The Waggle Room

The Waggle Room with Mick Brian
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Society & Culture

The Waggle Room is a space for sensemaking. Inspired by the way honeybees share signals through the waggle dance, this channel explores how meaning forms in complex, real-world systems — long before certainty, plans, or tidy conclusions appear. Each conversation focuses on the signals people are noticing but struggling to name. The patterns, tensions, half-formed ideas, and early shifts that don’t always make it into headlines, dashboards, or strategies — but matter all the same. Guests come from many walks of life: technology, leadership, policy, creativity, science, organisations, and bey

  1. 1d ago

    The Waggle Room - Ep 24 - Chris Oldfield - War, Trauma & the Signals We're Blocking

    ## Episode Overview Mick sits down with former Royal Engineers soldier Chris Oldfield — a man he served alongside in 2-4 Field Squadron in the late 80s and early 90s — for one of the most honest conversations The Waggle Room has ever hosted. Chris opens up about 23 years of service, the accumulation of combat trauma across Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and how the near-collapse of his own life led him to a radical re-reading of war, power, and generational trauma. Now living in Finland and speaking in schools about peace, Chris brings hard-won clarity to questions that matter far beyond the military. ## Key Topics - Generational trauma and the military recruiting pipeline — why broken communities and impoverished backgrounds produce the ideal recruit, and how trauma is passed across generations, even through DNA - High-risk search in Iraq and Afghanistan — the realities of IED threat, command decisions under pressure, and the death of Sapper Jordan - The trauma puzzle — how compartmentalised experiences from South Georgia to Sangin eventually forced a catastrophic breakdown, and what brought Chris back from the edge of suicide - Management in extremis vs. office management — what leading men in lethal environments reveals about the word we throw around in boardrooms - War as a system — Chris's research-driven conclusion that wars are produced for profit, sustained by broken communities, and cleaned up by charities rather than governments - Searching for peace — how Chris now delivers presentations in schools across Finland, and why changing one young person's next decision makes 23 years of service worthwhile ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Chris Oldfield — Former Professional Soldier (Royal Engineers, 23 years), public speaker and advocate for peace, currently based in Finland. Chris is working on a book titled Searching for Peace. - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/chris-oldfield-eng-tech-minst-re-2507432b4 - Email: oldfield465@yahoo.co.uk

    The Waggle Room - Ep 24 - Chris Oldfield - War, Trauma & the Signals We're Blocking

  2. Jul 13

    The Waggle Room - Ep 23 - Paul Blair - A Soldier's Gut Feel in an Entrepreneur's World

    ## Episode Overview Mick sits down with Paul Blair — veteran, exited founder, and CEO of ArcX — to explore what it really takes to back yourself when the data says stop. From Dragon's Den rejections to 9 million units sold, and from Afghan patrols to wearable tech startups, Paul shares the signals he nearly missed, the ones he acted on, and what turning 50 taught him about paying attention. ## Key Topics - Entrepreneurial risk and confirmation bias — why Paul remortgaged his house, ignored Dragon's Den, and flew to Florida to prove everyone wrong - Gut instinct vs. data — how reading the environment in Afghanistan translates directly to startup decision-making - The swarming founder — serial venturing, knowing when to kill a failing business, and the cost of stubbornness - Corporate vs. startup decision-making — why consensus culture stalls organisations, and what skunkworks models get right - Mission command in practice — why military leadership training doesn't transplant easily into corporate life - Signals we fail to see — from Fangio at Monaco 1950 to the quiet streets of Helmand: spotting the obvious before it's too late ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Paul Blair DSO — CEO of ArcX, exited founder, veteran, and mentor at Heropreneurs. - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/paul-blair-dso - ArcX: https://arcx.fit - Kong Company: https://kongcompany.com - AFFS: https://affs.co.uk - Email: paul@arcx.fit

    The Waggle Room - Ep 23 - Paul Blair - A Soldier's Gut Feel in an Entrepreneur's World

  3. Jul 4

    The Waggle Room - Ep22 - Ed Pike - Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It

    Episode Overview Mick sits down with Ed Pike — behaviouralist, applied scientist, and founder of Irrational Change — for a sharp, unfiltered conversation about why humans are predictably irrational at work, and what that means for leaders, change agents, and organisations trying to actually get things done. Drawing on 30 years inside large corporates, Ed makes a compelling case that safety — not purpose, not values — is the primary driver of human behaviour at work. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Key Topics - Safety as the master motivator — why financial security drives more organisational behaviour than any engagement survey will tell you, and how VW Dieselgate and EY's ethics exam scandal prove it - Tribal dynamics over team dynamics — how tribes form, how leaders are expected to keep them safe, and why individuals sacrifice their ethics to preserve belonging - Why traditional change management is broken — the critical mistake of focusing on the change itself rather than the system around it, and why the profession has trained leaders badly for decades - Self-discovery over entertainment — Ed's three killer questions technique, the IKEA bias, and why asking is more powerful than telling - Cognitive surrender and AI — how AI risks becoming a tool for intellectual abdication, and how Ed's team deliberately reintroduces friction to drive genuine thinking - Leaders get the outcomes they deserve — why the signal most organisations are failing to see is that leaders' behaviours are producing exactly the results they're getting — and nobody is telling them Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian Guest Info Ed Pike is a behaviouralist and applied behavioural scientist with 30 years of experience advising large corporates on complex tribal and behavioural change. She is the founder of Irrational Change and B-Site AI. - Irrational Change: https://irrationalchange.com - B-Site AI: https://bsiteai.com

    The Waggle Room - Ep22 - Ed Pike - Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It

  4. Jun 24

    The Waggle Room - Ep21 - Ellen Kay - Mind Over Machine: Drones and Human Performance

    Ellen Kay, Founder of Neuro8, joins Mick for a remarkable conversation that spans thought-controlled drones, neuroscience, defence trials, and the inner workings of human performance. From a Special Forces Defence Expo coffee conversation to a live US military trial flying drones by thought alone, Ellen reveals why lasting change — in people and organisations — is always an inside job. ## Key Topics - The drone trial: How Ellen worked with US military operatives to fly drones using brainwave activity alone, and what the AI-driven linguistic analysis revealed about deep personal change - The brain-body loop: Why 95% of who we are is fixed by age 35 — and how to work with the 5% window for genuine transformation - Stress, performance, and coherence: The critical difference between short-term stress (useful) and chronic stress (destructive), and how nervous system coherence unlocks peak performance - The operative who struggled: The most instructive case from the trial — a participant whose self-reported success was contradicted entirely by the data - Engineered serendipity: Why showing up, having the coffee, and sharing what you are passionate about is a deliberate strategy, not luck - Hyper-enabled operators: The vision of serving personnel — and leaders — who can perform optimally with or without technology ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Ellen Kay is Founder of Neuro8, a neuroscience-based change and performance training company. She has worked across corporate, cyber security, and defence sectors, and led a landmark thought-control drone trial with US military operatives. - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ellenkay - Website: https://neuro8.com - Email: engage@neuro8.com

    The Waggle Room - Ep21 - Ellen Kay - Mind Over Machine: Drones and Human Performance

  5. Jun 19

    The Waggle Room - Ep20 - Philip Atkinson - Leadership Lessons from the Hive

    ## Episode Overview Mick is joined by Philip Atkinson — founder of Hive-Logic, executive coach, beekeeper, and author of BeeWise: 12 Leadership Lessons from a Busy Hive. Together they explore what bees can teach us about communication, continuous learning, team design, and the underrated art of ending things well. This is one episode where no bee metaphor needs forcing — it's baked in from the start. ## Key Topics - Communication in the dark: Why the waggle dance is a masterclass in consistent, repeatable messaging — and what CEOs get wrong about email - The bee career model: How bees rotate through seven distinct roles before they ever fly, and what that means for continuous learning in a world of unknown future jobs - Two types of teams: The critical difference between interdependent and extra-dependent teams, and why treating them the same is a systemic failure - Endings matter: Why organisations are brilliant at starting things and terrible at closing them — and the burnout cost of too many open apps - Don't let history restrict the future: Philip's signal — past performance, past titles, and past structures are poor guides to what's needed next - Curiosity as competitive advantage: Why killing curiosity in organisations isn't just bad for performance — it's bad for civilisation ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Philip Atkinson — Founder & Team Coach, Hive-Logic - Website: https://hive-logic.com - Book: https://beewisebook.com - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/philipatkinsonhivelogic - Email: Philip@Hive-Logic.com All proceeds from BeeWise go directly to [Bees for Development](https://beesfordevelopment.org), supporting families in developing countries to build beekeeping businesses.

    The Waggle Room - Ep20 - Philip Atkinson - Leadership Lessons from the Hive

  6. Jun 11

    The Waggle Room - Ep19 - Susie Palmer-Trew - The Everyday Change Revolution

    Susie Palmer-Trew, founder of Everyday Change and author of 'The Everyday Change Playbook (because change doesn't need to be shit)', joins Mick for a refreshing conversation about making change work for real humans. From her background as a student union president to building a business that champions everyday change over transformation theatre, Susie brings a grounded, no-nonsense perspective to how organisations can actually get things done. ## Key Topics • Why we inflate everyday change into massive 'transformations' and who benefits from this theatre • The reality that most change is just normal people doing normal things in normal ways • How Big Four consultancies set the rules of the game and why we all play along • Finding leadership at every level of the organisation, not just in the C-suite • The importance of adult-to-adult conversations instead of parent-child dynamics • Using AI practically to free up time for actual human interaction ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Susie Palmer-Trew is the founder of Everyday Change and The Grove Club. She's written two books: 'Project Management is All Bollocks' (co-authored with Peter Taylor) and 'The Everyday Change Playbook (because change doesn't need to be shit)'. Connect with Susie on LinkedIn where she shares candid insights about making change work for real people in real organisations.

    The Waggle Room - Ep19 - Susie Palmer-Trew - The Everyday Change Revolution

  7. Jun 4

    The Waggle Room - Ep18 - Mark "Moose" McGrath - Beyond OODA loop Mythology

    Mark 'Moose' McGrath has dedicated his career to preserving and building upon John Boyd's authentic work, rescuing it from the simplified 'circle diagrams' pushed by those who may not know it's true meaning. In this episode, we explore the real depth of Boyd's thinking, from Destruction and Creation to the OODA 'loop' sketch, and how it applies to modern challenges including AI adoption. ## Key Topics - Why Boyd's work is widely misunderstood and how to access the authentic material - The critical importance of 'Destruction and Creation' as Boyd's foundation - How the Marines adopted Boyd's thinking whilst other services didn't - Orientation as the centre of gravity in decision-making - People, Ideas, Things - and why we always fixate on the wrong one - How AI can enhance orientation when applied correctly - The guerrilla information war we're all participating in ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Mark (Moose) McGrath is Strategic Orientation Advisory at AGLX, former Marine Corps officer, and co-host of the 'No Way Out' podcast. He has spent years in Boyd's archives preserving the authenticity of his work. - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1 - Website: aglx.com - Substack: thewhirl.substack.com - Email: mark.mcgrath@aglx.com

    The Waggle Room - Ep18 - Mark "Moose" McGrath - Beyond OODA loop Mythology

  8. May 19

    The Waggle Room - Ep17 - Steve Hearsum - Why We Keep Falling for Silver Bullets

    Steve Hearsum joins Mick to explore why organisations and leaders repeatedly reach for silver bullet solutions, despite knowing they don't work. Steve unpacks the powerful forces of shame, anxiety, and what he calls 'functional collusion' that drive our collective search for certainty in an uncertain world. This conversation reveals the uncomfortable truths about why change fails and what practices we actually need to develop instead. ## Key Topics • Why we collude in seeking silver bullet solutions despite knowing they don't work • The role of shame and anxiety in organisational decision-making • Functional collusion and unconscious patterns that maintain dysfunctional systems • The difference between learning for certificates versus learning for practice • Power dynamics and complicity in organisational hierarchies • Why embracing ambivalence and absurdity might be the signal we're missing ## Where to Listen - Website: https://thewaggleroom.com - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWaggleRoom - Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/TheWaggleRoom - Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-waggle-room/id1879089102 - Substack: https://substack.com/@mickbrian ## Guest Info Steve Hearsum is a consultant, executive coach, supervisor and author specialising in organisational change and leadership practices. His book explores why silver bullet solutions persist. - LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/stevehearsum - Company: edgeandstretch.com - Personal: hearsum.com

    The Waggle Room - Ep17 - Steve Hearsum - Why We Keep Falling for Silver Bullets
See All (24)

About

The Waggle Room is a space for sensemaking. Inspired by the way honeybees share signals through the waggle dance, this channel explores how meaning forms in complex, real-world systems — long before certainty, plans, or tidy conclusions appear. Each conversation focuses on the signals people are noticing but struggling to name. The patterns, tensions, half-formed ideas, and early shifts that don’t always make it into headlines, dashboards, or strategies — but matter all the same. Guests come from many walks of life: technology, leadership, policy, creativity, science, organisations, and bey

Information

  • Creator
    The Waggle Room with Mick Brian
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    24
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Waggle Room with Mick Brian
  • Show Website
    The Waggle Room