Welcome and thank you for checking in at the Inner Game of Change Podcast where I focus on exploring the multi layers of managing organisational change.

 My guests cover a diverse number of critical topics to enable effective and sustainable change in the workplace.

My guest today is Michael Brown, An award-winning author, a CEO, a wonderful human and so many other great things. 

A respected international author of the Gold Award Winning book I Don’t Agree and a tenacious CEO who tries every day to live his values and deliver community value. 

I am grateful to have Michael discussing his book with me today.   

Topics discussed

The positive effect of disagreement

The continuous battle between competing and collaborating 

The pride diet 

Behaviour Switches

The attribution bias

Values before skills

The pyramid of choice

Disagreement as an agent for change

Michael’s ongoing to disagree authentically

And much more

About Michael (In his own words)

TENACIOUS, CREATIVE, OPTIMISTIC, ENTREPRENEURIAL, KIND.
These are the qualities I most admire in others.
I’ve tried to cultivate them in myself. I’ve not always lived up to them, but I remain aspirational. For me, it’s these qualities that come in most handy when you set out to achieve a dream. Which is useful; because having a vision and finding a way to make it happen is what excites me most. When I was (much) younger I was in a band. We had the usual big ambitions.
But…I raised a bit of money from local businesses, started an indie record label and signed my band to it. That action eventually led to me securing not one, but two, major recording contracts during my twenties. While I have amazing memories of a time spent largely on the road, ultimately, we never sold enough music to maintain a major label deal – even though I was a sticker in Smash Hits (my mum still has it on her toilet door) and in an era before Spotify, the tunes we wrote were frequent visitors to the airwaves.
In the death of that dream I learned a valuable lesson;
Creativity without the entrepreneurship, tenacity and sheer optimism to bring whatever you create to an audience is wasteful.
Tenacity is crucial. In life and business, many people have the power to say NO. Getting to a YES requires a wider consultation with a larger constituency of people. That usually means ‘yes’ decisions happen less often. If you wanted to fly a hot air balloon through the raised drawer bridges of Tower Bridge as I have, or kickstart the world’s first mental health drop-in centre inside a soup kitchen, you have to have to keep communicating and collaborating; to keep asking the questions that will get you a big fat YES. This is the quality that I hope to contribute to an endeavour.
I’d like to think I’ve now honed my entrepreneurial instincts to a point where they’re proven – I’ve been a long-term managing director of an award-winning, high growth advertising agency and founded another creative business that is now an international organisation of renown – we’ve won an agency of the year accolade 6 times in 8 years.
As for optimism – well, in any mission you embark on, you need to believe the horizon is bathed in sunshine, or why head there at all?
And kindness? I sometimes fall short.
BUT...I’m a homelessness charity trustee and a soup kitchen volunteer. I believe in equality of opportunity. I sit on our LGBTQ+ steering committee and I’m an activist. I’m a working-class kid from Grimsby who has needed

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Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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