Known for answering cooperation with cooperation, and a breach with one firm, proportionate response before returning to cooperation, a manager becomes predictable, and dealing openly with them pays.
An example
Inside a third-party logistics company, the director of warehouse operations depended on the transportation director to schedule trucks around the warehouse's shifts, and for years the two had traded favors: the warehouse loaded late trucks on overtime, and transportation moved pickups to fit a short-staffed night. During the holiday peak, transportation rebooked a large retailer's pickups into the warehouse's busiest window without asking, to save itself a contract carrier's fee. The warehouse director responded once, in the open. He sent a note saying that overtime for any rebooking made without notice would be charged to transportation's budget, as the company's cost rules allowed, and he did exactly that two days later. Then he called the transportation director, said the matter was closed as far as he was concerned, and offered help with the following week's backlog. There were no more surprise rebookings that season, and the favors resumed.
Why it works
Colleagues who deal with someone repeatedly look ahead. If cooperation is returned and a breach is answered, their best long-run course is to cooperate, so cooperating with this manager is easier and more rewarding, and taking advantage of them less so. A manager who starts cooperatively, responds clearly and proportionately to a breach, and then returns to cooperation is easy to read, and that legibility is what keeps the pattern working. The dealings have to be repeated, the response proportionate and visible, and the return to cooperation prompt.
The thinking behind it
Robert Axelrod The Evolution of Cooperation (1984) reports computer tournaments of the repeated prisoner's dilemma won by tit for tat: cooperate first, then do whatever the other player did last. Axelrod attributed its success to being nice, retaliatory, forgiving, and clear, and showed that cooperation can emerge when the shadow of the future, the likelihood of meeting again, is large enough. Two directors who share a dock every day have a long shadow, and the warehouse director's single response followed by an offer of help is tit for tat.
Morton Deutsch The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes (1973) states what Deutsch called the crude law of social relations: the characteristic effects of a relationship tend to elicit that relationship, so cooperative moves draw cooperation and competitive ones draw competition. It explains why the response has to end with a prompt return to cooperation. A lasting punishment would draw competition in return and turn a working relationship into a contest.
When it fits
Relationships with peers you will deal with again and again suit it: another function that shares a process, a supplier, a sister unit. It needs a long horizon, a response to breaches that is within your authority and proportionate, and the discipline to forgive once the response has been made.
How to use it well
Open by cooperating, and keep cooperating while the other side does.
- When they breach, respond once, openly, and in proportion: withdraw the specific favor, or apply the rule you had waived, and say what you are doing and why.
- Keep the response inside your authority and aimed at the breach, never at the person.
- Return to cooperation as soon as the response has been made, and say so.
- Be consistent, so people can predict you.
Explain your pattern if it helps. Colleagues who know how you will respond seldom need to test it.
What it costs and where it backfires
A firm response, even a fair one, can sour a relationship for a while, and some colleagues will read it as aggression. Mistaking an accident for a breach can start a cycle of responses, and forgiving quickly can look like weakness to people who expected a longer punishment. Keep the response proportionate, open, and within your authority. Once it aims to hurt the other person, exceeds the breach, or reaches into their work, their customers, or their career, it has become retaliation.
When it is used on you
Met with a firm response to something you did, look at what it answered and whether that was fair. If you breached an understanding, acknowledge it and resume cooperating, since the pattern rewards exactly that. If you think an accident was misread, say so directly and promptly, before the responses escalate.