Battling with Business

Episode 162 - The UK Government's Top Secret War Book : The Idiot's Guide For What To Do In Case Of Apocalypse - Part 1

In this week’s episode we start the first of a two part series looking at how people plan for events that they hope will never actually happen. The story begins with a visit to the National Archives at Kew where Chris spent time reading declassified documents about real British wartime planning that started just after the First World War and continued late into the Cold War. This plan, the British Government's War Book, raises a fascinating challenge that is relevant not just for the Government of the United Kingdom, but also for every other kind of organisation. How do you plan for something that is unlikely but world changing? In this first episode we explore the idea that good planning is not about predicting the future perfectly. Instead it is about preparing organisations to deal with a range of possible futures. We discuss the concept of a cone of plausibility and why the further you look ahead the wider the range of possible outcomes becomes. We also look at why organisations often struggle to take low probability but high impact risks seriously until they actually occur. Using examples from wartime planning and more recent events such as the Covid pandemic, we explore how leaders try to make sense of uncertain futures and what practical preparation can look like. The discussion starts to touch on the British government War Book, a detailed set of preparations that attempted to answer practical questions about how the country would function if war broke out. These plans covered everything from broadcasting and aviation to the mechanics of keeping government running during a national emergency. This first episode focuses on the leadership challenge of thinking ahead and recognising risks that may feel distant or unlikely. In the second episode we will explore what happens when those plans collide with reality and what leaders can learn when planning meets execution. If you are interested in leadership, strategy and decision making under uncertainty, this is a fascinating starting point for a conversation about how individuals and organisations prepare for the unthinkable.

Episode 161 - Pressure Is the Point : What UK Special Forces Can Teach Leaders About Performance with Simon Jeffries

In this week’s episode we explore a simple but uncomfortable truth about leadership: pressure is the point. It is not something to be avoided, minimised or delegated away. It is the arena in which performance is revealed. We sat down with Simon Jeffries, a former Special Boat Service operator turned mindset and performance coach, to unpack what elite military environments can teach leaders in business. From Royal Marines training to Special Forces selection and operational life in small, high stakes teams, Simon shared what it really means to operate when the margin for error is zero. We talked about the difference between discomfort and damage, and why learning to sit with discomfort is a trainable skill rather than a personality trait. We explored how selection environments expose mindset weaknesses long before they expose physical ones, and why in both military and business settings the stories we tell ourselves under pressure often determine whether we push on or quit. One of the strongest themes was performance as a system. Not motivation. Not inspiration. A system. Simon broke it down into three practical pillars: hardware, which is your physical state and nervous system; software, which is your mindset and self talk; and structure, which is the habits and routines that either create control or chaos. The insight was clear. Most businesses train skills but ignore performance. We also discussed small team dynamics, dissent under pressure and why effective debriefs create cultures where vulnerability exists in behaviour even if it is never labelled as such. There were powerful lessons about culture being defined by behaviours rather than words on a wall, and why clarity around expectations beats slogans every time. If you lead people, run a business or simply feel that you are operating below your potential despite outward success, this conversation will challenge you. It is direct, practical and grounded in lived experience at the sharp end of performance. This episode is about ownership, resilience and the discipline of showing up well when it matters most. If you want to think differently about leadership and how to perform under pressure, this one is worth your time.

Episode 160 - BHAGs and 3HAGs Re-Release : Turning Vision into Action

In this week’s episode, re-released from the heady early days of the podcast in 2023, we tackle a question that sits at the heart of leadership and management: how do you move from a bold vision to meaningful action? It is easy to talk about strategy. It is much harder to create a clear destination that inspires people and then connect it to what people are actually doing on a Monday morning. We explore the concept of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, first introduced by Jim Collins in Built to Last. A BHAG is not a polite target or a marginal improvement. It is a statement of intent that feels almost out of reach. It should be compelling, energising and transformative. Think of enabling human settlement on Mars, or putting a computer on every desk at a time when computers filled entire rooms. If you already know exactly how to achieve it, it is probably not bold enough. But vision without execution is theatre. So we introduce the idea of the Three Year Highly Achievable Goal. This is where long term ambition meets operational reality. What does the organisation look like in three years if we are genuinely on track? What capabilities must exist? What numbers must be true? What would customers say about us? By breaking the audacious goal into achievable stages, leaders create a golden thread that links strategy to quarterly focus and even weekly priorities. Along the way we compare business thinking with military concepts such as operational art and mission command. We discuss how leaders generate the moral energy that motivates people to contribute to something bigger than themselves. We also confront the risk of becoming obsessed with managing the plan rather than delivering the outcome. If you have ever felt that your organisation has a strategy on paper but no clear sense of direction in practice, this episode is for you. We move beyond abstract discussion and offer a practical framework you can apply immediately. Listen in if you want to connect bold ambition with disciplined execution and give your team a destination worth striving for.

Episode 159 - Influencers #15 Re-Release - Niccolò Machiavelli - Power and Principle in an Age of Strongmen

This week we revisit, as a re-released episode, one of the most controversial figures in political and leadership thinking as part of our Influencers series. We ask a simple but uncomfortable question. Do good leaders sometimes have to do bad things? It seems particularly relevant given the world around us today. We return to Niccolo Machiavelli and explore whether he truly deserves his reputation as the patron saint of manipulation and ruthless ambition, or whether he was in fact one of the first serious thinkers to describe leadership as it actually is rather than as we might wish it to be. As we unpack The Prince and his wider thinking, we explore realism versus idealism, virtue versus effectiveness, and the enduring tension between being loved and being feared. We look at why Machiavelli separated personal morality from the morality of leadership, why he believed fortune favours the bold, and why he thought leaders must be prepared to act decisively in a world where not everyone plays by the same rules. This re-release feels strikingly relevant. From modern geopolitics to business leadership and even product management, the dilemmas he described five hundred years ago remain unchanged. How do you balance ethics with outcomes. When does pragmatism become compromise. And if the good people refuse to get their hands dirty, who fills the vacuum. If you care about leadership in the real world rather than leadership in theory, this episode will challenge your assumptions and sharpen your thinking. Whether you end up agreeing with Machiavelli or not, you will almost certainly see power, influence and responsibility differently by the end.

Episode 158 - Leadership and Management in an AI Powered World - Part 3

In this week’s episode we conclude our three part series on AI by tackling one of the most uncomfortable and important questions of all: surveillance, control and the future of decision making. If AI can see more than we can, interpret more than we can and act faster than we can, what does that mean for leaders, managers and the societies we operate in? Are we witnessing a natural evolution of tools that improve safety and efficiency, or are we quietly normalising a level of oversight that could reshape trust, accountability and power itself? We explore how surveillance is not new. From CCTV networks to financial forensics, from Rolls Royce monitoring engine performance to battlefield targeting systems, organisations have always gathered data to understand and act. What AI changes is the speed, scale and autonomy of those decisions. Dashboards become insights. Insights become actions. And actions increasingly happen without a human in the loop. We dig into the tension between efficiency and control. When machines outperform humans, should we step back? Or does leadership require us to retain oversight, even if it slows things down? We examine real examples from autonomous vehicles to military defence systems to workplace monitoring, asking where trust ends and overreach begins. A central theme emerges: explainability and accountability are not optional. If we cannot understand why a system made a decision, we have already surrendered more control than we realise. The challenge is not rogue robots. The challenge is how people use powerful systems, and whether we build in the guardrails that protect values, culture and civil liberties. This episode is not about easy answers. It is about asking better questions. As leaders, managers and participants in organisations, we cannot afford to treat AI as someone else’s problem. The pace of change is accelerating. The trade offs are real. The responsibility is ours. If you care about leadership, decision making and the future of power in organisations, this is an episode you will want to hear.