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Messy with Daniel Atlin

Messy with Daniel Atlin

By: Solid Gold Podcasts #BeHeard
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Make Sense of the Mess of Leadership. Today’s leaders are facing unprecedented challenges. It’s a messy, complex world that requires a different approach and mindset to get things done. This is where you'll find conversations on how leaders in complex organizations navigate and make sense of the mess they find themselves in.Solid Gold Podcasts #BeHeard Economics Management Management & Leadership Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Putting the Mouth Back into the Body Politic | Sara Hurley

    Putting the Mouth Back into the Body Politic | Sara Hurley
    Mar 25 2026
    Public Service = Designing Fairness at Scale.

    In this episode of Messy, Daniel Atlin is joined by Sara Hurley, former Chief Dental Officer for England, a leader whose career spans frontline clinical care, military service, and senior government leadership. Few have operated as consistently at the intersection of individual care, institutional complexity, and public policy.

    Sara offers a deeply reflective account of leadership in the mess.
    Drawing on her experience during COVID, she describes what it feels like to make decisions when there are no good options — only trade-offs. In these moments, she argues, leadership is not about projecting certainty, but about holding uncertainty on behalf of others, while maintaining trust, clarity, and integrity.

    The conversation moves fluidly between the personal and the systemic:
    • The shift from authority to trust as the foundation of leadership
    • The emotional labour of carrying responsibility in complex systems
    • The challenge of leading in environments where outcomes are delayed, diffuse, and often invisible
    • The importance of stewardship — leaving systems better than you found them, even if the impact unfolds long after you’ve left

    Sara also makes a compelling case for public service as one of the last places where fairness can be intentionally designed into systems at scale — an idea that feels increasingly urgent in a time of institutional mistrust.

    At its core, this episode is about sensemaking: how leaders navigate ambiguity internally, while shaping systems externally.

    It’s a conversation about leadership in the real world: messy, human, and deeply consequential.

    If you like this episode please write a review and share it with a friend. Sara Hurley's LinkedIn · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
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    56 mins
  • Is the University Model Broken? | Tim Blackman

    Is the University Model Broken? | Tim Blackman
    Mar 11 2026
    Rethinking higher education — and finding your purpose.

    What if the real problem with higher education isn’t funding, technology, or rankings, but the model itself?

    In this episode, Daniel Atlin speaks with Tim Blackman, former Vice-Chancellor and President of the Open University, about whether the dominant university model is simply out of sync with modern life.

    While most universities still organise learning around a single intensive period in early adulthood, Tim argues that the future lies in lifelong learning, shorter credentials, and education woven throughout people’s working lives. Drawing on his experience leading one of the largest and most distinctive universities in the UK, he reflects on the challenge of changing institutions that are structurally designed to protect the status quo.

    But this conversation is also deeply personal.

    While in his role leading the Open University, Tim was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. The experience forced a profound pause, prompting him to reflect on legacy, responsibility, and a simple but powerful question: What kind of world do I want to leave my grandchildren?

    That moment sharpened his focus on the larger purpose of higher education. In his recent paper for the Higher Education Policy Institute, Tim argues that universities should orient themselves around a guiding mission: helping to build a sustainable economy: environmentally, socially, and financially.

    The discussion ranges from institutional leadership and lifelong learning to the challenge of misinformation in an increasingly fragmented knowledge landscape.

    Above all, it’s a conversation about purpose and the reminder that it is never too late to rethink your work, your impact, and the difference you want to make. In a messy world, Tim reminds us that leadership isn’t just about managing institutions - it’s about deciding what really matters with the time we have. Connect with Tim on LinkedIn · The HEPI paper · Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
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    51 mins
  • Making Sense of Making Sense | Why the mess matters

    Making Sense of Making Sense | Why the mess matters
    Mar 4 2026
    This episode is different.

    There’s no guest. It’s just me, Daniel Atlin, answering the question I ask every leader who comes on Messy: to riff off the Kierkegaard quote “Life must be lived forwards, but can only be understood backwards."

    I look back at the moments that shaped my curiosity about leadership, complexity, and what I now call “the mess.” I talk about growing up between cultures and religions, about realising I was gay in the 1980s, about feeling different and discovering that everyone carries a backstory you can’t see.

    After senior roles across government, cooperative organisations, and higher education, I kept noticing the same pattern: smart people, important missions, and good intentions. And… stalled initiatives, quiet failures, and exhausted leaders.

    Why is leadership in mission-driven organisations so difficult?

    That question led me to study leadership more formally at Oxford and HEC Paris and to interview 25 university leader across four countries. What I discovered surprised me.

    Leaders who navigated complexity most effectively weren’t the ones with perfect strategies but the ones who could make sense of politics, competing narratives, incomplete data, and their own emotional reactions.
    They were practicing two forms of sensemaking at the same time:
    1. Personal sensemaking: regulating emotion, building resilience, understanding how your nervous system affects the organisation.
    2. Organisational sensemaking: exploring the terrain, shaping narrative, improvising when plans collide with reality, and adapting collaboratively.
    When those two disconnect, leadership falters.

    When they align, something powerful happens.

    This episode explains what I’ve learned so far, and why naming complexity is oddly liberating.

    If you’re wrestling with leadership in uncertain times, this episode and the series is for you. Website · Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn
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    9 mins
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