Strategy Meets Reality Podcast
Strategy Meets Reality Podcast
Podcast Description
Traditional strategy is broken.The world is complex, unpredictable, and constantly shifting—yet most strategy still relies on outdated assumptions of control, certainty, and linear plans.Strategy Meets Reality is a podcast for leaders who know that theory alone doesn’t cut it.Hosted by Mike Jones, organisational psychologist and systems thinker, this show features honest, unfiltered conversations with leaders, strategists, and practitioners who’ve had to live with the consequences of strategy.We go beyond frameworks to explore what it really takes to make strategy work in the real world—where trade-offs are messy, power dynamics matter, and complexity won’t go away.No jargon. No fluff. Just real insight into how strategy and execution actually happen.🎧 New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe and rethink your strategy.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast delves into various aspects of strategic thinking and execution, emphasizing complexity and adaptability. Episodes feature topics like the influence of power dynamics in strategy, the importance of mental models in decision-making, and how to construct deliberately adaptive organizations. For instance, episodes cover frameworks such as the OODA loop with insights from military strategist Chet Richards and methods for navigating organizational change with Mike Burrows.
Traditional strategy is broken.
The world is complex, unpredictable, and constantly shifting—yet most strategy still relies on outdated assumptions of control, certainty, and linear plans.
Strategy Meets Reality is a podcast for leaders who know that theory alone doesn’t cut it.
Hosted by Mike Jones, organisational psychologist and systems thinker, this show features honest, unfiltered conversations with leaders, strategists, and practitioners who’ve had to live with the consequences of strategy.
We go beyond frameworks to explore what it really takes to make strategy work in the real world—where trade-offs are messy, power dynamics matter, and complexity won’t go away.
No jargon. No fluff. Just real insight into how strategy and execution actually happen.
🎧 New episodes every Tuesday. Subscribe and rethink your strategy.
Most organisations misuse the word risk, and the consequences can be severe.
In this episode of Strategy Meets Reality, Mike Jones sits down with Professor Denis Fischbacher Smith, Professor of Risk and Resilience at the University of Glasgow, to unpack decades of insight from analysing system failures, organisational breakdowns and multi fatality accidents.
Denis explains why humans will never be perfectly rational, why managers exist to deal with uncertainty, and why risk frameworks often hide the very vulnerabilities leaders need to confront. From rule violations to bureaucracy, informal networks, degraded controls and the myths that mislead executives, this is a deep, practical exploration of organisational reality.
🔍 In this episode:
• Why rationality is a false construct
• Human behaviour, bounded perspective and mental models
• Why managers exist to manage uncertainty
• The misuse of risk in organisations
• Understanding threats, vulnerabilities and degraded controls
• What rule violations really tell you
• The myth of the all knowing board
• How bureaucracy distorts work and decision making
• Listening, engagement and the value of middle management
• Learning from failures and why “it never happened before” is not a strategy
• Strategic thinking in complex and uncertain environments
🎧 Keywords: Risk, Resilience, Organisational Failure, Decision Making, Vulnerabilities, Threats, Human Factors, Systems Thinking, Leadership, Safety, Complexity, Strategy
📘 Connect with Denis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denis-fischbacher-smith-1aa6453/
📬 Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones
🌐 Full episodes: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategy-meets-reality
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