Talking Strategy29 Jul 2025

S5E21: Hero of a Thousand Faces - Reflections on Strategy and Leadership

Beatrice and Paul reflect on the lessons for strategy-making and strategy-delivery from their conversations with and about strategic leaders in earlier episodes. Previous sessions of Talking Strategy have explored the activities of great strategic leaders and commanders from around the world. In this final episode of the current season, Paul and Beatrice reflect on past conversations and try to identify what lessons might be drawn about strategic leadership and how that shapes the way strategy is made and delivered. While the concept of strategic leadership itself is contested, this episode draws out some consistent themes from earlier episodes. Based around the concept of strategic leadership as a fundamentally human endeavour, Beatrice and Paul explore how strategy is developed by understanding and shaping the external environment, by mobilising the resources available within the enterprise the leader controls, and by ensuring the internal culture encourages commitment from all.

Strategic leaders play an important role in making sense of the world around them, setting the direction for their organisation and mobilising it in delivering the strategy. But delivery depends on sometimes thousands of others investing their talents in ensuring the strategy's success. So, while individual strategic leaders, in all their diversity, often appear as heroes, they represent thousands of others too. Join Beatrice and Paul as they try to distil lessons from the greats covered by this podcast series and what we might take away to help liberate the talent of our own organisations to succeed.

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Episoder(101)

S6E22: Delivering National Security Strategies

Former UN Ambassador and National Security Advisor Sir Mark Lyall Grant discusses the challenges facing delivery of Western security strategies. In this season of Talking Strategy we have explored man...

14 Jul 38min

S6E21: Dr Jack Watling on Ukrainian Adaptation to War

In our 100th episode, we talk to RUSI senior research fellow Dr Jack Watling about the transformation in Ukraine in response to Russia's War. Against what many considered a materially superior adversa...

30 Jun 33min

S6E20: Preparing for War: Adaptable Forces and Societies

Professor Olivier Schmitt describes the systemic challenges of military transformation, given rapidly evolving technology and NATO's distinct strategic cultures. Modern defence and security reviews hi...

16 Jun 36min

S6E19: Adversarial Strategy: Russia's Preparations for a Long War

We look at how Russia's armed forces are learning lessons from combat and examine Moscow's ambitions in its war against Ukraine. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine is part of a long-term, much larger ...

2 Jun 32min

S6E18: Bullion to Bullets: Mobilising the Financial Markets

The Centre for Economic Security's Dr Rebecca Harding argues for the importance of financial markets as the fourth pillar in supporting effective mobilisation. Conversations about industrial mobilisat...

19 Mai 35min

S6E17: Industrial Mobilisation: Harnessing the Capacity of Defence Primes Andrea Thompson

Despite an increasing focus on SMEs, effective industrial mobilisation must also better harness the power of traditional defence firms. Andrea Thompson from BAE Systems explains how. The excitement in...

5 Mai 36min

S6E16: Harnessing Disruptors in the Defence Industrial Ecosystem: Anduril Industries

The preparedness of Western armed forces for conflict is something that has featured prominently in many defence reviews. Christian Brose, Anduril's President & Chief Strategy Officer, describes how g...

21 Apr 41min

S6E15: Integrating Today's Forces for Air and Missile Defence

Rear Admiral Archer M Macy Jr describes today's military, organisational, human and cultural risks and opportunities in integrating forces for air and missile defence. Many modern defence reviews focu...

8 Apr 33min