The Inner Game of Change

Welcome to The Inner Game of Change.  where we explore the thinking that shapes how change really happens. 
Today’s conversation sits at the heart of something we do not talk about enough when it comes to change.
We talk about strategy.
We talk about tools.
We talk about capability and execution.
But very rarely do we stop and ask a simpler question.
What if the real challenge is not the change itself…
but what we cannot see about ourselves as we go through it?
In this episode, I sit down with Jill McCauley.
Jill is the COO at Behavioral Essentials, and her work focuses on one thing that sits beneath performance, culture, and leadership.
Self awareness.
She has spent years working alongside leaders and teams, helping them see themselves more clearly, especially in environments that look successful on the outside, but feel very different on the inside.
In this conversation, we explore the idea of blind spots in the workplace.
Not as abstract concepts…
but as real forces that shape how leaders show up, how teams operate, and ultimately how change either moves forward… or quietly stalls.
We talk about the hidden cost of leadership without self awareness.
Why capable leaders unintentionally create friction.
And how the strengths that got us here… can sometimes be the very things that get in the way.
There is a simple but powerful idea that runs through this conversation.
You cannot change what you cannot see.
And the moment you start seeing yourself more clearly…
everything else begins to shift.
I am grateful to have Jill chatting with me today. 

About Jill
I’ve spent my career working alongside leaders — in boardrooms, executive meetings, and organizations that look successful on paper but feel different on the inside.

I’ve learned that this feeling is rarely a strategy problem or a skills gap. 

It’s a self-awareness problem.

Capable leaders unintentionally create friction. Teams spend time managing dynamics instead of doing the work. Meetings become more painful than they need to be. Energy and efforts get wasted. And no one can quite name why things feel harder than they should.

This is the hidden cost of leadership without self-awareness.

Over time, I stopped seeing these challenges as individual failures and started seeing them as systemic issues. As organizations grow, roles evolve, pressure increases, and identities lag behind reality. Leaders keep relying on the same strengths that got them here, without realizing those strengths may now be creating blindspots, tension, or misalignment downstream.

Self-awareness isn’t soft. And it isn’t intuitive for everyone.

It’s a discipline, practice, and a leadership responsibility. That can’t be ignored.

At Behavioral Essentials, we work with leaders, teams, and organizations to build awareness where it actually matters — in how people show up, make decisions, communicate under pressure, and impact the systems around them. This work sits at the intersection of psychology, behavior, and real-world leadership demands. It’s not about labeling people or fixing personalities. It’s about creating clarity, reducing unnecessary suffering, and helping organizations function with more ease, accountability, and effectiveness.

I’ve seen what happens when leaders are willing to look honestly at themselves, and when organizations create space for that work. Conflict becomes more productive. Roles align more cleanly. Teams stop compensating for leadersh
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Ali Juma 
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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.
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 
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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)
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.
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.

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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’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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