In this episode of the Max Value Podcast, host Ben Towne sits down with Mike Roe, CEO of 10Sense, a UK-based software company that helps organizations understand what is really going on inside their teams using sensemaking science and organizational experience data. Mike shares his unlikely career journey — from failed banker to 30-year police veteran, commanding 1,500 officers in Bristol, to leading a software company. Throughout the conversation, Mike covers the four pillars of long-term leadership success, the critical importance of having a trusted peer group where leaders can be truly vulnerable, and the concept of “perching” as a framework for organizational reflection. He explains how 10Sense differs from traditional engagement surveys by prioritizing plausibility over precision and offering a frequent pulse of the organization. The episode closes with Mike’s defining moment during the Bristol crack cocaine crisis of 1999–2000 and his current reading recommendation: Embracing Uncertainty by Margaret Heffernan.
Chapter 1: From Police Commander to Software CEO
Mike traces his career path from banking dropout to 30-year police veteran — most of it as a detective — culminating in commanding Bristol’s police force of 1,500 officers. He then joined Footdown, a leadership and mentoring company, as a member, which eventually led him to leave the public sector and take on the CEO role. Over time, the company evolved from a mentoring group to a consultancy to a full software company, with the core mission of inspiring leaders and organizations to be the best they can be remaining constant throughout.
Chapter 2: Why Every Leader Needs a Safe Circle
Mike argues that leadership is a continual journey and that the moment a leader thinks they’ve cracked it is precisely when they are most vulnerable. He outlines his four-part leadership mantra: create purpose and direction, align people around that, motivate people, and create a culture of leadership. He reflects on spending many years without a trusted peer group, and how joining a mentoring circle — which he has now led for 25 years — transformed his approach to leadership. The conversation also covers the “perching” concept developed by Dr. Mike Carter, using a bird analogy to argue that leaders and teams must pause regularly to assess direction, renewal, and alignment.
Chapter 3: Scaling Impact Without Becoming Silicon Valley
Ben explores the transition from one-to-one coaching to a scalable software product and how 10Sense positioned itself as disruptive technology without the Silicon Valley trappings. Mike clarifies that while 10Sense is software, it is not yet a full SaaS company — it provides diagnostic tools that help leaders understand what is going on in their organizations. The chapter highlights the early challenge of marketing a product that organizations don’t know they need, especially when competing against the Big Four consulting firms or incumbent HR engagement surveys.
Chapter 4: Turning Team Culture Into Measurable Insight
Mike explains the concept of sensemaking in practice: asking the fewest number of questions possible, segmented by function, geography, and hierarchy, to generate what 10Sense calls Organizational Experience (OX) data. He distinguishes this from EX (employee engagement) and CX (customer data), emphasizing that the tool captures weak signals that can predict organizational problems — as demonstrated by a client whose CTO said the tool could now predict profitability two months in advance. The chapter reinforces that data augments leadership decision-making but does not replace it: the tool is a warning system, not an autopilot.
Chapter 5: Why Sense-Making Goes Beyond 360 Reviews
Mike differentiates 10Sense from traditional 360 reviews — which focus on the individual — and from annual engagement surveys, describing the tool as a monthly organizational MRI that prioritizes plausibility over precision. The approach is grounded in the academic sensemaking science developed by Karl Weick in the late 1960s, and 10Sense worked with the University of Bath to validate its methodology. The clever design — just 16 interconnected questions — consistently gives organizations a mirror of themselves, to the point where no client has ever said “that’s not our company.”
Chapter 6: Using Sense-Making to Build Business Value
Mike connects the 10Sense diagnostic directly to business value: it functions both as a warning system — preventing performance decline before it hits the bottom line — and as a growth tool, helping organizations identify and replicate what their top performers are doing. He shares a concrete example of an accountancy firm that grew from $25M to $30M using the tool, and discusses how a CEO used it in four companies, including in preparation for a successful IPO. The RAG (red-amber-green) reporting dashboard gives leaders a fast, visual read on team health across the organization.
Chapter 7: Get to Know You — Mike Roe
Mike opens up about two things not on his LinkedIn: a lifelong dedication to cricket, from which he says he learned more about leadership than from the boardroom; and the defining crisis of his career — managing Bristol’s crack cocaine epidemic in 1999–2000, which drove a surge in acquisitive crime and led the Home Secretary David Blunkett to call for his dismissal. He reflects on resilience, the value of a trusted support network (which he didn’t have at the time), and the contrast between public sector security and the brutal accountability of private sector leadership. He closes with a strong recommendation for the work of author Margaret Heffernan, particularly Willful Blindness, Uncharted, and his current read, Embracing Uncertainty.
