When the boss likes to create conflict, you have to learn how to win

Dear Bob …

I’ve been in a new position (Ops Manager, large IT organization, three months). I’m learning that the CIO likes to creat conflict within his “team” (in quotes for obvious reasons).

[ Also on InfoWorld: Bob notes the difference between learning to manage conflict in the classroom and applying those practices to the workplace. | Keep up on career advice with Bob Lewis’ Advice Line newsletter. ]

This isn’t how I’ve understood leadership throughout my career, but everyone here seems to think it’s normal. And so, instead if being able to trust my colleagues, I’m supposed to fight with them for resources, political mind share, and so on.

How do I convince the CIO that there’s a better way to lead than this. Or, failing that, how do I succeed as a noncombatant?

– Conflicted

Dear Conflicted …

You don’t. The CIO has learned this trick and it works for him. Among the advantages: With everyone fighting each other, he’s less likely to see an internal rival pass him by.

I agree that it’s a bad way to lead. It dissipates energy in internal competition that’s better spent beating external competitors. However, that doesn’t matter because your CIO hasn’t asked my opinion — or yours.

As I see it, you have 3.5 choices. They are:

1. Be who you are, stay where you are, and live with the consequences, which will be a too-small budget, too-small staff, excessive workload, and all of your “peers” will treat you as a subordinate. In a few years, you leave with an ulcer and decide to take up macrame as your new profession.
2. Be who you are and get the hell out of Dodge, figuring life’s too short to work in a meat grinder.
3. Learn to play. Ingratiate yourself with the CIO. Learn his levers and buttons and how to pull and push them. Even more important, learn the power relationships among the company executives and build a strong personal network outside IT that makes you untouchable inside IT. It’s a game. Figure out how to enjoy it and get good at it.

Then there’s reason 3.5: Learn to play through unbreakable alliances. Back when I was in college, lots of students played Risk. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a game of world domination. Strategies and tactics include forming alliances and then breaking them whenever it isn’t convenient.

A good friend and I generally lost, often to characters we found seriously obnoxious. So before the next game we formed a pact — we’d ally throughout the game, never double-cross each other, and quit when we’d beat the other players and divided the world in half.

It turned out our unbreakable alliance was an unbeatable strategy — so much so that the other players accused us of cheating by forming it.

I tell the story because you just might be able to form an alliance like this with a peer or two who also find the CIO’s set-everyone-up-for-conflict style of management irritating. If so, it’s entirely possible that this alliance will be an unbeatable strategy, allowing the three of you to be both untouchable to your peers and impossible to refuse to the CIO.

There are no guarantees, of course, and if you form an unbreakable alliance with a peer who turns out to be untrustworthy, the outcome could get ugly fast. But if it works, it will have the added benefit of irritating the CIO without his being able to do anything about it.

– Bob

This story, “When the boss likes to create conflict, you have to learn how to win,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com or subscribe to the Advice Line newsletter for the latest wisdom on managing your IT career.