ABSTRACT
Quite often, apparently innocuous designs can help deal with apparently big problems. Consider the relevance of the role analysis technique as a general-purpose intervention, and as useful in initial approaches to even very conflictful situations; that is, conflict may derive from many sources—major personal incompatibilities, vicious backstabbing with a long history, disagreements about the responsibility for serious failures, and so on. Such conflict may be very hard to manage, let alone extinguish. Frequently enough, however, conflict may derive from a hum-drum lack of clarity about what needs doing, as well as about who is supposed to do one piece or another of that business.
