Strategy Meets Reality Podcast

Against the Grain: Saul Betmead de Chasteigner on Strategy, Structure, and the Psychology of Change

• Mike Jones • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Success can be blinding. Strategy is often where complacency hides best.

In this episode of Strategy Meets Reality, Mike Jones speaks with Saul Betmead de Chasteigner—strategic advisor and transformation leader—about the hidden traps in organisations that seem to be “winning.” They unpack how strategy becomes theatre, why organisations resist feedback when things are going well, and how real transformation depends on psychological safety, clarity, and structural intent.

From autonomy and structure to feedback loops and values, this is a conversation about the inner work of organisational change—why it’s not just a structural fix, but a mindset shift.

🔍 In this episode:

  • Why strategy breaks when we confuse motion for progress
  • How “success syndrome” creates blind spots
  • Autonomy, structure, and the tension in between
  • The value of anti-complacency systems and lived feedback
  • Why real transformation challenges power—not people

🎧 Keywords: Strategy, organisational change, transformation, autonomy, structure, feedback, success syndrome, leadership, psychological safety, execution, decision-making

📘 Learn more about Saul’s work: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saul-betmead/

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

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🎧 Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Buzzsprout

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

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (00:00)
there's a thing called the success syndrome. which says that the reason why organisations to evolve over time is they're designed to exploit what they're currently good at, not exploit what they potentially could be good at in the future.

we are assumption brokers, we are constantly looking to make things that are implicit explicit, to see assumptions for what they are,

your reality could be completely changed by what people around you are You can see how things get stuck in certain places and certain systems.

challenge yourself before someone or something does it for you because they will.

Mike Jones (00:36)
Mmm,

Welcome back to the Strategy Meets Reality podcast. I'm delighted to have Saul join me. I've been trying to get this together for some while, but Sol's a very busy man, so I'm lucky to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (00:56)
That's very kind of you Mike. I think we're both very busy in the right way. In the right sort of way I think.

Mike Jones (01:01)
Yes, yeah,

It's so good to finally get you on and for our listeners, do you mind giving a bit of background about yourself and a bit of context about what you've been up to lately?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (01:11)
Yeah, so I started off in cognitive psychology. You'll see that's a kind of red thread through my whole life. I then spent most of my career up until the last 10 years in kind of senior positions in marketing and advertising brand world. I ended up as the CMO, Chief Marketing Officer of the UN of our food program, which is the really big one. A remarkable organization. Kind of feeds 140 million people a year. It's the backbone of the UN.

Mike Jones (01:17)
you

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (01:40)
Now I do a lot of stuff on my own. I've kind of got, I describe it as three hats. got a, I'm a consultant. So I work in strategy and innovation space, as well as, as I'm working for the center for democracy and peace as a kind of leadership facilitator for them. I'm a coach. So I do executive coaching with teams and, and individuals and life coach.

But I'm also an associate fellow at the business school in Oxford. So I do a lot of work in innovation and strategy and leadership. I think they're kind of those three houses. There's a thread that holds them all together, which is I describe myself as in the business of transformative thinking and ideas. how to think about, I think this is true across any sort of business, any sort of situation, whether it's an individual or an organization.

Mike Jones (02:19)
Hmm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (02:28)
How do you challenge your own assumptions? How do you think about what worked before and what will work in the future? mean, lots of stuff comes up when you look at that because humans do not like change. We do not do do not ambiguity, but life and the world necessitates that we deal with change and adapt to it. So for me, that's where I work is trying to work out how to help people and organizations evolve in a constructive way.

Mike Jones (02:40)
How you?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (02:54)
over time and what the systems and mindsets are. you'll see the psychology in that. I've got this idea that behind every business problem and opportunity lies a human one. And for me, just, the psychology of change is about the psychology of successful businesses and successful lives, I guess. ⁓ So that's the kind of world I operate in now.

Mike Jones (02:59)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Hmm.

And I get it. I often, when I speak to leaders and stuff, I said, the biggest challenge you've got, yes, there is complexity and it's very uncertain, but the biggest challenge you have is your ability to challenge your own assumptions and maybe even deconstruct your worldview for something new. And I was watching at the weekend because I love it because it really rich in this thinking. Is the film the big short? Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (03:27)
Hmm.

No, yeah.

Yeah.

Mike Jones (03:38)
And

that was all based on people's belief and assumption that everything is going to be stable, it is all true. But underlying, was these people that they saw differences, there's difference between what people thought to be true and what was actually happening in reality. Yeah, it's a fascinating film with people in it.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (03:53)
I mean, it's a really good example because there's a thing called the success syndrome. I think it's Lafley and Martin that came up with this idea, which says that the reason why organisations struggle to evolve over time is they're designed to exploit what they're currently good at, not exploit what they potentially could be good at in the future.

So there's basic assumptions behind the business model.

Mike Jones (04:15)
you go.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (04:18)
the operating system, the culture, that hold it together ⁓ in a really positive way, many ways, because everything is designed to do one thing, which is exploit what they're currently good at. But it means it's very difficult for them to look at and go, actually, are we still right? Are there places where we're wrong? Our assumptions are incorrect. But the system's not built to do that. it's, you you'll come across this as a classic, that balance.

Mike Jones (04:28)
Yes.

Hmm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (04:43)
is necessary but also incredibly difficult. Big Short is a perfect example of that. The ability to step outside and look back in go oof. Because it's just, it's a very evocative convincing because everybody else thinks the same way.

Mike Jones (04:45)
Yes.

Yes. I

remember there was a study, think the FBI done it, I believe, where they got all these people in the room. Everyone was an actor by one person and they put up an image and everyone in the room, I can't remember exactly what the image was, but say it was a bear, image, and everyone, the person who wasn't an actor was at the end.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (05:06)
Mm.

yeah.

Mike Jones (05:18)
and everyone had said that the image was a tiger and it got to the final end person. But even though that person was like, it's definitely not a tiger, it's a bear. But because of everyone else agreed to it, they conformed and were like, oh yeah, yeah, it's a tiger. And you see this with organizations that that sort of, that incestuous amplification, that closed loop of

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (05:38)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (05:45)
We've all been talking about the same thing. So we all see the same thing. And whenever times are a bit dark and a bit troubled, it's that ability to look ahead, look to the future about what we could do. That's the thing that seems to get sacrificed first.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (05:59)
There's a load of biases that sit behind what you're saying and that we we have consistency bias so we have great difficulty challenging our own conventional thinking, our own belief systems because we actively look for things that support what we have already and it means that we

Mike Jones (06:03)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (06:20)
we find it very difficult to see outside that. mean, for me, what's interesting, those social experiments, it's the 60s usually, think. There's one with an elevator where there's... No, no, actually that's not an experiment. I think that's like a candid camera, where somebody goes in and have a guy with a hat and everybody else is turning the other way and he ends up turning the other way. Because we're social animals, but the idea that...

Mike Jones (06:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (06:43)
that your reality could be completely changed by what people around you are thinking is fascinating to me. You can see how things get stuck in certain places and certain systems.

Mike Jones (06:55)
And that's

where you look at, you know, often challenges the orthodoxy around strategy. And I know we've had, you know, interesting back and forth around my view on, you know, strategy has been hijacked by marketing and know, strategy is not a it's just a branding exercise. And also about how organizations have structured themselves in such a way that

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (07:08)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (07:16)
the traditional view of stability and certainty is prevalent in our thinking in organisations.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (07:24)
Yeah, mean, I know we talked about this briefly last time, the idea about vision statements, mission statements. They're very evocative and they have their place. They can be very useful because they are, they can light the fire and they can light the way. But that doesn't mean you've looked under the bonnet properly and said, okay, I always use the...

an idea that Todd, a guy called Professor Todd Zenger at the Utah University uses, which is the idea of strategy is theory. That often when you have vision and mission statements, they haven't really tested what their theory is and why they think it's right. And when you start having kind of performative language around things, it can be really helpful later on when you're trying to frame things and position yourself, but

Mike Jones (07:50)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (08:10)
It often hides the truth about what actually you're trying to do. Because I emotionally responded to your comments on that previously. thought, actually, you know what? He's saying a very similar thing to me. You have to do the building blocks first and then you can get to the other stuff. That's fine. But you have to have done the work first and foremost.

Mike Jones (08:14)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (08:29)
And that's why I find that kind of theory thing really helpful because it's one of the things I know you talk about a lot which I really agree with is that the strategy action gap, know, the fact that most, what's the name of the podcast, isn't it? Most strategy does not survive contact with reality. The reason I find the theory idea compelling is because if everybody buys into the theory, there's no real...

Mike Jones (08:44)
Yeah, yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (08:56)
difference between the execution and the theory because you're saying well this is our theory we're testing it constantly we're constantly what is it? T-Cents shape C so constantly checking it how do is it still right and then people know what the theory is and they're testing it and if it's wrong they go well actually maybe there's something maybe this isn't right that's why I find that as a kind of compelling organizing idea it's the best one I found at least in my my simple brain it seems to just work

Mike Jones (09:00)
Yes. Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (09:22)
I don't know what's your really interesting what's your what's your model for how you think about how to bridge that gap in the simplest way how do you yeah how do you think and can I your systems thinker as well and how do you

Mike Jones (09:32)
in the simplest way.

So there's a structural and philosophical view of it. So the structural part is I use viable systems model because that puts the right structure so that people then, you've seen a lot what I talk about about enabling the organisation, the ability to act. And I suppose this gets confused in the whole flat structure, bottom up or bottom down.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (10:00)
Mm.

Mike Jones (10:04)
element, but this is the thing that structurally enables it. And the other part is what we call mission command. So mission command is very from one multi-coinedness for the user in general. And really what that is, about that coming back to your idea with theory, it's, call it an intent, but it's the same thing. This is my intent. This is what we hope to achieve. And then we enable people, parts of the organization to understand

what they do in it. And they've got then the freedom of actions. They have an intent, have constraints, and they then have the freedom to adapt in line with the intent and within the constraints.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (10:28)
Yeah.

It's really interesting because you've got this, I remember reading a paper on the Valve Corporation, is a gaming company, very successful one, and it played around with quite a long time, a completely flat structure where they had, I think, polyarchy, so if you could get...

Mike Jones (10:46)
Yes.

Holacacy.

Is it holacacy? right.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (11:02)
No, no, polyarchy, I think it was called. was like, you

have, if one person can get two other people to agree on a project, goes. So there's completely flat structure and then they've got social proofs. I mean, I think it works for a bit, but then there's, you run up to the problems of any sort of group dynamics where you have.

politics gets involved, have cliques, have no real direction, you have lot of overlap and people doing the same sort of thing because they're the same sort of people. mean, you've got this intuitively it's an empowering force, which is the same thing you're talking about, which is just people like autonomy, they like to feel like they're in control of things, or most people, some people don't, I think. But then also just how do you organise yourself enough so that there is direction? I know for me, I'm just thinking about this, I think there's the...

Mike Jones (11:36)
Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (11:46)
know, the Explore, Exploit thing. The Exploit thing I think is, think there's more need for control and operational excellence, know, operations when you're scaling. But in the Explore thing, I think the idea of having complete autonomy with a bit of guidance is really helpful. So they can play around with things.

but in the context of a culture that works and helps them organize themselves. If that makes sense.

Mike Jones (12:19)
Yeah, yeah, it does. I think the biggest challenge when we talk about this, and this is really useful for strategy and especially execution, is that we sort of get bogged down by this idea of silos. ⁓ More and more recently, I've gone against the idea of silos that they actually exist other than the construct, because when we have teams, I want those teams to be...

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (12:30)
Mm.

Mike Jones (12:40)
And we know that closed teams are more self-policing, you know, they're more supportive, but the challenges that they tend to, the more closed they are, tend to have more redundant information. So, you know, we want a bit of openness so that people can go and pollinate new ideas and bring them in. But the thing is, I don't particularly care if this team has much empathy for the other team or this team has in detailed knowledge of this team. Cause what you find when they come to like,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (12:50)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (13:08)
performance reviews or things like this where the leadership team to come together. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about detail within their team. It's just not relevant to what we're trying to do. That's more of a, that's your team issue. But where I think they get wrong is they then go to this point where they go, well, we need to have a let's work better together day. Where they just like, I'm gonna be really cynical. They just throw tennis balls around each other, high five each other and hope that.

you know, things go well after they've finished to go eight. Where really what I think they need to work on is more structural. So it's coordination. So how do we get these teams, these independent entities that have got their own outcomes that need to achieve? How do we now enable them to be autonomous as possible without messing each other over? So we'll have good coordination. And if you think about this at school level,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (13:58)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (13:59)
When we talk about coordination, that's the schedule. Because without the schedule, no one really thinks about, it'd be chaos because teachers would be fighting for rooms, kids would be lost everywhere. So the schedule is a coordination element that enables the teachers to, you know, work autonomously to meet their aims and have the children there. The other part is handover. So what's the handover between teams? Because there's some connection there.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (14:05)
you

Good.

Mike Jones (14:25)
So what is it that we need to hand over or pass over with that team? And do we have that laid out in a good protocol or a good process or something that happens seamlessly without friction? Otherwise that starts to bring this divide. And then people think that they're siloed and they don't care about them. And then the other part is a value exchange. It's like, what's the value exchange that happens within those teams or functions?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (14:47)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (14:51)
And it's all recursive, so it starts at teams and works its way up. But if you, you carry on, just saying, if you work, look at those three things, then I think that could help you start to understand this idea of flat structure.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (15:05)
Yeah, it's really interesting because a couple of things came up for me as you were talking. There's one is I do a lot of work on strategy days and there are, there's some learnings that I've, perhaps we can go into this in detail, but there's some learnings I've got, I've had over the years about what works and what doesn't work. One of them is the team building thing, actually just for team building, for team building sake. Really what it's about is a fundamental, and I think this is one of the key things about any sort of leadership, it's connection.

Mike Jones (15:33)
Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (15:33)
the

ability to see the other, feel seen, to feel heard. That's what people are looking for. When they talk about team building and teams, they need to feel connected to the other person where they can have honest conversations about stuff that matters to them at work, but also beyond work. But also the idea of value of exchange is very interesting because I can't, who came up with this? The idea about organizations need to have a knowledge brokering cycle. Most organizations,

The argument is this is that they are great coming up with ideas, but they're very very bad at keeping them and then sharing them over time So the idea that you can have exchange platform for people because I've had a good idea here, but it might not be relevant for this situation But it might be relevant for another situation. So it's like idea idea and Capability mining so you can take ideas one place and put them in another I think that's part of what you're talking about with actually how do you get teams to?

to be able to be autonomous and work on their own, also share enough. What is enough in those contexts where you don't have overwhelm? ⁓

Mike Jones (16:25)
Yes.

Yes. And,

and, and overly restrictive because that's where there's always a balance to be played between control and autonomy. you, you, need enough control, because well, we call it coherence. So enough coherence that, ⁓ you know, that, that clear intent, that, you know, enough that bounce the organization together. So as they, if anything happens or things change,

They're not gonna fall apart. But we don't wanna be too autonomous because we're too autonomous. All that's gonna happen is those teams are just going to fundamentally mess each other over. You're gonna have real big issues. I think, was it Ford I think had this problem? Because they had like multiple teams that then started competing against each other in different models, which you don't want. And then you don't want it to controlled where they're so restrictive that they can't act.

and become so stiff that as soon as change happens, they just chatter.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (17:25)
I also think there's this really interesting theme here which is I think there are different kinds of people. I think there are some people who really like autonomy, some people who really like the ability to be creative in the way they work and what they're doing. But also there's a lot of people who quite like rules and guidelines and they don't really want that much freedom. That sounds slightly ridiculous.

Mike Jones (17:44)
Hell yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (17:46)
I think there are different kinds of people and they operate in different ways in different organisations. I don't know how that would work within that team structure you're talking about.

Mike Jones (17:51)
Whoa.

I think a lot of it's naturally where they're inclined to what industry or work they go into. Because if you think about it, what we're talking about is constraints. And not all constraints are bad. So some constraints are good, the governing constraints, like for instance, we've got roundabouts and road signs and that's a good governing constraint that brings order into what could be a chaotic system. I've driven, you

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (17:58)
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm.

Hmm.

Mike Jones (18:19)
I've driven a board in a lot of countries that have a lack of road signs and things, there's absolute chaos. And that's the same, you'll find that people that really like order and probably a bit more restrictive constraints are probably more inclined to stuff like safety industries, accountancy, where it's very kind of black and white, where you find that people that want a bit more

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (18:37)
Mm. Mm-mm.

Mike Jones (18:44)
will go to different industries that are less defined, and probably rightly so, like more innovative places.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (18:52)
I wonder whether I'm being a bit binary as well, is I suspect like all things it's never black and white. think there's probably context dependent. mean, if I speak for myself, I think there's certain places I like more rules and there are certain places I like those rules to be removed and just have freedom of thought. But the idea of, and this comes from the creative industries as well, discipline equals freedom.

Mike Jones (19:04)
and

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (19:13)
There is nothing so empowering as a tight brief. you kind of know your idea of constraints. You know what constraints you're working within. Therefore you're probably going to be more creative in that context because you have to be. Necessity is the mother of invention. Knowing what those constraints are is critical, I think. I think you're right.

Mike Jones (19:25)
Yes.

Yeah, and I think that's where this whole, you know, Neo sort of thinking around flat organizations is not new. know, Safa Behr in that talked about this a long time ago, even if you look at Sun Tzu stuff, he was talking similar to this type of idea, you know, 300 years before Christ. But there seems to be this incessant need to create

what's it called, nice language around our flat organization, bossless organizations. And then, but they don't understand the right level of structure and what needs to happen to enable that. So it goes too far. then those, and you're right about that, just enough clarity is crucial because if I've got clarity, I've got focus, if I've got focus, I can make sense of my choices and adapt, be more creative and have a greater initiative.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (19:57)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Mike Jones (20:19)
but there then seems to be, and then maybe I've just been cynical on this, but seems to be this thing where they go, well, no, I don't want to give too much direction because I don't want a micromanager. I don't want to put too much structure in because I don't want to, you know, I want to have a flat organization. And they then wonder why it starts to drift from an ordered system to a chaotic system pretty quickly.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (20:24)
you

I'm just I'm just wondering whether there's a okay so using the model I was talking about let's say you've got you've got theory at center which is your intent and then you go around it you've got culture as an operating system I'm wondering whether let me think about what I mean by that so that you know you've got a load of behaviors you've got load of principles slash values around how you're organizing yourself

Mike Jones (20:54)
Mmm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (21:06)
to deliver an experiment around those theories. I'm wondering whether...

I'm thinking it out loud now. mean, it's interesting, it's the idea that when you have cultural boundaries, you kind of know what you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to do it. It's a bit similar to your example you were giving before about seeing a tiger when you're looking at a cat or looking at a lion. The culture can be very powerful, organizing principle that is flexible in nature. Does that work? I think it might work.

Mike Jones (21:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Well,

this is where, you know, I'm more and more going down my thinking around, you know, is there a, is there a culture? And there is, obviously there is, is the thing we come in, but is there like, you know, people talk about, we've got an innovative culture, we've got a this culture, where I'm thinking, is it more just about going back to what people need and want, which is autonomy? Is it just about a decentralized?

where values then come really important because at the moment, you know, I could be quite cynical about values. I am very cynical about values. Let's be honest. But the, and I think they are important because really when you think what is values, values are what we deem to be important. And on a personal level, our own values shape how we make decisions. They are important to filter. So we use it almost like a,

⁓ an option select consciously or unconsciously to make decisions. Where if you have a decentralized culture, those values come really important because those people at the very front line are making the day-to-day decisions. Are they actually using what we deem to be important as an organization as a filter for those decisions? Or are they just this exterior noise that appears on my screen saver every so often?

but actually doesn't form a thinking.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (22:56)
I have a similar response to values. The reason I struggle with them is because most people, most of the time, are going to agree to most values. Honesty. Nobody's going to disagree with that. Integrity. Nobody's going to disagree with that. Innovative. Who doesn't want to be innovative? I prefer principles.

Mike Jones (23:05)
Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (23:15)
The reason I prefer principles is they are guardrails, they're red lines. When the shit hits the fan, you know what you do and do not do. And there's a trade-off, I think it's, I can't remember who said this, but the principle is only a principle when it costs you something. So you know that there are lines that you cannot cross. Often that gets, you get into...

Mike Jones (23:15)
Yeah, I agree.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (23:38)
how you're doing things, so there might be an ethical or social climate dimension to that. But you know, if you give people principles, they either agree with them or they don't agree with them, but they know what to do with them. Whereas values are very soft. again, I think it goes to the same pot as the vision mission thing. They have their place, but right at the center of things, principles are much more, much clearer because they're deterministic. You just know what to do with them, and you know if you cross the line.

Mike Jones (23:50)
and

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (24:03)
But I think this is the same in life. kind of know what your principles are and you know when you're not comfortable with your principles. They're just more awkward to talk about because they're very definitive.

Mike Jones (24:09)
Yes.

Yeah.

And I agree. there's a client I worked with and they got a really interesting principle. Well, they call it a value, but it is more of a principle to them. It's called, Yes, we can. And it's not like your traditional sort of value around, you know, honesty or innovative, but it's more of a principle to get people to think about what they're doing because they were traditionally quite a dismissive.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (24:36)
Mmm. Mmm.

Mike Jones (24:37)
organization and when you're about challenging

that, that tension between today and tomorrow, that principle helped them to think about actually, before they do anything, the first acceptance is yes, we can, then we'll think about what the options are and how we do it. But I think it was just a, it was quite interesting principle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, and that's the challenge, they could look at and go, actually, it can't work.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (24:54)
Hold on, hold on, no we can't.

Mike Jones (25:01)
But at least I suppose it comes back to your very first point around that cognitive bit around homostasis and are we willing to, what do you call it? It wasn't change of worldview, was challenge your assumptions. I think that's what that would help you do, help them challenge their assumptions first.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (25:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, ⁓

fascinating about that is I've got this other kind of idea that I use which is challenge yourself before someone or something does it for you because they will.

Mike Jones (25:27)
Mmm,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (25:27)
What's interesting about the yes we can idea is it starts off on the premise that look there's things that we perhaps haven't thought of there's belief systems that have held us back what happens if we push it what would have to be true?

Mike Jones (25:27)
yeah, yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (25:43)
for that to work. And for me, that gets us into the innovation space, is, know, belief systems, strategic blind spots are usually the barriers to interesting stuff. And what's nice about that line is you say, actually, what would need to be true for that to be right, rather than, that won't work. It's very easy. We as...

Mike Jones (25:48)
Yeah.

Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (26:06)
The psychology of humans is we find it much easier to see negative things than positive things. So just that intent is interesting to me because it gets around the challenges of success syndrome that we talked about before, but belief biases just forces you out of your comfort zone. Also, it's nice. That's why Obama used it, I think. It's about hope, it's about belief, it's about...

Mike Jones (26:27)
Yeah, yeah,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (26:30)
positivity. can see why that would be... I mean, that's an interesting tension between what we both agreed on before, which is like the vision mission thing and the... what did you call it? The hijacking of strategy by marketing, which I think is a fair point. That's an example of where a simple idea can...

Mike Jones (26:42)
Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (26:50)
can embody a philosophy that really is very helpful in the day-to-day existence of the company.

Mike Jones (26:55)
Yeah. And it

goes back to your point about the theory. This is a theory and I'm very much believing that, that this is our intent and this is where, this is what we think will happen and we're gonna look for these things. But then it's the people that are on the ground that are enacting this stuff and it gives them enough to be adaptable from.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (27:01)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (27:21)
but you've got to those feedback loops for that theory. Otherwise, that theory just remains just a vision statement.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (27:28)
No, totally. There's a Warren Buffett quote. think he says that the biggest danger of companies is complacency. So I do a lot of work with organisations on looking at their strategy, which is anti-complacency weapons. So you get people to... You sit and go, OK, what's the elephant in the room? What's our elephant in the room? And you don't just ask the leaders, you ask the employees.

Mike Jones (27:40)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (27:54)
the at the front line and they're often anonymized and they'll give you very interesting answers because they might say actually well competitor A has started doing this or this technology is challenging the assumptions of our fundamental business model we really thought about it have we? or things like where are we lying to ourselves? or if we were to start our company today what would we do differently? so that's a softer way of getting you

Mike Jones (28:13)
Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (28:19)
getting outside, stepping in and outside the business. Often the people at the front line know more, even though they may not be a senior, they know more about the context in which companies playing, organisations playing than the people in the leadership.

Mike Jones (28:22)
Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (28:35)
So the idea that anti-complacency systems should be part of the DNA of the company, I think is an interesting one.

Mike Jones (28:43)
Yeah, and this is where we talk about that bottom up approach to strategy. And I think, you know, I had Julia Haltz on, and we talked about the open approach to strategy, which was really useful in that thing. But then people could take that too far and it becomes almost consensus. And it's too much noise to really make sense of what's going on. Where, and it's really not a, and I keep saying to you, it's not a thing that you do.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (28:53)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (29:05)
Right, we've got a new strategy. Let's, let's suddenly get loads of input. It's a consistent pulse that leaders need to, you know, step down several layers of the organization and they need to go challenge their own assumptions with the people at the frontline. So that when they, yeah. And when they go up, that means that their, their, their view of the world is more congruent with reality rather than what they, the stories they've told themselves in their little closed loop. But it comes back to your, I really like your idea about

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (29:19)
Yeah, I'm totally, yeah, totally.

Mike Jones (29:32)
you know, what's the elephant in the room? You know, what would you do differently? All that good stuff. Because when I do strategy with clients, straight away they want to go into this aspiration straight away. the aspiration is this one. No, no, no, no, Let's do aspiration last. Let's understand first. Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (29:48)
⁓ yeah, yeah,

yeah. I don't know if we talked about this before. I've got a system that I built from, again, Todd Zenger's work, which is, I call it the five sites. And it's exactly what you're talking about. So when I kind of run strategy days, or look at kind of company theories, I say, look, the first size hindsight, so you look back and you go, okay, what do we do well? What do we not do well? What do we regret doing?

Mike Jones (30:03)
you

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (30:13)
What are we most proud of? Kind of open, kind of emotional questions, but also, you know, what are the assumptions of the category? you go company, category, customer, you just ask lots of questions in hindsight. That's what you're pushing against. And then you have foresight, which is what do we believe the future looks like? That's the evolution of technology. It's the evolution of culture, of the customer needs. And then you've got insight, which is actually, where are we now? What capabilities do we have? What culture do we have?

Mike Jones (30:30)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (30:40)
And is there a gap between those two things? And he calls it a kind new theory of value. Another guy called Professor Teppo Fellin, was one of my professors at Oxford when I retrained the idea of, here's the old theory of value, what's the new theory of value? And then outside, which is, how do we grow? What do we need to develop? And then...

Mike Jones (30:53)
Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (31:05)
oversight which is how do you organize yourself in a way that is constructive which is allows empowerment but also without some constraints so that you know what you're doing. For me those, did I do all five? think I've got all five. Those things are a really good way of pressure testing, it's part of the assumptions but it's a good way of making people go,

Mike Jones (31:24)
I think so.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (31:31)
that's what worked before, is it still right? That's what we believe the future looks like, is that interesting? You know the idea of yes we can is a framework to think about interesting things that might be possible. I find those sites helpful because it forces your hand where you go okay, you have to look back in a constructive way first. So you go okay what are the foundation stones of our business and our thinking?

Mike Jones (31:55)
And it's good because it really gets you away from this just purely internal view, where it's just all internal. Internal is really important because obviously your organization ability will in turn inform but also constrain your strategy because there's no point reaching for a strategy that you've got no chance of executing. So you need to think what's possible. What do we need to do first?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (32:01)
Mm.

Mike Jones (32:20)
but also the external view around. And this is my thinking for the military. I've never been, we've never done strategy without considering the external environment, because we have to. And that's what really surprises me when I think about modern strategy. think there's not one point here where you've actually, apart from maybe the customer, you've considered anything external.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (32:31)
Mm. Mm.

Yeah, mean, there's two things coming up from me as you're talking is the idea that I see this quite a lot in companies I work with that there's often the strategy work is a confirmation work, which is they're just looking to confirm what they really what they already believe. And there isn't a isn't a there isn't a intent to say, you know what? Maybe if this isn't about confirmation, it's about exploration, and then we might find something that is better.

Mike Jones (32:54)
⁓ Yes, yeah, yeah

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (33:05)
Again, I would use my theory here is that we may find a better theory or we adjust the theory but often companies and again, it's that success syndrome. They're looking to confirm what they already know not not to challenge that thinking because it's uncomfortable and it means they're probably gonna have to change quite a lot and We know you you I mean the psychology of change is fascinating perhaps we can dig into that but you know, just just we generally don't Change and we don't like discomfort

Mike Jones (33:05)
Yes.

Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (33:31)
and I think that's at an organisational level as well. we tend to, there's a tendency to confirm what we currently, I don't whether you find this in your work, but to confirm what you currently think, confirm what the current strategy is versus actually maybe the context has changed and we haven't.

Mike Jones (33:34)
Yes.

Yeah, ⁓

This is, this is where my sort of viewer strategy isn't, I don't think it's really, sexy enough or appealing to a lot of people because it's not, I don't see it as grand aspiration. ⁓ I look at it as a pursuit of viability. because that's what it is. It's just ongoing pursuit of viability. isn't a 10 year plan. isn't a, ⁓ you know, ⁓ beyond that it's, it really comes back to yes, we'll look.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (34:01)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (34:15)
for the future, course we will. But that's got to inform today's decisions around, you know, what affordances do we have? You know, what are our adjacent possibilities that we could have? It's all about the action, but it's always in the pursuit of viability. Because if we don't have viability, then, you know, having, and that viability encompasses, you know, our products, our services, our stuff, but it's, that's like the,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (34:34)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (34:41)
the lifeblood, the connection to the external environment that keeps us viable. And if we don't look to see how we can adapt it, prove it or prove our fit with the external environment, we'll cease to be viable.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (34:51)
you

Pursuit of viability.

I mean it's an interesting question that sits behind that which is at what point, how do know what viable means? And then at what point does it become unviable? if you've got buffers, you've got organisational buffers that protect you from understanding or blind spots. Actually you know what, this isn't viable any longer but fuck it, we've been doing this for, we've been doing it this way for last five years that just don't tell anybody because my

Mike Jones (35:02)
Mmm.

Hehehehe

Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (35:19)
I'm not going to get judged on it in my performance review. For me what's interesting is what's coming up is the idea about how do you take people with you and the pursuit of viability is because it feels quite as you were talking as it feels like it's not sexy but it's real. How do you take that and say okay how do you make that pursuit of viability to something that has emotional traction with the most

Mike Jones (35:26)
Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (35:40)
people inside and outside the company. And this is where you get into the soft stuff of marketing. Actually that's where marketing's place is, is, I think, it has lots of benefits in lots of ways, perhaps we can dig into that. But it's very good at framing things so that the pursuit of viability actually becomes quite a powerful and engaging thing rather than a functional thing, if that makes sense.

Mike Jones (35:59)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I agree there is, there is things that, ⁓ know, branding and marketing are really useful for, but you know, it's a, again, it comes after, like you said, early got to do the work first. ⁓ but this thing would change and it'd be great to explore that with the idea because it makes it really hard, you know, at an organizational level for people to want to change. Because one, a bit like we talking earlier, the, when things get tough.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (36:13)
Hmm.

Mike Jones (36:29)
we remove the thing that enables us to change, i.e. we go very efficient as in lean. So we move all spare resources through hand to change. The people that we need to change are still the same ones that are trying to exploit what we have today. And they're always going to go through what they are today because that's what their performance managed for. And then a lot of the time, there's this idea that autonomy,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (36:46)
Mmm.

Mike Jones (36:56)
So people don't resist change. was just change being done to them. And I think that when people are trying to do change, it's knee jerk a lot of the time because they've lost that foresight. And two, they define how too many level or cursive levels down. So people haven't got the freedom of action to adapt. Okay. I understand what, what, what you want me to do. I can adapt to that within the constraints I've got. It's very much.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (37:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Jones (37:20)
no you have to do this this way and the people there going well that can't happen it's just like you're disconnected

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (37:25)
I got this,

no, no, it's really interesting. there's a couple of things that if you look at the psychology of change, there's a number of reasons why it's so hard for us. But the first one is, and again, this is not organizational change, but this is how people feel like they can and cannot change. There's a study, I think it's Ed Gilbert, Dan Gilbert.

He wrote a really interesting paper called The End of History, which he looked at as a large, I think it was a large longitudinal model that said, they looked at, got people to look at their lives backwards and say, look, have I changed? Obviously I've changed. I had chapters in my life I've evolved and stuff like that. So it's just natural that they would change. When you ask them to look forward, they say, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm quite stable.

I can't really see if I'm self-changing. People and I think organizations see the natural organizational change over time. But looking forward, it's much harder for them to that. But there's also another study that emphasizes quite how hard people find it to enter ambiguous, uncertain situations. There was a, can't remember which group did this, but 2016 they they measured

responses to certain stressful situations with the number of numbers of people and they tested lots of things but the one in particular I remember which was the the likelihood of getting an electric shock like a kind of electric shock you would not want to get and they basically they looked at physiological responses so I think pupil dilation, skin conductivity, heart rate

Mike Jones (38:52)
Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (39:02)
And they also had a response, somebody's written response, and they gave them two options and they said, okay, you're gonna, there's a hundred percent chance of an electric shock versus a 50 % chance of an electric shock. And people were significantly more stressed about a 50 % chance of electric shock than a hundred percent chance of electric shock. So you think about that for a second. So they'd much rather, they feel much more comfortable knowing they're gonna have this electric shock than the...

Mike Jones (39:23)
Alright.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (39:29)
they're not knowing they're going to have an electric shock. mean, for me that says, I don't think there's an agreed reason, there's an agreed reason why this has happened. For me, I think it's the sense of control that you know what's going on in situation. But that certainty, the other thing, as you were talking, I've got this, I wrote a paper on this at Oxford and it's about organisational change and how you get people to evolve over time.

And I use the analogy of family systems therapy. I don't know whether you've heard of it. It's the idea that we are most therapeutic systems. It's about an onion where you slowly peel away the layers until you get to yourself. This theory is about, it says that we're actually more like a garlic and we have distinct personalities, four or five of them.

that make up us and they play different roles in our lives. What's interesting to me is it's...

Because they're young, they have maladaptive practices that are no longer relevant to the context they're in at the moment. So the whole therapeutic system is about getting them to grow up and into something else. So taking those, getting them to be aware of themselves, aware of their context, and then changing themselves to be adapted to a current situation. For me, that is very interesting way of thinking about organizational change and the kind of stuff that you were talking about just before.

How do you get people to go, okay, this isn't right, I need to adapt. I need to shift into something else. And for me, I find therapeutic systems, which is probably the opposite of the military, but those therapeutic systems as a way of getting an organization to grow up and into something else, for me is a fascinating area of research, which I'm looking into at the moment. How do you think about those things?

Mike Jones (40:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

think there's a point there in a sense of what we see traditional practice that can overwhelm that because when you're in that therapeutic thing and that family behavioural, I forgot what called it, yeah, yeah, that was I think one of the first introductions to sort of system thinking into therapy. But there's an interesting thing when you think about bad practice and stuff like transformations.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (41:22)
Family Systems Therapy,

Mike Jones (41:33)
So when you've got those people in that family and suddenly we're going, right, we're doing this massive transformation and we then cover it in this buzzword, like, it's probably worst buzzwords as this, but digital transformation. It comes overwhelming and it increases the uncertainty because I don't actually know what you mean. And the interpretations, because we're all individual, we perceive things differently due...

our emotions, stresses, personality, and obviously our predisposition for behavior in such as like, I like more control, I like more autonomy, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we make it more uncertain than what we need to, rather than trying to acknowledge actually, what is it that we're actually changing? What are we going from and what we're going to? So sort of like a chance making, we're going from this to this.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (42:08)
Mm.

Mike Jones (42:22)
and also recognizing what's not changing. What element of you or what element of the organization is actually under all these plausible scenarios that we've looked at, they're going to be consistent over all those scenarios. So we need to embolden that. And what it does then, it makes it a lot less uncertain because I can put my focus and my resources, limited resources I have, into things that are going to change.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (42:28)
Mm.

Mike Jones (42:46)
rather than trying to stretch my thinking and resources, be it emotion, be it actual physical resources, over several things, not knowing what's going to change and what's not.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (42:55)
I think there's really interesting theme in what you're talking about is that we have a tendency to over emphasize the change and not what stays the same. And at a really basic level, most people in most organizations want to know, get we're transforming, but what does that mean for me? Why should I care? But also really importantly, how does that change in that ambition align with my ambitions and what I want?

Mike Jones (43:20)
Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (43:20)
And often

that's I think that's missed in those transformation, the transformation project in that it doesn't contextualize it in a way that's really important for the individual is concerned. It feels like it's often it's top down because it has to be top down because you have to, the CEO or the president, whoever it is, has to, has to.

out why that's important but it's also very important bottom up where they actually feel like they have a place in that change they can see themselves and the change they can see themselves in the change and how they move through it and into it that's really difficult to do though I think

Mike Jones (43:56)
And I

think that comes back to the autonomy piece around what's negotiable, what's not negotiable in the sense that I think this is what the problem is. And they go down two layers, they define it too low down. And Von Malker always said, the higher you are, the shorter your order. And what he's talking about is you've got clear intent. This is what we're doing. These are the constraints that we've got to put in place. And hopefully that, and then for the...

freedom of action on how to deliver that change, that can be part of that. And that's where they can overly sense make and see what that possibility is and adapt. And you get speed of execution, but also you get more investment into the change itself because they feel like they're part of it. They're constructing themselves. I mean, that's really crucial. And then also,

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (44:24)
Yeah.

Mike Jones (44:43)
you know, when we're doing change, it's the same at organisational level or human level. When we look at the change or we're looking at something that we didn't think was possible, we want to make sure that we've got the belief and the resources and the time on which to do that change. Otherwise, if we don't believe that we have that, then it becomes very difficult to enact that change. It's almost like this is really probably not great analogy of this, but imagine like, you know, I'm

I'm gonna go do a London marathon, but the furthest I've run before is to the fridge to get a Mars bar. That's quite an overwhelming thing. And it seems really uncertain. You don't know where to start. then if you don't, but then if you couple that with, do you know what? I've got a coach that's gonna train me how to do the run. I've now allocated time in which I got that time to train.

And that's not going to be impeded by a lot of unnecessary noise or today's stuff. And I've got the right trainers and the right equipment. So I feel like I'm ready. I've got the resources to do it. I'm not saying it's going to be perfect, but it gives them at least the scaffolding, the bit of the belief, the fact that they can go along that and try and adapt and think about the change. And maybe they go, well, actually,

The full marathon was a bit of a stretch in the time I said, but half a marathon and then we can work with that.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (46:06)
I mean for me it's interesting because you've got...

You've got this idea about this potential possible things I could do. And I think this is at an organizational level too, but there's also, it often becomes just how do you think about what's the something that looks potentially incredibly amazing, but it's almost impossible. It's almost impossible. need, you mentioned this word, language approach is adjacent possibles. And I always think of things as like they're bridges between where you are now and what.

Mike Jones (46:28)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (46:34)
potentially you could be. And those adjacent possibles are capability bridges, they can be network bridges, the things that allow you to get closer to something that feels like it's out of reach. It's similar to your marathon idea, you break something down but then you have things that feel like they're easy to get hold of.

and breaking them down into interesting potential things by adjacent possibilities. I think it's quite clever.

Mike Jones (47:02)
Hmm.

We need that. No, no, think it's, it's co-created. And that's what I like these conversations to really challenge, and have the space for conversation and to, to things we're not, we're not, we're not here to, to, nail it and, ⁓ to get there, but just think about a lot of it's this baggage that we carry. And I think there is a lot of baggage that organizations carry and humans.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (47:03)
It's not my idea, it's yours. ⁓

Hmm.

Mike Jones (47:29)
carry about what we should do rather than what we could do.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (47:33)
See, know, totally, and this is why the hindsight thing I find really interesting and useful because it forces you to go, look, are we right? What was working before? Is it still right? The emotional baggage, the functional baggage, the legacy systems and thinking is often the biggest problem companies have. Not.

Mike Jones (47:53)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (47:54)
competition moving in a particular way or new technology. I've got this idea that technology is only as disruptive as the thinking and beliefs around it. If you open the page of any sort of magazine or newspaper, AI is going to be dominant. How is it challenging assumptions first and foremost and what thinking systems are built around it? That's what really succeeds. But that's the really hard bit.

Mike Jones (48:09)
Yeah, yeah,

Yeah. Yeah. I think we, we, we build this and John Boyd talked about this. We build this internal inertia that we, end up spending all our time feeding this machine, internal machine without actually, you know, bringing in some, critical thinking to actually, you know, what are we doing? How is this helping?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (48:18)
That's the really hard bit, is seeing what others can't see.

Hmm.

Mike Jones (48:40)
I'm really getting back to it. I was with the organisation only this week. This week, no, it's Tuesday. It wasn't this week. It was last week. I'm losing my mind. Yeah. Yeah. And, and really it was, was quite surprising to really challenge them around what was their primary activities. I, what, was the things, the value that they have to the external environment that is the reason why they exist.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (48:48)
I don't know how that feels.

Hmm.

Mike Jones (49:07)
⁓ And I'm not talking about some existential purpose thing, but this is really getting back to the thing why, and it was, was interesting just across this executive team. There was so much disagreement.

And I was like, if you can't agree, you can't be clear of fundamentally what that is, then no wonder the rest of the internal is just noise.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (49:27)
You know it's really interesting, mean just we circle back to the beginning which is the idea about looking under the bonnet and working out what a what an organisation is for and why it's different.

even within really tight teams, it's very unclear what they think their strategy is and it's often very unclear how they then explain that to the world. And that's why I think having a, again I like the idea of theory, but having a theory that is formalized so people can go, yes I agree with that or I don't agree with that and that's right and that's wrong, is really, really helpful. But I mean most companies

Even within most companies they won't have a consistent view of what they think strategy is and they certainly won't have a consistent view of what they think their strategy is. That's really really I mean that's enormously problematic because you end up you end up in the kind of conversations you're talking about which is actually they can't agree on what makes them special and why they should keep doing that versus doing something else. That's pretty fundamental.

Mike Jones (50:09)
No.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of things, they focus on the structural complexity you have, but I think they neglect the perceptual complexity. Actually, the fact that, you know, it is a collective system, we are a collective system, but we're individuals within a collective system, which is a great strength because we have that diversity of thought if we allow it. And we can see more of what we don't know.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (50:37)
Mm.

Mike Jones (50:51)
than what we think we did know. But the challenge of it is, it's because we're individuals in the collective system, we have this inherent perceptual complexity that is hard because if we had a big sign behind us that was saying what we thought, it would be a lot easier, but we don't because it's all implicit here and it's how do we get it explicit so that we can then see the difference.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (50:53)
Mm.

Hmm.

When I do think, I mean the idea about what remains unsaid, are there hidden truths about this stuff that... I ⁓ love the idea about what are people actually thinking versus what they're performing, how they're presenting themselves. One system I use in leadership work is Hegel's dialectic, which you'll be familiar with, which is...

Mike Jones (51:27)
Mm.

Yeah, yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (51:38)
thesis, antithesis, synthesis, and you go, you know, what do we think? What's the argument against that? So it's opinion, but also fact, and then how do we synthesize it? The way I like to think about it is, I got this from the Archbishop of Auckland. He says, the thesis is what is true, but then the antithesis is what is also true. And it forces you to go, actually, I mean, this is very interesting in any sort political discussion because...

Mike Jones (51:57)
Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (52:03)
different sides of the political debate will just think that they're right and that their truth is the only truth. Actually, no, that's not true. But it comes when you get into those kind of management conversations, okay, that this is true, but what happens if something else is true? Maybe your capabilities aren't as interesting as you think they are, or maybe a new competitor has come on that undermines what the customer believes to be interesting about your work. I mean, those systems are...

Mike Jones (52:06)
Yeah.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (52:27)
They're kind fundamental thinking systems that organisations need to have within them. It's also the argument for consultants. know consultants get a lot of shit, is, a lot of it is probably justified. But the reason for consultants being useful is they are able to help companies step in and outside of themselves. perspectives are very difficult to come by, especially in systems that are, what did you, internal inertia. I really liked the idea of.

Mike Jones (52:37)
Haha, yeah.

Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (52:52)
Just their compounding forces, they hold things together rather than opening things up. They close before they open. ⁓

Mike Jones (52:59)
Yeah, I think that's

true. I very much agree. Well, I'm a consultant, so I'm going to agree with you at that point. But you're right. But this is a challenge I have for a lot of organizations. I've had this recently with people going, oh, yeah, we've gone for this person because they've got experience of this industry. And I get it. But then I always challenge that because

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (53:06)
This is so nice,

Mm. Mm-mm-mm.

Mike Jones (53:24)
I think there's a

lot then what you talked about earlier, there's a lot of biases that you're bringing to that. And when we're trying to get an organisation to challenge their thinking, do we really want someone that has deep experience in that?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (53:34)
I, I mean this is a whole other very, very interesting and important theme is that the idea that people, mean you get this in the job market, I do a lot of work with MBAs at business school in Oxford and often the criteria for employing people is they've got experience in the category or discipline. And my argument is yes, that's helpful at one level, but it's also very unhelpful because they don't know what

People who don't come from that, world that you're employing, they don't know what they're supposed to see. They don't have those fundamental biases and assumptions. That means they can go, I don't understand, why are we doing that? But they'll ask questions that are really helpful. They're awkward, but they're useful questions. And it's the argument for diversity.

Mike Jones (54:04)
Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (54:20)
is that you go, you get a load of, what you don't want is a load of people who think in a similar way. that, they could come from very different backgrounds, but if they're thinking in the same way, that's hugely problematic from, from an, from a driving, a assumption challenging possibility embracing, thinking system and strategy that ends up, you end up with. I mean, that's, that's why I found the whole DEI thing just fascinating as well.

That is a really, really bad idea. You politicised what is essentially the innovation engine of most organisations, and I include governments. Be very careful, the diversity of thought is unbelievably important in any sort of organisation.

Mike Jones (54:49)
Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. We always talk about the darkness principle, know, due to the fact that, yeah, it's because it's so, because the world is so complex, it's impossible to, there's always going to be an element of darkness that we just don't know. But if we have that cognitive diversity, we're hopefully going to see a bit more. There's always going to be darkness, but at least it sees different perspectives that enables us to see a bit more of the whole.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (55:04)
No, darkness principle.

Mike Jones (55:25)
than we could have possibly done if we were on our own or we had people that just viewed the world the way that we do.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (55:32)
I always describe my life like a dark room with a torch. You know what, my French is like this. I take that and just build on what you're saying, which actually means you've got more torches in a dark room. You've got more torches, you've got more different ways of seeing different parts of the room. Okay, I've got a much better understanding of what's going on. As you can see, I like metaphors and analogies. That's how I orientate my world. I like dark principles.

Mike Jones (55:37)
Yeah, yeah.

Yes. Yeah. ⁓

No, no, no, it's Yeah.

Same here. a of, yeah, there's a lot of sister thinking is bases a lot my, my thinking, my approach to problems.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (56:05)
Cool.

Mike Jones (56:06)
But

this has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (56:09)
Yeah,

I feel like we've gotten to... This is interesting about what people like. I slipped into a different gear and I felt like the last part, like last 30 minutes was... You didn't just click into a slightly different gear. I can't explain what that means by the way, but you suddenly start making lateral jumps that you wouldn't have done before. But it takes me... I don't know about you, it takes me a while to get into that space. I can't do it straight off the bat.

Mike Jones (56:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and any people that are willing to entertain and go into that. And I think that's a new and fantastic for that because you're, and this is why I love this podcast. People are open for a discussion. It's not, there's not set questions. It's, it's, it's to explore and test and, you know, challenge my own assumptions about things. And I think you've done that really well today. Thank you.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (56:36)
you

Mm.

Hmm. Well, I hope

so. I'm not sure about the beginning. I'm sure the beginning I was like... ⁓ no, it's funny. You know, I was looking after Maya last night and I know when I haven't slept very well, my memory goes. So the few times I know the people I've talked to, was like, God, for life, remember who said that? ⁓

Mike Jones (56:58)
No, no, you're not.

Hahaha

Yeah, I'm always

like that. That's why I make a terrible academic because I'll never remember my ⁓ academic. I think that's the way forward, mate.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (57:21)
for me. a, I'm a pracademic, see, I, I, a pracademic. That's not me who came

up with that, but it's very true. ⁓ well, thanks for that. I, hopefully that was helpful. I hope you'll be able to make something. I think I said some interesting things. ⁓

Mike Jones (57:28)
But, yeah, all right.

No, of course. But for our listeners,

what would you like them to go away and think about from this podcast?

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (57:44)
Okay, so I think the idea that one of the fundamental skills in organizations, but also in life, is the idea that we are assumption brokers, that we are constantly looking to make things that are implicit explicit, to see assumptions for what they are,

Mike Jones (57:56)
Mm.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (58:04)
but also the idea of having a theory that you test.

That is the shortcut to strategy, whether it's at an organization or whether it's in your life. And if you think about that...

It gives you permission to constantly test things and try new things out, but have something that is solid and stays the same over time. For me, I find those things really, really helpful in navigating lots of the different hats that I have in life and in organisation and leadership.

Mike Jones (58:29)
I think that's a great thing for listeners to go away and think about actually, how do you deal with these different assumptions and your own assumptions in a team? And also thinking about, just reflect on your approach. Definitely the strategy, is it a theory? Are you consistently testing and adjusting? Or is it just a static thing that...

remains in the drawer. it's good to think and I think listeners thinking back on this episode, I think they will get a lot of useful tips and ideas to go away and explore those.

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (58:59)
Well,

my hope, so for me, the central challenge of strategy is sounds, people say they're strategists because it makes them sound smart and nobody's gonna, dislikes being called a strategy person because it sounds great. But what is strategy and how is it helpful in the moment and over time? And it's the essence of your work and this podcast is, it's a living, it's an organic.

Mike Jones (59:07)
Important

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (59:22)
evolving thing and it's always in beta, always. And that's why I find it fascinating because it means it's consistent but it's flexible. It's fascinating. That's why I love it. Why I like the work I do and like the work you do is it's a really interesting space.

Mike Jones (59:31)
Yes. ⁓

Saul Betmead De Chasteigner (59:38)
well thanks for inviting me and hopefully you've got something there that you can cut into something that's interesting.

Mike Jones (59:40)
No, no, it's been pleasure.

Yeah. And for

for the listeners, please, if you enjoyed this as much as I have, please like and share and hopefully more people get value from this podcast. I'll see you all again soon.