The Being Thinking Doing Podcast by Matthew Brown

Why do intelligence officers never say "100% sure" — and what can leaders learn from it?Owen Churton spent 12 years as an intelligence officer in the British Army, where the information was always incomplete and the cost of getting it wrong was measured in lives. In this episode of Being Thinking Doing, Matthew Brown talks with Owen about thinking clearly under uncertainty, why open conflict beats false consensus, and why the best leaders listen far more than they speak.Owen's path is an unusual one: from reading theology at Cambridge, to Sandhurst, to briefing commanders in Afghanistan. He now works as an agile project manager at a software company. He shares how a Remembrance Sunday talk changed his life, how pattern analysis and understanding human behaviour kept soldiers safe in Kabul, and what happens when military discipline meets a new civilian career and two young daughters.In this episode:• Why intelligence assessments are never "certain", and why that isn't weasel wording• The danger of false confidence and the courage to say "I don't know"• Why false consensus is more dangerous than open disagreement• How a junior corporal's pushback made Owen's analysis stronger• Why the best leaders speak last and listen most• Why progress is rarely linear (and how the wrong metrics can mislead you)• Finding the person in a big organisation who can unblock your problem• The transition from military to civilian life, and what to keep from it• Why the perfect productivity system is a pipe dreamAbout Being Thinking DoingBeing Thinking Doing explores how leaders show up (Being), make decisions (Thinking) and deliver impact (Doing). Hosted by Matthew Brown, who has spent 15+ years training teams and coaching leaders.If this conversation gave you one thing worth keeping, please like and subscribe. It costs nothing and means everything to us.#Leadership #DecisionMaking #MilitaryLeadership #Intelligence #CriticalThinking #Podcast

His sister dreamt up a business idea at university. A decade later they sold it to SNCF.In this episode Matthew Brown talks to Jamie Andrews — co-founder of Loco2, the low-carbon rail booking platform he built with his sister Kate and sold in 2017, now the founder of Squaddle and a director of TrydaNi, Wales' community electric car club network.Matthew and Jamie first met in 2004 at a low carbon technology incubator in Sheffield, where Jamie landed his first job aged 21 and got a baptism of fire. Matthew went on to help build Loco2's first financial model and invest in the business. Twenty-something years later, they sit down to talk about what that decade of building actually cost, and what Jamie does differently now.It's a conversation about the line between being productive and being happy — and whether you can genuinely have both.In this conversation:BEING — The emotional resilience nobody warns entrepreneurs about, why money and family backing matter as much as grit, the stress that shows up in your body, and the daily practices that hold it together: ten minutes of meditation every weekday, exercise as a thinking tool, and one note-taking app for an entire life. Plus: raising a son in an age of infinite distraction, and building a coalition of parents to hold the line on smartphones.THINKING — Why waterfall planning fails and Kanban doesn't, limiting work in progress, and treating entrepreneurship as recursive rather than linear. Why Jamie still has hope on climate, why falling technology costs may matter more than regulation, why he rejects the "net zero" framing altogether, and the shift from damage limitation to building the future you actually want.DOING — Compartmentalising the week across multiple businesses, taming Slack and email, inbox zero as a precondition for deep thinking, why too many meetings is a symptom rather than a cause, and the meeting-and-email death spiral that swallows corporate teams. Then the big one: what happens to work when the AI comes back in ninety seconds instead of three days, and what you do with the two minutes in between.Mentioned in this episode:Abundance — Ezra Klein and Derek ThompsonEnshittification — Cory DoctorowDeep Work and Cal Newport's TED talk on quitting social mediaThe Anxious Generation — Jonathan HaidtThe Center for Humane Technology and Your Undivided AttentionWaking Up, ReflectAbout Jamie Andrews:Jamie Andrews co-founded Loco2 in 2006 with his sister Kate, building it into one of Europe's leading rail booking platforms before its acquisition by SNCF's e-Voyageurs group in 2017. He now runs Squaddle, a tool for organising group sports through WhatsApp with 16,000 users, and works with TrydaNi, a Welsh Government-backed network of community electric car clubs. He lives in mid Wales, where he is renovating a listed building that may never be finished.#BeingThinkingDoing #Entrepreneurship #DeepWork #Productivity #StartupLessons #Kanban #AI #ClimateTech #Leadership #Podcast

What does it take to lead a major institution when you can't mandate anything? And why have we known the climate science for 45 years yet still struggle to act?In this episode, Matthew Brown sits down with Professor D'Maris Coffman — Vice Dean at UCL and former Head of the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction — for a conversation that spans desegregating Virginia's schools, the US Navy's geothermal programme, cognitive biases in infrastructure decisions, and why the Romans ignored Vesuvius.D'Maris shares her remarkable family story: a great-uncle tasked by Eisenhower with desegregating Virginia's schools, a father who ran the Navy's geothermal development office, and how an ethic of service across generations shaped her journey from American scholar to British institutional leader.In this conversation:🔹 BEING — Identity, service and privilege: the journey from individual scholar to institutional leader, caring for a dying parent from across an ocean, and why the example you set matters more than the policies you write🔹 THINKING — Cognitive biases in action: normalcy bias and why the Romans stayed near Vesuvius, herding behaviour and bank runs, hyperbolic discounting, and what it actually takes to shift public opinion on climate change🔹 DOING — Innovation at UCL: building ecosystems beyond Silicon Valley clichés, evaluating social impact in major infrastructure, why gigaprojects like Neom distort global markets, and the survivorship bias behind the "great Victorian engineers"Key moments:00:00 – Introduction07:51 – From Virginia to Moab: a family history of service12:39 – Service as a force multiplier in leadership18:10 – Caring for elderly parents from a distance20:19 – Modelling values for the next generation25:06 – Leading by influence when you can't mandate27:34 – Cognitive biases: normalcy bias, herding, and Vesuvius32:16 – How catastrophes shift public opinion: the New Deal and the Eisenhower highways38:09 – Disinformation, state actors and the modern public sphere45:49 – Innovation at UCL: from pharma to social impact53:33 – Lessons from building innovation ecosystems58:10 – Long time horizons: St Paul's, HS2 and survivorship bias01:02:11 – A message to her 20-year-old selfAbout D'Maris Coffman:Professor D'Maris Coffman is Vice Dean at UCL and Professor of Economics and Finance of the Built Environment at the Bartlett. An economic historian by training, she previously led the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction and now works on innovation, enterprise, and infrastructure finance. She was recently a co-author on a Nature paper on energy transitions.Connect with D'Maris on LinkedIn or via email — as she says, there's probably only one D'Maris Coffman in the world.🎙️ Subscribe for more conversations on Being, Thinking and Doing#Leadership #ClimateChange #CognitiveBias #Innovation #UCL #Infrastructure #DecisionMaking #BeingThinkingDoing

How do you make the right call when the information is incomplete, the stakes are high, and everyone in the room is waiting on you?In this episode of The Being Thinking Doing Podcast, Matthew Brown sits down with Tom Burnet — commissioned as an army officer at just 17 before going on to lead businesses as a CEO and serial chairman — to unpack the leadership and decision-making lessons that carry straight from the battlefield to the modern boardroom.From Sandhurst and the Black Watch to the chair's seat of multi-billion-pound companies, Tom has spent four decades learning how to lead under pressure. He and Matthew explore what it really takes to move from command to influence, why the best leaders "serve to lead," how to think clearly when the data is imperfect, and why indecision — what one CEO memorably called "swirl" — quietly destroys more value than any bad decision ever could. It's a candid, story-rich conversation on stress, risk, ego, trust, and the hard conversations every leader eventually has to have.In this episode:Why moving from CEO to chairman means unlearning the instinct to command — and learning to influenceThe "Serve to Lead" philosophy from Sandhurst, and why it still holds 40 years onHow an aggressive cancer diagnosis in his late 20s reshaped his appetite for riskReading risk and opportunity as two sides of the same coinWhen to double down on conviction vs. when to "drown the puppies" and walk away"Swirl": how a lack of decisions silently drains a business — and how to kill itMaking the best possible call with an imperfect data set, and being at peace with itBalancing shareholders, staff and customers — and the art of the "least worst decision"The hardest conversation any chair has to have: "you're in the wrong job"Why founders inspire fierce loyalty, and the painful cost of scaling past your earliest peopleTrust as the foundation of every high-performing teamAbout Tom Burnet:Tom Burnet is a former British Army officer turned business leader. Commissioned at 17 and a veteran of Sandhurst and the Black Watch, he has spent his civilian career as a Chief Executive and serial Chairman of high-growth companies, now working as a portfolio chair and non-executive director coaching founders and leadership teams to scale and internationalise.About the show:The Being Thinking Doing Podcast with Matthew Brown explores how leaders show up (being), how they reason and recognise patterns (thinking), and how they make an impact in the world (doing).Subscribe for more conversations with exceptional leaders, thinkers and operators. If you found this valuable, leave a like and tell us your biggest takeaway in the comments.#Leadership #DecisionMaking #BeingThinkingDoing #MilitaryLeadership #Boardroom #BusinessStrategy #ServantLeadership #FounderCoaching #LeadershipPodcast #Podcast

The Hidden Truths of Billions in Social Impact: Measurement, Myths, & Microfinance | Being Thinking Doing with Steve ChapmanIn this episode of the Being Thinking Doing podcast, host Matthew Brown sits down with Steve Chapman, a self-styled senior monitoring and evaluation strategist. With a career spanning nearly 40 years, Steve has tracked the real-world impact of massive global health and social programs. From uncovering the demand curve for condom distribution in 1989 to working with the Global Fund to distribute billions for infectious diseases, Steve reveals what truly works—and what doesn't. Structured around the podcast's core themes of Being (how you show up), Thinking (how you make decisions), and Doing (achieving impact), this conversation is a masterclass in navigating data, human bias, and complex problem-solving.KEY TAKEAWAYS & HIGHLIGHTS- The Microfinance Myth: Discover why the heavily funded, Nobel Prize-winning microfinance boom of the 1980s was proven by MIT researchers to be largely ineffective at alleviating poverty, and in some cases, actively harmful. - Navigating Uncertainty: Learn how to utilize the "known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns" framework to make sound decisions without having all the data.- The Power of Feedback Loops: Hear how historical examples, like John Snow mapping the 1850 cholera outbreak, mirror modern low-cost feedback systems like the smiley-face buttons at Heathrow Airport.- The Danger of Bad Metrics: Understand the unintended consequences of measurement, including how reporting massive monthly impact scores can accidentally disincentivize innovation.- Communicating Complexity: Why the best technical experts act as teachers, start with their conclusions, and use powerful analogies (like calling sharks the "lions and tigers of the sea") to bypass human bias. - Career Advice: Why joining a growing organization with a leader who is comfortable hearing the truth (even when it reduces their power) is the best move you can make. EPISODE CHAPTERS00:00 - Introduction: Defining the real role of Monitoring & Evaluation02:12 - Working with the Global Fund & Distributing $6 Billion04:55 - The 1989 Condom Spreadsheet that Launched a Career11:27 - Operating in Uncertainty: Rumsfeld’s Knowns & Unknowns15:22 - The "Impatient Optimist" & Viewing Real Global Progress19:58 - The Microfinance Illusion: When Good Stories Trump Evidence28:29 - The Power and Limits of Measurement: From Cholera to Heathrow38:46 - Lead vs. Lag Measures and Unintended Consequences49:28 - How to Communicate Complex Data Effectively1:01:03 - Finding Mental Clarity on Epic Road Trips1:03:52 - Final Thoughts: Finding the Right Leaders & Organizations---------------------------------------------------(Note: If you plan to visit the John Snow pub on Broadwick Street in Soho, be warned—they do not serve London Pride!)

Are you micromanaging your team into misery?

After 40 years leading elite institutions worldwide, Mark Bishop reveals the difference between a toxic culture and a high-performing one.

In this episode of the Being Thinking Doing podcast, Matthew Brown sits down with Mark Bishop (former Headmaster and current Chair of Governors at Charterhouse) to extract battle-tested leadership lessons that apply whether you're running a school or a corporate powerhouse.

We bypass the textbook theory and dive into the messy reality of being a leader. Mark opens up about how to navigate tragic crises, why the "3 E's" will save your team from burnout, and the three critical tasks that a leader must never delegate.

If you want to feel great, think straight, and deliver your best work, hit play.

⏳ Chapters & Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro: 40 Years of Leadership in 10 Seconds

01:50 - Leading Through Tragedy: How to Handle a Real Crisis

09:27 - The 4:30 AM Email: Are You Creating a Toxic Culture?

11:03 - The 3 M's vs. The 3 E's: Why Your Team is Miserable

16:32 - The Shift from Executive to Board Member

20:56 - Swimming in Data: How to Make Decisions That Actually Matter

28:53 - The Hardest Choice: Balancing Compassion vs. The Rules

38:04 - The ONLY 3 Things a Leader Should Never Delegate

47:55 - Strategy Fails: Why Having 15 Goals Means You Have 0 Goals

👇 Join the Conversation:

What is the one leadership task you refuse to delegate? Let us know in the comments!

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#Leadership #Management #BeingThinkingDoing #MarkBishop #CompanyCulture #LeadershipDevelopment #Podcast