A central executive designs processes that produce recurring disputes between two departments, which keeps them from allying and makes both depend on the executive to settle every argument.
An example
Every inbound shipment at a third-party logistics company needed sign-off from both warehousing and transportation before a truck could leave, and the two departments had different service targets for the same dock. The chief operating officer had designed the handoff and held the only authority to change it. Warehousing and transportation escalated to that office forty to sixty times a month. When the head of warehousing proposed a shared dock schedule, the reply was that changes to cross-departmental process needed a full review, which never got scheduled. Joint wins, like a record month for on-time departures, had no owner on either scorecard. A new chief executive arrived in January and asked for a list of escalations by route. Almost all of them ran through one office, and most came from processes nobody else had been allowed to edit.
Why it works
Escalating to the arbiter is the simplest route, because the arbiter has clean information and decision rights while the direct route between the departments is cluttered with procedure. Direct cooperation looks worse, since joint results go unclaimed on either scorecard and every negotiation feels like dealing with a counterparty. An alliance between the two heads is costlier, because each joint move surfaces the built-in conflicts and costs both leaders credibility with their own teams. The design depends on exclusive control over the process and over dispute resolution, on enough routine traffic to generate a steady stream of escalations, and on neither head seeing the friction as designed.
The thinking behind it
Jeffrey Pfeffer Jeffrey Pfeffer's The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective (1978) holds that whoever controls a critical, scarce resource gains power over those who depend on it, and that actors work to create others' dependence on them. In friction engineering the scarce resource is the right to settle disputes. Processes that generate disputes make both departments depend on the arbiter, and authority to redesign the process removes the dependence.
Muzafer Sherif In Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (1961), Muzafer Sherif showed that competition over scarce rewards was enough to produce hostility between groups, and that superordinate goals, shared problems neither group could solve alone, reduced it. Overlapping mandates and conflicting service targets recreate the first condition between two departments. A shared measure for joint results, and a joint request to redesign the handoff, recreate the second.
Niccolò Machiavelli Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) reports the old practice of ruling towns by keeping factions among them and rejects it, because divided cities are quickly lost when an enemy approaches. The point applies to an executive who keeps two departments at odds so as to remain their arbiter: the company carries the cost of that division, and an outside reviewer who counts the escalations can see it.
Warning signs
Escalations between two units stay high month after month, and the process owner refuses to let them redesign the handoff. Joint results have no clear owner on either scorecard. Mandates, shared resources, and service targets overlap in ways that guarantee disputes. Proposals for direct fixes get sent to a review that never meets. On a process map, one office sits at the center of most disputes.
How to defend yourself
Compare notes with the other department head informally, away from the arbiter, and lay out where the disputes come from. If most trace to rules neither of you wrote, you are looking at a design.
Then ask together, in writing, for authority to redesign the shared process, with a short trial and a measure you both accept, such as on-time departures. A joint request is harder to refuse than two separate complaints. If it is refused, take the escalation count by route to whoever can see across the organization: a new chief executive, a board committee, or an outside reviewer doing process mapping.
How a leader shuts it down
Count escalations by route and look at who sits at the center. Give department pairs that share a process the authority to redesign it together, with a shared measure for joint results. When one office arbitrates most disputes, ask whether the processes it controls are creating them, and move design authority to the people who live with the handoff.