Working on objectives doesn't create conflict. It puts people where they can't avoid each other

At an objectives review you recognise a conflict by one thing. Everyone reports their status, and nobody talks about blockers or about what they could do differently. An open conversation needs trust, and a lack of trust looks exactly like this: correct and empty. The mechanism is simple. A team made up of representatives of different departments creates an interface that wasn't there before, because people sat in their own departments and could steer around each other. When the heads of two departments are in conflict, their people reproduce that divide inside a team built around one shared objective. The objectives didn't break anything here. They just sat people down at one table who had never had to meet before.

The guest on this episode is a consultant who works with organisational culture, conflict and burnout, and the most practical thing to take from the conversation is the distinction between kinds of conflict. A dispute about data or about a goal can be simple: it is enough to name it, agree a shared measurable goal and be transparent with information. A conflict of values touches identity and beliefs, is practically non-negotiable, and no framework will defuse it. At the level of the organisation you don't work on other people's personal values. You work on rules, procedures, the way of communicating and the team's working agreement. There is also a question we usually skip because it seems unnecessary: do both sides actually want anything to change. In a conflict that has dragged on for years, the sides may no longer remember what it was about, and that is their comfort zone. Without an answer to that question, all further work produces nothing but frustration.

The second thread of the episode looks like a separate topic, but it is the same matter seen from the side. When the business model or a role changes, you mustn't assume that a long-serving employee will adjust on their own. Repeated patterns reinforce old habits, and new ones need repetition and planned support, so learning a new way of working has to be treated like any other change and written into the strategy. When that is missing, rust-out comes first: the person looks very busy but starts avoiding their duties, doesn't know where to begin, and their work piles up. Burnout only comes after that. We ourselves worked for a long time as if a clear, measurable key result was enough for an objective to happen. It isn't. Alongside it there has to be work on communication and on mutual understanding of working styles in the team.