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In a world that won’t sit still, leaders can’t rely on outdated models built for stability and control.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

Podcast graphic featuring the title "Strategy Meets Reality," a subtitle about leadership perspective on strategy, a photo of host Mike Jones, with additional design elements like a microphone icon, green accents, and a background with connecting lines

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

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From AI Hype To Competitive Advantage And Real Change | Dr Mark Bloomfield

AI is moving fast, but the real risk is moving fast in the wrong direction. We sit down with Dr Mark Bloomfield, founder of Turbulence and a fellow at Cambridge Judge Business School, to get past the hype and talk about what AI transformation looks like when strategy meets reality. If you have ever heard “we need an AI strategy” and felt the room skip the hard questions, you will recognise the boardroom tension we unpack: change management, competitive advantage, and the uncomfortable truth that with AI, there is no neat finish line. 

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Sensemaking Under The Confusion Tax | Richard Claydon

Strategy fails in the gap between the plan and the lived reality of work, and that gap is where most leaders burn out. We sit down with Richard Claydon, an organisational theorist focused on leadership in complex and ambiguous environments, to name what’s really happening when teams feel overloaded, stuck and quietly cynical despite “doing everything right”. 

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Why Just Broadcasting Strategy Is Sabotaging Execution | Jurriaan Kamer

Strategy fails in a painfully predictable place: the moment it leaves the boardroom and lands in everyone else’s calendar. We sit down with Jurriaan Kamer to get brutally practical about why “alignment” so often becomes a loud broadcast, a perfect slide deck, and a quiet wave of cynicism on the ground. Instead, we dig into what actually moves strategy execution forward: orientation to real conditions, clear choices, and activation that gives teams room to interpret and self-align.

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The Confusion Tax | Stefan Norrvall

Strategy often fails for a boring reason: nobody knows who can decide what, and everything slows to a crawl. We sit down with Stefan Norrvall, joining us from Australia, to unpack organisational coherence and why it beats the usual push for “alignment” when dealing with real-world complexity. If your organisation feels busy but stuck, this conversation gives you language for what is happening and a model for what to fix first.

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