Stop turf wars

“What is your definition of” turf war”?

Over the past three years I’ve asked thousands of people to share their personal definition of turf war.  They say things like…

“Withholding or controlling information for personal gain and at the expense of the group’s progress”

“Withholding what should be shared in the best interest of the group   – in our business especially technical information about production process”

“Physical, emotional and intellectual possessiveness.”

“I own my area of responsibility – no one enters this hallowed ground without first going through me.”

And my personal favorite:

“What’s mine is mine.  What’s yours is questionable.”

Not once has anyone said, “Why, I’ve never heard of this term: turf war.”  Nope.  This is a phenomenon we know all too well.  It is universal, cross-cultural, and ubiquitous.  Once, speaking to an international group, it seemed that the Germans were stumped by the literal definition of turf war: “peat moss fight” but once the South African and Israeli guys next to them explained it – they nodded enthusiastically.  Oh that.  They knew.  You do too.  You may use a different metaphor: backstabbing, silos, rice bowls, even the rather graphic “pissing contest” but whatever you call it: turf wars reduce productivity, waste resources and sabotage innovation.

A Typical Story:

After several months of intense lobbying, Ed felt the light bulb had finally clicked on for the rest of his senior management team.  They had agreed to implement the new resource allocation software his team recommended.  Finally, some forward movement! Conflicts over resource allocation had caused the company to miss opportunities for the last time – now they would have an objective system to speed up decision-making.  Ed’s team prepared the vital details of an implementation plan.  Ready to present the full plan to the carefully selected cross-functional team Ed walked into the meeting room.

But the Sales and Marketing guys were missing  “Where’s Martin and Sid?” Ed asked.  “Martin called down a few minutes ago,” came the response, “Sarah (the VP of Marketing) told them she had an urgent customer call that needs their attention.  He said to start without them. They’ll be here as soon as they can.”

But Sales and Marketing were the ones who fought the most over resources.  They caused most of the second-guessing that deconstructed almost every decision Ed supported.  How in the world could he start without them?  Without their commitment and cooperation he had no hope of success. Ed charged into Sarah’s office. “What gives? You agreed at the SMT meeting to form a team to implement this resource allocation software, and now you pull your people off!?”   Her eye contact swerved away. “You know, I think we moved too quickly on that idea,” she responded.  “We need to rethink this whole thing.  The last thing my team needs is right now is something else to slow us down.” (she turned to take a call.) “And besides, I have real work for those people.  I have a customer screaming because their system went down right in the middle of their billing process.  Do you want me to tell them they’ll just have to wait until our meeting is over?”

Fuming Ed left Sarah’s office.  This wasn’t the first time she had pulled that sort of thing.   Well, fine.  Ed thought, “If that’s the way she wants to play it… then that’s how we will play it.”  Ed headed straight to the CEO’s office.  It was time for a little chat about Sarah.  Perhaps he’d stop by the Frank’s office as well.

This is how it begins.  Or rather, how it continues.  If this story were told from Sarah’s point of view she would probably say she had no choice and that Ed started the whole thing by railroading the software implementation decision through in the first place.  After ten years of researching turf wars I have not once talked to the person who started it.  Most people are like yourself…”nice” people who “would like for everyone to get along,” but are “forced to play games” because these “other people” (insert your nemesis here) are impossible to deal with any other way.

Yes well… as long as all us ” nice” people feel forced to play games in order to survive the corporate game, then nothing you do – teambuilding, re-organization, new policies, new procedures – will make a bit of difference.  Only when people begin to feel differently will they begin to act differently.  In order to understand turf wars it is important to see, not only what you see, but what they see, as well.  Guaranteed: they see their behavior as absolutely necessary and appropriate given the situation.

Games People Play

If you are going to understand territorial games you need a map of the perceptual terrain.  Even though we human beings aspire to be objective rational decision makers, perceptions and emotions filter our reality into an oversimplified terrain of good guys and bad guys.  Us good guys are fighting those bad guys for territory that is increasingly intangible and invisible: information, relationships, and decision-making. The result? The invisible perceptions of our negative assumptions obstruct group progress as effectively as a brick wall or gun-fire.  Us and Them at the O.K. Corral.

Imagine that your company could be mapped into regions with different boundaries and terrain.  Where would you draw the lines?  Every company has different territories that people come to think of as their own.  It may be Sales/Marketing, vs. Operations vs. Finance, Middle vs. Senior Management, divided by regional lines (north vs. south) or other relational lines (new guard vs. old guard, family ties, merger ghosts, etc.).  Regardless, you will find that each territory has developed ownership over “their” area, and “their” ways of doing things.   They even develop their own language and jargon.

Every new idea that you implement will, by definition, invade someone’s territory.  Sometimes the people within that “territory” recognize the benefits and welcome your ‘invasion’ as valuable.  Sometimes they don’t.  If you mistakenly think that the rational benefits of your new idea are obvious and naively barge into claimed territory uninvited, you will may find that you are on the receiving end of one or any of the ten territorial games people use to keep you OUT.

Ten Territorial Games

Regardless of the mantra, ‘this isn’t personal’ business is always personal.  Our feelings of competence, our identity, and our self-esteem are at least partially derived from our feelings of success at work.  Once we care what happens, conflict inevitably becomes personal.  That is a given.  It is not a crime to get emotional about work – if you want people to care – you are asking them to be emotional.  The only crime is refusing to acknowledge these emotions occur so that the group has no strategy for dealing with the emotions or the behaviors they create.  Awareness is the first step for developing a strategy for your work group.
Scan through the list of ten territorial games below and see if you recognize any of these games from your own experiences.  You might even want to create a mini-survey and ask your group to anonymously check the games they see being played within your work group.

• Strategic Non-Compliance – agreeing up-front to cooperate and waiting until the “last minute” to back out, promising agreement simply to buy time

• Information Manipulation – withholding or putting a spin on information, covering up mistakes or problems, giving false information

• Occupation – monopolizing resources (people, time, etc.) in a way that prevents them from being allocated to other groups, acting as the gatekeeper for vital information

• Shunning – socially excluding an individual in a way that brands them and “outsider” to the rest of the group, “forgetting” to invite someone to a meeting, shuffling papers whenever they try to talk

• Discredit – using personal criticisms to diminish the image of competence or credibility of others, creating doubt about another’s “agenda,” using sweeping generalizations to discredit (just a bunch of “bean counters” or what do you expect he is from “marketing”)

• Intimidation – using scare tactics or veiled threats to squash ideas, a “back off” stare or an intimidating reputation that makes pursuing the idea “just not worth it”

• Filibuster – talking long enough and hard enough so that the meeting is over before anything is resolved, talk enough to wear down petitioners

• Invisible Walls – covertly blocking forward momentum by creating logistical impossibilities (red tape), can be as subtle as a sigh or a tone of voice that decreases enthusiasm for an initiative

• Camouflage – sending people off on “wild goose chases” that keep them away from the real issues, deliberately stimulating anxiety over consequences

• Powerful Alliances – using relationships to stimulate similar games in areas outside their department

People battle over territory as if their lives depended on it.  Corporate survival seems to activate old survival software better suited for battles over hunting grounds.  We use metaphors like killing the product, fighting a war, choosing our weapons, and one person said telling the truth is like committing “career suicide.”  Occupying and protecting important territory — decision-making, information and the ability to influence through good relationships – reduces anxiety and creates the illusion of current and future success.

Unavoidable concern over psychological survival generates emotions originally designed for physical survival. Camouflage and intimidation are great ways to fend off an angry invader but not so good if the new guy is invading your role as “expert” by sounding like he knows more about tax law than you do.  The world doesn’t reward territorial players like it used to.  Success in the new economy is more about connections than protections.  The more people you connect with the more access you have to the goodies offered by the new economy.

Success will now require that you consciously have the ability to over-ride instinctual urges to protect decision-making, information and relationships – so that shared decision making, shared information, shared relationships creates lasting connections that offer reciprocal opportunities.

How do we over-ride our own instincts?

Forget the word should

“They shouldn’t be doing that should they?”  No, but they are.  The first thing you do is, forget the word “should.”  Stop yourself every time you say,  “They should …be able to see the negative long term implications, …know that quick fix costs them more in the end, etc.”  If you have evidence that they don’t see (even if they should) then take that as data!  You will do much better to try and understand what they do see before you try to show them what you see.

When a group feels like you are invading their territory they can react in a primitive emotional way and all the logic in the world won’t help you understand emotions. Emotions aren’t logical.  Focusing too much on what they should see (i.e. you are here to help, the company’s future depends on this, etc.) distracts your ability to correctly address the emotional dynamics at play.

Using the word “should” with human behavior is like setting off for Mexico with two maps: one that shows where the U.S. Highways are and one that shows where they should be.  If you insist on using the map where they should be you will only get lost and frustrated.  People are people.  They can get territorial about anything they perceive as valuable.  These days, this includes a lot of intangible things (relationships, authority, and information) and these territorial feelings will fuel games when they feel threatened.  Your efforts to implement new ideas or keep people in line with policy will create territorial games.  They shouldn’t — but they will.

Pre-Empt the Games

You can anticipate these games – so prepare for them.  There are ways to inoculate your team or to build your implementation plan to pre-empt much of the game playing.  Territorial feelings are easy to anticipate.   Whenever you have an initiative that involves any kind of change in the way resources/rewards are allocated or that redefines a process so that a treasured “right way to do things” now becomes the wrong way you can expect territorial games.  Think ahead.  Who might feel like their territory is being invaded by the initiative?  Make some up-front agreements about cooperation that specifically address the games you anticipate.  Talk with your group in advance to identify what might go wrong – list the games that will be tempting and design “no-blame” strategies for dealing with them.

Since territorial games can be linked to ego protection, why not re-direct egos in the group to not play games.  Recently, a group who was downsizing anticipated that the needed reduction in forces would be more easily embraced as a concept than as a reality.  Several of the senior managers were already taking steps to protect their departments (territories) from losing any positions.  Before they ever discussed the specifics, the manager introduced the ten territorial games to the entire group and facilitated some agreements to minimize game-playing.

In the relative calm before the stormy reality, the senior managers were in agreement: they would not play any of these territorial games.  It was after they were forced to identify who, specifically, would lose staff that the impulse to play games began.  Because they had listed how the games might play out: making targeted employees look vital (occupation), re-hiring people as consultants (strategic non-compliance), bullying the HR people until they stopped asking for compliance (intimidation), it was much less likely that the listed behaviors would occur.  It doesn’t always work – nothing always works in the subjective world of emotions – but when you highlight previously covert tactics in a way that renders them highly visible they tend to decrease.  It is much easier to pretend you are not doing strategic non-compliance when it doesn’t have a name.

Over time, self-awareness, pre-emptive conversations and a genuine experience of success (less territorial = more goodies) will create a new corporate culture where game playing is naturally low.

S102survey

Ten Territorial Games Presentation

Territorial_GamesPresNotes2003