One thing has struck me recently. Most conflict-resolution experts talk about de-escalating workplace conflict. That makes sense because, by the time managers or HR become involved, the issue has usually developed into a serious workplace conflict. Emotions are high, positions are entrenched, relationships have deteriorated, and the priority is understandably to calm things down. But what if the problem of conflict resolution is being approached from the wrong direction?
Workplace Disagreements, Objections, Complaints and Conflict Conflation
Workplace disagreement, objection, and complaint are three distinct, open or unresolved interactions. Yet they are often conflated under the broad label of "workplace conflict". We think this confusion makes ordinary disagreement feel dangerous, makes the person disagreeing appear difficult, and leaves minor concerns about behaviour unnecessarily complicated and confusing to address and resolve.
The Speak Up Toolkit and Accountability Process
Many organisations encourage people to speak up. Far fewer provide a clear, fair, and proportionate process for what happens next. Without a shared process, speaking up can feel uncertain. People hesitate because they do not know how their concern will be received, whether it will escalate unnecessarily, or whether it will simply be ignored. A Speak Up Toolkit should do more than encourage conversations. It should guide them.
We Systemised Hamburgers 70 Years Before Processing Psychosocial Hazards
In the 1950s, McDonald’s did not transform fast food by simply expecting employees to work faster or telling them, “Make a burger with a patty, and make it fast.” That instruction described the desired outcome, but not the process. Instead, the the McDonald brothers studied every movement. They designed the kitchen layout, clarified each role, standardised the sequence, created machines, set timing expectations, specified ingredients, created quality checks and established what should happen when something went wrong....
SpatzChat™ Escalator Pitch
You know that feeling you get when someone unfairly and subtly puts you down after you share a radical idea at work? If it happens repeatedly, many people eventually complain about the person to their manager or HR. But what if you could safely address this behaviour, privately and in real-time, instead of waiting for them to repeat it? That’s what we do.
A Speculative Research Proposal on Fair Conversation as a Pathway Toward Artificial General Intelligence
This paper presents a speculative research hypothesis rather than a claim. It proposes that fair conversation may provide a richer environment for developing general intelligence than the bounded environments traditionally used in many AI systems, such as games....
Communal Accountability
Most workplace systems still treat objectionable behaviour as something for leadership or HR to decide. That makes sense once a matter has become serious. But what about the moment before that? What about the small public put-down, the dismissive tone, the repeated interruption, the sarcastic remark, the patronising comment, or the unfair delivery during disagreement?
If You Were Sue, Would You Use SpatzChat?
Imagine you are Sue in a team meeting. You suggest an idea. Jim responds publicly: “Babe, that’ll NEVER work! What were you thinking?” Maybe Jim was careless. Maybe he did not realise how dismissive he sounded. Maybe he did. Either way, the real test is what happens next. Sue gives him a light verbal caution:
I’ll Spatz You Later
Imagine if we had a chat-app and platform that enabled teams, during meetings, to address minor objectionable issues on the fly, before they were allowed to fester, compound and escalate into more intractable conflict incidents down the track.
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....
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