Adaptivity in Action: Modern leadership for resilient organisations.

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Adaptive NZ Conference - Monday 17 November 2025

I’ve been following Radically and Edwin Dando for a while now, so it was a real privilege to attend the Adaptive Conference at the Marriott in Auckland this week.

The conference was all about exploring how to lead, scale and build organisations that thrive in a rapidly evolving and complex world. And it did not disappoint.

Day 1

The first day was a masterclass in modern leadership, with insightful, high-quality content that didn't shy away from the hard challenges facing our major organisations, while illuminating genuinely great opportunities and real achievements. I was impressed by the speakers’ willingness to share candid case studies and practical blueprints for transformation.

The human heart of transformation

The morning kicked off with Holly Ransom, CEO of Emergent Global, who gave us a modern blueprint for making transformation stick. Holly deftly tackled the sobering statistic that more than 50% of change initiatives are not successful. The key, she argued, is activating the resource most leaders overlook; people who believe they matter to the mission.

Her "Three Pillars of High-Precision Change" provided immediate steps for leaders to overcome resistance to change:

• Energise through ownership by tapping into collective intelligence from the outset.

• Accelerate through trust by anticipating resistance and adapting fast using tools like pre-mortems.

• Empower through recognition to reinforce the everyday leadership required to move forward through uncertainty.

Holly used the simple device of a “change dice” to illustrate different perspectives on the same problem and emphasised the necessity of understanding the six sides of the dice to ensure different perspectives on the same problem are considered. She challenged us to lead by example, making our own moments of changing belief visible to our teams.

Quit doomscrolling: The practical reality of AI

A major theme of the day was transitioning from AI hype to practical implementation, revealing massive competitive advantage. Dave Howden, CEO & Co-Founder of SupaHuman AI, cut through the headlines with "Quit Doomscrolling: Real AI Wins You Won’t See on Your LinkedIn Feed". Dave affirmed that huge opportunities exist to unlock organisational intelligence, reduce compliance risk, and free smart minds from tedious manual work.

He highlighted some great real-world successes:

• A geotechnical engineering firm slashed the 10 hours required to draft a report down to a 10-minute task, leveraging their IP to transition into a software business.

• A commercial cleaning company used AI to execute lead generation in 90 seconds, a task that previously took sales teams 15 to 20 minutes.

This flowed seamlessly into the Practical AI Implementation Panel discussion led by Dan Xu of ElementX who prefaced the panel with a multifaceted summary of the current AI landscape. The panel reinforced that we must redesign, not just automate, old workflows. Transformation is a marathon, not a sprint, necessitating a phased approach where humans first collaborate, then manage, and finally supervise AI. The core opportunity lies in moving beyond micro-upgrades to reinventing the business entirely.

Culture, performance, and the path forward

Mark Stirton, Group CEO of The Warehouse Group, delivered a candid case study of culture and performance in his talk which was more like a fireside chat with Radically CEO Dan Teo.

Mark’s honesty about the challenges facing the iconic Kiwi brand was palpable. He explained the consequences of complexity and compounded decisions.

The key learning here is that true progress comes from defining a system of work that is pragmatic for the organisation, focusing on execution over ideas. He underlined the importance of leaders promoting honesty and active listening to unlock their people.

After lunch we had some great practical workshop sessions – pity I couldn’t attend them all!

Next-gen ways of working

Later in the afternoon, Will Carey-Hill of Suncorp detailed "Next-Gen Ways of Working: AI-Enabled Delivery Model & System of Work". Will shared Suncorp's transformation journey, which doubled delivery capacity. However, he emphasised that individual efficiency has soared with AI, system throughput often lags. The critical challenge is looking at the entire system to ensure that fast processes don't just lead to bottlenecks elsewhere.

The future opportunity is AI-augmented goal setting and decision-making, speeding execution, and embedding continuous compliance via unified guardrails. Jensen Fleming added an uplifting perspective from Atlassian, noting that their speed of implementation has increased dramatically, shifting from driving a few features per quarter to thirty-five.

Becoming unstuck

The day closed on a deeply personal and uplifting note with Edwin Dando, co-founder of Radically, in his session, "How To Not Be Stuck". Edwin spoke from experience about navigating those moments in leadership when the road ahead disappears entirely. He offered hard-won insights and practical mindset shifts for leading through ambiguity, reconnecting with purpose, and finding movement even in the most impossible situations.

Day 2

My fellow Dubliner Oscar Wilde once wrote “a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”.

There wasn’t much cynicism noticeable during and after Dr Ellen Ford’s incredible keynote presentation on Day 2 of the Adaptive Conference in Auckland on Tuesday.

In what was one of the more remarkable speeches I think I’ve ever heard, Dr Ford seemingly leveraged her close connection to a terrible recent tragedy into a full-throated plea for us all to lead with our authentic selves. As she warmed to the task, the whole room was with her and you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. The audience Q&A delivered via Slido consisted mostly of messages of support and thanks.

Drawing on her research and practical experiences, including her history as an officer in the NZDF, corporate leader, academic, humanitarian, and parent, Dr Ford demonstrated the power of her Belonging, Autonomy, and Purpose (BAP) Leadership Model for creating thriving workplaces.

The impact was brought to a crescendo as she shared a deeply moving case study about her efforts to evacuate over 500 Afghan people whose lives were in imminent danger through their work for the NZDF.

This presentation deserves a full treatment in a separate post to come.

Best. Conference. Ever.

I am a bit of a cynic about conferences if I’m honest. I often find myself regretting the investment of time and money in something that ends up less than I expected. This was not the case with Adaptive, not only did it exceed my (high) expectations, the quality of speakers, content and the atmosphere created by a group of like-minded individuals was next level.

In any other setting any one of the remaining presentations would have been amazing in themselves. The sessions explored crucial organisational challenges, focusing on systemic change and human leadership.

There were plenty of other highlights and takeaways.

Mason Gismondi underscored the necessity of addressing psychosocial safety, noting that risk must be reasonably foreseeable and preventable. He emphasised that supporting psychological health is critical because burnout impacts talent retention and organisational efficiency.

Mik Kersten, author of Project to Product, connected from overseas to tell us that the new constraint in the age of AI is no longer the delivery of outputs (which AI can scale exponentially) but rather organisational productivity, necessitating a model that focuses relentlessly on measuring and managing outcomes.

Both Grant McIvor of Southern Cross and Nicola Richardson of ASB shared candid stories about evolving large organisations away from systems that regressed toward project models despite having Agile ways of working in place. Grant emphasised that the operating model itself should be treated as a product requiring continuous care, like a garden.

The Modern Workplace panel debated how to drive productivity. Andrew Barnes (of four-day week fame) highlighted that the four-day work week is fundamentally about eliminating unproductive activity, suggesting that time is a poor surrogate for output.  Luke Campbell raised some laughs speaking about VXT’s high-performance culture, which uses radical transparency and output metrics to incentivise effort, while still having staff working 40 hours or 80 hours per week based on ambition.

Closing speaker Dr. Monty Badami offered an anthropologist's perspective, stressing that human adaptability and connection—not certainty or control—is our true superpower when facing complex and chaotic times. He encouraged leaders to create small, meaningful spaces where vulnerability and collective sensemaking are possible.

The Adaptive Conference showed yet again that our greatest transformative potential lies not in technology, but in embracing our shared humanity to solve the impossible.

I left with a greater determination to lead with empathy, connection and curiosity.