A new book by Robert C. Skarzynski
ConflictSurfaces
Stop having the same fight every week.
A systems framework for redesigning recurring co-parenting conflict.
The goal isn't winning. It's making conflict boring.
Why do you keep having the same fight?
You've tried communication tips. Maybe even lawyers. Yet the same collision keeps arriving, right on schedule.
The recurring conflict surfaces
This book makes a different claim: your recurring fights are not a communication problem. They are a design problem. And design problems have design solutions.
The Framework
What kind of process is workable under these conditions?
Conflict Surfaces shifts the question from what kind of person is this? to a question you can actually design around.
Map where conflict actually happens
Find the exact points where the same failure keeps getting scheduled — the ambiguous pickup, the unwritten rule.
Find the one fight creating twenty more
One issue often generates twenty others. Fix the source instead of fighting each symptom.
Turn negotiations into standing rules
Turn every recurring negotiation into a standing rule, so it never has to be re-litigated on a Friday.
Build a system that works anyway
Design for the people you actually have — a parenting system that works even when goodwill doesn't.
The core distinction
Two questions. Only one lets you design.
Faced with the same repeating collision, you can ask about the person or about the process. One path loops for months. The other produces facts you can act on.
“What kind of person is this?”
The loop
Months of diagnosis. Pickup is still Friday at 5:00.
“What process works under these conditions?”
Constraints you can design for
Low trust, high emotion, repeated interaction, children present, limited cooperation.
Who this book is for
Written for anyone who has to make a low-trust relationship work anyway.
Parents navigating separation
Anyone trying to build a workable week with a co-parent while the emotional dust is still settling.
Parallel parents
For low-contact, low-trust situations where cooperation isn't realistic — but a functioning system still is.
Lawyers & mediators
A structural vocabulary for turning recurring disputes into standing rules that hold outside the courtroom.
Parenting coordinators
A repeatable framework for diagnosing where conflict is scheduled and designing it out for the families you serve.
Inside the Book
Fifteen chapters, four movements.
- 1The Day I Realized This Wasn't About Divorce
- 2High Conflict Isn't a Personality Problem
- 3Trust Is a Dependency
- 4Conflict Surfaces
- 1Keystone Conflicts
- 2Remove the Negotiation
- 3The Parenting Playbook
- 4Never Fight Over Email
- 1The Four Levels of Communication
- 2The Escalation Ladder
- 3Build Systems Even Your Ex Would Like
- 4The Cost of Friction
- 5Process Is All You Control
- 1Systems Beat Intentions
- 2Make Conflict Boring
- 3Coda: Every Organization Has Conflict Surfaces
Look Inside
“The driveway is not where their conflict lives. The driveway is where their conflict is scheduled.”
15
practical chapters of conflict engineering
4
movements from foundations to peace
1
goal — the quiet, boring, workable life
Read Chapter One free.
Not ready to buy yet? Read the free sample — the introduction and the first chapters — and see the method for yourself before you commit.
PDF · No email required
Free Worksheets
The playbook drafting pack
Six blank tools for building a parenting playbook — designed for mediation and equally usable by two parents directly. Worked examples included.
- Conflict surface audit
- Standing rule drafting sheet
- Proposal & response
- The playbook — one page
- Review agenda
PDF · No email required