Rebalancing in a "Do More with Less" Era
Reflections from the 2026 Organisational Culture Summit in New Zealand
Last week at the Hilton Auckland, I had the pleasure of joining industry leaders for the Organisational Culture Summit. The delegates were eager to explore the important topics of the day and our MC Dani Fennessy made no hesitation in guiding the way through the lineup of speakers and what we were going to cover.
Beneath the shared eagerness, there were also a number of shared challenges and I was poised to call out the difficult truth of our "doing more with less" era and what we can look to rebalance that can shape culture and workforce climate in ways that result in performance and wellbeing sustainability instead of sacrificing one for the other. There is something very real everyone is dealing with that fits the ‘doing more with less’ mindset so I wanted to make sure this reality wasn’t trivialised in my session. Instead, my hope was to help leaders reclaim a sense of agency to overcome the despair or excuses tied to a dominating ‘doing more with less’ mindset.
Instead, my hope was to help leaders reclaim a sense of agency to overcome the despair or excuses often tied to a deprivation mindset. I framed "rebalancing" as a strategic imperative: rebalancing strategy, using practical science-based systems, and ensuring we regularly Check-In to monitor impact. Practical, science-backed approaches to sustainable wellbeing and performance are at the core of the Benny Button mission.
As such, in my speaking role I brought my own balance of educator and provocateur. I urged leaders to expand from an understandably reactive or ‘risk and cost' mindset to one of proactive and intentional culture strategy and system rebalancing where small shifts can net hugely beneficial corrections in people, teams, cultures and customer experience.
The (Re)Balancing Act
During my keynote, "Culture Under Pressure," we explored the inherent risks of this era and the flow on effects of this mindset on how people feel and function. We used the Benny Button Check-In tool to capture real-time data from the delegates. The results were a rare glimpse into the current state of the culture-shaping community. We saw a "Performance trumps Wellbeing" challenge whereby many people recorded work performance levels in the high zone, however, wellbeing in work and life was lagging significantly behind.
This imbalance is a leading indicator of burnout and psychosocial risk. When we simplify "rebalancing" to just "reducing demands" or "adding resources," we can really miss the systemic picture that offers many levels and levers for rebalancing.
Rebalancing Better: The RISE Strategy model was outlined as a means to move towards full-spectrum Psychosocial cultural change that spans traditional risk and cost reduction through to the proactive design and development of workforce capacity, capability, and psychosocial safety climate.
Safety & Reliability: Rebalancing traditional risk reduction, incident response, and recovery intervention with proactive and preventative systems and practices geared towards buffering, preempting and mitigating risks before they escalate.
Impact & Engagement: (Re)Aligning work design, leadership practices, and workforce engagement and development in order to rebalance the flow of work allocation and leadership downstream with the investments in capacity and capability that mobilise engagement and unlock discretionary effort.
We also dived into the D:R (Demands:Resources) Framework and using the four 'Recognise and Regulate' levers. Namely, reducing hindrances, regulating challenges, buffering demands, and building resources. We all acknowledged that there will be limitations when it comes to which levers can be used in different context and circumstances. However, to appreciate that there will always be something leaders and employees can explore and levers that can predict how rebalancing efforts can flow through to alleviate strain and elevate engagement to buffer risks and promote more sustainability in performance and wellbeing.
Collective Wisdom @ the Summit
The summit was a masterclass in diverse perspectives:
Kaila Colbin challenged us to lead with courage and vulnerability in an exponential world, noting how change often happens "slowly, then suddenly." Great messages given the human-centred depth of these important leadership capabilities at a time when AI is on a course we’d associate with sudden change.
Bruce Pilbrow shared honest lessons on purpose-led transformation, emphasising through personal and professional stories how vulnerability and accountability are the bedrock of trust.
Susan Lowe gave us a real-world look at embedding culture into strategy at Alpine Energy, proving that culture must be lived and measured to stick.
Tash Pieterse explored the power of leadership identity and the critical role of leader modelling, showing that our values and habits are the most powerful levers for team engagement.
Rajna Bogdanovic provided a roadmap for building psychologically safe organisations that meet modern guidelines and legislative obligations.
Michael Henderson anchored the day with a vital reminder: 'Your strategy can’t outperform your culture.' He challenged us to treat culture not as a slogan, but as the primary operating system for achieving our strategic goals.
A special thanks to our MC, Dani Fennessy, for her astute guidance, and to Meredith Wilson for her pre-summit Masterclass and contributions to the summit day. Thanks also to the fine team at Think Tank Media for this important Summit.
Finally, to the delegates who attended: you are the culture shapers in your organisations and I truly hope the insights and takeaways help you and your teams to strengthen wellbeing and performance sustainability through cultural change.
