CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
Nic Thomson
Founder | Iceberg (Aus)
SPEAKER BIO
Nic Thomson is the founder of Iceberg, an organisation exploring how businesses can adapt as complexity continues to outgrow traditional ways of working.
Drawing on experience across organisational development, systems thinking, and practical business transformation, Nic works alongside founders and teams across Australia and New Zealand to reduce founder dependency, strengthen decision-making, and build healthier, more adaptive operating systems.
Working across industries including arboriculture, construction, farming, veterinary services, and trades, his work explores practical mechanisms such as self-management, distributed decision-making, transparency, and natural hierarchies to help organisations evolve in increasingly complex environments.
At the heart of Nic's work is a simple question:
How do organisations evolve when complexity becomes too great for traditional management alone?
Through practical experiments with pioneering organisations, his work explores the emerging intersection of organisational design, ownership, collective intelligence, and human development.
TALK TITLE
When the Team Outgrows Their Management
ABSTRACT
Many businesses are experiencing increasing complexity, labour shortages, rising costs, succession challenges, and growing pressure on owners and managers. While these tensions are often treated as individual business problems, they may also be signals that traditional organisational structures are being stretched by a rapidly changing environment.
This session explores how organisations around the world are responding, including emerging approaches to ownership, decision-making, transparency, accountability, and self-management.
Drawing on practical examples from New Zealand businesses, including the arboriculture sector, Nic will share lessons from organisations experimenting with more distributed ways of working, what has worked, what has failed, and what leaders can learn from these experiences.
Attendees will leave with practical ideas for reducing founder dependency, improving decision-making, strengthening team ownership, and building organisations that are better equipped to navigate complexity.