Greetings!
Welcome to the first issue of the newsletter as Elijah Consulting. We are carrying on from where Shining Arrow left off, so the issue numbers remain. The acronym "MAU" used to have two meanings for me. The first was "Marine Amphibious Unit", which was essentially a Marine Battalion of the Fleet Marine Force that was readily deployable, and the second was a reference to the Mau Mau street gang referred to by NIcky Cruz in his book "Run, Baby, Run". Today, I have a new meaning for it - Mediation & Arbitration Unit.
Let's have a look at both these terms. Looking up the online dictionary, we find that: [Mediation and arbitration are similar in that they both designate processes for bringing about agreement or reconciliation between opponents in a dispute. "Mediation" implies deliberation that results in solutions that may or may not be accepted by the contending parties. "Arbitration" involves a more formal deliberation, it being understood that the results will be binding on the contending parties.] So, we see that "Arbitration" implies that the third party involved carries with it a weight of authority which it is able to enforce, or else such "authority" would be meaningless. A court of law is one such example. "Mediation" is therefore an attempt at resolving a dispute before the matter is escalated to involve a higher authority. What sparked off this topic was a CIPD podcast I heard recently. You might like to listen to it at this url: http://bit.ly/Ndnj6p If you use a Balanced Scorecard or similar instrumentation in your company, you would of course prefer incidents requiring arbitration to be kept to a minimum, meaning zero to very low. By "incidents", I of course mean those that involve a sense of hostility, real or perceived injustice and which lower morale and reduce productivity all round. Conflicts in general are not necessarily bad, for they are helpful in showing what could be wrong and also useful in generating ideas. There are even those that encourage conflict in the workplace because they see it as being generative and a discouragement to "groupthink". This is a dangerous fallacy. Conflict is always negative. Encouraging it will encourage the disease of multi-polarization in your company. What we are really looking for is not conflict per se, but rather constructive and generative discussion. The old adage "We agree to disagree and not be disagreeable" is something extremely helpful and ought to be a way of life in your company. After all, if some of your people do not share your purpose and vision, should they even be there? There can and will be disagreements on "How it is done" but all the "Hows" MUST support the "What" and the "Why". Once the leader(s) has/ have decided upon a "How" of action, then it is beholden upon all parties to throw in their full support. Anything else and you have a dysfunctional company.  Having said all that, we can liken mediation to administering general anaesthesia before a surgical procedure. What an anaesthetic does is reduce the level of pain so that a patient's condition can be stabilized sufficiently for life-saving actions to take place. Mediation helps defuse tensions so that constructive rather than destructive processes can be initiated. It reduces the pain of real or perceived grievances so that positive action can be taken for the good of all involved. What might be perceived as a "no-choice" option when one is in "great pain" would be seen as an extremely foolish course of action when the pain is greatly reduced. "Arbitration" usually results in the termination of what was or could have been a mutually fruitful relationship. It can be likened to what a beaver might do if it were caught in a trap. Beavers have been known to gnaw off a paw in order to get free. While that of course saves the beaver's life, it would live without a paw till the end of its days. So, hire the right people, and remove those who do not share your vision and purpose, and have demonstrated unwillingness to talk things through instead of simply insisting on their own way. Remove labels from "Gen Y", for example, and treat each dispute according to its own characteristics and needs. Set up a Mediation & Arbitration Unit in your company, with greater emphasis on Mediation. Do that, and you will see growth in your company. Go well! | 
