Outside Disputes


Bill Stowers is a senior Boeing executive who manages relationships with hundreds of Boeing's subcontractors. With that many suppliers to manage, there are always a few disputes going on at any given time. Stowers is a big fan of "senior official presentations" to resolve these disputes—you bring in high-level officials who are not otherwise involved in the dispute. He has established this method because it eliminates the emotional element of a dispute, as well as the attendant filtering of information that comes when people become emotionally involved in a business problem.

Here is why and how it works. Often disputes with customers and suppliers can be traced to personality conflicts between your employees and theirs. The customer might be claiming that you are mismanaging his or her company's account when, in fact, the customer just does not get along with your program manager. When your organization has a dispute with a customer or supplier, never let the emotions get out of hand. It is important that you and your counterpart in the other organization get together as early as possible to attempt to resolve the dispute. One method that has shown to be effective is to invite a high-level counterpart on the other side who has no direct personal involvement in the dispute. That person brings in his or her staff members that are involved in the dispute and they give an uninterrupted presentation to you of their view on the issue. Then your people get to give a similar uninterrupted presentation to the other company's senior official. Usually the presentations are limited to one hour and include graphics and other visual presentation materials.

Then the senior officials get together to resolve the matter. Because the senior officials have no direct personal involvement in the dispute, they can eye the problem more objectively than the direct participants can. Again, by wringing out the emotional and personality issues, solutions to problems become much clearer. Stowers has resolved or avoided five major lawsuits through this method. "It has proven to be an extremely effective method of resolving disputes in an emotionally charged environment," he notes. And it has saved his company millions of dollars in legal fees as well.




Staying Power. 30 Secrets Invincible Executives Use for Getting to the Top - and Staying There
Staying Power : 30 Secrets Invincible Executives Use for Getting to the Top - and Staying There
ISBN: 0071395172
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 174

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