What does the British Army have to do with how to develop programs for your consulting business?
My guest this week is Mike Jones, Founder & Director of LBI Consulting.
Mike is a seasoned leader, organisational psychologist, and systems thinker. He is adept at navigating the intricacies and unpredictability of contemporary organisations by developing foresight, strategy, and alignment.
Interestingly, Mike’s leadership journey is rooted in his extensive service in the British Army, where he led troops in challenging and hostile environments.
Tune in and you’ll learn the following, plus much more:
- How Mike’s Army experience helps him develop leadership programs
- The way to lead through complexity
- Methods you can use to help navigate complexity for your clients
Are you ready to transform strategic challenges into opportunities?
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Strategy is about understanding your ecosystem and positioning yourself for success.
Mike Jones – How I develop programs
Incorporating my Army background to develop programs.
Even though you say that we’ve got a strict hierarchy in the Army, we do it for lawful purposes.
Soldiers deal with the most complex and volatile situations that you will ever imagine.
But people get confused with leadership in the British Army.
People think it’s just ‘I’ll tell you what to do, and I’ll shouter you to do it faster’.
It’s not like that.
Most people don’t understand what command and control is.
Command and control is a two-way conversation. It’s here’s the clear intent and this is what we need to achieve, have some time to go away, to understand how you’re going to achieve that.
So in the end, you agree on what you’re going to do, and then you have the freedom of action, to go away and to deliver that aim.
So you can deal with the complexity and the unfolding circumstances you find yourself in.
That’s what we call mission command.
Alignment issues often arise from misaligned strategy, structure, culture, and leadership.
Mike Jones – How I develop programs
How do you help clients through challenges?
For me I like to talk about real strategy.
It’s where we really get people to understand their ecosystem, and how they change their fit within the ecosystem to an advantage.
Normally, clients come to us because they have a real strategic challenge, i.e. the world’s moving and they don’t know where to position themselves to add value.
So we help them with that and understand the strategy.
They are just misaligned.
So we help people to understand how to structure the organisation we look at coordination and performance metrics.
We use a viable systems model, which is a systems thinking approach.
We help people’s culture so they can work out where there’s something wrong with their culture.
Once they’ve worked this out they can then enable their culture to merge how they want it to.
We set them up for success, rather than just coming in and drip-feeding them so they have to keep coming to us every time something slightly changes. ⬅️
Take-aways you do not want to miss 👇
- Learn how Mike’s military background led him to a career in leadership consulting
- How you can use military leadership principles in your programes and training
- Ways to recognise common strategic challenges your clients face
- How command and control consulting can help your clients navigate challenges
- Learn how to identify and address misalignment issues within your client’s organisation
- The benefits of long-term consulting engagements for your consulting business
- The value of offering practical, tailored solutions to your clients, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
- How you can balance control and autonomy in leadership by providing clear intent
- Ways you can actively develop and shape organizational culture by going beyond traditional approaches
Some resources for you
LinkedIn: Follow and connect with Mike
Mike’s Website: lbiconsulting.com
Your Free ‘Get Set’ guide – Get your copy here
Check out the episode today!
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE AND SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY
Listen Again – From the army to freelance trainer w/ Bart Brammer
Listen Again – How military leadership helps my training /w Leslie Riley
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