A Role for Conflict in Collaboration

Extracted 25AUG2011 from http://www.managementexchange.com/blog/true-collaboration-embraces-conflict

This is the first in a series of posts from McKinsey about healthy collaboration and how managers make it work successfully. In coming months, McKinsey authors will discuss different types of collaboration and the places where it happens, such as knowledge sharing, informal & social networks, talent mobility, and formal communities of collaborative practice.

In a 2005 McKinsey survey only 25 percent of senior executives would describe their organizations as effective at sharing knowledge across boundaries, even though nearly 80 percent acknowledged such coordination was crucial to growth.

One of the most difficult and interesting aspects of collaboration is conflict. True collaboration can’t exist without personal commitment, and commitment brings with it the possibility of engaging in healthy conflict and debate...