Someone recently typed three words into Perplexity AI: “explain HPtE to me.“ Perplexity is an AI search engine. It reads the web, synthesises what it finds, and produces a structured answer with sources. What came back was surprisingly accurate. It was also, in important ways, incomplete. I want to walk through the conversation that followed…
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been exploring a single idea from three different angles — and what it reveals about the conflict tax across the organisation is something every leadership team needs to see. The idea is the Conflict Tax — the compounding cost of avoidance. Not the cost of conflict itself, but the…
Finance professionals see the Conflict Tax in overtime spend, project overruns, and KPI contradictions. HR and IR Directors see it in grievance patterns and repeat disputes. But there’s a third perspective that neither fully captures — and it’s where the conflict tax in operations hits hardest. Operations. Operational leaders live with the Conflict Tax every…
HR and IR Directors are the most conflict-experienced people in any organisation. You understand conflict better than any other function — and the conflict tax in HR is costing more than anyone has measured. You’ve sat in more grievance hearings, mediation sessions, and collective disputes than anyone else in the building. And yet — most…
Every finance professional I’ve worked with knows their cost base inside out. They can tell you the variance on any line item, the trend on any cost centre, the forecast for any quarter. But there’s a cost most of them have never measured — and it’s costing finance teams more than they realise. I call…
In 2013, Air New Zealand faced a problem that plagues organisations worldwide: decades of adversarial union-management relationships that drained resources, stifled innovation, and created a culture of mutual distrust. CEO Christopher Luxon called it the “Punch and Judy Show” — a theatrical performance where management and unions played predictable roles, fighting the same battles repeatedly…
In the world of business models and strategies, we often come across words that are used interchangeably. ‘Customer’, ‘Client’ and ‘Consumer’ – each of these terms carries a unique meaning and relevance depending on the context. As we dive into the nuances of The 3Cs Model, an important question arises: which term should we use?…
In the context of sustainable high performance in an organization, the three-legged stool metaphor represents the three necessary conditions for achieving that goal: The first leg of the stool is Commercial responsibility, which refers to an organization’s ability to manage its finances, resources, and operations to ensure its long-term viability and profitability. This leg supports…
It is estimated that employees spend 42% of their time engaging in or attempting to resolve conflict and 20% of Managers’ time is consumed with conflict-related issues. Masters and Albright (2002), in The Complete Guide to Conflict Resolution in the Workplace, point out that people thrive on conflict in most areas of their lives–football games, political debates, legal disputes–yet…
Alex Rogo, the new executive vice president of UniCo, must turn around three newly acquired companies, knowing that if he succeeds, they will be sold off and the new owners will replace him, and if he fails, the companies will be closed–in either case, he will likely be fired. Using the unique business-novel format, It’s Not…
“The thing for me is recognising that, as a business leader, you have a responsibility to lead a company for the future, leaving it in a better place in five, 10, 15, or 20 years’ time. My job is to make sure that commercials are strong, the customer experience is great, the culture of the…
