Most organisations don’t fail at strategy because they lack ambition. They fail because they skip the one thing that has to come first: an honest read of reality. In this solo reflection, Mike Jones pulls together the strongest themes from the recent run of conversations and the client work that’s been sharpening my thinking, from strategic blind spots to the quiet damage caused by “organisational disassociation”, the gap between what leaders want to be true and what the environment will actually allow.

He talks about why orientation beats decision-making and how overreaching plans create cynicism among senior leaders and the people expected to execute strategy. From there, he moves into strategy communication and the trap of amplifying noise: big launches, polished narratives and endless repetition that still leave teams unclear about what to do. The alternative is intent-led strategic leadership, creating space for interpretation, context and back-briefing so people can make tough choices and adapt without being micromanaged.

Then he goes deeper: what is strategy for? If strategy is mainly governance for the board, or an external projection of virtue that marketing can polish, it becomes theatre rather than a useful discipline. He offers a different frame: strategy as the practice that enables organisations to pursue viability and advantage in a changing political and economic environment, tightening the loop between hypotheses and surprise as the world evolves.

Subscribe for more on organisational strategy, share this with someone wrestling with strategic planning, and leave a review if it helps. What is strategy for in your organisation, really?

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🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

📺 Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@StrategyMeetsReality

Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

The strategy looks clean on paper. Real strategy is sweaty, uncertain, and intensely human. Mike Jones sits down with Matt Finch, a strategist, foresight practitioner, negotiator and mediator, to get underneath the slide decks and into the lived experience of decision-making under pressure. We talk about why so many strategic plans stall at execution, and how the missing piece is often what people are feeling but cannot yet say out loud.

Matt brings a grounded view from scenario planning and high-stakes work: leaders are not just thinking machines, they are bodies in a room, picking up signals, anxiety, hope and resistance. We dig into gut feel versus spreadsheet logic, the temptation to post-rationalise decisions after the fact, and the growing risk of outsourcing judgement to AI in strategy. AI can generate polished strategy outputs, but it cannot carry accountability, context or commitment.

From military leadership to organisational culture, we explore practical ways to create clarity without building a rigid “Greek villa” strategy: clear intent, light constraints, and the back brief that forces real translation. We also tackle power and role boundaries, why psychological safety is never a magic switch, and how to read the room using attention tools like bracketing and horizontalising. The conversation lands on a sharp strategic question for any leader: would you like what your strategy makes you become?

If you care about leadership, strategic planning, foresight, and decision-making under uncertainty, listen through and share it with someone who’s carrying the weight of a hard call. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what’s one “unsaid” truth you think your organisation needs to name?

Connect with Matt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-finch/

Send Mike a Message

Enjoying the show?

Subscribe and leave a review on your favourite platform — it helps more people find the podcast.

🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

📺 Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@StrategyMeetsReality

Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/

Strategy can feel like a choice between two bad options: a rigid annual plan that gets ignored by February, or constant agility that mistakes motion for direction. We sit down with Joel Grundy, Head of Strategy at Q5, to get back to what strategy is meant to do: help leaders make a small number of tough choices in an uncertain world, without pretending we can “bridle” the market into certainty.

We dig into the lived reality of internal strategy work: building coalitions across investment, technology, people, and go-to-market teams, and staying close enough to leadership that strategy doesn’t become a factory of outputs. Along the way, we challenge the habits that flatten thinking, from purpose statements that drift away from what a business actually does, to pillars that become buckets for every initiative, to KPI lists that describe effects without naming the decisions that create them. Joel shares practical ways to improve strategic sensemaking, including war-gaming competitors and regulators, planning for shifting customer expectations, and keeping options open when you cannot know in advance what will work.

Real-world examples bring it to life: AI as a “firework inside the business”; Netflix and Disney making identity-shaping bets on IP; Apple’s scale and the difficulty of placing meaningful bets; and what defence and rail teach us about why market forces cannot always be the guiding mind. We close with a grounded view of the strategist’s role: not telling people what to do, but giving decision-makers what they need, sometimes as an analyst and sometimes as a counsellor, always with humility.

If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a colleague who owns big decisions, and leave a review with the strategic question you’re wrestling with right now.

Find Joel here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-grundy-378b278/

Send Mike a Message

Enjoying the show?

Subscribe and leave a review on your favourite platform — it helps more people find the podcast.

🔗 Full episodes, show notes, and resources: https://www.lbiconsulting.com/strategymeetsreality-podcast

📺 Watch on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/@StrategyMeetsReality

Connect with host Mike Jones → https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-h-jones/