Your community wants impact, not your slides

Laz Csite has spent decades in high-end consulting. He chose to walk away from that and spend the next 10 years on something that actually matters to him: helping charities, social enterprises, and B corps use digital tools to deliver the change they exist for.

Produced by Europa Creative Partners (europa.nz).

In this episode of Slideshow, host Dave Hayward speaks with Laz Csite, founder of 360tuned, about why digital transformation keeps failing in mission-led organisations, and what it actually takes to get it right. Laz brings a rare combination: the rigour of a career at KPMG and PwC, and a philosophy shaped more by rice terraces and bamboo than by tech roadmaps.

The conversation covers the gap between board-approved strategy and the people who have to deliver it, why most nonprofits are nowhere near ready for AI and what to do first, the spaghetti problem hiding in almost every nonprofit back office, and the pizza framework for thinking about digital architecture. Laz also shares the "black Toyota Corolla" approach to choosing tools, a story about donor lifetime value that stopped a 15-year-old nonprofit in its tracks, and why boring, reliable systems beat shiny ones every time.

Links:

Laszlo Csite, LinkedIn

360tuned

Dave Hayward

A framework that is both actionable AND delicious

In this episode of Slideshow, Dave Hayward speaks with Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, the AI-native video editing platform, about her practical framework for surviving the AI hype cycle without losing your ability to think clearly.

The conversation covers the sandwich bet technique for defusing doom-spiral conversations by forcing specifics (what exactly, by when, measured how?), the "work slop" problem and Laura's internal Descript memo on AI and human thinking, why generative AI is missing its "Finding Nemo" moment, Dave's audience sandwich bets from Bright Objects readers, and what the word "intrepid" means when you're running a company through genuine disruption.

Links:

Laura Burkhauser, LinkedIn

Descript

Dave Hayward, LinkedIn

Chapters

00:00 Cold open: intrepid

00:45 Introduction

02:00 Why AI hype exists: the cynical and good-faith takes

03:30 The AI political horseshoe: doomers vs hypers

05:30 Descript's AI-native origins (before AI was a discourse)

08:00 The generative AI problem: slop and the wrong conversation

09:00 Finding Nemo and what generative media is still missing

10:30 Human creativity will survive this moment

11:30 Vibe-coded briefs and the limits of AI in creative work

12:00 Work slop at Descript and the human collaboration memo

13:30 Writing as two acts: what you cannot delegate to AI

15:00 From hype to action: becoming a translation layer

16:30 AI hasn't reduced the workload: the rising tide reality

17:30 AI vs the internet: scale of impact and the 30-year problem

20:00 Non-linear careers: German literature meets tech

22:00 The sandwich bet: framework explained

24:00 Why sandwich bets shift conversations from fear to curiosity

25:00 Sandwich bets as an internal leadership tool at Descript

26:30 The Lisa Oakley crossover: depersonalising difficult decisions

27:30 Bread talk and Vogels toast

28:00 The Descript Slack bet: getting concrete on the labour market

29:30 From vague doom to specific, measurable hypotheses

30:30 Kahneman's system 2 and shifting from reacting to thinking

31:00 Optimism, the pandemic, and humanity's problem-solving capacity

32:00 Andrew Mason identified Laura as his successor within weeks

33:00 Intrepid: the leadership quality for a disruptive moment

34:30 Serenity prayer, Rumsfeld, and the limits of what you can control

35:00 The VP-to-CEO paradox: more accountability, less control

36:30 Wrap up

FAQ

What is a sandwich bet and how does it work?

A sandwich bet is a conversational technique for defusing AI doom-spiral conversations. When someone makes a large, fear-inducing prediction, you ask them to make it specific and measurable: what exactly will happen, by when, and what metric would prove it? If they're right, you buy them a sandwich. The low stakes lower the emotional temperature. The act of getting concrete forces rational thinking. Laura uses it at Descript both in team conversations and externally when AI discourse becomes unproductive.

How should business leaders think about AI's impact on jobs and the economy?

Laura's position: people consistently overestimate AI's short-term impact and underestimate its long-term impact, the same pattern that played out with the internet. The internet took 30 years to fully reshape the economy. AI likely works on the same horizon. At Descript, full adoption of AI coding tools has actually increased the urgency to hire engineers, not reduced it.

What is Descript and what does it do?

Descript is an AI-native video and audio editing platform that lets users edit footage by editing a transcript, the same way you'd edit a text document. Its AI co-editor Underlord executes entire editing workflows from a single text prompt. Used by podcasters, content creators, business teams, and marketers who want professional results without specialist editing skills.

Lisa Oakley has a private investigator's licence and a habit of walking into rooms where things have gone badly wrong. What she's found: the conflict usually wasn't the problem. The avoidance was.

Produced by Europa Creative Partners (europa.nz).

In this episode of Slideshow, host Dave Hayward speaks with Lisa Oakley, Director and Lead Consultant at People Associates, about why workplace conflict is best understood as data — information your organisation is generating, whether you act on it or not.

The conversation covers the three types of conversations that prevent most workplace friction from escalating (expectation, accountability, and repair), a practical, hard-conversation framework drawn from problem-solving science, and why formal investigations often make things worse rather than better. Lisa also shares what she's seeing on the frontier of workplace HR: AI-generated complaints that are genuinely difficult to authenticate.

Links:

Lisa Oakley, LinkedIn

Dave Hayward, LinkedIn

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:00 Conflict is Data: The Core Reframe

03:00 Why Leaders Avoid Conflict (and What It Costs)

06:00 Intercultural Conflict in NZ Workplaces

09:00 The Three Conversations Every Leader Needs

12:00 A Problem-Solving Framework for Hard Conversations

15:00 Is This Relationship Recoverable?

18:00 Where Conflict Ends and Bullying Begins

19:00 What Leaders Get Wrong: Kindness Without Clarity

22:00 Delegating Conflict Upwards

24:00 PI Meets HR: AI-Generated Complaints

28:00 When Investigations Protract the Problem

31:00 The Art of a Real Apology

34:00 Conflict as Progress: The Boardroom Story

36:00 The "I Like, I Wonder" Technique

39:00 Wrap Up

FAQ

What is "conflict as data" and why does it matter for business leaders? Lisa Oakley's core idea is that conflict isn't a dysfunction to suppress — it's information your organisation is producing. The way a team handles disagreement, friction, or tension tells you something about your culture, your clarity, and your leadership. Treating it as data rather than a problem to eliminate means you can actually learn from it and act on it.

Keywords conflict resolution, workplace conflict, leadership, difficult conversations, HR, people management, organisational culture, conflict management, New Zealand business, team performance, mediation, psychological safety, accountability, leadership development, high-performing teams