On the Record

Your Thought Partner in the room.
Leading is harder when you're too close to the problem. This is where we share what we're seeing from client work, CEO conversations, and the people in our network, to give you a different perspective, a moment to think, and something worth acting on.

The Unfiltered State of NZ CEOs

THE CEO TABLE INSIGHTS 2025 • PART 2
AI, Leadership and the New Shape of Advantage

Part 1 showed the divide opening up in New Zealand business. Part 2 shows what’s driving it. Across AI CEO Tables in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, leaders moved past the tools conversation fast. What surfaced instead was something harder to name — the emerging burden, posture and psychology of leading when the rules are being rewritten in real time. Four tables. Five big signals. This is what NZ CEOs are actually grappling with.

The Unfiltered State of NZ CEOs

THE CEO TABLE INSIGHTS 2025 • PART 1

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Insights

Blog
Beyond Advice: Why Businesses Need More. And Why Adaptive Strategy and Actionable Leadership is the key.
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Beyond Advice: Why Businesses Need More. And Why Adaptive Strategy and Actionable Leadership is the key.
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce

In today’s climate, most businesses aren’t lacking advice.  They’re drowning in it.

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Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Teamship: The Leadership Muscle Most Businesses Haven’t Built Yet
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Teamship: The Leadership Muscle Most Businesses Haven’t Built Yet
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce

We’re used to talking about teams;  functional teams, project teams, executive teams. But what most businesses are missing isn’t more teams. It’s ‘Teamship’.

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Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Strategy in Motion: Why Context Is the Only Constant
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Strategy in Motion: Why Context Is the Only Constant
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce

Most strategy fails not because it’s wrong but because it’s rigid. Built in isolation. Delivered in a vacuum.  Disconnected from what’s really happening.

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Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Building Collective Intelligence: Why Smart Alone Won’t Scale
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
Building Collective Intelligence: Why Smart Alone Won’t Scale
Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce

Always start with context — not assumptions. A strategy needs to instantly connect and align towards one coherent direction. Be understood by all and energise all. And most importantly, it must spark ideas and action that are undeniably aligned.

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Insights
Gisela Montello-Bruce
From Chaos to Clarity: What Some Top Minds Shared About Adaptive Strategy.
Insights
Michael Friedberg
From Chaos to Clarity: What Some Top Minds Shared About Adaptive Strategy.
Insights
Michael Friedberg

The pace of change isn't slowing down,  so why are so many strategies stuck?

That was the question we put on the table at our recent panel event, hosted in partnership with The Icehouse and joined by some of Aotearoa’s sharpest strategic minds. 

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Insights
Michael Friedberg

The CEO Table

Blog
The Cost of Waiting: What Wellington's CEOs Said Out Loud
The CEO Table
Cam Sharplin
The Cost of Waiting: What Wellington's CEOs Said Out Loud
The CEO Table
Cam Sharplin

In March, we ran our inaugural CEO Table in Wellington, a room of leaders willing to say the things that don't always make it into polished strategy decks. The topic was AI. But the conversation that kept surfacing underneath that was something older and more familiar: what happens when the people responsible for moving an organisation forward end up being the ones holding it back.

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The CEO Table
Cam Sharplin
Enduring Smarter: Inside the Christchurch CEO Table.  Surviving, and Leading, Through Shallow Waters.
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
Enduring Smarter: Inside the Christchurch CEO Table.  Surviving, and Leading, Through Shallow Waters.
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg

Let’s call it what it is: the Christchurch market feels different.

At our latest CEO Table, hosted by Flux in late August, a cross-industry group of leaders came together to talk about what it takes to lead, sell, and grow in a market that’s not only quiet, but hollowing out.

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The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
Winning Work in a Distracted Market: What 8 CEOs Told Us at The CEO Table
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
Winning Work in a Distracted Market: What 8 CEOs Told Us at The CEO Table
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg

Hosted by Flux, this invitation-only breakfast brought together leaders from healthtech, SaaS, manufacturing, and professional services… all scaling through complexity.

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The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
How Capability, Culture, Cadence and Outside-In Thinking is the Real Strategy.
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
How Capability, Culture, Cadence and Outside-In Thinking is the Real Strategy.
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg

Auckland closed the year’s final CEO Tables with two unique conversations: one with a returning cohort who’ve shared a long strategy journey together, and another with a fresh group of CEOs stepping into the room for the first time.

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The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
Enduring Smarter in Christchurch: Leadership, Reading Future Signals and Human Execution in Shallow Waters
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg
Enduring Smarter in Christchurch: Leadership, Reading Future Signals and Human Execution in Shallow Waters
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg

Auckland closed the year’s final CEO Tables with two unique conversations: one with a returning cohort who’ve shared a long strategy journey together, and another with a fresh group of CEOs stepping into the room for the first time.

Read More →
The CEO Table
Michael Friedberg

Candid Conversations

Episode 1 • What Leaders Say vs What They Actually Feel

Unstoppable Flux

Two practitioners. No script. No stage.

Unstoppable Flux is a conversation series hosted by Michael Friedberg and Stew Darling — a founder CEO and a former British military commander turned executive coach. Between them, they’ve led businesses, built teams, and navigated the kind of pressure that doesn’t show up in case studies.
Each episode is an unscripted conversation between two practitioners who work inside NZ businesses every day — thinking out loud about leadership, growth, and what’s actually going on.

Flux on YouTube

Short takes, quick thinking, and real moments from the field.
New clips added regularly.

WATCH ON YOUTUBE
WATCH ON YOUTUBE

In Motion

Blog
Rethinking the Growth Engine: Why It’s Time to Build a Market Team
In Motion
Michael Friedberg
Rethinking the Growth Engine: Why It’s Time to Build a Market Team
In Motion
Michael Friedberg

Growth isn’t slowing because teams aren’t trying hard enough. It’s slowing because most B2B firms still run fragmented growth models. In industrial tech and advanced professional services, complexity amplifies this problem.

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In Motion
Michael Friedberg