Navigating Boundaries - Interdisciplinary Teams

COLLEAGUE:  Imagine if someone comes one day to you and says: “what you have been doing all these years is wrong”. I don’t think it creates the right environment to conduct this interesting work…

The tension in the room – er, rather across our three internet-connected rooms – was palpable.  Two social scientists had now delicately called out our colleague’s biophysical science field for rarely incorporating gender analysis.  Thanks to our asynchronous conversation by email, I had time to contemplate this conflict and await lowered temperatures. 

This issue had flared before, and each time we seemed to get closer to laying out the issues in a mutually understandable form.  Key for me was to 1) keep my ego out of the conversation, 2) identify a common denominator in our perspectives, then 3) zoom in ever closer to describe the dispassionate details of the points on which we might agree, including increasing precision in use of mutually understandable terms and frameworks.  Doing so will lead to increased rigor in our scientific methods, a shared value of all involved.  The ability to articulate that detail and find a connection point in our perspectives was, to my mind, a small, albeit significant innovation within our team.

MY REPLY: I like to think of these conversations that we have had as a sort of ‘creative conflict.”  I went on to highlight a quote from Perich-Anderson emphasizing that: We need to learn how to have creative conflict–the kind where people come together and have spirited and lively discussions and brainstorm sessions. There is argument and disagreement, but it feels alive and exciting, like something important is happening, like something new might be born (2001:1).

COLLEAGUE: Creative conflict….I like it.  By all means keep the conversation going…this how we all learn.

Why write about conflict in a blog on my evaluation business website?  Because evaluation team diversity can benefit from creative approaches to conflict.  My work as a social inclusion specialist brings attention to who benefits from social and economic development programs based on gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, age, etc.  

In the case of creative conflict just noted, we had already carried out a needs assessment and redesign of the research project theory of change.  Moving forward, we are working to adapt a prototype tool (conceptual framework) for gender responsive agricultural research into the priorities of both men AND women producers, processors, and consumers in three Sub-Saharan African countries. 

This same dynamic of conflict creativity applies just as well to social program innovations coming together in Southwest Michigan.  As we more fully realize the complexity of the wicked global and local problems facing us, workarounds to avoid conflict no longer serve us well.  Linda A. Hill goes so far  as to assert that “Breakthrough ideas rarely emerge without diversity of thought and conflict” (Hill 2016).

My hope is that this blogspace will promote creative conflict and other positive methods for navigating boundaries, whatever that difference may be. 

Hill, L.A. (2016) Is this what it takes to be an innovative leader?  World Economic Forum, 5 January 2016 https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/is-this-what-it-takes-to-be-an-innovative-leader/.

Perich-Anderson, J. (2001) Creative conflict: generating innovative ideas.  Futurist.com https://www.futurist.com/articles-archive/creativeconflict/