How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight

by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Conflict in the workplace is natural--and even necessary. Colleagues who challenge one another's thinking tend to consider a richer range of options, which ultimately leads to better business decisions.

How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight reveals the tactics managers can use to ensure that these healthy back-and-forth moments remain constructive and focused on the issues. Managers who embrace this kind of positive conflict will find increasingly engaged, productive teams--and discover that they themselves are better positioned to lead these teams to success.

Genres: Management

55 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Kathleen Eisenhardt is the S.W. Ascherman Professor at Stanford, highly-cited author, and Co-Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. Her new book (w/MIT’s Don Sull), “Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World”, explores how and why simplicity tames complexity in life, business, and nature. She is also co-author of “Competing on the Edge: Strategy as Structured Chaos” (w/Shona L. Brown), winner of the George R. Terry Award and an Amazon Top 10 Business and Investing book.

Kathleen’s research usually begins with a dilemma – something that stymies lots of people and piques her curiosity. In “Simple Rules”, that puzzle was coping with the mind-numbing proliferation of information and choices that characterizes everyday life. She then attacks these dilemmas with her amazing students and colleagues in expected places - like new firms and markets, and unexpected ones - like sports, history, nature, and the arts.

Kathleen has been a Fellow of the World Economic Forum (Davos) and Clinton Global Initiative. She is the winner of many awards including Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research and Schendel Best Paper prize, has four honorary degrees, and has given Oxford’s Clarendon Lectures. A renowned scholar, she was recently named the most cited research author in strategy and organization studies during the past 25 years. Kathleen relaxes at Lake Tahoe and stays busy in Palo Alto, California.

Reviews

[Alexander Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and sweet. A guide in making the most of dissent without it tearing a team apart.