The Coordination Tax Podcast
Why execution breaks when shared reality lags behind.
Conversations with operators, founders, and leaders who've lived the reality of keeping organizations aligned. Not consultants who theorize about it — people who've watched coordination break, rebuilt systems, and felt the pain of teams working on conflicting priorities.
Hosted by Kristian Luoma, Co-Founder & Head of Product at In Parallel. From Helsinki, Finland.
You Don't Have a Training Problem: Dr. Christie Vanorsdale on the L&D order-taker trap
Dr. Christie Vanorsdale — founder of Vanorsdale Learning Lab, cognitive multimedia learning researcher, and fractional Chief Learning Officer — on why L&D keeps solving the wrong problems, and what changes when you stop treating it as an order taker.
AI Is Quietly Eating Your Week: Kristian Luoma on the Coordination Tax Index 2026
A solo episode on the first quantitative measure of coordination overhead. 247 managers, five countries, 16.5 hours a week — and why the heaviest AI users are carrying the most load, not the least.
What Really Happened to the Spotify Model: Hosanna Ouellette and Nora Bereczkei on autonomy, agents, and the 26 rocket ships
Hosanna Ouellette and Nora Bereczkei ran the operating model rebuild inside Spotify. They explain why autonomy stopped scaling, how they stopped shipping the org chart to users, and why agents break the purposeful ambiguity every operating model quietly relies on.
The Hidden Cost of Leading: Robert Siegel on AI, cross-pressures, and outdated leadership playbooks
Robert E. Siegel — XSeed Capital partner, Stanford GSB lecturer, and author of The Systems Leader — on the hidden cost of coordination, why truth equals facts plus context, and why the managers using AI the most carry the heaviest coordination load.
Jeroen Kraaijenbrink — Why the CEO Is the Last to Know
Strategy author Jeroen Kraaijenbrink on why CEOs are the last to know — how truth travels sideways but never up, why only 1% of employees feel safe voicing concerns, and the PACE framework for the honesty a strategy needs before it's written.
Jason Barnaby — The Golden Spreadsheet in the Locked Drawer
Fractional sales leader Jason Barnaby on the golden spreadsheet in the locked drawer — why one person hoards the data a company runs on, why the $20M pipeline is really $10M, and the one hire that fixes it.