Design Manager: design management plan-Managing teams & conflict

Design Manager: Design Management Plan- Managing Teams & conflict is the nineteenth article of a series of articles about design management in architecture practice. I have discussed in the previous articles what is design management. Who is the design manager in practice and is it a project or firm design management plan? The key functions of the design management plan in practice. Adding to that What needs to be managed in a firm in practice. This article is the fourteenth article on building and writing a design management plan.

In this article, I will show the analysis of team building and conflict management in practice. Before I dive into this article, I will stand on professional practice publications about this subject in design management.

Conflict is a major factor leading to many destructive consequences in architecture operations. Conflict reduces the firm value internally when employees get to know of this type of problem. In other cases, the damage will increase when the conflict status reaches the client’s environment. It reduces company work quality and increases staff workload for reviews. Decreasing work quality and increasing review will cause more delays in work compliance with the project design time schedule. And all that will cause a reduction in revenue.

Design manager: professional bodies and conflict codes

Design managers in architecture firms rely on professional bodies, even in countries that do not consider like the Middle East, documents, rules, and regulations to conflict matters. For example, RIBA publications about conflict consider contractual conflict with architecture firms and ways of solving conflict. These ways do exist in other places in the world and do not differ from RIBA publications.

Regarding the professional conflict in a firm’s operations, RIBA points to the professional code of conduct. The code in clause 6.4 says Members must comply with good employment practices in their capacity as an employer and/or employee. This clause does not provide any useful ideas, concepts, best practices, advice, methods, or procedures to solve employee conflict rather than they must comply with good employment practices. What is written in this code is the garbage of practice.

These codes do not assist or show how conflict appears in practice, what type of conflict, how to analyze conflict, and what methods they provide to solve conflict. The code or any certification does not add any value and does not make certified members more professional than others in the world. The code here is a normal document that defines the roles and responsibilities of architecture firm’s contracts.

Design manager: practice and academic publication of conflict

Design managers know that Conflict and team building are related to each other. In architecture firms design managers start the assembly of the team before the project briefing with clients. Clients want to know the involved team in their project so that they receive all CVs in the beginning stages of the project after the award.

Firms in many cases employ staff to complete the required team. Many job board websites allow people to create profiles upload their CVs and apply for job vacancies.

Firms employ by reference from previous employees or existing ones. That is to make sure all staff are in harmony and to avoid conflict in future work. In my experience in the Middle East companies rarely employ from job board websites. That shows the lack of fairness and equal opportunities especially in the United Arab Emirates which is considered low quality labor market.

Job board websites segregate applications by hidden factors. For example, the candidate worked in the Western market, holds a degree from abroad, and holds a Western passport. Applying through LinkedIn, Glassdoor, indeed, and others is just a waste of time especially in the United Arab Emirates. Many candidates I know had profiles on LinkedIn and they followed the procedure to link with others but not even one chance was given or reference to proceed with the application. And many say why should I refer someone I don’t know. Job board websites online are a waste of time and the garbage of job opportunities.

Team building as practice publications indicate is based on three criteria. Experience, inexperienced people should be avoided. Values, discussion, and agreement on roles and responsibilities are essential to avoid future conflicts and problems. Attitude, levels of trust, and distrust are affected by attitudes.

Staff who work together for a longer time tend to be in harmony and fewer negative emotions will appear. Types of conflict are:

Natural conflict: the stronger participant benefits from this clash

Unnatural conflict: one participant intends to make financial or personal gain.

What professional bodies and practice publications show are not beneficial at all by any means. See Figure 1, one type of conflict resolution method that can be applied in practice.

My Analysis of roots of conflict

In my previous years of work in the Middle East holding various positions such as department head I have passed many conflict situations. These situations include

Non-compliance to management instructions: management takes action in architecture work depending on work requirements, for example, assigning work to different levels when required, asking people to attend overtime work, or completing other’s work without studying it for urgency.

Non-cooperation to teamwork: team members show in some circumstances resistance to follow senior level instructions for their belief that they don’t have the right to do that. If the design manager asks, that’s what I have witnessed before, to hand over MEP work to review the team shows extreme resistance to that. If the architecture team requests the structure team to consider an option of the structural system, they consider it the wrong intervention.

Non-convenience to position status and wages: in the Middle East market staff that do not have the country experience are considered juniors. That is a major problem if the employee is coming from the Middle East and has a certain level of experience. Salaries paid to these people are lower than the same equivalent people in the country.

Company workload: A previous company I worked with had a team of 7. The manager never increased the team even in high-load work and tended to put more load on the existing team. The manager never considers, but only for seniors, increments only after they finish the two-year contract.

Taking jobs lower than market price: companies with large staff tend to take jobs at lower prices to cover their expenses. That comes when the salaries are lower than the market average and fair pay. Staff in this situation show more negativeness at work.

Assignment of roles to staff not in their scope: senior level and junior level might face management decisions to take work that does not fall in their scope. This work might be higher than the staff experience and require other types of experience. Tension and stress appear in the work environment.

Salary payment delay by employer: many staff members are obligated to certain amount of expenses and need their pay to come on time. Any delay causes trouble in family life and stability.

Lack of understanding of duties and responsibilities and liabilities of work behavior: staff members who come to be employed by the company by reference do not receive job duties and responsibilities. The lack of knowledge of these duties and responsibilities puts the staff member under pressure.

These are the major roots of conflict in the architecture practice.

How do design managers manage conflict?

When I analyze these major factors, they fall into three criteria. Inefficient management, improper understanding of required performance, and inefficient administration and financial management.

In going more in detail and analyzing the work environment of management, and professional work I found that the main cause of conflict is low experience.

Experienced managers know the effective way to employ a team member, what roles and responsibilities to assign to team members without creating conflict, when to take more jobs with a price that keeps the staff at optimum performance, and what effective way to instruct a team head to distribute work.

Experienced team members know that cooperation is a major element of the successful operation of the firm, team member position and wages upgrade when the team member contributes above the required standard of work, the team member should take more workload to support the firm financial operations, and team member must show reliability in expressing his view about assigned roles outside his scope to management.

Experience administration staff must know how to manage the payment of salaries in low-work firm operations, they must have a company plan on how to cover expenses when the load is at the minimum.

The design manager to consider in his management plan these critical matters concerning staff employment, duties roles, and responsibilities, liability and educate staff on the required positivity and proper behavior of staff, he should consider the budget for every project and keep an extra percentage of funds for emergencies in the plan for every project and how to reduce overhead.

this article is he end of these series please do not hesitate to contact me for any question related to the subject of these articles on me@husamtalib.com.