I Don’t Agree: Why we can’t stop fighting – and how to get great stuff done despite our differences

I’m a founder and long-term managing-director of creative industries businesses and a social enterprise entrepreneur – helping to launch and lead what is thought to be the world’s first mental health drop-in centre inside a soup-kitchen.

My interest in the psychology of conflict and compromise arose after spectacularly falling out with my partners in a previous business. The lessons learned positively informed the culture of my next venture, now an international marketing organisation (MKTG) with offices in 20 countries. It set me on my path to becoming an author.

In an earlier life, I nearly made it in music. As a player/manager in a band I secured two major recording contracts; once featuring as a giveaway sticker on the cover of Smash-Hits. My mum still has that sticker on her toilet door.

Why did you write the book?

I had become embroiled in an elongated power struggle with my partners inside a business I ran for a decade. What started as minor board room disputes over the direction of the enterprise culminated in a public firework display of white-hot emotions on the office floor.

We could have sold front row seats on Ticketmaster.

The aftermath threatened the security of my young family, disrupted the valued team I’d put together, cost the partners a small fortune in legal fees – and a business we’d given so much to turned to ashes in the conflagration.

Could we have done things differently?

Definitely.

Knowing how to… that’s a different matter. Of all the questions I asked myself in the period of reflection that followed, one kept coming back: did my partners have a position in the argument that was as valid as mine? It took me an age to reach a position on this. Only with hindsight can I confirm that yes, they definitely did.

The thing about disagreement is that it often escalates when you try to sort it out: research has shown that people in dispute typically assume their own motivations are true and just – the deadlocks that prevent everyone moving forward are likely to be blamed on the other side by both sides – a phenomenon known as attribution bias.

Ultimately my issue was an inability to see things from the other side. Putting yourself in your counterparts’ position puts another option on the table – the possibility of reaching a way through despite the disagreement. My efforts to learn how shaped the book.

What value does the book offer?

Imagine a toolbox that allowed us to get on with solving problems while recognising our differences, whatever the argument: from equality to the environment, from pay rises to promotion, from gender to geopolitics.

That’s the value I hope I Don’t Agree will bring. As a business founder I’ve experienced the difficulties of trying to get everybody inspired by a vision. A lot of collaboration needs to happen, yet there’s much to get in the way. Our genes, biology, Darwinism, perhaps controversially our gender, our emotions, where we were born, family dynamics, our values, our education system, our ideologies; even our propensity to smile.

I’m convinced though, harmony is achievable. I hope those who read the book will never think about organisational culture, and their role within it, in the same way again.

It’s my belief that flawed organisational culture messes up the world because all human endeavour is organised.

And who is responsible for culture? Yep. Us. The people inside it.

So, we’ve got to sort it out – doing so is valuable and vital. I Don’t Agree is my contribution to that aim.

What did you gain from writing the book?

An improved ability to take perspective through the benefit of other people’s wisdom!
The research for I Don’t Agree bought me into contact with a vast storehouse of knowledge and so many deep thinkers in the social sciences, academia and professional life that I genuinely feel I’ve evolved as a human being.

I Don’t Agree: Why we can’t stop fighting – and how to get great stuff done despite our differences (Published by Harriman House) is available to buy on Amazon. 

Connect with Michael: LinkedIn

Winners of The Business Book Awards 2021 will be revealed online on Tuesday 25th May 2021.