When The Wheels Fall Off The Wagon

What Happens To Cause Interest-Based Negotiations/Labor-Management Cooperation to be Abandoned

They were waiting for me when I arrived to set up the room for yet another day of facilitating their negotiations. There was great consternation on their faces, and they looked hurt, too. I knew what they were about to say. I've seen these looks before. Many times.

"It's about their commitment to this process:' she coaxed from her throat, voice trembling. "How can we make them participate in this? I feel so, so....betrayed." "Listen to the words you've just used:' I said. "You really can't make someone do something if you expect what you want them to do to last and thrive," I suggested. "What we are talking about here is a change of mind. "The way to doing something differently is being different."

Feeling that the other party has abandon its commitment to labor/management cooperation and/or interest based negotiations is a very common experience.... because it's too often true! But, "seek first to understand" the behavior you are concluding to be abandonment as it may simply be awkward practice or an unconscious reversion to the comfort of habit. The internalization of the fundamental precept of both labor/management cooperation and interest based negotiations, enlightened self-interest, is a tough one to acquire (be) and practice (do). The magnetic strength of its opposite paradigm, myopic or MW self interest, is so powerful that it is impossible for many to understand that in order to "win" the other side need not "lose."

Thanks to CFER hundreds of labor management relationships in the public schools have been introduced to the elegant principles and practices of an interest based decision making approach. Entire union and management institutions are now including the approach in their overall mission; and other segments of the public sector have begun practicing the principles. Yet, despite the initial enthusiasm, the fantastic numbers of attendees at the annual conferences, and the almost universal acclaim for the attractiveness s of the principles, I suspect that the principles are consciously thriving in only 20% or so of those relationships. Why is this so? Why do people tell me, in moments of candor, that while things are so much better in their relationship, the paradigm hasn't really shifted? Am I expecting too much? Has the message that the approach is powerful and effective as a transformational methodology for lasting and meaningful organizational success not been heard?

Based on my experience working with many labor-management groups, here are some of my answers to these questions.

People trip on a "pitfall."

Remember the "Pitfalls to Success" we include in the CFIER binder? Did you read them? Do you go back to them when you are doing your implementation planning and designing? Do you consult them when things don't seem to be going "just right"? They are still as valid today as when we developed them. You can read the full explanation of each in articles by Janet Walden in the February and October 1995 issues of Viewpoints. My purpose in writing this current article is not to simply review the pitfalls list, although that's not a bad idea. No, what this article is about is capturing and reflecting upon some of the underlying "stuff" that cause the pitfalls to happen. Read on.

Surprise! The interest approach wasn't just a new "manipulative" management tool (employer perspective) or "another way to win" (union perspective)!

Perhaps the most common reason that the interest approach to negotiations or labor management cooperation doesn't survive, let alone thrive, is that it turns out not to fit the preconceived expectations of it held by management or union leadership in the first place. Coming from the conventional workplace model as most people do, they tend to develop their understanding and expectations of the model based upon the idea that it will "just enable us to do what we now do, only better"!

If sobriety doesn't set in during the introductory training, it soon does during the course of implementation and application afterwards. "Uh oh. You mean I have to change the way / do business with them?" Yup. This surprise if often not consciously acknowledged. If it is, then the abandonment choice which sometimes follows is a conscious one. So is the denial choice which sometimes follows. Often the abandonment choice following the surprise is unconscious be cause the conventional paradigm of management/union relations simply has no place for this different model to fit; so the operational choices continue to perpetuate the conventional, e.g., the union isn't included in the budgeting process or rejects the opportunity to become part of hiring and evaluation processes.

"You are in bed with management." or "You are giving away the store."

The absence of conscious, committed, and ongoing efforts to develop an understanding within one's constituency of the principled approach to labor/management relations and interest-based negotiations usually haunts. The efforts can be simple, such as the negotiating teams mutually designing a series of communiques to all constituents by developing a "dog and pony show" that is presented jointly by site union reps and managers. Or they can be elaborate such as ongoing, formal introductory and refresher training for all employees and managers.

Constituencies need to understand the principles because they lead the practitioner to engage in different behaviors. Absent a prior understanding of these behaviors they will be understood from the conventional perspective and condemned as wrong. Understanding is the consequence of communication/education. No ongoing educational effort regarding your constituency? Don't be surprised that they don't like what you are doing to the point of political action!

"They're the ones who aren't committed! I'm not changing the way I do things until they do!"

Externalizing responsibility, and therefore blame, is the conventional, institutionalized approach to doing business and solving problems. It makes things very easy for the individual and keeps the courts busy. If the above quote sounds like you, my question to you is this: Who is going to practice these principles if you don't? These principles get abandoned because each of the many individuals in any institutional relationship choose not to practice them! You can really, ultimately only be responsible for yourself!

The interest approach is only thought of as a conflict resolution or crisis resolution tool.

Again, back to the absence of an "ah ha" about the truly transformational capacity when practicing interest-based principles. As a student, consultant, and instructor of organizational development (OD) I have come to have great respect for what I call "state of the art" OD practice: intervene, assess, prescribe, implement. Unfortunately, because this model fails to take the concept of legitimacy into account its impact tends to be short lived. Relying upon legitimacy (decision making through participation and reason rather than direction/coercion/power/leverage) as a fundamental constraint of developing an effective organization/relationship is critical.

Unhappily, it has been my experience that many managers, administrators, and union leaders think of the interest approach solely as a pigeon holed product rather than the powerful transformational methodology that it is. That's the optimistic view. The pessimistic one is that people in positions of leadership do in fact recognize the interest based principles for the transformational tool it is and want nothing do with them, as it would mean that they have to change the way they do their day to day business! Either way, interest-based principles seem to have been narrowly pigeon holed as something for use in crisis, formal negotiations, and problem solving only.

"Some people never really stepped into it in the first place."

This was the response when I asked a school district superintendent why she thought that the principles were sometimes abandoned. To her reckoning there seems to be a "test drive" period wherein people try it out half-heartedly for awhile to see if it does what the presenters and testimony from other practitioners say it does. Rapidly forgetting the "three to five years to become fully acquainted with the principles and to achieve a level of feeling practiced with them" learning curve that we present in the initial training. Such "test drivers" have a shortsightedness that does not serve them well if their test driving consists of sticking a big toe into the shallow end of the pool as opposed to diving in with a can do spirit. This approach is a disaster if it is how they decide whether or not to commit. I will always remember Jan Abbott's observation to every group about the unseen principles that one must also practice alongside the principles we formally introduced. One of these unseen principles: stick-to-it-ive-ness.

Then I suppose there are those who believe that there is nothing new under the sun. And if this stuff is so hot how come they didn't see it somewhere else first? You know 'em. The 'been there, done that' type.

The culture of the "fad"

Fads are interesting. The best explanation that I ever heard about how it works is that most people figure that if they see something new in their workplace still around in about 3 to 5 years, it probably wasn't a fad, and then they'll give it a try! Sound familiar? Probably. We are all reluctant to be taken in. No matter how bad it is now it could only be worse, not better, right ?

The interest based principles of decision making and labor management cooperation are at the heart of the success stories such as Harley Davidson, Saturn, Xerox; yet such empirical evidence seems not to dent those who self-protect by dismissing new ideas as fads. The funny thing is that while they are dismissed, people seem to think that there will be another coming along any minute now! So they really don't want to get too invested in the one they're dealing with at the moment! The judgmental me says that such thinking is lazy and displays an arrogance about the duality of learning and knowing: awareness and practice. I prefer Socrates: lead the examined life. And to examine the "doing" one must participate in the "being."

Transition is ignored

Despite verbalized and behavioral commitments to the interest based principles, key players who leave the relationship are unthinkingly replaced by someone who is actually or virtually ignorant of the commitment to the approach by the institution or the labor management relationship. They practice what they know, which is conventional, and in practicing this "betrayal" is communicated to the other parties.

The wheels fall off fast this way! Knowledge, practice, and awareness of interest based principles must become part and parcel of recruitment and hiring, as must ongoing training in the principles become a part of introducing people to their new jobs or institutions.

Strong "partners" backing away rather than helping weak "partners"

One of the basic principles of an effective labor/management decision making relationship is the idea that the parties accept one another as legitimate partners. The years of conventional experience, literature, learning, and cultural constraints seem to make this concept very difficult to even understand let alone adopt or practice. It lies at the heart of the success stories. The behavioral principle that operationalizes a partnership through meeting ones own needs by meeting the needs of the other party (enlightened self interest) is what brings forth elegant and delightful contractual and workplace solutions.

The difficulty in wrapping one's mind around this idea so that it is reflected in behavior is a true predicament and often a cause of process abandonment. The idea that a union's best ally is strong management or that management's best friend is a strong union seems to catch in many, otherwise enlightened throats. How many times is it implicitly communicated in the tone of voice, gossip, or agenda setting that some situation or other is "their problem" and "if we just stand and watch maybe it will become so bad as to handicap them in some significant way"? Listen for this attitude.

Not your problem? Maybe not, but you do have one because your partner has a problem. That's your problem. Not taking the initiative to reach out the helping hand is actually like shooting yourself in the foot and accounts for many of the explanations as to why the principles are abandoned. It's overcoming the conventional mindset that "if they are strong, it means I'm weak" that you must work on.

Fear of Failure

Often we will refrain from advocating our own interests for fear of the reaction we think such advocacy will create in the other party to our relationship. We seem to think that such advocacy will actually ruin the relationship. But such fear on our part doesn't necessarily inhibit the other party. As a consequence of your inhibition, then, your interests get submerged or even ignored by the untempered assertion of interests by the other party. Then what? Resentment? Blaming the other party for being selfish? A constituency that isn't served?

Again, choice making is the key. Avoidance, as usual, doesn't work. Listening to your own choice making is critical so that you are aware that you are making such a choice in the first place. Once you become aware that this may be the course you are on, what then? The answer probably lies in practicing one of those underlying concepts that make for good understanding in the mind of the other party: describing one's behavior before it is engaged in. Let the other party know, openly, that the relationship is important, that what you are about to say or do isn't meant to strain it or question it but rather to work within it. Then be careful to truly advocate your interests rather than push a position.

Roots we didn't even know we had

Much like the "law of scarcity:' a myth which undergirds modern capitalism, the concept of "agency" has defined both the structure and practice of the modem workplace. "Agency" is the legal principle that the employer is liable for the acts of the employee while the employee is acting in the course of employment. This concept came from an early (14th or 15th Century) court case that arose from a time when the principal employment relationship wasn't that of employer/employee as we know it but rather that of master/servant.

Accordingly, employers through the centuries reasoned that the best way to reduce liability was to strictly control behavior of the employee(s). This obsession with controlling behavior as a way of reducing liability and achieving our desired outcomes (products and/ or services) appears to me to be the root of our familiar institutions: hierarchical organizations, motivation through reward and discipline, ordinate and subordinate ranks within the hierarchy etc.

While the realities of customer relations, customer demands, literacy levels, and the age of knowledge no longer call for such a structure or interactive methods, the modern descendants of the master/servant relationship exist as they do as a consequence of institutionalization and socialization processes. Is it any wonder that the introduction of what is essentially a democratic process to the workplace is met with such cognitive dissonance?

Voltaire

We've allowed our left brain and belief in the salience of reason to overshadow our right brain and the human element. To understand how this happened read a book by John Ralston Saul entitled Voltaire's Bastards. Light bulbs will pop in your head. In the meantime let me observe that one of the reasons that people, good people, well-intended people abandon a principled approach to labor/management relations and negotiations is that the notion that the human element, or how we relate to each other, is as important as the substantive components of the enterprise (such as the work we do or the compensation we receive) is so very different from our conventional thinking that people have a very difficult time accepting it consciously and a very easy time unconsciously reverting to the conventional.

In his introduction to the book Synchronicity by Joseph Jaworski Peter Senge writes: "First, Joe said, we need to be open to fundamental shifts of mind. We have very deep mental models of how the world works, deeper than we can know. To think that the world can ever change without changes in our mental models is folly. When I asked Joe more specifically what these changes might be about, he said that it's about a shift from seeing a world made up of things to seeing a world that's open and primarily made up of relationships."

Finally, there is a small collection of personal qualities that only you can practice.

Commitment or sticking to it. Practicing an interest based approach despite the behaviors of the other party just as the Aikido master transforms success from the aggression of the other party.

Courage in initiating and advocating a better way of doing business with each other. Asking, out loud, in response to your discomfort with the behavior of yourself or others "is this a principled thing to do?" Leadership is both paradigmatic thinking and adaptive behavior .

Willingness to be open and humble. We cannot and do not know it all. Are you reveling in the learning you experience from mistakes? Are you "thriving on the 'no"' you hear from the other party, pursuing the interests behind the "no," and using it to stimulate the creativity? Or are you simply condemning it and feeling insulted? Are you listening more than talking? Are you saving face or being honest?

Vision—picturing in your personal and collective consciousness what you want to be. This "vision thing" is a conscious decision that must actually be made and not assumed. Has a vision in fact been jointly reached? Is it being periodically revisited and refined? Has it been well and broadly communicated? Is your relationship listening to your joint constituency to determine whether the vision has been heard and is being used as the ultimate criterion in all decision making?

In sum let me suggest that abandonment of the interest based approach is really a choice that you make. Consciously or unconsciously, when it comes to the labor-management relationship I think that you are getting what you choose to have. Doing is being.