Mick sits down with Marcus Dimbleby, founder of Effective Direction, to explore the shocking reality of workforce disengagement and what leaders can do about it. With UK engagement at just 10% globally, Marcus reveals why traditional approaches are failing and how critical thinking can transform organisations.

## Key Topics
- UK workforce engagement sits at just 10% - the lowest globally
- Why promotion without leadership training creates a "drop off the cliff" effect
- The false promise of wellbeing initiatives and performative solutions
- How AI without collective intelligence (CI) will fail catastrophically
- The importance of creating safe environments for challenge and fun
- Why Gen Z cognitive decline demands urgent action on critical thinking

## About Marcus Dimbleby
Marcus Dimbleby is the founder of Effective Direction, focusing on unleashing people's potential through critical thinking and adaptive leadership. With 20+ years in the Royal Air Force, Marcus works with leadership teams to apply evidence-based approaches to organisational transformation. He co-authored "Big Things Fast" and specialises in helping startups scale and family businesses professionalise their leadership.

linkedin.com/in/marcusdimbleby

effectivedirection.com

bigthingsfast.com

[email protected]

## Where to Listen
- Website: https://thewaggleroom.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102
- Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian

In this episode, Tricia Kennedy, co-author of 'Changed Myths', explores why outdated change models persist and how we can apply critical thinking to organisational change. From debunking the change curve to questioning ADKAR, Tricia advocates for attacking ideas rather than people whilst maintaining intellectual honesty in our practice.

## Key Topics

- Why change myths become embedded as 'sacred cows' in organisations

- The difference between attacking ideas versus attacking people

- How to apply the LIAR framework (Logic, Authority, Intuition, Research) to evaluate change models

- Context-driven change approaches versus one-size-fits-all templates

- The challenge of measuring change outcomes versus activities

- AI's potential to create an inflection point for the change profession

## Where to Listen

- Website: https://thewaggleroom.com

- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom

- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom

- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102

- Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian

## Guest Info

Tricia Kennedy is an organisational change professional with over 20 years' experience and co-author of 'Changed Myths' with Paul Gibbons. Connect with her on LinkedIn for links to her books and ongoing discussions about evidence-based change practice.

## Guest Links

- linkedin.com/in/triciak

- TriciaK.com

- [email protected]

- Change Myths: The Professionals Guide to Separating Sense from Nonsense

Nigel Thurlow brings decades of experience from Toyota, complexity thinking, and organisational transformation to a conversation that challenges how we think about leadership, tools, and the future of work. From the Toyota Production System to the dangers of abdicating decision-making to AI, Nigel unpacks why most organisational change fails—and what leaders are missing.

## Key Topics
- Why Toyota isn't a collection of tools—it's all about behaviours, discipline, and human factors
- The theatre of consulting: why transformation programmes fail every three years
- Distributed leadership and transferring ownership of decision-making to those doing the work
- Red is not bad—red means "I need help": building cultures that embrace problems, not hide them
- The Peter Principle and promoting people to their level of incompetence
- AI as intelligent automation: will we serve the machine, or will it serve us?
- Weak signals we're ignoring: social media, misinformation, and the slow drift toward machine subservience
- Nigel's work with his son Elliot bringing audio descriptive commentary to sport in the US

## Where to Listen
- Website: https://thewaggleroom.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102
- Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian

## Guest Info
Nigel Thurlow is an executive coach, board advisor, co-creator of The Flow System®, and creator of Scrum The Toyota Way™. He brings deep expertise in complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science—grounded in years working within Toyota's production system.

Connect with Nigel:
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nigelthurlow
- Website: nigelthurlow.com
- Flow Consortium: flowconsortium.com
- Flow Guides: flowguides.org
- Ear Sport (Audio Descriptive Commentary): hearsport.com

Dr Carrie Goucher joins Mick to explore why meetings haven't improved in 50 years—and what we're getting fundamentally wrong.

Drawing on her PhD in systems thinking and meeting culture and 25 years helping organisations shift from industrial-era hierarchies to faster, more agile ways of working, Carrie unpacks the hidden systems driving meeting dysfunction, from collabureaucracy to the parent-child dynamics that still dominate knowledge work.

## Key Topics

- Why meetings are a systems problem, not a process problem—and why surface-level fixes (agendas, timekeeping) miss the point

- The three dominant organisational models (control, achievement, consensus) and how each creates its own meeting pathology

- How bees make decisions through quorum, not consensus—and why waiting for 100% agreement is organisational death

- The historical roots of meetings: from trial by combat to Quaker decision-making architecture

- Four things organisations must do: constrain meeting time, add scaffolding, handle conflict better, and design rhythm and system

- The shift from parent-child to adult-to-adult relationships as the foundation for knowledge-era collaboration

## Where to Listen

- Website: https://thewaggleroom.com

- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom

- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom

- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102

- Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian

## Guest Info

Dr Carrie Goucher is a systems thinker and organisational designer specialising in meetings and collaboration. She has a PHD in meeting culture from Cambridge. She helps organisations move from industrial-era hierarchies to faster, more agile ways of working.

- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carriebedingfield

- Website: fewerfasterbolder.com

Former commando engineer Chris Marren joins Mick to explore how military principles translate into modern leadership. From mission command and patrol lanes to the importance of specific timings and clear communication,

Chris shares practical frameworks for creating clarity in complex environments. The conversation moves through the power of observation over feedback, the lost art of sensing frequency and vibration in others, and why asking people to paraphrase what they've heard saves time in the long run.

## Key Topics

- Translating mission command principles into business silos and team management

- Why "feedback" should be replaced with "observations" in leadership conversations

- The importance of specificity: timing, objectives, and standards

- How frequency and vibration communicate more than we realise

- Conditioning people to listen through strategic questioning

- The value of creating visual clarity (like military ground models) in organisational contexts

## Where to Listen

- Website: https://thewaggleroom.com

- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom

- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom

- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102

- Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian

## Guest Info

Chris Marren served 27 years in the military with the commando engineers before transitioning to coaching, leadership development, and children's author. He's passionate about teaching humans how to think, not what to think.

- Email: [email protected]

- Mickey Monroe books: mickymonroe.com

- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chris-marren

We pour billions into training, change programmes, and leadership frameworks. Most of it doesn't stick. In this episode, Mick Brian sits down with Paul Gibbons — CAIO Advisor, author, keynote speaker, and one of the sharpest critical thinkers in organisational change and AI — to ask why.

Paul has spent 30 years challenging the comfortable stories organisations tell themselves. The ones that oversimplify complex realities. The ones that protect us from harder questions. From the myth of Kübler-Ross grief stages in change management, to Myers-Briggs as a hundred-million-dollar industry built on shaky foundations, to why AI is being pointed at the wrong problems entirely — this conversation goes to places most podcasts won't.

We explore why training fails the moment Monday morning arrives. Why systems conspire to keep people doing exactly what they always did. Why humans signal like bees — but not nearly as well. And why the most powerful tool humanity has ever created is being used to answer emails faster, when it could be fixing the NHS.

AI isn't just a data tool — it's a decision-making tool. The organisations getting it wrong are defaulting to ROI-first thinking and big-bang implementations that ignore the humans at the centre. The future isn't human versus machine — it's human and machine, working alongside each other. And the democratisation of AI is already life-changing for people who never expected access to this kind of intelligence.

Paul's signal — the one we're all failing to see — is simple and urgent: we have the tools. We're just not aiming them at the right things.

This is The Waggle Room. Signals. Systems. Sensemaking. Because humans and bees matter.

FIND PAUL GIBBONS 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulggibbons 🌐 Website: https://www.paulgibbonsadvisory.com/ 📖 Substack: https://thinkbiggerthinkbetter.substack.com/

FIND THE WAGGLE ROOM 🌐 https://thewaggleroom.com/ ▶️ https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom 🎧 https://open.spotify.com/episode/7m2XdI8lYCWnR2QMYlyUtT 🍎 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 📖 https://substack.com/@mickbrian

KEYWORDS organisational change, change myths, leadership training, Myers-Briggs, Kübler-Ross, systems thinking, AI ethics, people-first AI, human-centric technology, decision-making, AI adoption, Paul Gibbons, The Waggle Room, democratisation of AI, emergence, complexity, sensemaking, signals, human and machine collaboration

The Waggle Room podcast explores the concept of finding signals in work, organizations, and personal life, inspired by the waggle dance of bees. Mark Green, founder of Change Rebellion, shares his insights on change management, humour, and the industry. The conversation delves into the challenges of change management, the need for empathy and critical thinking, and the limitations of traditional methodologies. The conversation delves into the impact of human interaction and humour in change management, the importance of psychological safety, and the role of smaller organisations in driving change. It also highlights the need for a shift away from traditional enterprise solutions to more innovative and rebellious approaches.

Takeaways

• Signals in work and life
• The importance of empathy and critical thinking in change management Human interaction and engagement are crucial in driving change
• Psychological safety is essential for fostering open communication and growth
• Smaller organizations offer valuable and innovative solutions for change management
• A shift away from traditional enterprise solutions is needed for driving change

Chapters

• 00:00 Finding Signals in Change
• 07:32 The Rebellion Against Traditional Change
• 19:44 The Role of Empathy in Change
• 30:16 The Power of Human Interaction
• 39:07 Addressing Change Fatigue and Demoralization
• 49:06 Leadership and Change Management
• 55:27 The Signal We're Failing to See

Dave Snowden on Cynefin, Chaos, Swarm Intelligence and the Signals We’re Missing

What if confusion isn’t failure — but the starting point?

In this episode of The Waggle Room, I’m joined by Dave Snowden, creator of the Cynefin framework, to explore how we actually make decisions in uncertainty.

We dive into:

• Why “fire the sycophants, promote the cynics” is more than a throwaway line
• Why chaos is temporary — and how to use it without being consumed by it
• The most misunderstood part of Cynefin (hint: it’s the centre)
• Why education should teach argument, not just answers
• How neurodiversity strengthens decision-making
• The origins of SwarmCompass and what bees can teach us about optimisation
• Why large scale sensing beats top down control
• Climate change as a dispositional and community problem, not just a technical one
• Why micro interactions create macro change

We also explore the EU field guide on managing complexity in crisis, the limits of AI in decision-making, and why empathy at the community level may be the most powerful signal we’re currently ignoring.

This is a conversation about sensemaking, courage, weak signals and navigating complexity in a world that wants easy answers.

The next guest on The Waggle Room is Daniel Hulme — and having someone of this calibre on the podcast still feels a bit mind-blowing to me.Daniel is CEO of Satalia, Chief AI Officer at WPP, a founder of Faculty AI, and Founder & CEO of Conscium, focused on understanding machine consciousness.The conversation delves into the intersection of AI and human decision making, exploring the value of AI, the human side of technology, and the potential for consciousness in AI. It also addresses the misuse of AI and the importance of careful decision making in AI implementation. The conversation covers the challenges and opportunities of AI, including misinvestment, talent retention, ethics, singularity, and the impact on humanity. It also delves into the risks, value, and preparation for the future of AI, concluding with the power of multi-agent reasoning.TakeawaysThe human side of AI is often overlooked, and the focus should be on understanding the value of AI in decision making.The misuse of AI and the need for careful decision making in AI implementation are critical considerations. AI misinvestment can hinder talent retentionAI ethics and bias are complex and often misunderstoodThe PESTLE framework provides a comprehensive lens for understanding AI's impactAI's impact on humanity requires careful considerationThe risks and opportunities of AI are significantValue and productivity in AI require a deeper understandingPreparing for the future of AI involves adapting to rapid changeMulti-agent reasoning holds the key to AI's exponential growth

SummaryIn this conversation, Paul Sweeney discusses his book 'Magnetic Nonsense' and explores the pervasive issues of critical thinking, organizational culture, and the impact of power dynamics in leadership. He emphasizes the importance of autonomy and critical thinking in organizations, critiques the illusion of control in planning, and examines the role of AI in modern workplaces. Sweeney also highlights the need for a shift in how organizations approach leadership and decision-making, advocating for a more evidence-based and open-minded approach to management.Takeaways

• Critical thinking is essential for effective leadership.
• Many organizations suffer from a lack of critical thinking.
• Cognitive biases can lead to poor decision-making.
• The illusion of control in planning can be detrimental.
• Autonomy in the workplace can enhance well-being and creativity.
• Power dynamics significantly influence organizational behavior.
• AI can improve productivity but must be used wisely.
• Culture is often misunderstood and may not exist as a tangible entity.
• Middle management can hinder innovation and should be reevaluated.
• There is hope for change through critical thinking and autonomy.