Most organisations don’t fail because they lack strategy.
They fail because reality changes faster than their plans.

In this episode of The Change Agent, Eric sits down with Mike Jones, Founder and Director of LBI Consulting, to unpack what leadership and strategy actually look like when certainty disappears and complexity takes over.

Drawing on his experience as a former British Army officer and leadership instructor at Sandhurst, as well as his work advising organisations across rail, healthcare, infrastructure, and large-scale enterprises, Mike challenges one of the most deeply held assumptions in modern leadership: that more clarity is always better.

Instead, he introduces a more uncomfortable — and more effective — idea: strategic ambiguity.

This conversation explores why over-specified strategies create fragility, how leaders can set clear intent without strangling execution, and why trust, decentralised decision-making, and freedom of action are essential in complex environments.

Together, Eric and Mike discuss:

• Why strategy should be treated as a practice, not a static plan
• How mission command enables adaptability without chaos
• When clarity helps leaders — and when it quietly makes things worse
• The role of trust and mistake-making in high-performing teams
• How organisational structure drives behaviour, not slogans or culture decks
• Why psychometrics and cognitive diversity matter more than personality labels
• How leaders can re-orient in uncertainty instead of clinging to control
• What to do when leadership climate above you is misaligned or corrosive

This is not a conversation about frameworks, buzzwords, or leadership theatre.
It’s about how strategy actually gets executed by real people under pressure.

If you’re a senior leader, programme manager, executive, or anyone navigating complexity where the stakes are real and the answers are incomplete, this episode will challenge how you think about leadership, control, and responsibility.

🎙️ Listen now — and learn why the ability to hold intent firmly, plans loosely, and ego lightly may be the most important leadership capability of our time.

Learn More About:

LBI Consulting

Mike Jones on LinkedIn

Mike's podcast - "Strategy Meets Reality"

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