Good conflict feels alive, has traction, stretches you, and draws you in. Good conflict solves problems, creates value, and supports change. But the only way you get good conflict is if you have a good conflict system, and most organizations don’t even know they have one. In this keynote, I’ll shine a light on your conflict system, revealing how it operates, and showing you how to make concrete changes to the system that will start delivering good conflict right away. Stop trying to survive your conflicts, and start turning them into a strategic advantage.

Getting things done feels harder than it used to. Agreed-upon strategies get ignored when key decisions are made. Departments agree to coordinate on their customer communications, but never develop a unified schedule. We commit to leveraging AI to improve efficiency, but employees either don’t use the tools, or they use them in random, non-strategic ways. We’re putting in the effort (and then some), but we’re not getting traction.

The pace, pressure, and complexity of today’s environment require a different approach, where instead of merely adding to everyone’s to-do list, we choose to replace some of what we’ve been doing with new practices, and then lean into the resistance and conflict that inevitably emerge out of the change.

In this keynote, organizational change and culture expert Jamie Notter will give you a roadmap for building out a set of practices that take the right things away in addition to doing the new things that will work better, and he’ll provide practical tools and frameworks you can use to start having the productive conflict that moves everyone forward and generates new traction.

Organizations do not need better intentions or more activity. They need the capacity to make choices that matter, and then work through the consequences together, because avoiding this work in our complex environment will leave you spinning your wheels.

You’re investing in innovation. You’re managing change. You’re working hard to keep your best people. So why does it feel like none of it is paying off? In this keynote, culture and conflict expert Jamie Notter makes the case that nobody is noticing the single, upstream solution to achieving the three things leaders want most: your organization’s ability to do conflict well. Drawing on two decades inside organizational culture and a master’s in conflict resolution, Jamie shows why innovation depends on the disagreements people are avoiding, why resistance to change is rooted in unresolved conflict, and why your best people leave not because of money or managers, but because the chronic drama wears them down. You’ll leave with a clear-eyed view of the hidden “conflict system” already running in your organization, along with concrete strategies for improving the system and generating more of the good conflict that will drive results.

Now, more than ever, we need to be good at change. Every aspect of our strategic landscapes seems to be shifting beneath our feet, so our very survival depends on our ability to change, adapt, and pivot with skill and speed. In most organizations, however, change feels like we’re trying to turn the Titanic. We often blame this on resistance, poor communication, or lack of resources, but the real culprit here is your culture. There are six roadblocks to change that most cultures create, without you even realizing it. In this keynote I’ll share my research on how these roadblocks are formed and show  you how to make concrete changes inside your culture that will transform these roadblocks into change accelerators. You’ll leave knowing what to do—and stop doing—to turn change into an ally rather than a disruptor.