“I don’t have time for this.” This cry of exasperation sums up the frustration when senior executives or board members find themselves drawn into conflict among their people. This includes conflict among peers, leaders vs their direct reports, or between regional or functional champions. “Don’t they realize they are on the same team?” And yet internal conflict has more potential to be toxic than squabbles with outsiders be they competitors, suppliers and even customers. Left unattended, internal conflict can become all consuming, paralyze the organization, and poison relationships. Once it spirals out of control, you will have to make time, whether you like it or not. Bad conflict prioritizes itself so to speak.

When it comes to national embarrassments, one would be hard pressed to do better than Berlin Brandenburg Airport (FBB), or known by its IATA airport code BER. The “new” international airport of Germany’s national capital opened, on the down-low so to speak, on November 1st, 2020. The quietness of the affair had good reason: BER started operations 9 years late and billions over budget; plans for the airport had actually begun as early as 1990, the year of German reunification making this a, no typo, 30-year airport building project.