Williams F1 boss James Vowles on leadership and building a winning culture

0:11Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's programme, we're switching gears and moving into the fast lane with a Formula One team principal to hear about his philosophy on leadership and building a winning culture on and off the track. We're no different to any other company in the world, in my opinion. We race on TV and in front of 70 million people. But actually, at the firm of it, you want exactly the same thing. You want proper foundation structures, systems, processes, wrapped in data.

0:43And people are the most important thing that you can be investing in. And that's no different to any business that I know outside of that. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:01You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. My guest today needs little introduction to the millions of Formula One fans who followed his illustrious career from leading race strategy and helping Sear Mercedes to multiple championship victories, to taking the helm at Williams in 2023, where he played a key role in securing Carlos Sainz to race for the team. I'm talking, of course, about James Vowles, team principal of Atlassian Williams Racing. In June, James signed a new long-term contract with the team. He made a quick pit stop at Midori House amid his packed racing schedule to discuss the team's progress, his approach to decision-making, and how long-term thinking drives success, whether in Formula One or other high-performance environments.

1:44James began by telling me why now was the right time for both him and for the team to make that extended commitment. We've put a tremendous amount of investment in since I've joined, and it's really important to, I can't stress that enough. And from my own personal perspective, this is the first time I've been a team principal. So there is a challenge on both sides. And I think we're at a good period of time where we've started to lay the foundations for Williams for our future. And it's starting to bear fruit, which is what we can see this year. I love it to bits, but I'm not here to be finishing fifth or sixth or eighth.

2:17I'm here to be fighting for world championships. And this is really now marking that the next part of our journey is to do that. It's not a one-year journey. It's a very long-term prospect in front of us in order to get everything absolutely right. But I think from both sides, it's absolutely journeying and working. And this is the right time to win the deal and say, are we both happy to do this? It's going to be tougher. Yep, let's do it. Well, let's talk toughness because one of the interesting things about, I guess, turning around or restructuring a culture from settling to settling for nothing but the best is about breaking everything.

2:50And if you go back to the remarks you made in 23, I guess, when you took the job, you said we're going to break everything. How's that going? Is it as expensive as it sounds? I didn't mean the car, but we broke the car quite a few times as well. But it did everything that I hoped it would, though, because it changed a mentality and a mindset. Not overnight, but it has done across a very short period of time. We're no different to any other company in the world, in my opinion. Yeah, we race on TV and in front of 70 million people. But actually, at the firm of it, you want exactly the same thing.

3:21You want proper foundation structures, systems, processes, wrapped in data. And people are the most important thing that you can be investing in. And that's no different to any business that I know outside of that. And so when we spoke about break everything, when you have that, people are so afraid of change sometimes that you stay very much within the boundaries of where you are. Or even if you pushed, you move a little bit outside the boundaries. We had to completely tear it up and start again. And to get that journey there has required some different thought process. But we are now doing all of those things I've just spoken about.

3:54We have some incredible people who will work tirelessly day and night for me. We have a culture that's fantastic there. And onto your sentiment analysis, that's what I fell in love with at Williams. We have a heritage that's nearly bar none in our sports. I mean, I know we haven't had success for a long time, but we're still the third most successful, top three most successful teams in the sport. And I'm fortunate to have that at the back, but I don't want to rely on that. That's just a lovely thing in the background that attracted me towards this organization. What I want is to create something that's unique in our arena that forces people to turn their head twice and look at us again and on that journey.

4:30You mentioned the H word, heritage there. Is there a tension, James? And I know because you're also a student of F1 history. And as you said, it's only the third principle, I think, of Williamson 40 plus years. It's pretty amazing. How do you balance heritage then with this need for relentless change and innovation? Because I guess some people would say, look, those values are oppositional or at least in tension. Is there a tension there? Is it healthy tension? How do you navigate it? I think there was a tension there when I joined. We've got rid of it. We often will look back into the past and with rose-tinted glasses in reality, and it's probably one of the worst things you can ever do.

5:04I'll give you a little bit about our sport and then I'll answer the question. We're trying to get someone's idea from their head to the car in about six weeks. That's the turnaround. Most engineering firms would be years, multiple years, maybe five years, six weeks. And because that's the rate of development, we're trying to bring updates and performance to our car every few races in order to keep basically moving forward relative to the field. And you can see how we've done that. We've moved forward to a point in the last few where we're starting to compete further up. The rate at which you do that defines how successful you are in our sport.

5:38So going back to your point, if you hold on to what you thought a year ago or five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago, you're that far out of date. And it is around a culture of continuous improvement and around a culture of failure is okay, because we're running right on the leading edge and we're going to fail a tremendous amount. And the really important bit is how you take that learning and reapply it back into what you do in a positive way, not in a negative way. So our heritage, our history is something that makes me proud. But none of that will allow us to win races in the future.

6:10It's simply there as a strength to our company. And tell me how you incorporate experiences of great leaders with whom you've collaborated, people for whom you've worked. We've had Toto on Monaco Radio before, people like ross braun you know these are stellar stellar names with that idea of constantly looking forwards how do you i don't know process and assimilate the learnings from them james into your own unique way of doing things do you have to be very conscious and intentional about it or do you just have to trust the best practice certain principles you kind of soak up by almost an osmotic process as you go through your career how does that work so i completely agree i've had the fortune of working alongside some brilliant brilliant individuals ross toto you've named two of them david richards actually before that as well they all have the different strengths no one of them is the same as the other as any human human beings are also different to each other so first of all i haven't changed who i am who i am at my core is me but what i've done is i've seen some capabilities within all of them ross brilliant at bringing the right people together in the room and then letting them talk toto fantastic at using very few words to direct so many people.

7:16Very strong way of presenting himself, very clear, eloquent, uses humor in a great way. But I'm neither of those two. I've just absorbed and gathered. There was a conversation Toto and I had once where we were having a conversation, it was by phone. I said, look, Toto, you have to understand, I'm not you. We're different. But that's a good thing. That's not a bad thing. And actually, in time, he and I came to learn how to use those differences in order to make a stronger opinion, because that's the reality behind it. So answering your question, I was guided by some very strong individuals. And what I learned from them is this.

7:47First and foremost, direction is often more important than the answer you provide. In other words, a lack of direction and going around in circles is pretty poor. And often people are afraid of taking decisions. I'm not. I have no fear of doing that whatsoever at all. I'll look you in the eyes and say, they're not always going to be exactly the right ones, but we're probably on the right pathway together. That's one thing I definitely learned from my time there. The second is that how you deal with poor performance and failure defines you. That's absolutely a key part of it. And that has to be integral to your core.

8:16The other element of things, and this didn't come from either Totoro Ross, it actually came from Michael Schumacher, is the way you get the most out of people is really simple. You just need to care about them. And you don't, it can't be a falsified care. You actually need to actually really care about those individuals. And I do. Everyone that gives up every hour of their day for me, I'm hugely appreciative of. Because they could be spending that minute with their family or putting their child to bed. And they're not. They're with me by my side as we work towards building this team up into a championship material.

8:46And that will buy infinite respect with me. If you've got a team of a thousand or whatever it might be, I don't know the exact numbers, but it's in that ballpark. How do you make sure that you're communicating in that way, with that intimacy, with that humanity, James? Because, you know, there are only so many hours in the day. You've just mentioned at the top, you know, people are spread far and wide around the world often. How can you make the time? or is it about a different kind of expression? Because that challenge, that complexity must be very difficult to deal with. A little bit of everything.

9:16So these are all individuals to every person. So I'll tell you what I do. I'll write an email to the whole factory three times a week. I will, to everyone after every race, go downstairs and just make sure we just do a team talk together and have a chat about all. Everyone that's invited doesn't mean we have 1 ,100. Everyone's on shifts, but it's a good number. Probably 500, 700. We'll do meetings with the whole company once a month to make sure we're just talking through what's going on. i will have and these are brilliant i'll have lunches with our just a number of individuals from organization but here's the key to it they have to be from all over the organization brought together in the room because that's the real trick behind it you get people who've never met other people in this 1100 business talking to each other and that's where the real magic happens i will just randomly wander around the factory and just meet people and that's where you get the real insights as to what's going on and that i need to do more of i recognize i could do even more of that again.

10:06And you find time in your day because ultimately those minutes that you spend, every single time I've done it, I've learned more than when I've been sat in my office piling through emails that I think are important. Let's talk about people in a slightly different context because of course, and this is getting a bit sport away from the business much, but if we look at the Carlos Sainz hire, this was a guy that as I understand it could have potentially joined, you know, one of the other big works teams, incredible talent. And again, it was really arresting what he said when he joined you guys and he said i just get i get james's vision i completely get it now i guess all drivers would say that right but it it struck me as being really true tell me a little bit about that moment because the relationship with the driver is obviously key they're a fundamental part of this machine that's driving towards victory it was a coup for you guys to get him but it was also a meeting of i think ambition how did that come about and how did you communicate your vision with such clarity to him I mean, it was a long journey with Carlos.

11:00The first time I spoke to him and his family was December 23. So before I had any knowledge that anything was going to particularly happen to him, unfortunately, it did at Ferrari, but it created opportunity for me. and then our journey really began around about february march 24 onwards and it's really fair to say that i'd be on the phone to either him or his father but mostly him once every two days once every three days uh we'd be meeting at the track he's got a fantastic number of individuals around him that i highly rate and and respect one is his cousin who's also called carlos science and his Although, as much as I take the mickey out of them, they are right in saying that everyone in my company is called James.

11:46So you met in the middle. We met in the middle. But what we did was this. What I laid out from, and remember, this is quite early on. Before we've really done much in 24, and we certainly haven't done anything in 25, is lay out, this is what's wrong. These are the bad bits. All the bad bits. I'll lay it all out to you as I know it and as I see it right now. And you may not come to me, so I'm giving away information. Here is all the bad bits. this is the steps I am doing and we are doing over the next 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, plus plus, in order to rectify and fix all of it. Here's the investment.

12:19This is why we're investing. This is where we're investing. This is why it's different, but this is why I believe in it. Now you can do that to an individual over whatever weeks and probably convince them that you're doing the right thing. But this was across six months, remembering he didn't sign until about six months after that point and in six months you can't hide everything and what he realized is he and i actually very similar we're incredibly performance driven we're incredibly honest authentic everything at our core is what we say is what we do we get on with it simple as that we deliver on what we do as well all the individuals i said these people are coming towards me they're top two individuals they came towards us everyone that we're investing in have a look at this this is what we're doing this is where our performance will change but by the way the focus won't be there.

13:02Everything we did transpired. And across six months, he had the opportunity to see that it's not fictitious. And by the way, this isn't the exciting bit. The exciting bit comes and the real investment kicks in in 12, 24 months. But that's what brought him on the journey because he could tell that actually what he wanted to do as well in himself is be a part of a transformative experience where he's at the core of it. And he is with us. I needed a leader next to my side so me alex and him effectively driving this forward i need an individual who's not just fast in the car there's quite a few individuals who are fast in the car but i need someone who actually understands what it takes to make a championship team and wants to be a part of it and that resonated with him and that's really what gelled us together and that's pretty powerful because i guess the transformation that journey is as compelling for some characters isn't it as maybe people would like to parachute in and be the winner switch stay the winner but there's something about going on the journey, which is actually more commonly discussed in team sports.

13:58Obviously, this is a team sport, but we put these individuals on a pedestal. But it's interesting and reassuring, maybe to a degree, that there are... There's so much bombast and big characters. There are people who are fascinated by that process and not just by the, like, show me what you got or what's the paycheck. They're interested in the mechanics. It's almost more of an... It's an engineer's approach, maybe, almost. You're spot on. So first of all, if I had to say who I am as a character, I get not bored easily, but I have to feel like I'm challenged every single day. I get frustrated if I haven't learned something or developed myself or developed something around me pretty much daily.

14:32And that's what drives me on. That's why... Must be a nightmare to live with, James. Fortunately, Rachel's not here, but it's... That's the sequel. That's the follow-up. Exactly. But what do you do if that doesn't work then? If you get that frustration and it is just coursing away under the surface and obviously in your sport in particular, there's so many opportunities to get irritated what's the process you have to get zen you're very focused but how do you because you got to give yourself a break maybe you need to get yourself out of that frenzy how do you how do you do it i haven't so there's nothing that we as williams are not in control of this is how i define it there's nothing blocking us yeah there's there's regulating bodies but you work to those rules we have finance we have structure we have people around us there's nothing nothing that we're not in control of in my opinion and therefore there's nothing for me to get frustrated with because I'd be disappointed if there isn't things to change every day.

15:25And I assure you, in Williams, I love our company to bits, but there's a lot to change. There's a lot to keep working through. So fear not, I'm not going to be bored for a while. What it does mean is it's more in a personal context. I can't, on holiday, it takes me ages to shut down, as you would probably imagine as a result of that. But Carlos is something very similar to that. What I mean by that is he's data-driven. I'm having a chat with him about what he does in his future, but I think he's got a really great future as a leader of one of these organizations in time he's got a really good way of bringing together incredibly incredibly intelligent engineers and align everyone to the same goal and that's really if you had to summarize my job that's all I'm doing that's really interesting so on leadership then do you is there whether it's definable or indefinable can you see that even I don't know it might be like a more junior say engineer joins the team is there something you can see do you think or do you try to diagnose what that leadership x factor looks like is it just insatiable curiosity at the beginning are different people suited to leadership for different for different reasons or routes tell me a little bit about what you because you mentioned it with carlos of course how do you identify it and carlos and alex i should say both but okay different traits you're looking for first and foremost the best leaders i've worked with are the ones not fearful of being challenged by people more intelligent than them.

16:45I've publicly said, I'll say it here again, well, I'm not the most intelligent person in Williams. I know how to point us the right way, but I'm not the most intelligent person. My job is to go and hire the most intelligent people. And my job as well, and this will sound perhaps slightly odd, but as I wear the Williams shirt, I wear it with pride, but it's not mine to keep. It is mine to put into a better place and mine to find a structure that enables to take over in time from that such that I pass on to future generations. So the result of that is my job therefore as a leader is to employ better individuals than i am that are pushing me daily into me also being a better individual and in time one of them will succeed because simply because they're too good to not as a result of it and if you build that up so if i take you through how we structure the organization about 1100 people over 120 are early careers so the very few organizations out there in my experience that have nearly over 10 of their workforce that are early careers.

17:40Why? I don't want success that's today necessarily. I'd love success today, but I'm here to build a team that is successful in five, 10 years. To do that, you invest in your graduates, those at university, apprentices, that will be basically the next backbone of this organization for the next 10, 15 years. And one of those, I hope, is a leader that takes over as the result of things. And my job in all of that is to create the construct that allow the really great individuals to fly within our organization. They shouldn't be held by paperwork, by age. They should be allowed to fly and go at the speed they want to.

18:12So what qualities are you looking for? Same thing. The need to empower others around them. They can't be effectively all about themselves. It's actually about the empowerment. They have to be not fearful of employing more intelligent people than they are in return. Conversely, as a scale of things, you can see how an organization builds very quickly. They have to be curious. They have to be intelligent naturally. They have to be able to accept that their opinion is often wrong. Mine is. But I'm fantastically proud to have around me is individuals who are good at presenting their view. And you go, that's fine.

18:41Let's go this way. And so it's not one trait. And I don't think I'm necessarily the best leader that exists in the world either. So I'm just using the traits that are good to me. The next one is probably now to the really important bit. You have to be authentic. This is not a facade. This has to be you. You put up any facade on it, it'll be broken down in time. Could be one year, could be 10 years. It will be broken down in time. You have to believe in what you're doing with all your heart because ultimately that's what's going to drive you on every single day when things get tough and when things get tough is where your true personality comes out and if you're not authentic you'll be there straight away so it's that belief and authenticity that i believe i carry and that's the strength that i have is it trickier to be authentic in a world and also in a sport in particular where not only there's so much scrutiny but there's so much scrutiny through the sort of media prism obviously we've had the sort of all-access docs, the F1 film.

19:34I mean, you pop up in that, don't you, James? I've got a tiny bit in that. Well, I don't know. It was noticed. But also social media and all the rest. We know about the benefits, and it's great, and you can showcase fun stories, and you can help your partners who are with you on the journey. But there's an attendant challenge, which is, it is the scrutiny, it's high stakes. That is short-termism in a way that's anathemaic to your longer-term approach. Does it, be honest with me, and look, I'm a journalist asking you a question, but sometimes do you just wish you could turn those taps off and just get on with the job?

20:05Or are you more sanguine about it? I'm more impressed by the athrimeic. Well done. Okay. Here's the best I can answer it. I accept that my life and work are completely intertwined. You treat it like a corded rope. They're completely wrapped around each other. There's nothing, you can't separate them. They're one entity. Me as a team principal is me as an individual at the same time. It's what I meant by the authentic bit because you are the same human being irrespective out of it. I'm very happy and confident in what I'm doing, which creates confidence, therefore, for my family and creates elements outside.

20:39Everyone will have an opinion. That's their job, to have an opinion. Mine is to make sure that I'm true to myself and true to what I believe in and not be too swayed by anything else, unless it's leaders around me telling me all that I'm wrong. No, I'm okay with where it is because it makes the team successful, it makes the sport successful, and ultimately that's what I'm here to do. But you've got to accept that it's an intertwined problem that you can't get rid of until such point as it terminates and ends, which is obviously a tragic way to think about it. But the next bit is being candid about it.

21:11Me as an individual, I would describe myself as quiet. I'd happily sit at home, read a book, that would be, or watch a film. That's me. But that's not our life. Our life is I'm off to the F1 movie premiere and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be great. but you'll be in the limelight in front of tens of thousands of people maybe more but that's the life that comes with it now you seem very very sort of relaxed about it although i don't know if there's a i don't know a race well it's gone very well this season you've married up your points from the last is it three seasons already better this yeah that's pretty good right i mean it's a very good it's incredible but and not to throw it you know to put any dampness down but you know you're going to have frustrations and things that aren't going to work out you don't have that temptation to just get away from it you just back straight back to the coal face always can you you can retain the focus even in the face of frustration like that so there's a moment last year where we did a piece of camera i was sitting in my chair in my office and you'll see it in my eyes there's pain there that was last year after brazil after we smashed three cars did two chassis did tens of million pounds worth of damage at the end of a season where we've had our not in terms of performance but our worst season in terms of crash no one had the amount of crashes we had last year.

22:23It's an unsustainable amount for any team. When a cost cap in every crash basically kills you, it kills future development as well. And that's probably the only time where I think I reflect on what we've done and you'll see the pain in my eyes. Because it hurt. It really did hurt. It impacted me personally where I went, Jesus, there's a lot of energy you need to pick yourself up every day. And not just yourself. You need to pick up 1 ,100 people that are feeling the same pain you are as well around you. Answering your question, yes, I have frustration after bad races but what i've learned in time is take take a bit of time and by a bit of time i mean half an hour an hour to be pissed because frankly that's the emotion that drives you on that wants you to be stronger next weekend the weekend afterwards but my job my job in all of this is to bring the team up to a new level of strength and everyone will feel that low and you can start and what i've noticed and it's really true is if you start with the right attitude that doesn't mean put it by the side learn from everything we've done wrong but treat it the right way you suddenly bring a number of individuals with you on that journey straight away and if you don't no one will so that's how i see it yeah i like that where does this adventure go james because you know your goals are pretty clear and you're actually very explicit about wanting to compete and you've got a team we can see already where we're starting to see you know the fruits of the talent acquisition the curiosity the hunger do you have to be disciplined about saying it's this season and then next and there's a three-year plan and a five-year plan it sounds like you've got a 10-year a lifetime a legacy ambition how do you make sense of the time ahead because you can tell that you've got these ambitions that might be a decade in the realising so how do you keep that structure around your thinking i don't believe in any short-termism any short-termism just fail and even i'll be completely clear at the cost of my role i'm not going to go short term because it's not right for Williams and its future.

24:18And so because I'm driven so aggressively by that, I'm actually not swayed by the short term nearly at all. I'll explain the nearly in a second. There is a way of being swayed by it. I can see the potential in the business. I can see where we need to be and I can see how we can get there. So everything drives me on to that long-term vision. There's a but to it. If you took the race team, for example, fantastic group of individuals, most of the impact they can have is executing the race weekend well. there's some items that I always ask them to think about. Think about how are you going to make this more automatic, more in the future, less doing manual work, and feed that back into a loop to make sure that we keep improving as a team.

24:55But I've probably described that 95 % of what they're doing is the now, because they have to execute on the weekend. And I can get myself into the same mentality, so that all I do is create structure, whereby I'll guarantee you I want every point we can. But as I'm talking to you now, everything is for the future. it is only when we turn up that I'll go into let's get everything in our hand out this weekend and then half an hour after the race if I'm frustrated a minute after the race if I'm not, right, now we've got to sort out what we're doing for our future effectively so it is a little bit Jekyll and Hyde and it depends who you are within the organisation there's some people that really can impact on the three and five years, there's some people that can impact on the now, and they can't do much for the three and five years, and all I ask them to do is when they're outside of it, put focus on it so answering your question, it's trying to split my mindset between that very elegantly put just finally look williams we mentioned at the top only the 13 principle obviously 40 something years obviously with frank and all the rest of it a family team and obviously some of the narrative around the buy-in it's not a family business anymore but the way you talk about it it sounds like a family is that important to you and how confident are you that i guess the the idea almost this is a bit of a funny abstract question but the sort of the idea of williams it will be the same and will endure it will change and it will continue need to be successful but is it important to you that it is still a sort of a family maybe an occasionally dysfunctional one but it's still a it's still a family it's not the family but it's a family i don't know you confident that will be the case for time evermore whilst i'm here yes so i i'm incredibly fortunate so frank created a lot of the culture they have which is passionate individuals that want success and if you look at williams in its past it's always been an independent near enough entity and that's what i loved about it i mean for transparency it's the first team I followed.

26:38I fell in love with it. Fell in love with it because it was unique. It stood out. It had nothing shackling it. This is how I perceived it anyway. It would challenge everyone. It would challenge the giants. It's David and Goliath, if you like. That's how I just pictured it. That's my mindset on it. And that culture, a lot of that culture still remains, which is fantastic and fortunate. And that's who we are. And I don't want to lose any of that portion of it. We are an entity that will do what it takes to get the job done. It doesn't always necessarily mean we had at the past the same tools around us but we're creating tools around us now that provide that strength but i love walking into work every single day i love looking at the how people are around our organization and they're happy when i joined there it was strange there was barely anyone able to make eye contact heads down shoulders down i use body language because it's the best way to explain it now you walk around there and i have individuals that are proud every single day to come in.

27:35And I love coming in there. And that environment is only created by what you've described. That was James Vowell's team principal for Atlassian Williams Racing. And you can find out more by heading to williamsf1.com.

28:01And that is all for this episode of The Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time next week. Do look out for Eureka, which drops every Friday. The Entrepreneurs is produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more about the show at monocle.com or you can follow us and catch up with the archive wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to get in touch with the team, email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to The Entrepreneurs.

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