Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change

This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real.

These episodes are not about tools or frameworks. They are reflections on judgement, dignity, and the human cost of change as it is actually lived.

The Weight of the Middle Feels Heavier Than the Authority.

This episode explores a reality many middle managers and change makers quietly carry.

Seeing what needs to change.
Feeling responsible for making it work.
But not always having the authority to fully shape it.

Drawing on history, from Roman centurions to naval captains, and modern organisations like Toyota, this episode reflects on a pattern that has always existed.

Responsibility does not always come with full control.

And in the messy middle, leadership is often less about authority… and more about judgement.

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Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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Welcome to The Inner Game of Change. where we explore the thinking that shapes how change really happens.

Today I am joined by Shannon Lucas.

Shannon is the Co CEO of Catalyst Constellations, where she works with executive teams to close the gap between the speed of change and the speed of execution.

And in this conversation, we explore what that might mean in practice.

We talk about discernment. We talk about resistance as a signal. We talk about fear in the system.

And we explore the reality of leading change when everything is moving at pace.

One idea! AI might be acting as a kind of mirror.

Reflecting how we think, how we decide, and how we design work.

In simple terms, what we notice may shape what happens next.

This is an episode for those navigating change in real systems.

Not just designing it on paper.

I am grateful to have Shannon chatting with me today.

About

I help executive teams and organizations build the muscle to transform continuously without burning out their best people or watching momentum die between initiatives.

Most organizations treat transformation like a one-time event: hire consultants, launch the program, declare victory, exhaust everyone involved, then wonder why nothing sticks. I work with CEOs and C-suite leaders to break that cycle by building real change capability into how their organizations actually operate.

As Co-CEO of Catalyst Constellations, I bring 20+ years of enterprise-scale innovation and transformation experience from companies like Ericsson, Cisco, and Vodafone. I’ve owned a $150M P&L, generated over $1B in new business pipeline, and learned firsthand what actually works (and what definitely doesn't) when you're trying to change how global organizations operate.

My approach combines hard-won operational experience with ongoing research into how transformation really happens. I co-authored the #1 Amazon bestseller Move Fast. Break Shit. Burn Out. based on our research into Catalysts (the highly action-oriented change agents inside organizations who can't stop themselves from driving change). We wrote it after watching too many talented people flame out while trying to transform their companies without the right support or frameworks. And based on lived personal experience.

I believe the organizations that will thrive are the ones that stop treating change as an event and start building the human, cultural, and structural capacity to adapt continuously. These are the firms that turn transformation into a sustained advantage rather than a recurring disruption.

My mission: help make the world's largest organizations more sustainable in every sense of the word: for people, profit, and planet.

Shannon’s profile

linkedin.com/in/shannonglucas

Website

catalystconstellations.com (Company)

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Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change

This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real.

These episodes are not about tools or frameworks. They are reflections on judgement, dignity, and the human cost of change as it is actually lived.

This episode is for anyone who has started moving, only to find that the plan does not quite hold once it meets the real world.

The shift.
The tension between following the plan and adjusting it.
The quiet judgement required to make things work in practice.

This is where many middle managers and change makers operate.
Not just executing plans, but reshaping them to fit reality.

Because change does not move forward because of the plan alone.
It moves forward because of how people engage with it.

Send us Fan Mail

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

Follow me on LinkedIn

Welcome to The Inner Game of Change. where we explore the thinking that shapes how change really happens.

Today’s conversation is not really about technology.

It is about decision making. It is about how we make calls when we do not fully know how something will land. How we rely on instinct, experience, and sometimes guesswork. And now AI is entering that space. Not to replace the human, but to sit alongside the human.

So the question becomes, are we moving into a world of human in the loop,
or AI in the loop supporting human judgement?

Today I am joined by Millie Marconi.

Millie is a serial entrepreneur who has been building most of her life. She has created over sixty products across ecommerce, SaaS, mobile games, and recruitment tech. She raised capital, built a product to early revenue, and then made a very deliberate decision to pivot in public when she hit scaling friction.

What triggered that pivot is what caught my attention. A single AI generated LinkedIn post that did not land.

And her reflection was simple and powerful. How something lands matters more than how it sounds in your head.

From that moment, she started to explore what she now calls a perception problem. Not a content problem.

She is now building TestFeed, a platform that allows you to simulate how your message, your idea, or your decision might land before it goes out into the world.

In simple terms, helping humans make better decisions before the consequences arrive.

What I enjoyed in this conversation is that it is not just about the tool.

It is about judgement. It is about confidence. And it is about what happens when we start to reduce the unknown.

Let’s get into it.

About

Oh, I'm Millie. I'm a serial entrepreneur and have been building my entire (professional) life since I was 20 - I've built over 60 products across e-commerce, SaaS, mobile games, and recruitment tech. I've had one 'real' job which lasted a matter of months, and we don’t talk about that.

I put my entrepreneurship down to incredible impatience, painful curiosity, and inspiration from my immigrant grandfather, who came to Australia from Italy with nothing and built a fantastic life for himself and our family (and, as a child, introduced me to the joys of red wine and orange juice at breakfast).

In 2023, I joined Antler as a solo founder, raised and built a recruitment product that hit $100K in revenue. But after hitting scaling friction in enterprise sales, I made the hard call to pivot - and did it in public.

The insight came from an unexpected place: a single LinkedIn post. It was AI-generated. It bombed. And it sparked a realisation: “How something lands matters more than how it sounds in your head.”

I wasn’t alone. In dozens of conversations with founders, marketers, and execs, the same problem kept surfacing: “I don’t know how this message will land.” That became the thesis: businesses don’t have a content problem - they have a perception problem.

That’s what I’m building now: TestFeed, the world’s first perspective engine.

TestFeed lets you simulate how your audience will react using synthetic audiences - before you hit send. Sales emails. Internal updates. Product decisions. Investor decks. Social posts. We help you predict reactions, spot blind spots, and stress-test communication across any channel, without needing to run a focus group or annoy your team with endless drafts.

I lead the business as CEO (in my opinion, this title is a total wank unless you have at least 10 people, but alas) I

Send us Fan Mail

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

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Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change

This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real.

These episodes are not about tools or frameworks. They are reflections on judgement, dignity, and the human cost of change as it is actually lived.

Send us Fan Mail

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

Follow me on LinkedIn

Welcome to The Inner Game of Change. where we explore the thinking that shapes how change really happens.

Today’s conversation is a special one for me.

My guest today was actually the very first person I interviewed when I started this podcast during the middle of Covid back in April 2021. At the time, the world was navigating uncertainty, disruption, and trying to make sense of what consistency meant when everything around us was shifting.

Since then, a lot has happened. The podcast has passed one hundred episodes, the world has moved through Covid, and we now find ourselves in another wave of transformation with Artificial Intelligence entering the workplace and our lives in profound ways.

So I thought it would be meaningful to bring him back.

My guest is Michael Canic, author of the book Ruthless Consistency. It was one of the books I was reading at the time when the idea of this podcast first came to me.

Michael’s central idea is simple but powerful. Consistency is not about robotic repetition. It is about the relentless alignment of intentions, decisions, and actions.

In this conversation we revisit the idea of consistency, but in a very different context.

We explore whether consistency is the opposite of change, or whether it is actually the thing that enables change. We talk about consistency in leadership, in capability building, and in the way individuals manage themselves in a world full of distraction.

And of course, we also touch on Artificial Intelligence, and how it is beginning to amplify the conditions that already exist inside organisations.

This is a reflective conversation about leadership, identity, discipline, and the inner game of navigating uncertainty.

I am grateful to have Michael chatting with me again.

Send us Fan Mail

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

Follow me on LinkedIn

Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change

This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real.

These episodes are not about tools or frameworks. They are reflections on judgement, dignity, and the human cost of change as it is actually lived.

In this episode of Inside The Messy Middle, I explore what happens when hesitation is repeatedly misread, and the middle layer of organisations slowly becomes quieter.

At first the silence can look like alignment. Fewer questions. Faster meetings. Less friction.

But silence carries a cost.

Through examples from science, business, and mythology, this episode explores what organisations lose when thoughtful voices withdraw, why adoption becomes shallow when the middle stops translating change, and how systems can bring those voices back.

Send a text

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

Follow me on LinkedIn

Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change

This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real.

These episodes are not about tools or frameworks. They are reflections on judgement, dignity, and the human cost of change as it is actually lived.

In this episode of Inside The Messy Middle, I explore what happens when pause, reflection, and professional judgement are interpreted as pushback.

What if hesitation is not resistance, but care?
What if slowing down is competence recognising consequence?

Through a business example from Intel and a quiet literary reflection, this episode examines the cost of misreading human hesitation — and what organisations risk losing when the middle stops speaking.

Send a text

Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast

Follow me on LinkedIn