Pay your (conflict) debts on time
summary
Argues that unresolved “conflict debt” silently erodes delivery and trust and that addressing it early saves months of work; demonstrates with a legacy-developer case where mediation and a working agreement improves collaboration but eventual termination costs the team a year of progress, and a vendor choice that wastes six months of execution before reversal. Uses concrete tools: mediation, accountability, and non-violent communication (NVC) as a repeatable framework, plus examples of where it succeeds and where tolerance fails.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:07What is conflict debt
- 4:16Case study: Frank
- 7:26Case study: Payment migration
- 9:13Avoidance vs aversion
- 13:32Four archetypes of avoidance
- 18:10Impact on teams
- 19:33Non-violent communication
- 23:01How to apply non-violent communication
- 26:35NVC in retrospectives
- 28:21Real-world NVC use
- 29:23Replacing people won’t help
- 30:06Takeaways and next steps
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