Teams now carry more social, political, and cultural tension than ever before. DEI, woke, civil rights, identity, fairness, gender, race, religion, politics, and then, before we even get started, the normal work issues arrive as well: deadlines, pressure, mistakes, ego, authority, status, and disagreement. No wonder teams get caught up in minor workplace spats....
I have been thinking about a possibility that sits at the heart of workplace conflict research. What if disagreement and conflict are not the same thing? Reference: Understand Conflict Most conflict researchers seem to define conflict broadly enough to include disagreements....
Addressing Workplace Impingements
For years I've been interested in workplace conflict or micro-conflicts, but lately I've been thinking about something even smaller. Not conflict. Not even an infringement. An impingement or someone impinging on the other player's space. In soccer, a player can subtly tug an opponent's shirt. It may be almost invisible. The referee might miss it. The crowd certainly won't notice most of the time....
Ignoring is Ignorant Behavior
Ignoring is one of the quietest ways minor workplace tension becomes conflict. That is: Not answering. Not acknowledging. Letting a concern hang in the air. The difficulty is that “ignoring” is hard to prove. A person can always say they missed it, were busy, misunderstood, or did not think a response was needed.
SpatzAI: Building a Category Before the Category Exists
I recently saw a post about how Taiwan became the centre of the world’s semiconductor industry. The simple version is this: Taiwan did not begin with a semiconductor industry. It began with a plan, selected people, serious training, and time to learn. In 1974, Taiwan sent 19 hand-picked engineers to RCA in America to learn how to build chips. They had no mature industry, no deep experience, and no category to slot neatly into. What they had was a foundational bet.
Measuring Team Micro-Conflict Resolution Efficiency
Most organizations already measure productivity, delivery speed, incident rates, and customer satisfaction. Very few measure how efficiently their teams resolve the everyday micro-conflicts that quietly affect all of those outcomes....
What If Conflict Has Been Made Too Complex?
We see this pattern everywhere, from workplace teams to organisations, communities, politics, and even global disputes. Minor issues are often left unresolved until they become major problems. By then, the process needed to resolve them is far more complex, expensive, emotional, and entrenched....
Everyone Deserves an Early Warning.
Teams still seem to lack a practical and proportionate way to signal that an interaction may be drifting off course before it escalates into resentment, disengagement, formal complaints, or conflict. This is one of the main reasons I created SpatzAI. SpatzAI is designed as an early warning system for conflict. Not punishment. Not public shaming. Not an anonymous HR ambush three weeks later. An early warning system requiring an accountable response.
Mary Parker Follett, SpatzAI & the Future of Disagreements
Mary Parker Follett was ahead of her time in how she understood conflict. By 1924, she had already articulated her framework of domination, compromise, and integration, later presented clearly in her 1925 paper, Constructive Conflict. She did not see conflict simply as something to suppress or avoid. Instead, she saw it as a possible source of learning, creativity, and mutual understanding.
SpatzAI: Psychological Safety PPE
I think psychological safety should be treated the same way. It is not created by speeches, slogans, workshops, or encouragement alone. It is created when teams have practical systematic protections in place, such as ways to hold team member and managers to account, an open and transparent way to ensure issues are fairly resolved, agreed behavioural standards, and a fair way to address, in real-time, when these behavioural standards are infringed upon...
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