When Systems Merely Administer Their Conflicts

As long as a system is able to recognise, distinguish and work through its conflicts, it remains capable of development. It becomes critical when conflicts are no longer worked through but merely administered.

Yet the real crisis may begin even earlier. Not only when a system chooses the wrong way of dealing with a conflict. But already when it no longer recognises which conflict it actually has.

The most dangerous crisis of a system may begin not with the conflict itself, but with the loss of the ability to understand the conflict correctly.

Then symptoms are taken for causes. Consequences are declared to be problems. Operational measures replace engagement with the actual tensions.

• A structural conflict becomes a personnel problem.
• An identity conflict becomes a financing problem.
• A conflict with a changed reality becomes a communication problem.

The system is by no means idle in the process. On the contrary. It works. It analyses. It organises. It decides.

But it works on the wrong object.

Mistaking one conflict for another

Many crises arise not because nobody acts. They arise because the energy available is directed at the wrong question.

A company loses market share and looks for the cause primarily in its costs. An institution loses social acceptance and responds with additional procedures. A political system experiences growing social tensions and tries to meet them above all with new communication strategies.

All these measures can be professional, comprehensible and, individually, even successful. And yet the actual problem can persist.

For not every visible conflict is the underlying conflict. And not every successful measure is therefore already a solution to the actual problem.

Precisely here lies a particular danger of complex systems: they can respond with extraordinary professionalism to a misunderstood reality.

Professionalism offers no protection against a wrong diagnosis. On the contrary: the more professionally the instruments are applied, the longer it may remain hidden that they are missing the actual conflict.

Distinguishing conflicts

The beginning of any renewal therefore does not necessarily lie in new programmes, new structures or new rules. It lies first in the ability to distinguish conflicts once more.

Which conflicts must we endure and negotiate?

Because they are the expression of legitimate difference. Because free people hold different interests, convictions and expectations. Because not every tension can be dissolved and not every clash of interests needs a winner.

Democracies in particular live from this form of conflict. Their quality shows not in making differences disappear, but in keeping them visible, peaceful and open to renegotiation again and again.

Which conflicts must we decide?

Because leadership begins where alternatives must be weighed and directions chosen. Not every decision can be postponed until nobody objects any more.

Permanent postponement can therefore at some point itself become a decision – the decision to continue the existing state of affairs.

And which conflicts demand that we change the structures from which they keep arising anew?

Some conflicts do not arise primarily from individual behaviour. Their causes lie in rules, incentive systems, organisational forms, business models or institutional logics that produce the same problems again and again.

Then it is no longer enough to look for a better solution within the existing system. Then the system must be prepared to make itself the object of change.

Negotiate. Decide. Change.

Conflict capability can thus perhaps be reduced to three fundamental abilities: negotiate – decide – change.

The decisive ability, however, lies even before these: understanding.

Whoever misunderstands a conflict can apply the wrong instrument with the highest professionalism.

The actual sequence is therefore:

Perhaps the maturity of a system can even be recognised by this. Not by how few conflicts it has. But by whether it can still distinguish what kind of conflict lies before it and what form of treatment that conflict demands.

The temptation of postponement

Postponement is particularly seductive. At first it looks like stability.

Conflicts are defused. Decisions are deferred. Compromises are found. New working groups emerge. Procedures are adjusted. The organisation remains capable of acting.

And often that is exactly what is needed. Not every conflict demands an immediate decision. Time can bring forth new information, shift positions and make compromises possible.

Yet necessary time can turn into habit. Then negotiation becomes postponement. Caution becomes a reluctance to decide. Stability becomes standstill.

The conflict is not resolved. Only its visibility is reduced. It does not disappear. It becomes part of the system.

And the longer this state persists, the more self-evident it can appear. At some point, hardly anyone may remember that what is now accepted as an unalterable condition was originally regarded as a solvable problem.

When procedures work and the crisis nonetheless grows

Systems come into danger not only when their procedures fail. Sometimes their crisis begins precisely where the procedures continue to function.

The meetings take place. The reports are written. The key figures are collected. The votes are held. The committees work. The organisation remains capable of acting.

Seen from outside, order appears intact. Yet the reality for which these procedures were once created may long since have changed. Today's problems are no longer yesterday's problems. The answers, however, still stem from a past logic.

This gives rise to a quiet form of decoupling:

The system functions. But it functions increasingly past its own reality.

Successful systems may be particularly susceptible to this. For what has worked for years or decades develops authority. Procedures become routines, routines become certainties, and certainties at some point become premises that are hardly questioned any more.

A system's past success can thus paradoxically impair its ability to recognise in time that the preconditions of its success have changed.

A system can appear stable and nonetheless lose future viability. And conversely, a system can experience considerable conflict precisely because it has begun to face a changed reality.

Companies, institutions and democracies

This pattern can be observed in very different systems – without thereby equating companies, institutions and democracies.

Companies can lose their future viability while their management instruments still function. Institutions can lose social acceptance while their governance structures remain intact.

And democracies, too, are not vital because they are free of conflict. On the contrary: democracy organises conflict. It makes differing interests visible and creates procedures for resolving them peacefully.

It would therefore be wrong to interpret political dispute, protracted compromise-building or institutional slowness as weakness per se. The decisive question is rather: Where does necessary negotiation end – and where does the permanent avoidance of necessary decisions begin?

If the impression solidifies over a longer period that fundamental problems are permanently discussed but can no longer be effectively addressed, trust in the problem-solving capacity of institutions can erode. Not because conflicts exist. But because doubts arise as to whether the system still understands which conflict it actually has to address.

The common core

Companies, institutions and democracies differ fundamentally in their tasks, their legitimacy and their decision-making procedures. Yet they share one challenge:

Every system can learn to live with its conflicts. Not every system preserves the ability to recognise which conflicts must be endured, which decided, and which overcome by changing their causes.

A persistently misunderstood conflict does not disappear. It can become part of the structure. Part of the routines. Part of the language. Part of the culture. And ultimately even part of a system's identity.

Then the question is no longer why a problem exists. The only question is how to deal with it.

Perhaps that is precisely the moment at which conflict management imperceptibly turns into conflict administration.

The decisive question

The future viability of a system is not decided by whether it can avoid conflicts. Nor is it decided solely by how efficiently it administers its conflicts. It is decided first by whether it still recognises which conflict it actually has.

For systems do not necessarily fail because of their conflicts. They can also fail because they no longer recognise the actual conflict – and therefore solve, with great professionalism, problems that are not their decisive problems at all.

F. P. Zeuner