EOW Reflections: Conflict avoidance and collaboration

These are my words of the week. Collaboration as readers of ‘Reflections’ will know is one of my favourites. It’s got a lovely texture to it. You can almost feel from the word itself the effort that has to go into working together to achieve truly effective collaboration. And then ‘conflict avoidance’. What an aspiration. If we can work out exactly how to collaborate then surely conflict can be avoided. If conflict is avoided, then surely the exorbitant costs of conflict and of resolving disputes can be used more effectively elsewhere and everyone benefits. On the other hand, if we determine to avoid conflict that determination will lead us to resolve to collaborate.

I’m reflecting on this because the first ever Conflict Avoidance Conference for the construction industry was held this week. Construction company Insolvencies are up 47% on last year, and there are 2 suicides of construction workers every working day, up 20% in the last year. I was told this morning that £6 billion a year is wasted due to overdue payments, extended contractual payment terms and nonpayment, contributing to those shocking figures. Construction leaders know something has to be done before the whole sector stops functioning entirely and given that Construction accounts for 8.6% of the UK economy so it not only those working in the sector who should fear its implosion.

What does it take to avoid conflict? It takes commitment to:

• work proactively to avoid conflict and to facilitate early resolution of potential disputes
• work collaboratively and use early intervention techniques to resolve differences of opinion before they escalate
• embed conflict avoidance mechanisms into contracts and throughout firms
• develop capability in the early identification of potential disputes and in the use of conflict avoidance measures
• promote the value of collaborative working with partners to identify, promote and apply conflict avoidance mechanisms.

I’ve adapted the construction sector’s Conflict Avoidance Pledge here because it could work in any sector. When you see it in writing it exercises the mind. Imagine the impact on payments if everyone signed up to a pledge like this. Working proactively to avoid conflict over payments could lead to better discussions around payment terms rather than a bigger customer just telling a smaller supplier that they’ll be paid in 120 days. Potential disputes could be avoided if both parties agree and put the payment terms in writing before the job starts. It’s probable that there would be fewer disputes caused by payments being overdue too, because it’s the commitment is there in writing. If the aspiration is there to work collaboratively from the off, and to work as partners, both parties would be thinking of themselves as part of the same team rather than thinking of one as a business to be taken advantage of or to use for the benefit of the more powerful.

The construction sector has woken up to the need to change its culture to one of collaboration and conflict avoidance. In the interests of sharing best practice and learning from each other please can we all think about how we can do the same in other sectors and make our suppliers and supply chains more resilient as a result.