WHERE LEADERS RETHINK HOW STRATEGY WORKS IN THE REAL WORLD
The traditional approach to strategy is broken.
In a world that won’t sit still, leaders can’t rely on outdated models built for stability and control.
Strategy Meets Reality is a podcast for leaders, strategists, and thinkers who want real insight—not theory. Hosted by organisational psychologist and systems thinker Mike Jones, each episode cuts through the noise with honest conversations from people who’ve lived the complexity, made the tough calls, and rethought what strategy means in practice.
🎧 New episodes every Tuesday
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Meet your Host:
Mike Jones
Mike Jones is a systems thinker, organisational psychologist, and former British Army soldier.
He’s worked as a strategy and execution advisor to senior executives across rail, tech, and government to rethink how strategy actually works in complexity.
He founded LBI Consulting and author of the upcoming book When Strategy Meets Reality.
All Episodes
Meaning Does Not Transfer | Luiz von Paumgartten
Strategy fails in ways that feel mysterious: the plan looked solid, the logic was sound, and yet reality does something else.
I’m joined by Luiz von Paumgartten, a patent attorney who has spent the last decade developing a model he calls Natural Reality. Using a handful of diagrams and plain language, we dig into “meaning” (everything produced inside your mind) versus “happening” (uninterpreted action in the world).
From Strategy To Reality Through Better Operations | Ben Chappell
A strategy you can't deliver isn't ambitious; it's wishful thinking. Mike sits down with Ben Chappell, founder of Cove Ops, to get brutally practical about the gap between strategy and execution and why “operations” is the missing piece in so many SMEs that are scaling, preparing for investment, or gearing up for a sale.
Making Strategy Real | Evan Campbell
A strategy can look flawless on a slide deck and still fail the moment it reaches the real world. I’m joined by Evan Campbell, technology executive, former management consultant, and author of Adapt to Win, to unpack why organisations with “good strategy” so often struggle with strategy execution, strategic alignment, and making day-to-day work match leadership intent.
Strategy Meets Reality In Government | Alison Guthrie-Wrenn
Strategy sounds clean on a slide deck. Then you try to deliver it inside a system with competing priorities, blurred boundaries, and a public spotlight that never switches off.
I’m joined by senior civil servant Alison Guthrie-Wrenn to talk about strategy execution where constraints are real, relationships are long-term, and legitimacy is not automatically granted. We compare what it feels like to drive change from inside an organisation versus advising from the outside, and why power dynamics and internal politics shape what can be challenged and what must be navigated.
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