Just recently I had a conflict with
one of my co-workers over several issues. Our building was going through a very
busy period where additional warehouse worker hours were required, mostly in
the form of overtime. My job was to approve the overtime hours and include them
in my plans. This is tricky because you want to make sure there is enough
overtime to accomplish our goals, but not too much to where we run out of work.
This is all based on forecasts and how many warehouse workers are signed up. I
approved it for one department and realized the next day after 8 additional
team members showed up that staffing was entered wrong in the tracking file. I
called this manager on her day off and let her know that the staffing was not
only wrong, but that the forecasts were lower than expected so we did not have
enough work for the overtime team members. The next week her staffing was wrong
again and we ended up not meeting our daily plans for that department because
of it. I ended talking to her about it again and what the impact of her missing
her staffing was. I also followed up with her manager because this was a
negative trend that was beginning to start.
The cost of conflict was higher
than I was comfortable with. The miss in staffing that one day led me to create
production plans with resources that were not even available that day. This caused
the building to lose the level of service on priority cartons that the stores
needed. It also gave me a negative feeling toward the manager because I felt
like she didn’t value her job, nor did she value mine, being that staffing was
so important. This affected our relationship as it created tension between us.
After looking at the ten
principles of new thinking, I could have followed some of the beginning steps
in more detail, as this may have preserved the relationship part of this
conflict. Creating partnerships earlier in the process could have prevented the
second occurrence from happening. However, I feel that this manager did not
possess the qualities to be able to deal with the conflict in a more effective
way. She did not take accountability for the staffing misses, nor did she
commit to making it better going forward. I used my feelings after the first
time and thought that she was going to improve, but I was wrong and she failed
to meet her commitments.
This exercise helped me realize
what types of costs are associated with conflicts of all types; even those at
work that you feel are minor. When this conflict was happening I did not think
of the impact it would have on our relationship. These conflicts have impacts
greater than you would imagine, especially in a high speed, fast pace work
environment where small mistakes have big effects.
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