This model in relation to the different types of conflicts we have been addressing is very interesting. I believe in situations when a person is trying to mediate two sides of a situation it must be done in a very reasonable and thought-out way in order to come out with the most successful outcome. I have experienced this in multiple situations both in work and internships as well as in RSOs on campus. Holding a leadership position often puts people in situations where they have to balance out the authoritative aspects with also maintaining a positive relationship with every member of their team. I have talked about my experience in an on-campus consulting organization in a lot of my blog posts because of the amount of real-life experience it has provided for me. My experience in CUBE consulting, an entirely student-run organization has taught me so much about the way organizations run and has provided me examples of a lot of the situations talked about in this class.
As a project manager within CUBE, I have definitely been in triangular situations where I have to mediate a problem between two parties. I am usually the point of contact between the consultants on my team and the clients we work with and also often the middleman between the consultants and the executive board. The situation I think that is most relevant to this is my interaction between the consultants on my team and the first client I had as a project manager. In a lot of my blog posts, I talked about my interactions with the board and consultants but not as much about communicating with clients. The first client I had was incredible at communicating at first and then slowly started becoming harder and harder to reach. Our project was to expand the start-ups marketing strategies and phase two of our project became extremely difficult since our client stopped responding to messages and canceled a lot of our meetings. I had to maintain this connection between the consultants and the clients and as the problem was getting worse as the semester went on, it was harder to meet the deliverables of the project. I solved this problem by coming up with my own idea of what phase two of this project could look like rather than depending on the clients to give us direction. We did have to maintain a very professional relationship with the clients while also making sure the consultants were having a positive experience on the project. The issue of the two sides having different roles and being in conflict was solved by taking initiative and making sure both parties would end up happy with the results. I found it harder to satisfy the consultants on my team than the clients due to the fact that I wanted them to feel like their work mattered. This was hard to relay since the clients were not responsive enough to appreciate the work we had been providing for them all semester.
Problems like these are common in the workplace and I am glad I have gotten to experience similar situations and have learned how to handle them before entering the real world. As graduation is coming closer and closer it is comforting to know that I have had experiences similar to those in the industry already and have found professional solutions.
It would have been good in this post to discuss what the clients paid Cube for the consulting and if this was paid entirely up front or if there was an ongoing payment. Suppose, contrary to your assertion, but a realistic possibility in the situation you describe, the client did lose interest in the project. There are many possible reasons - the project which seemed relevant to them no longer was, the quality of the early work done on the project was not good enough in their eyes, or they were overwhelmed by other business opportunities that happened only after they had contracted with Cube. Something like this must have occurred to explain their behavior. If so, and if their entirely financial obligation occurred up front, then walking away from the arrangement might have been the economically efficient thing to do. They may have done that in word, if not in deed.
ReplyDeleteNow there is the matter of what to say to your consultants in this situation. I'm guessing that this is where an RSO is different from a commercial consulting company. If the latter has a lot of other business, then it would have been optimal to reallocated the consultants to other work. I'm sensing (but I don't know it for a fact) that there weren't other projects for your consultants to move to. You may have said in an earlier post (but many other students have written about RSOs that do consulting) that project schedules matched the academic calendar and would start soon after the beginning of the fall semester. This is a constraint that makes very good sense for an RSO, but would seem entirely artificial for a commercial consulting firm.
So, yes, there was a triangle issue here. But I'm not convinced it is one that mirrors well the sort of triangle problems you'll confront after you graduate.