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Hey reader,
how did you go with the Fear Setting exercise from the last useletter? Did you try it out? I hope it was useful, let me know how you went. How might I support you further?
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Some of you may have picked up that I'm an Adam Grant fanboy (his name is linked here to his website, check out his work). I was recently listening to his WorkLife podcast episode on Productive Conflict, and thought, I must write about productive conflict in the useletter. I later recognised an additional and alternative use in architectural practice. How we might use productive conflict in the collaborative work that we do.
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Productive Conflict in Collaboration
We've all had those collaborations that have gone well and others that have been an unmitigated failure. How might we work towards more of the former and less of the latter? Designing a good collaboration has many parts, here I focus on a tweak to process, working together on both the problem and solution.
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Collaboration is a conversation which often involves conflict. Conflict often as the result of one or more of the parties jumping ahead to a solution. Unfortunately, when people don’t like a particular solution, they might deny or dismiss the problem that you're working on altogether - this is called solution aversion. The effect of this is keep focus on an outcome that can't be agreed upon, instead of on what you might all be attempting to solve or achieve.
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The first step in any collaboration should be to spend time at the start to agree on the problem that you're trying to solve together. This might be on the overall brief of a design project, or it might be on a smaller part of a project. When concentrating on the problem, people might ask questions like: "Is that really a problem?" or "I disagree with that problem. I actually think the problem is this." It produces a conversation about what it is you're trying to do together before commencing on designing outcomes. A constructive discussion helps to identify and/or clarify the exact work you're doing. This gives you a better shot at designing an outcome that everyone will agree upon.
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In future collaborations focus on working out the problem before leaping to solutions. Hint: to avoid solution aversion all collaborators must be involved from the start.
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When doing something differently, a useful question to consider is...
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How will you know if it's working?
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At unmeasured I help architects plot their desire lines in practice.
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Working with you to better practise your practice and get better at what you do.
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If you need help, or you're just interested in a chat, please drop me a line.
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recent useful blog posts...
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It might be time for the architecture profession’s leaders to starting learning form the ground up.
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There’s two main ways to stand out. Be different. or Be better. Copying is the route to unexceptional.
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Or…
do architects do too many of the wrong things?
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