The Story
Where this work comes from
Michael is the Founder and CEO of Linke Leadership, a strategy and leadership consultancy that helps individuals and organisations close the gap between where they are and where they need to be. Linke Leadership works with leaders at all levels — through coaching, mentoring, and practical frameworks — to make leading organisational change more effective in an AI-enabled world.
That work is grounded in thirty years of executive leadership experience, including fifteen years as a CEO. He has led organisations in the aviation sector and the animal welfare sector, and held senior executive roles in the disability and public sectors. Those environments — each with its own regulatory pressures, stakeholder complexity, and cultural dynamics — shaped a leadership philosophy that is practical, direct, and built around what actually works in context. He navigated the Global Financial Crisis in the animal welfare sector and led major strategic and cultural transformation programs across national organisations.
In 2023, Michael completed Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Programme (AMP 210) — one of the world's most respected senior executive programs. The AMP deepened his thinking on leading organisational change, strategic renewal, and the dynamics that determine whether strategy translates into results. The frameworks he studied — the Congruence Model, Innovation Streams, Dynamic Conservatism, and Strategic Gap Analysis — are applied directly in his client work, not left in a classroom.
His career has covered strategy development and execution, governance and board relationships, risk management, and the sustained work of building culture and capability. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director, which keeps him close to governance from the board's perspective as well as the executive's. He understands that strategy without the capability and culture to execute it is just a document — and that the hardest part of leadership is rarely the decision, it is the implementation.