On Work and Revolution · 2026-02-25 · 41 min
Jurie Strydom is the newly appointed Group CEO of Old Mutual, one of South Africa's most iconic financial institutions, who took an unconventional path to the top - stepping out of a portfolio NED life and back into the fire. He unpacks the surprisingly low-stakes experience of interviewing for the CEO role with a board he already sat on, the whiplash of going from a considered portfolio life to a full-throttle executive role within days, and his near-obsessive focus on accelerating decision-making as the primary unlock for organisational speed. With characteristic directness, Jurie is candid about what he hasn't gotten right - including work-life balance in the first six months - and reflects on the deeper philosophy that job satisfaction must come from impact, not the size of the title. Jurie and Debbie discuss: Decision velocity as a cultural weapon . Jurie's central conviction is that slow decision-making is the organisational cement that freezes momentum - and that leaders can reclaim speed by distinguishing reversible "two-way doors" from irreversible ones, and by giving people genuine license to act without always asking permission. Leading from the inside out.
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