Insights on Strategy, Execution & Complex Organisations
I write about how strategy, execution and organisational design work in real-world environments — the kind that resist simple plans, reward systems thinking, and require leaders to adapt with clarity and purpose. Here you’ll find insights on strategic ambiguity, strategic manoeuvre, organisational viability, decision-making in complexity, and practical leadership thinking.
Browse the latest articles, or explore by topic below.
Shaped by Default
Most strategies organisations produce are just projections of ambition or flattering stories they want people to believe. Most fail to produce any effect that meaningfully changes the organisation's relationship to its environment.
This is the equivalent of making a wish in front of a birthday cake, changing nothing about how you live, and assuming the wish will find its way to you. Most strategy development takes this shape: declare a vision, let the machine run, produce the Greek Temple, amplify the narrative to the world, and try to optimise the parts while the whole fails to produce the effect required to shape the external environment to your advantage.
Mike's presentation delves into the complexities of the modern business landscape, sharing insights and approaches that can help leaders navigate challenges effectively.
In complex and high-stakes environments, stability is an illusion. Reflecting on my experiences as a soldier in Afghanistan, this talk explores the challenges of adapting strategy and execution in the face of chaos, risk aversion, and an agile adversary.
Podcasts and Talks.
Apperences from our founder Mike Jones.
Systems Thinking and Strategy for Leaders : Join us for an insightful interview with Mike Jones, founder and director of LBI Consulting, as we dive into the world of systems thinking and strategy.
In this episode, Mike Jones critiques leaders’ obsession with alignment, consensus, and “working better together” sessions, arguing instead for organizational coherence built on clear intent, appropriate constraints, resources, decision rights, and effective control mechanisms.
This week, we chat with Mike Jones [ @StrategyMeetsReality ] about why mainstream strategy and leadership have become performative and detached from organizational reality. Mike argues business schools and social media encourage “magic wand” leadership, while many Silicon Valley firms centralize decisions, remove agency, and then blame people for their collective failures.
Mike Jones, Strategic Advisor at LBI Consulting and host of Strategy Meets Reality, challenges the conventional approach to strategy. From his military background to studying cognitive psychology, Mike reveals why most organisational strategies fail and how leaders can adopt a continuous, adaptive approach to strategic thinking. This conversation explores the gap between strategy documents and strategic reality.
In this episode of The Change Agent Podcast, Eric sits down with Mike Jones, Founder and Director of LBI Consulting, to explore what leadership and strategy actually look like when certainty disappears and complexity takes over.
In this reflective solo episode, Mike Jones steps back from the guest chair to explore a deeper truth: strategy is failing long before execution begins.
Mike sees strategy not as a top-down process, where the wishes of management become the gospel of the employees: strategy emerges from the actions of all. In this process, the Viable System Model is a valuable tool to develop a strategy and Mike explains how.