FFC NL 2025 TALKS

Most work on improving flow in organisations focuses on structure.

We redesign team boundaries.
We reduce cognitive load.
We invest in platforms and clearer interaction models.

And still, things don’t move.

You can have the right team topology on paper and still feel stuck. Decisions slow down. Feedback loops break. The same problems repeat.

This talk is about what sits underneath that.

In my experience, one of the most overlooked constraints on flow is not structure. It is how leaders interpret what is happening around them.

Drawing on research in moral disengagement, cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning and belief perseverance, I’ll walk through a simple model that explains how leaders gradually become resistant to feedback.

It shows up in four stages:

- Narrative reframing
Harmful patterns are described as necessary or even positive
- Identity protection
Feedback is reinterpreted to preserve self-image
- Motivated perception
Dysfunctional behaviour starts to look like strength
- Interpretive sealing
Feedback no longer changes anything

At each stage, the organisation’s ability to adapt reduces.

This is not theoretical. I’ll share real examples from engineering environments where flow was blocked not because of architecture or team design, but because leadership perception had drifted.

The talk offers a practical way to diagnose where someone is operating from and what actually helps at each stage.

Because the uncomfortable truth is this:

Not every leader can be coached into enabling flow.

If we don’t recognise that early enough, we spend months or years trying to fix something that isn’t fixable through coaching alone.