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 CEO Update
"Fighting the right fights right leads to better results. Yes, alignment is important, but perfectly aligned companies can slip into mediocrity if there is insufficient internal tension. You need the creative spark that a good fight can produce. And one of your jobs as CEO is to
introduce and manage right fights to create breakthrough performance, meaningful innovation, and lasting value."
This is one of the messages Saj-nicole Joni delivered to the members of CEO Roundtable at the All Member Seminar, The Right Fight, on May 21st. Dr. Joni is a consultant and confidant to top executives at some of the world's largest companies. Her latest book, The Right Fight: How Great Leaders Use Healthy Conflict to Drive Performance, Innovation, and Value, provided the framework for a spirited discussion.
 When you combine good alignment with the right fight you get a diversity of views expressed openly and fairly considered, checks and balances, complex thinking grounded in reality, a culture of respect for difference, the fuel of human innovation and the necessary training ground for future leaders.
You must be very careful to select the right fight and to assure it is fought right. The right fight fought wrong, the wrong fight fought right, the wrong fight fought wrong all lead to bad results.
How do know what the right fight is?
There are some basic principles for choosing the right fight:
- Make it material - the outcome must have the potential to make a real and significant difference in the performance of the company
- It must be focused on creating the future not a review of the past
- It must pursue a noble purpose. Noble purpose and business results are seldom perfectly aligned but is a right fight
How do we assure we fight right?
There are also principles for fighting right:
- Make it sport, not war, and clearly establish the rules of the game so that everyone understands
- Structure the process formally, but work informally
- Turn pain into gain - there will be losers but they should not be punished; see the opportunity for growth
Right fights must be real inquiries about ideas where the answer is not prejudged and there must be respect for the people on all sides.
The members discussed instances when they selected the right fight and when they selected the wrong fight and now wish they could have a 'do-over'. We all have fought the wrong fight and we all have fought wrong. Saj-nicole's book provides detailed tools and assessments to help you select the right fight and fight it right. Her conclusion is that all successful organizations fight right fights. When you can manage the tensions consciously, and use the Right Fight Principles as your guide, you and your teams will reap extraordinary rewards.
Saj-nicole left us with this question, "Do you have the courage, wisdom and purpose to fight for what really matters?"
To explore this topic further I recommend you read Saj-nicole's book, or at least go read her column in Forbes.com or read her article in Harvard Business Review:
How to Pick a Good Fight. You may also want to read The Third Opinion, by Saj-nicole Joni
CEO Roundtable provides these All Member Seminars as an 'unexpected benefit' of being a member. | 
