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.

We dig into Stefan’s run serve change heuristic and how each layer carries a different type of work, a different time horizon, and a different kind of complexity. Run creates value at the frontline. Serve as a coordinating hub across multiple run units to ensure they do not clash on resources, standards, platforms, or handovers. Change sets intent and enterprise constraints by reading the external environment, defining risk appetite, and making the big calls that shape the system. When serve is missing, leaders get dragged into operational conflict and lose the capacity to do real strategy work.

From there, we name the “confusion tax”: the financial and human cost of unclear decision rights, endless escalation, and slow governance. We talk scenario-based tests that reveal where decision latency is baked in, why PMOs and change teams often report without authority, and why copying frameworks cannot compensate for poor operating model design. We also challenge strategy theatre, forced cascades, and agile rituals that do not improve decisions. If you want strategy execution that actually meets reality, listen, subscribe, share the episode, and leave us a review with the biggest confusion tax you see in your organisation.

Find Stefan's Work:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefannorrvall/
Substack: https://substack.com/@synexia
​The Organisational Confusion Tax Scorecard: https://scorecard.synexia.au/confusion-tax

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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/

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?

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/

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/