Marketing and IT are inherently at odds with each other. This is often made worse by the fact that each function is on a different channel, so there is a lot of cross-talk. When tension turns into unresolved conflict, it's impossible to use a CRM strategy. To avoid conflicts, it helps to know that CRM is about more than just sharing information; it's also about sharing relationships. And every relationship that works well has some disagreements. How you deal with it is what matters.
Conflict as a Force of Change
Work is full of conflicts. It can be especially clear when the people involved have different ways of looking at the world, as is often the case with marketing and IT. Conflict can spark creativity and lead to teams that are both creative and productive. It can also make people angry, divide people, and make them act in ways that aren't helpful. Let's look at the following situation to figure out how to handle a conflict.
Situation:
During the implementation of CRM, the top management wants to encourage people to work in teams to make decisions and communicate more quickly.
Marketing:
You are the vice president of marketing and co-chair the cross-functional CRM implementation team. You don't know much about how to implement technology, but you really believe in the CRM philosophy and the power of technology to help the sales force get things done. Two important IT staff members who were supposed to be on the CRM team didn't show up to the weekly meeting this week. You need these people to be at the meetings where the plan is put into action. You were going to talk to the IT director about this right after the meeting, but she had to go somewhere else. You've already called her a few times this morning.
Here is what the vice president of marketing might be telling himself about this situation: I'm annoyed. I have trouble allocating my own resources, but this project is very important. We can't have people not show up. It's clear that IT hasn't given this enough attention.
IT:
You are the IT director. Along with the VP of marketing, you are in charge of the CRM cross-functional implementation team. You have a lot of internal clients who need both ongoing help and help with new projects. You just checked your voice mail, and the vice president of marketing has left you a few messages. You know what's going on. To be honest, you feel like you've given too many people to the CRM team in your haste to move the project forward. You don't have anything against the "team" approach, but running the day-to-day business makes it hard to send two of your employees to weekly meetings and go yourself. You didn't know when you gave people time off that week that they wouldn't be at the meeting this morning.
Here is what the IT director might be telling herself about this situation: We have a lot of needs. I can't put two people on this team. I can only put one person on it, and that person may have to switch with other team members. He (the VP of marketing) will just have to be more open to change.
Not a Difference of Personality
The next time these two people talk to each other is very important. It will decide if Mars and Venus will collide and burn up or if their orbits will line up. Let's look at what research says about conflict and the most common places where people disagree at work. People are often surprised to find out that personality clashes are rarely the cause.
Most disagreements at work happen because one or more of the following things aren't clear:
Roles: I know what your job is, and you know what mine is. We both know what our roles are. When roles are clear, everyone knows what to expect from the other person.
Goals: We both want the organisation to reach its goal, and neither of us has a secret plan. When you have clear goals, everyone knows what needs to be done and agrees on it.
Procedures: I want to do it this way, and you want to do it that way. Procedures can be changed, and they are just the way to get to the goal. Can you come up with a different way to reach the goal?
Personality: The parties don't like each other because of their own traits, behaviours, mannerisms, etc. Maybe the past has changed the way they see each other, and they now look at each other through the lens of the past, not the present or the future.
As consultants for CRM teams, we tell people not to jump to the conclusion that the tension they feel or experience is caused by personality clashes. Almost always, it has to do with roles, goals, and procedures, as well as misunderstandings about those three things. In this case, the goals set for the CRM team by the organisation are probably pretty clear to both sides. What isn't clear is:
What are the best ways to make the goal come true?
How will they handle their relationship with each other as co-chairs?
The Big Secret
The real problem is not a lack of commitment, but how to divide up the resources. The best way to solve this conflict is to figure out how to get IT involved on the team as much as possible while taking into account the resources and time commitments of both departments. But not only the procedures need to be worked out.
The less obvious issue is how well the co-chairs get along with each other. If they had laid the groundwork for their relationship earlier, these negative feelings might not be coming up now. Instead of getting angry and frustrated, they could give each other the benefit of the doubt and try to figure out what's going on.
Moving forward, this can be done if the marketing vice president and the IT director put their relationship as co-chairs on the agenda and figure out how they will deal with tension, misunderstandings, and conflict. Interplanetary CRM conflicts will happen if they try to avoid the issue by not having real conversations about how to handle expectations and solve problems.
Change Management is the art and science of figuring out how to deal with the people side of change. As a method, it uses a wide range of social science fields to bring people, technology, and ideas together in a productive way.
