Messy with Daniel Atlin

What happens when a cognitive scientist and writer, who has spent more than three decades inside universities, decides to help change higher education from a different vantage point? This week on "Messy", Daniel Atlin speaks with Art Markman, a former senior academic leader at the University of Texas at Austin and now Chief Academic Officer at Minerva Project. It is the first of two linked conversations about rethinking higher education, with Minerva founder Ben Nelson joining Daniel next week. Art brings the perspective of someone who knows both how people learn and how universities work. He reflects on the personal and professional changes behind his move to Minerva, and on a challenging realization: being an engaging professor does not necessarily mean creating an effective learning experience. Together, Daniel and Art explore why students are so often left to connect the pieces of their education themselves, why grades tell us less about learning than we might assume, and how a more intentional curriculum can help students apply what they learn in unfamiliar situations. Art also offers a practical example of AI supporting skill development through negotiation practice and individual feedback. Running through the conversation is a leadership question familiar well beyond universities: how do you help knowledgeable, independent people see the need for change and participate in making it happen? Art and Ben have arrived at Minerva through different paths. Art brings decades of experience working within an established institution; Ben brings an entrepreneur’s determination to rethink university education from first principles. Their conversations offer complementary perspectives on a shared ambition: helping higher education prepare students for a world that will keep changing. Key takeaways from this episode: - Engaging teaching does not guarantee learning. Art reflects on the difference between being an entertaining professor and designing experiences that help students develop lasting capabilities. - Grades offer an incomplete picture. Universities collect what Art calls “learning adjacent data,” while often knowing much less about what students have actually learned. - Students need help connecting the pieces. An intentional curriculum makes clear how skills develop across courses, rather than leaving students to discover those connections themselves. - Learning becomes powerful when it travels. Education should help students recognize when and how to apply their knowledge and skills in unfamiliar situations. - AI can create opportunities for practice and feedback. Art’s negotiation example shows how carefully designed tools could support students at different levels. - Institutional change requires faculty participation. Building a shared understanding of the need for change, alongside manageable steps forward, can help turn resistance into engagement. - Communication strengthens leadership. Explaining complex ideas to different audiences can help leaders understand the systems behind the problems they face. If you like this episode, please like it, write a review, and share it! Connect with Art Markman on LinkedIN · Art Markman and Bob Duke · The Minerva Project · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Strategist and researcher Zora Artis on the real work of alignment. Leadership is messy, ongoing, and stubbornly resistant to five-step programs. What does it take for people to move forward together when they see the world differently? Strategist, facilitator, coach, and researcher Zora Artis joins Daniel Atlin to explore what alignment means, what it costs when it is missing, and why sustaining it requires continual care and attention. Zora’s story begins with a childhood moving between Yugoslavia and Australia, learning to read unfamiliar environments and find belonging while retaining her own perspective. That experience helped shape her curiosity about how people make sense of situations and work through differences. Together, Zora and Daniel explore why apparent agreement can conceal very different understandings, what separates an executive team from a team of executives, and how avoiding difficult conversations means “banking future conflict.” Zora describes how ego, fear, and a sense that speaking up will change nothing can undermine alignment, even in seemingly successful teams. She also explains how leaders can build shared clarity through dialogue: giving everyone a voice, listening to understand, and asking questions that uncover assumptions and meaning. These practices connect alignment with a central theme of Messy: collective sensemaking, or how people work through different interpretations to figure out what to do next, together. As strategy cycles shorten and AI accelerates the pace of work, Zora argues that technology amplifies whatever alignment or misalignment already exists. The ongoing work of connecting purpose, priorities and everyday decisions becomes even more consequential. The conversation closes with Zora’s advice to her younger self: nurture curiosity, seek out different perspectives, and keep asking questions when something is unclear. Connect with Zora Artis on LinkedIn · Jonathan Trevor - Strategic Alignment Research, Said Business School · Michael Bungay Stanier - The Coaching Habit and The Conspiracy community · IABC - International Association of Business Communicators · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Eight jazz principles for leading in uncertain, unscripted environments. This episode is for leaders who feel the ground shifting beneath them and who must keep moving forward despite having no reliable script, no guaranteed outcome, and no clear map. In Part 2 of our conversation, Frank Barrett, author of Say Yes to the Mess, draws on jazz improvisation to offer a practical framework for leading well in exactly those conditions. Frank walks through eight jazz-derived leadership practices: mastering the art of unlearning (following Sonny Rollins' legendary retreat to the Brooklyn Bridge), saying yes to the mess through affirmative competence, performing and experimenting simultaneously, and building minimal structure for maximal autonomy. The conversation covers how Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue in a single take with no rehearsal - provoking musicians just enough to demand fresh attention - and what that teaches about provocative competence and double vision in leadership. The discussion also tackles followership - a discipline jazz calls 'comping' - and why organisations that only celebrate soloists are missing half the picture. Henry Mintzberg's concept of communityship gets a mention, and the episode explores how hanging out and serendipity (from Edison's Menlo Park to the Navy's O Club) drive the kind of innovation that formal structures cannot manufacture. Frank then turns the lens on universities as loosely coupled, gloriously messy organisations where autonomy, redundancy, and narcissistic passion somehow produce extraordinary results - and warns what is lost when control is tightened. The episode closes with a sharp-edged argument about AI: useful for surfacing patterns across compressed expertise, but dangerous when used to offload the struggle of learning itself. Saying yes to the mess means resisting the temptation to let a machine clean up the very friction through which judgment, identity, and wisdom are formed. Relevant to leaders in higher education, the military, technology, and anywhere uncertainty is the default operating condition. Connect with Frank Barrett on LinkedIn · Say Yes to the Mess by Frank Barrett (Harvard Business Review Press) · Sonny Rollins - The Bridge (album) · Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (album) · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Jazz pianist and organizational scholar Frank Barrett on play, shame, and finding your voice. This episode is for anyone who has ever felt held back by a voice telling them they are doing it wrong. Frank Barrett, jazz pianist, organizational scholar, and author of Yes to the Mess, traces the roots of improvisation back to where it really begins: childhood, play, shame, and the difference between learning that is alive and learning that is rule-bound. If you love music, suspect that fear of mistakes is quietly limiting you, or want to understand what jazz can genuinely teach leaders about navigating uncertainty, this conversation is for you. Frank's story starts at his grandfather's piano in a small Irish-American home in Cleveland, where ragtime and laughter shaped a different relationship with mistakes than any formal lesson ever could. He traces how that early experience of playful, joyful learning was replaced by shame when structured piano lessons began, and how that shame became the main enemy of improvisation throughout his life and career. The contrast between mistakes that generate laughter and mistakes that generate silence is one of the most practical insights in this episode. The conversation moves through Frank's accidental journey into jazz: teaching himself by ear, playing with the late great jazz clarinetist Ken Popowski, surviving a very public humiliation in the wrong key with the Tommy Dorsey Band at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, and receiving the bluntest possible feedback to find his own voice. These are not polished success stories. They are exactly the kind of messes that turn into wisdom. Frank also traces how his lived experience as a musician collided with the organizational thinking of Karl Weick, whose concept of sense-making and compressed expertise runs through this episode. He describes the 1996-97 Academy of Management symposium on jazz that sparked his research career, his early connection to David Cooperrider and the birth of appreciative inquiry at the Cleveland Clinic, and his relationship with Deborah Ancona's work on leadership and the family ghosts we carry into our professional lives. The episode closes on the phrase that anchors Frank's entire framework: yes to the mess is an appreciative move. Part two (next week) covers leadership, unlearning, minimal structure, maximal autonomy, and AI. Connect with Frank on LinkedIn · Yes to the Mess · Karl Weick's Social Psychology of Organizing · Deborah Ancona's research at MIT Sloan · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Sensemaking leadership as a team sport. This episode is for anyone who cares about the future of public institutions and what it takes to lead them well in a world of slow growth, eroding trust, and rapid technological change. Sir Anton Muscatelli, economist, former Principal of the University of Glasgow, and current President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, shares a rare combination: deep academic expertise, two decades of institutional leadership, and an immigrant's perspective shaped by childhood across Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. Anton lays out a three-part framework for how expert institutions must communicate to preserve public trust: show your reasoning, be honest about where expertise ends and judgment begins, and be accountable when you get things wrong. He applies this directly to flashpoint debates including Brexit, climate change, and US tariffs - explaining why experts are losing credibility and what they must change. The conversation moves into the structural pressures facing advanced economies: why slower growth makes politics more zero-sum and fuels populism, what the history of the interwar years tells us about today's protectionism, and why Anton remains an optimist about democracy, technology, and humanity's capacity to overcome adversity. Anton reflects on interdisciplinary research and institutional design, including the Advanced Research Centre at Glasgow and parallels with Cambridge, and what form-follows-function really means when building institutions for wicked problems. He humbly shares his personal leadership philosophy: curiosity first, team leadership always, and the player-coach model as the practical antidote to the lonely decisions at the top. The episode closes with a distinction that cuts to the heart of the AI era: knowledge is becoming abundant and easy to access, but wisdom, the judgment to know how to use knowledge in a particular situation, remains scarce and irreducibly human. That, Anton argues, is exactly the role universities and national academies must own going forward. · Royal Society of Edinburgh · University of Glasgow Advanced Research Centre · UK Productivity Institute · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Kathy Biondi on 40 years of leadership in action and navigating uncertainty This episode is for leaders and aspiring leaders in the public sector who want a frank, experience-grounded conversation about what it really takes to navigate organisational upheaval, closures, mergers and cultural change. Kathy Biondi spent nearly forty years in the Ontario government and closed a college campus, led teams through mergers, and directed a far-reaching operations branch in the Correctional Ministry. Her lessons are practical, humble, and immediately transferable. Kathy unpacks the moments that defined her leadership: physically staying on site until the last day of a college closure in 1994, personally phoning to secure jobs for every displaced staff member, and building the kind of trust that meant people brought her solutions rather than just problems. She shares how her background in education and communications became a thread running through every role she held, and how written communication - briefing notes, documented decisions, clear expectations - became one of her most powerful leadership tools. The conversation covers the concept of 'profits beyond money' - how prosperity in mission-driven and public organisations is measured in healthier communities, stronger relationships and better quality of life rather than a financial bottom line. Kathy also reflects on the next generation of public sector leaders she is meeting today, the COVID generation of health professionals driving policy change from the middle of their careers, and what senior leaders risk if they fail to listen to them. Topics include: servant leadership and leading from the middle; distributed problem-solving and trust-building; managing organisational closure with compassion; navigating government restructuring a in Ontario; performance management through documentation; the role of communication, clear language and written records in leadership; community foundations and post-retirement public service; and, the idea that leadership is less about control and more about regrouping, planning and returning to basics when things get messy. Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Leadership, identity, and the human need to belong. In this deeply personal episode of Messy, Daniel Atlin sits down with executive coach and leadership practitioner Nkulu Madonko to explore the often-overlooked relationship between identity, belonging, and leadership. Drawing on a remarkable life journey that spans Zambia, Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom, and South Africa, Nkulu reflects on the formative experiences that shaped him — from being sent to boarding school at age six, to navigating questions of race, culture, and belonging, to helping leaders make sense of complexity in their organizations and within themselves. Together, Daniel and Nkulu explore why leadership challenges are often rooted in deeper questions of identity and meaning. They discuss how many of the behaviours we describe as “leadership styles” may actually be survival strategies developed long ago in response to our need to belong, succeed, be safe, or be loved. The conversation examines the importance of self-awareness, curiosity, reflection, and the power of the pause in leadership. Nkulu shares insights from his coaching work with executives, arguing that leaders often lead from deeply ingrained patterns rather than consciously chosen purpose. Along the way, they discuss race, culture, coaching, emotional regulation, purpose, vulnerability, and why personal sensemaking is not separate from leadership — it is leadership. The episode concludes with a reflection on the Southern African greeting Sawubona: "I see you" and its powerful connection to leadership, identity, and the human need to be truly seen. Key Themes - Identity and leadership - Belonging, safety, and meaning-making - The hidden origins of leadership behaviour - Leading from purpose rather than pattern - Personal and organizational sensemaking - Race, culture, and lived experience - The power of reflection and self-awareness - Executive coaching and leadership transformation - Curiosity as a leadership discipline - Sawubona: seeing others and being seen Connect with Nkulu on LinkedIn · Quintus Wealth and Coaching · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

Rebalance the world and celebrate our interdependence. Henry Mintzberg, one of the world's most influential management thinkers, makes the case that society is dangerously out of balance and that every one of us has a role in fixing it. This episode is for anyone who feels cynical, overwhelmed, or immobilised by the state of the world but is still looking for a reason to act. Mintzberg, now in his mid-eighties and still publishing, argues that communism did not lose to capitalism in 1991, it simply collapsed under its own weight. The dangerous myth that capitalism triumphed has licensed a predatory form of it to tilt society off its axis. His remedy is a three-sector model of society: balancing private business, government, and what he calls the plural sector - cooperatives, NGOs, mutual organisations, and community enterprises. He uses Co-op Sapporo in Hokkaido, Japan as a living proof-of-concept: a cooperative that fills every gap left by retreating businesses and governments, from supermarkets to funeral services to mobile ATMs in depopulated villages. The conversation covers Mintzberg's four-stage roadmap for societal rebalancing, outlined in his pamphlet 'Balance Now for the Sake of Survival': first, reframing and committing via the Declaration of Interdependence; second, mobilising through tangible grassroots action; third, transforming institutions to make governments more respected, businesses more responsible, and communities more robust; and fourth, consolidating into comprehensive social economy models. He cites the women of Paraguay pelting a corrupt senator's house with eggs until the smell forced his resignation as the spirit of stage two. On organisations, Mintzberg revisits his foundational four-form framework from 'Understanding Organizations, Finally' - program, project, personal, and professional - illustrated through sports analogies from North American football to yacht racing. He champions communitieship over leadership, arguing that healthy organisations function as communities, not hierarchies, and that you cannot create a manager in a classroom any more than you can create a swimmer in a classroom. Mintzberg also reflects on MBA education reform, the isolating effects of every technology from the car to AI, the viral potential of the Reformation as a model for individual-led change, and why he is searching for a 'first follower' to help his rebalancing message spread. His inspiration: Martin Luther, an obscure monk whose one-page rant nailed to a church door changed Christianity. If Mintzberg at 86 is still trying to change the world, his argument is clear - so should the rest of us. Connect with Henry Mintzberg on LinkedIn · Henry Mintzberg's website and blog · Rebalancing Society - free PDF and resources · The declaration of our interdependence · Derek Sivers TED Talk - how to start a movement · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester on AI, philosophy, and institutional change. This episode is for people who are struggling to see how transformative change, especially AI adoption, can be introduced without fracturing trust or triggering institutional paralysis. Duncan Ivison, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, one of the UK's largest and most comprehensive universities, in conversation with Daniel Atlin, explains how he is leading significant change: not by minimizing disruption, but by leaning into it deliberately and bringing the community along. Duncan describes the University of Manchester's landmark partnership with Microsoft, the first of its kind globally. It is providing free, unrestricted access to the latest version of Copilot to all 65,000 students and staff, alongside ethical frameworks, working groups on environmental impact, and structured training. He is frank about what he got wrong: underestimating the emotional response, the anxiety about AI's effect on organizational culture, and the importance of 'deliberated disagreement', having actual conversations rather than making assumptions about what people think. The 1,700 person town hall that followed the announcement, ranging from 'this is evil' to 'where is my licence?', became a masterclass in why dialogue and transparency matter more than consensus. Duncan draws directly on his background as a philosopher, trained in the limits of knowledge, first principles thinking, and asking better questions - to explain how he navigates decisions in an institution that is simultaneously a research powerhouse, a civic anchor, a global brand, and a complex adaptive system of competing disciplines and stakeholders. He argues that in an AI-mediated world, large language models don't think, rather human beings do, and that philosophy and the humanities are entering a golden era precisely because the ethical and value questions AI raises will not be answered by the tech industry. The conversation also covers: - distributed leadership and when to step in versus step back - strategy as narrative and why universities drift when purpose is unclear - reimagining university structures around real-world problems rather than academic disciplines - lifelong and flexible learning as the new model - the fragility of universities' social licence to operate - And the career philosophy of saying yes to opportunities before you know the outcome. Duncan reflects on 22 years at the University of Sydney, the 'two body problem' of a global career, and what growing up in multicultural, bilingual Montreal taught him about identity, power and ideas. This is a thoughtful conversation about leadership in complexity, the future of higher education, and why deeply human capacities may matter more than ever in the age of AI. As always, thanks for listening to Messy. Connect with Duncan Ivison on LinkedIn · University of Manchester AI and Microsoft Copilot partnership · Alan Turing at the University of Manchester · University of Manchester - From Manchester For The World strategy · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn

And meeting them where they're at. In this episode of Messy, Daniel Atlin sits down with Mary Anne Chambers, former Ontario cabinet minister, banking executive, and lifelong advocate for equity and access, to explore what it truly means to lead in complex, purpose and people-centered systems. From her early experiences growing up in Jamaica, where she learned to understand lives different from her own, to her work as a bank executive, to a member of government and minister shaping policies that expanded access to education and childcare, Mary Anne reflects on the power of empathy, integrity, and lived experience in leadership. This conversation goes beyond titles and achievements. It’s about how leaders navigate competing pressures, balance politics with purpose, and make decisions that serve the public good, even when those decisions are difficult. At its core, this episode is a reminder that leadership in the mess isn’t about control or authority. It’s an inspiring and motivating conversation about connection and meeting people where they are, listening deeply, and bringing others along toward a shared future. Key Takeaways: • Empathy is not soft, rather it’s essential for effective leadership • People’s decisions make sense only when you understand their context • Structural barriers often hide opportunity and talent • Leadership is about influence, not just authority • Good public policy requires long-term thinking not quick fixes • Trust and integrity are a leader’s most valuable capital • Listening does not mean agreeing, it means understanding • Leadership is about bringing people along, not pushing them forward. I hope you'll find this conversation helpful and motivating in getting through the mess. If you like it, please write a review and share it with a friend. Working through messes is easier with others. Mary Anne Chambers' profile as Chancellor at the University of Guelph · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn