Mad or bad or both?
Most people are competent and well intentioned. If they appear otherwise, it’s invariably worth looking a bit deeper…
“Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding”. – André Gide
Every self-respecting consultant has their 2 x 2 matrix.
Mine emerged when I was asked to help resolve a dispute between a Japanese supplier of industrial control equipment – let’s call them Japanese Controls (J-Con for short) – and their Hong Kong Chinese customer – let’s call them HK Handling (HKH for short).
J-Con and HKH had invoked the arbitration clause in their contract after reaching an impasse regarding the digital control system at the heart of the project.
Most control systems operate based on sensing deviation from target conditions and taking control actions to move the system back to achieve those conditions.
Take for example the heating system in your home.
The target condition is the room temperature you want the heating system to maintain. You set this on the thermostat, which controls the heat source and heat distribution. 1
When the room temperature drops below the setpoint on the thermostat, the heating kicks in. When the room temperature reaches the point set on the thermostat, the heating shuts down.
When the temperature drops below the set point again, the heating system kicks in again. This cycle repeats, maintaining the room temperature close to the setpoint.
J-Con’s core system design used a similar approach but augmented by a much more sophisticated technique known as predictive control.
The system controlled the lifting and stacking of large objects in HKH’s outdoor yard.
The objects being lifted and stacked were subject to wind effects, both slow-changing overall direction, and much faster-changing gusts.
Normally, control systems in such operating conditions would be designed to move the objects slowly, thereby dampening down the wind effects, especially the gusts.
But J-Con’s control system used independent wind sensors to gather data on the changing wind and use this to predict and pre-empt the impact on lifting and stacking.
This meant their system could compensate in real-time for wind effects, move objects much more quickly, and increase throughput – hugely improving system performance.
Why had J-Con and HKH ended up in dispute?
HKH was not a sophisticated buyer of advanced control equipment and had no in-house capability for evaluating and assessing real-time digital control systems development projects.
They therefore hired an external software development expert to evaluate the design, development and testing of J-Con’s control system.
J-Con’s design team were not only using advanced predictive control techniques but also an iterative, agile development approach.
This was back in the late 1990s before the Agile Manifesto was published and before HKH’s external expert had any exposure to agile methods and approaches. 2
He only knew one approach to software development – the traditional Waterfall methodology. 3
The Waterfall methodology is a sequential, stage by stage, linear approach, controlled by a series of documents: requirement specifications, design specifications, detailed designs, testing methods & records, release & revision protocols etc.
HKH’s expert first began to worry about the quality of J-Con’s software when he saw no evidence of these “essential” documents.
He therefore demanded these documents from J-Con.
J-Con produced the documents in an effort to appease the expert so he would get HKH to make the contractual stage payments. 4
Whilst HKH’s expert didn’t understand J-Con’s software development approach, he did understand that the documentation had been produced to keep him happy – not to control the development process.
Accordingly, he advised HKH to refuse to make any further stage payments until J-Con redeveloped the software from scratch the way he thought they should.
Meanwhile, J-Con had heard rumours HKH was in financial difficulties, and assumed HKH were refusing to make the agreed stage payments to conserve cash.
J-Con therefore downed tools until the outstanding stage payments were made.
Both sides lawyered up, started hurling accusations of incompetence and bad intentions, and eventually invoked the arbitration clause in their contract.
Several months and giant stacks of lawyer-generated paperwork later, J-Con asked me to help resolve the impasse. 5
It was as I began to understand how J-Con and HKH had ended up in conflict that the 2 x 2 competence / intentionality matrix above suggested itself.
Originally, both parties saw the other in the top right quadrant – as competent and well intentioned.
When HKH’s external expert began to raise concerns that J-Con was “not developing the software properly”, in HKH’s eyes J-Con had shifted to the top left quadrant – from competent and well intentioned to appearing incompetent but well intentioned.
Adding to the misunderstanding was the fact that J-Con knew that HKH’s external expert had also worked for some of J-Con’s industrial control competitors.
This made J-Con reluctant to explain their development process and even more reluctant to explain their predictive control designs.
They were understandably concerned that the expert would make their intellectual property available to competitors.
When J-Con lawyered up, HKH no longer saw them as incompetent but well intentioned (top-left quadrant), but as incompetent and badly intentioned (bottom-left quadrant).
You only have to reflect on your own experience to know that once you see someone as incompetent and badly intentioned there’s little or no basis for relationship.
Which is good news for commercial (and divorce) lawyers, but not for value creation…
Now let’s look at how J-Con saw HKH’s journey round the matrix.
J-Con originally saw HKH in the top right quadrant – competent and well intentioned.
Once HKH’s expert began questioning their software, J-Con became concerned that HKH might not be as well intentioned as they originally thought.
When HKH refused to make the agreed stage payments, this ‘confirmed’ J-Con’s concerns about HKH - they were clearly competent but badly intentioned (bottom-right quadrant).
When HKH lawyered up, no doubt about their bad intentions remained.
It's easy to see how the relationship between J-Con and HKH degenerated - a classic pattern whereby former partners become accidental adversaries. 6
To resolve the impasse, with J-Con’s agreement, I brought in a world-leading expert on predictive control who was also familiar with agile development methods.
After he signed a confidentiality agreement, J-Con showed him under the hood.
He and I then proceeded to explain to HKH’s expert the general nature of J-Con’s design and their development process.
Once the expert realised the problem was not J-Con’s capabilities, but his own lack of relevant knowledge, experience, and expertise, the dispute was swiftly resolved, much to the relief of J-Con and HKH, and the annoyance of both sets of lawyers.
Since the 2 x 2 competence / intentionality matrix first occurred to me, I've seen many occasions over the past 20+ years where individuals, teams, functions, departments, groups, and whole organisations have drifted from the top right quadrant and found it hard to find their way back.
In using the 2 x 2 with clients, alternative terms used for ‘incompetence’ & ‘badly intentioned’ have included ‘aptitude problem’ & ‘attitude problem’, and the much more punchy, monosyllabic, ‘mad’ & ‘bad’.
Think about relationships where you’ve started out in the top right quadrant but ended up seeing the other party as mad or bad or both.
What pathway did you take in drifting away from the top right quadrant?
What pathway did the other party take?
What did it take, or what would it have taken, to get you and the other party back into the top right quadrant?
Is there anyone you’re currently seeing as mad or bad or both?
Or anyone who might be drifting in that direction?
In my experience, most of us are quick to assume others are mad or bad or both.
But 95 times out of 100, other parties only appear that way due to misunderstandings like the one that affected J-Con and HKH’s relationship.
Towards the end of his career, Peter Drucker was asked by David Cooperrider 7 to summarise his main learning from 65 years poking around in organisations.
Drucker replied that the ultimate key to organisational success is to create conditions where “people play to their strengths in such a way that their weaknesses become irrelevant”.
This made me reflect on how I’d summarise 35 years of learning from helping organisations create future-fit cultures.
I’d say that the secret of success in creating future-fit cultures of innovation, agility, and adaptiveness is to maintain the awareness that other parties are competent and well intentioned, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
What at first appears overwhelming evidence of incompetence or bad intentions usually turns out to be due to non-obvious factors that become apparent when you take the time and trouble to look a bit deeper…
It’s also worth reflecting on how people see you.
Competent and well intentioned?
Or mad or bad or both?
If the latter, maybe like J-Con and HKH, you’ve drifted out of the top right quadrant due to understandable misunderstandings that you can easily correct.
In the UK we use the term boiler for the device that heats the water that distributes heat. In the US the equivalent device is called a furnace.
The Agile Manifesto was published in 2001.
The Waterfall software development methodology is based on traditional approaches to design, engineering and construction projects where the requirements can be easily specified up front.
Traditional Japanese business values dictate that if a customer asks for something, you deliver it.
Actually, J-Con hired me to help them ‘win’ the arbitration dispute until I saw how they’d ended up in dispute with HKH and how they could easily resolve it.
The ‘Accidental Adversaries’ relationship breakdown pattern is explained here by my former colleague Jenny Kemeny.
David Cooperrider is a Professor at Case Western University, co-founder of the Appreciative Inquiry approach, and The Peter F. Drucker Distinguished Fellow at Claremont University.