What’s In a Name?: More Than Intended

I was born a Smith (along with all the originally pure people). However, at 28 years and as a newly minted attorney in Detroit, I discovered there were four other Larry Smith attorneys in the neighborhood. The day I received a confidential psychiatric report intended for another Larry Smith attorney’s client, I realized this problem could become more than a mere inconvenience.

After conferring with family and friends, along with my wife and two young children we all marched off to court and became Bridgesmith’s. That was the name we chose because Linda was born a Bridges and we honored both families in combining our two birth surnames. Neither of us can agree to this day whose “s” was lost in the transaction. I argue that it was mine, because the missing “S” is a capital letter. Linda won’t agree.

We’ve noted that the name we created is unique out there because we have found no other Bridgesmiths. Not even with the Internet. Although most assume I am the descendant of English masons who specialized in building bridges, I’m really of Scotish descent. We all know what the Scotch are famous for: whiskey and fighting (that’s because golf came first). There’s plenty of evidence that the genetic strain is strong in my ancestry (except for the golf part).

Who knew a name change 30 years ago could foreshadow the work I enjoy most? Building bridges between people and the organizations in which they find themselves is the most gratifying work I can imagine. I don’t anticipate retirement as an option because the work I get to be involved in is so satisfying.

And then, this guy named Steve Joiner became a colleague. Is that irony or something more intentional?

H1N1: The Path to Health

My granddaughter recently had a bout with the dreaded “swine flu”. She’s fine, has recovered fully and loves the attention she received during her “recent distress”.

However, a moment at the doctor’s office when she was tested and H1N1 was confirmed reminds me of a truth our culture is loathe to embrace. The doctor announced the test results and added, “Now, you don’t have to get the shot.” She found great comfort in that reality. She believes the illness is more welcome than the inoculation. “From the mouths of babes!”

Our culture’s worship of comfort masks the value of embracing conflict. Young trees are made stronger by the winds which stress the root system and create a healthy support network. Children kept safe from germs in a sterile environment are far more likely to contract disease.  People who are willing to deal with the conflict before them are far more successful and emotionally centered than those who escape it at all costs.

Our aversion to discomfort makes us weak. Our avoidance of conflict renders us susceptible to the trauma of unresolved turmoil.

What if like the corporate culture at Johnson & Johnson, “We welcome conflict”? Might we become more resilient, more innovative, more personally and organizationally healthy?

Conflict competence comes from embracing the inevitability of difficult moments, acquiring the skills to negotiate these shoals and anticipating the opportunities seized by going there with confidence.

Who needs the inoculation when the real thing might be better for us?

How 3M Encourages Collaboration

In today’s business environment, it is always encouraging to see companies that encourage collaboration.  Here’s an article that appeared in Business Week that explains how 3M Encourages Collaboration.

Taking a Different Approach

Last week, the Institute for Conflict Management hosted 29 middle school students to discuss a different approach to conflict.  This is the first of six sessions for the 2009-2010 school.  Take a look at, Students Take Class Aimed at Resolving Conflict, which appeared on News Channel 5.

Collaboration: Idealism or Pragmatism?

I was fortunate to a attend a breakfast meeting last week with John Siegenthaler, the former editor of the Nashville Tennessean and founding editor of the USA Today newspaper. His topic was leadership lessons which arise out of failure.

John is noted for his courageous work in the tumultuous civil rights culture of the 60’s in the South. Among many other notable accomplishments, John was an assistant to Robert (Bobby) Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General in the John (Jack) F. Kennedy presidential administration. Of these two famous brothers, John Seigenthaler said Jack Kennedy was the idealist and Bobbie the pragmatist. Jack’s visionary ideals of an improved society could be accomplished only by the hard nosed use of strategic legal tools wielded effectively by Bobby.

In support of the Freedom Riders’ efforts to desegregate lunch counters through out the South, Bobby dispatched Seigenthaler to Alabama to extract the freedom riders from the jails and hospitals of Montgomery following a brutal attack by a mob who burned their bus and savagely beat the civil rights activists. John was severely injured when he attempted to rescue one of the freedom riders.

Although heroism was attributed to John for his actions in that heated climate, he indicated that he felt more a failure than courageous. He blamed himself for his inability to bring reason to mob mentality, to convince Alabama governor Patterson to protect the freedom riders and change the culture of violence. His sense of failure in this moment shaped his character and work to follow.

John spoke further of his concern about the state of journalism today in which the media appears to take partisan positions and fails to engender transformative dialogue about matters of consequence. In his view, partisanship, or positional posturing serves as a sign of declining civility and the ineffectual nature of the fifth estate. He recalled wistfully the role of journalism in prior conflicted eras, like the civil rights environment of the 60’s. In his view, principled journalism fosters respectful inquiry, factual development and facilitates the exploration of creative responses. In contrast, blind partisanship merely escalates the conflict without providing avenues of solution. It takes both idealism and pragmatism to engender the collaborative environment out of which creative solutions can be developed and implemented.

A few weeks ago, Randy Lowry and I were asked to facilitate a retreat of a state legislative coalition in advance of the state’s legislative session. I had my doubts that we could break through the partisan mindset of elected state officials. in contrast, what we both discovered was that these officials were as hungry for training and experience in collaborative outcomes as doctors, nurses, lawyers and accountants. At the end of the retreat, they were asking for more training and requested greater involvement by facilitative leaders in legislative development and skill building.

Our time with the legislators and the recognized power of collaboration and consensus building reminds us that these practical skills are the creative place where idealism and pragmatism meet. Partisan positioning severely limits the ability of people to create new solutions, devise innovative outcomes and develop mutually beneficial results.

We are infinitely more capable than people who merely reduce problem solving to declaring the loudest voice the winner and relegating great ideas to the waste bin of trivialized losers.

Let’s be enthusiastically idealistic pragmatists and pursue the power of collaboration.

Lawyer Day 2009

This is the day lawyers get to celebrate their profession and the many contributions they have made to our nation and our communities. We do not have to look very far to realize how many lawyers are in significant positions of influence in government, business, agencies and community development initiatives.

As one of those lawyers, I find myself both proud and occasionally shamed by some of our profession’s accomplishments. Without lawyers, our federal and state constitutions would not have the staying power and vitality to live flexibly and protect individual and collective rights for over 200 years. Corporations are led by lawyers. There are more lawyers in Congress and government than any other profession. Most US presidents have been lawyers. In fact, with only 5% of the world’s population, the US has at least 70% of the world’s lawyers.

On the other hand, the profession I entered over 30 years ago is a far different field than I first knew it to be. My first business card stated that I was a “Counselor at law”. Today, it says I am an “attorney”. What’s the difference? The legal business and the prevailing model of profitability and economic success is the reality practicing lawyers must rely on to “pay the bills” and put the kids through school.

As a result, the business of law and the culture of adversarial representation has transformed the practice of law in the eyes of many into a business that profits at the expense of those it purports to serve. Some complain the legal practice model of the “billable hour” is an unjustified and potentially unethical incentive for waste and inefficiency contrary to the client’s best interest. Some critics believe that conflict is improperly prolonged by a financial reward which is provided to the one who can prolong the fight the longest.

Law firm managers are finding the current economic climate inhospitable to the status quo and numerous experiments are being engineered to promote both the profession of law and the business of law with the client’s interest as the highest priority. “Alternative billing” and “fixed fees” are buzzwords that signal a possible tsunami in the legal services model.

However these innovative initiatives turn out, one fact remains: lawyers are critical to our society and great lawyers are recognized as problem solvers for their clients. That means that collaborative law, mediation, settlement counsel, negotiation and expedited litigation will all become valuable tools with which lawyers will become increasingly proficient in order to reclaim the public trust in the profession. Trusted advisers are those whose professional skills meet the client’s needs and for which the client finds value sufficient to gladly pay the bill.

The days of lawyers as trusted adviser will return, and soon. As lawyers learn the strategic skills of conflict management, their clients will both respect and trust them.

In the meantime, go hug a lawyer. We need love too.

Either/Or: Will it Ever End?

Republican or Democrat, Protestant or Catholic, right or wrong? That formulation is the basis of most human dialogue. Either I am right or I am wrong. More definitively, you are right or I am right. It can’t possibly be both.

And so it goes; family conflict, church conflict, health care policy, legislative reform. We must choose one position over the other. This false dichotomy has immobilized discourse and limited achievement and innovation. Why is it that debates can only be won or lost? To quote the haunting song from the 70’s, “Is that all there is?”

In the current national agony about “whither civility?”, the possibility of “both/and” has been ignored. Was Serena right or wrong? Was Kanye right or wrong? Who was right, Rep. Wilson or Pres. Obama? The trap we find ourselves in is our assumption that right is expressed through might, or vice versa. We have lost sight of the possibility that right and might are not mandatory corollaries.

Clearly, our culture affirms that being right justifies the exercise of might. In turn, the most mighty are bound to be right. Are we bound to follow this binary path to our destruction as a society?

Absolutely not. Transformative dialogue can shape new realities out of formerly intransigent positions. The essence of collaboration is being “hard on the issues and soft on the people”. investing deeply in the search for solutions to the issues that divide us and working hard to preserve the relationships we share is the definition of collaboration.

We can learn the skills of collaboration which are so obviously countercultural. We can take two great and diametrically opposed ideas and fashion them into an innovative new reality which is not defined by the limitations of either opposed position.

Note the management theories of six sigma and system theory. Two more opposing perspectives on organizational development and management excellence hardly could be conceived. Yet the evidence is mounting that successful business models are finding the way to merge these two strong forces into an exciting new tool for performance, productivity and profitability. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/business/06proto.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=six%20sigma&st=cse

What about health care, MTV awards, out of bounds calls, or “who’s in charge at church”? Can we collaborate even there? Why not give it a try? Our either/or tactics aren’t “advancing the ball.” very far down field.

What have we learned from our defining moments?

We all have them.  Those moments you can remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when it happened.  The “it” may have been the assassination of President Kennedy (for us old folks), the Challenger disaster for some of us and September 11 for all of us.  The world shifted, the foundations were shaken and the world was never the same after moments like that.

Eight years after 9/11, 23 years after the Challenger disaster and 46 years after President Kennedy was assassinated are there lessons we have learned?  For me each of those events reflect our poorly developed ability to deal with conflict.  JFK died because an ideologue decided self-help in the form of a rifle, two bullets  and a scope was the way to settle a score.  Challenger exploded because NASA gave no credence to the vendor that manufactured the O-ring that failed on January 28, 1986 in the unplanned for cold of a Florida winter morning.  The vendor warned of failure, but the warning was ignored, lives were lost unnecessarily and the space program was set back a decade or more while shame and blame were fixed.  9/11 occurred because FBI warnings went unheeded by a whistleblower (Colleen Rowley) and radicals decided that mass murder was the best way to win an argument.  These are all people and system failures.

How are we doing in 2009?  Town Hall muggings and the breakdown of civil behavior in a Joint Session of Congress suggest we have not matured very much.  When violence and irrational outbursts are the means by which we win or lose, why should we expect anything different?

What would our culture be like if we learned to cultivate collaboration and generate respectful conversations of consequence?  Disagreements need not result in violence, calamity and death.  It is possible to dialogue our way into better outcomes.  Do we have the courage to engage?  Can we afford not to?

Let’s check back in another eight, 23 or 46 years and see how we have done.

Wrestling Our Way to Better Public Policy

Growing up I was fascinated with “TV Wrestling” and totally convinced that good and evil were at war in every match and only one could win.  Somehow in the simplicity of youth, my informal scorecard revealed that good won out over evil most of the time.  All was right with the world.

Then as a teenager in Detroit, I went to watch a live grudge match and my hero “Leaping Larry Shane” was pummeled by the bad guy, “Dick the Bruiser”  I was crushed and decided to leave the match early because my world of order and right and wrong felt like it was falling in around me.  Much to my surprise and chagrin, in the five minutes it took me to leave the arena and walk to my car, I encountered Leaping Larry Shane in street clothes behind the arena, also heading home . . . and looking very much alive and well.  I haven’t been back to a wrestling match or watched it on television since that night.

The health care debate seems to have turned into a bit of a grudge match.  Each side seems to be climbing higher on the ropes and piling on with ever greater ferocity.  The Town Hall meetings this week have seemed anything but civil.

Doesn’t it dawn on us that the fight is rigged?  Posturing and pouncing don’t really seem to win points anymore.  As a civilized society can we learn the skill of respectful dialogue, critical conversations and consensus building?  If not, let’s just turn on our television and watch professional wrestling.  At least that way, no one will really get hurt.

Reconciling Reconcilers

A high water mark was reached last week when 35 Christian theologians, pastors and church leaders engaged in two and one half days of dialogue and training in conflict management at ICM.  Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists and others from across the theological spectrum participated in an experience they described as “once in a lifetime”.  We worked, we ate, we laughed, we ate, we cried and then we ate.  It was an incredible time for relationship building and in the process we all learned something:  the work of reconciliation in our churches is hard,  but eternally gratifying.

Why is church conflict so difficult to address?  Because it is based on our values and beliefs, the reasons behind our positions are less open to exploration.  Nonetheless, when we explore the reasons for our relationships and seek to create safe and constructive dialogue, a path to reconciliation is built.  I will never forget my new best friends.  I can’t wait to be with them again.

Click HERE to read an op/ed piece in The Tennessean that appeared in this morning’s paper.