Recently, a colleague of mine was sharing a story about a Salesforce Field Service (SFS) project he’s currently working on.
As anyone who has worked with SFS knows, these projects can be tricky. It always feels like the client needs to follow a strict structure and process to benefit from it. Any large deviation from these best practices can cause many large and negative ripple effects.
In this scenario, my colleague was advising his internal team not to recommend a particular approach to the client. The approach would have certainly caused ripples, and he proposed viable alternatives.
Sadly, because my colleague’s perspective was counter to the solution architect, they were dismissed. The project manager, sensing my colleague’s growing frustration, asked him:
“Is this the hill you want to die on?”
What an awful question.
I know it’s commonly used in the industry, but it’s crap. It’s meant to diffuse a situation and force your opponent off their balance. You would be seen as a bully if you did anything else but back off.
The takeaway
If you truly believe in your perspective, don’t be swayed by negotiation hacks like this. You shouldn’t fight every battle presented to you, but you should always fight for the client’s best interest. Knowing which battles to fight can be tricky, as you don’t want to fight too hard with your team. I’ll further discuss managing team conflict in a future email.