarely hurts, but considering all the costs, it can be a mistake. To understand why, imagine waking up one morning with a pain in your left side. You call your doctor and manage somehow to get an appointment that morning. You walk into the office and say, "Doctor, my left side hurts. Please remove my appendix."

Self-diagnosis is risky
when your health is at stake,
and it's no less risky in
the organizational contextOf course, you'd never do that. Instead, you'd probably talk about your pain, and submit to an examination. Maybe it's appendicitis, but maybe not — it's unlikely, since normally, the appendix is on the right side.

Self-diagnosis is risky when your health is at stake, and it's no less risky in the organizational context. Instead of deciding for yourself what to do, have a consultant investigate what kind of problem there might be, then tell you what your options are, and recommend action.

Here are some advantages of professional assessment:

Fit

If there's too much tension in the air, training might not be a fit. Some people might be too hurt or too steamed to learn much. You might need another kind of intervention first.

Cost

When you include the cost of participant time, training can be more expensive than more direct and focused interventions. A professional assessment can control costs.

Opportunity cost

The people attending the training could be doing something else, and that work might be delayed by the time spent in training. The cost of those delays can be significant.

Expertise

Experts are more likely to uncover the real issue. You gain the benefit of their skill and experience with other organizations.

Outsider status

During the assessment, some people in your organization are more likely to reveal key information to the outside expert than they would be to you or to someone within your organization.

Objectivity

It's difficult to be objective about interpersonal issues. Since we have a tendency to overlook our own contributions to problems, self-assessment can be less objective than a professional assessment.

An assessment can be helpful even when you think everything is OK. Think of it the way you would your annual physical. Would you skip a physical because you feel fine?  Top    Next Issue

Are your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!

Situs inversus is a condition in which internal organs are organized as a mirror image of the norm. It affects one in 7-8,000 humans. There are also other conditions that can cause the appendix to be on the left side. More.

Your comments are welcome

About Point Lookout

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful, and that you'll consider recommending it to a friend.

This article in its entirety was written by a human being. No machine intelligence was involved in any way.

Point Lookout is a free weekly email newsletter. Browse the archive of past issues. Subscribe for free.

Support Point Lookout by joining the Friends of Point Lookout, as an individual or as an organization.

Do you face a complex interpersonal situation? Send it in, anonymously if you like, and I'll give you my two cents.

Related articles

More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:

Never, Ever, Kill the Messenger

If you're a manager in a project-oriented organization, you need to know the full, unvarnished Truth. When you kill a messenger, you deliver a message of your own: Tell me the Truth at your peril. Killing messengers has such predictable results that you have to question any report you receive — good news or bad.

Masked Messages

Sometimes what we say to each other isn't what we really mean. We mask the messages, or we form them into what are usually positive structures, to make them appear to be something less malicious than they are. Here are some examples of masked messages.

How to Ruin Meetings

Much has been written about how to conduct meetings effectively. Here are some reliable techniques for doing something else altogether.

Wacky Words of Wisdom

Words of wisdom are so often helpful that many of them have solidified into easily remembered capsules. We do tend to over-generalize them, though, and when we do, trouble follows. Here are a few of the more dangerous ones.

Collaborations or Cooperations?

Modern products and services are so complex that many people cooperate and collaborate to produce them. Strangely, few of us have given much thought to the difference between cooperating and collaborating. The two do differ, and the differences matter.

See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming March 12: Embedded Technology Groups and the Dunning-Kruger Effect

Groups of technical specialists in fields that differ markedly from the main business of the enterprise that hosts them must sometimes deal with wrong-headed decisions made by people who think they know more about the technology than they actually do. Available here and by RSS on March 12.

And on March 19: On Lying by Omission

Of the many devious strategies of workplace politics, deception is among the most commonly used. And perhaps the most commonly used tactic of deception is lying. Since getting caught in a lie can be costly, people try to lie without lying. Available here and by RSS on March 19.

Coaching services

I offer email and telephone coaching at both corporate and individual rates. Contact Rick for details at rbrenjTnUayrCbSnnEcYfner@ChacdcYpBKAaMJgMalFXoCanyon.com or (650) 787-6475, or toll-free in the continental US at (866) 378-5470.

Get the ebook!

Past issues of Point Lookout are available in six ebooks:

• Get 2001-2 in Geese Don't Land on Twigs (PDF, )
• Get 2003-4 in Why Dogs Wag (PDF, )
• Get 2005-6 in Loopy Things We Do (PDF, )
• Get 2007-8 in Things We Believe That Maybe Aren't So True (PDF, )
• Get 2009-10 in The Questions Not Asked (PDF, )
• Get all of the first twelve years (2001-2012) in The Collected Issues of Point Lookout (PDF, )

Are you a writer, editor or publisher on deadline? Are you looking for an article that will get people talking and get compliments flying your way? You can have 500-1000 words in your inbox in one hour. License any article from this Web site. More info