『Messy with Daniel Atlin』のカバーアート

Messy with Daniel Atlin

Messy with Daniel Atlin

著者： Solid Gold Podcasts #BeHeard
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概要

 Make Sense of the Mess of Leadership. Today’s leaders are facing unprecedented challenges. It’s a messy, complex world that requires a different approach and mindset to get things done. This is where you'll find conversations on how leaders in complex organizations navigate and make sense of the mess they find themselves in.Solid Gold Podcasts #BeHeard マネジメント マネジメント・リーダーシップ 社会科学 経済学
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  • Is the University Model Broken? | Tim Blackman

    Is the University Model Broken? | Tim Blackman
    2026/03/11
    Rethinking higher education — and finding your purpose.

    What if the real problem with higher education isn’t funding, technology, or rankings, but the model itself?

    In this episode, Daniel Atlin speaks with Tim Blackman, former Vice-Chancellor and President of the Open University, about whether the dominant university model is simply out of sync with modern life.

    While most universities still organise learning around a single intensive period in early adulthood, Tim argues that the future lies in lifelong learning, shorter credentials, and education woven throughout people’s working lives. Drawing on his experience leading one of the largest and most distinctive universities in the UK, he reflects on the challenge of changing institutions that are structurally designed to protect the status quo.

    But this conversation is also deeply personal.

    While in his role leading the Open University, Tim was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. The experience forced a profound pause, prompting him to reflect on legacy, responsibility, and a simple but powerful question: What kind of world do I want to leave my grandchildren?

    That moment sharpened his focus on the larger purpose of higher education. In his recent paper for the Higher Education Policy Institute, Tim argues that universities should orient themselves around a guiding mission: helping to build a sustainable economy: environmentally, socially, and financially.

    The discussion ranges from institutional leadership and lifelong learning to the challenge of misinformation in an increasingly fragmented knowledge landscape.

    Above all, it’s a conversation about purpose and the reminder that it is never too late to rethink your work, your impact, and the difference you want to make. In a messy world, Tim reminds us that leadership isn’t just about managing institutions - it’s about deciding what really matters with the time we have. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn · The HEPI paper · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
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    51 分
  • Making Sense of Making Sense | Why the mess matters

    Making Sense of Making Sense | Why the mess matters
    2026/03/04
    This episode is different.

    There’s no guest. It’s just me, Daniel Atlin, answering the question I ask every leader who comes on Messy: to riff off the Kierkegaard quote “Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards."

    I look back at the moments that shaped my curiosity about leadership, complexity, and what I now call “the mess.” I talk about growing up between cultures and religions, about realising I was gay in the 1980s, about feeling different and discovering that everyone carries a backstory you can’t see.

    After senior roles across government, cooperative organisations, and higher education, I kept noticing the same pattern: smart people, important missions, and good intentions. And… stalled initiatives, quiet failures, and exhausted leaders.

    Why is leadership in mission-driven organisations so difficult?

    That question led me to study leadership more formally at Oxford and HEC Paris and to interview 25 university leader across four countries. What I discovered surprised me.

    Leaders who navigated complexity most effectively weren’t the ones with perfect strategies but the ones who could make sense of politics, competing narratives, incomplete data, and their own emotional reactions.
    They were practicing two forms of sensemaking at the same time:
    1. Personal sensemaking: regulating emotion, building resilience, understanding how your nervous system affects the organisation.
    2. Organisational sensemaking: exploring the terrain, shaping narrative, improvising when plans collide with reality, and adapting collaboratively.
    When those two disconnect, leadership falters.

    When they align, something powerful happens.

    This episode explains what I’ve learned so far, and why naming complexity is oddly liberating.

    If you’re wrestling with leadership in uncertain times, this episode and the series is for you. Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
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    9 分
  • Should you Collaborate with the Enemy? | Adam Kahane

    Should you Collaborate with the Enemy? | Adam Kahane
    2026/02/25
    If you're not part of the problem, you can't be part of the solution.

    In this episode of Messy, Daniel Atlin sits down with global facilitator and systems practitioner Adam Kahane to explore what it really means to collaborate when agreement feels impossible.

    They explore collaboration across deep divides, the courage to see our own part in the problem, and how change often starts in the smallest crack in a hardened system.

    Drawing from his newly revised second edition of "Collaborating with the Enemy", Adam challenges the romantic idea that collaboration is always the right answer. Instead, he offers a more grounded framework: collaboration is one option among four, alongside forcing, adapting, and exiting. The key question is “When, and under what conditions, is collaboration the most viable path?”

    The conversation explores several core ideas:
    • "Enemy-fying": Adam’s invented word for the habit of labeling others as enemies simply because we disagree with them. In polarized systems, this reflex deepens fragmentation and limits our options.

    • The Three Stretches of Collaboration:
    1. Embrace conflict as well as connection
    2. Experiment your way forward
    3. Recognise your role in the game

    • Power, Love, and Justice: Drawing on Martin Luther King Jr. and Paul Tillich, Adam frames social change as a tension between the drive to realize oneself (power), the drive to unify the separated (love), and the structures that balance the two (justice).

    • Failure as Teacher: Adam speaks candidly about mistakes in both professional and personal contexts, arguing that experimentation, not certainty, is the only way forward in complex systems.

    One of the key take aways for those interested in “Messy” leadership is that collaboration begins not with technique, but with introspection: Who am I in this system? How am I contributing to the very dynamics I’m frustrated by?

    If you like this episode, share it with a friend. And buy Adam's book! Link to Adam's book: Collaborating with the Enemy · Reos Partners Website · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
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    51 分
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