Walking away from Mercedes to risk everything for Williams, with F1 Boss James Vowles (E237)

0:28Watch it early on the High Performance app. be challenged and to grow. Here's what's coming up. I think Formula One is not just the best sport in the world, but the best industry in the world because no other place can you challenge yourself every week to the absolute limit of what you're capable of. I didn't have anything else in my life. I didn't have family. I didn't have partners. I think it was about work. If you are prepared to sacrifice everything, you can have greatness. You can have growth. You can have the direction of travel, but there's no such thing as all of it. It doesn't work that way.

1:04I want to make sure that I'm earning my place. This isn't a right. I have to earn it, and I have to earn it every single day. Break everything. This is an opportunity you'll never have in your lifetime. Break everything. Learn and use the experience. So welcome to High Performance, James Vowles, one of the unsung superstars of Formula One. The Williams team principal has been in the world's fastest sport for almost 25 years. In that time, he's worked with five world champion winning drivers, including Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher. But how did he make his Formula One dream a reality? How did he help Mercedes to those multiple titles?

1:44What were the keys to winning eight successive Constructors World Championships? What separates the best from the rest? What made him take the leap to Williams? What did he find when he got there? and how was he trying to transform the team? All of that is on today's fascinating high performance episode with James Vowles. Right, let's do it and welcome James Vowles to the show. But before we start, a few messages from our valued partners who help keep high performance totally free. And of course, I know that ads are not for everyone. If you want to listen to high performance ad free, then you can do so on the high performance app.

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5:49Well, James, thank you very much for joining us. What is high performance, do you think? It's a good question. For me, certainly, I can only put it within the remit that I've been working in for 20, 25 years or so. But it is against peers that are as intelligent and as strong as you are overcoming them and become fundamentally the top of your game in that region. So it's pushing everyone further than they ever thought they could be pushed. It's exploring boundaries that you'd never thought you could go past and defining and redefining and actually becoming the lead in terms of this is now the mark by which everyone else will assess whether they're doing a good or bad job by.

6:29So how competitive are you? massively. It's very difficult to even put in words how competitive it is. Definitely, let's not play Monopoly. Oh, really? Or anything else, for that matter, I think. So where did that first begin? Can you remember? I would say it's always been there to a certain extent. There's just some items that will trigger me to want to be the best in it. There's other items that didn't. For example, in the early school years, I didn't want to be necessarily best in the class. In fact, I felt that that would put a target on me. And I was more interested in other aspects of things.

7:02And I wouldn't say that in the early days I was outstandingly good at everything. I was actually just good at everything rather than outstandingly good or excellent. So there's always better than me in every category. But if we got to a new task, I'd be reasonable at it. It's probably the best way of putting it. And I think it happened very much actually at university. It was probably where it properly triggered where I thought, and now's the time to really be the best at what you do. And it was especially when I made the decision that this is where I wanted to be and I realised very swiftly that this isn't about average anymore.

7:36This isn't about being good. This is the single best person will make it. So that's where you need to be. So that sounds like a very conscious decision just to be good rather than great at school. Were you always aware that you had the capacity to go up the gears then? I think the best way of describing it My teachers definitely did because my report card said incredibly intelligent, but could do much better if he just applied himself. I'm fortunate. I don't think school was particularly challenging. It's just I would find other things that would distract me that I found more exciting, more interesting.

8:08Well, at the time, football, for example, I'd play. There was a whole group of us, but we'd play football four times a day to give an idea to it. It would be unusual to walk away with an hour and a half of football under your belt a day or more or cycling at the time. So I cycled to school and back for many, many years, which fitness was absolutely fantastic. But I found a challenge in myself. I started timing it and I thought, right, how do we take time out of it? So you can see the competitive spirit, but it was against myself. And I couldn't do it without some metric to say, this is where you were.

8:38Let's move it on from there. But I didn't realize at the time, I mean, at 16, you barely dress yourself properly, let alone know what you're going to form into later on in life. I didn't know where that was going to construct to, but definitely I didn't get that from schooling. It made no difference to me whether I went to an international school, so you're rated out of seven. It made no difference to me whether you got a five, six or seven. It just didn't trigger any response to me whatsoever at all. And I can flip the question then on its head. You made a conscious decision not to be extremely good when you were at school, but then you have to make the conscious decision to be extremely good when you're at university because the penny has dropped that if you want to be in Formula One, it is a sport that rewards the elite.

9:17So a lot of people think I want to be the best, right? What behaviours followed on from the moment when you made that decision that this is going to be the life you pursue? The best one is probably it's a compulsive behaviour, which is not necessarily always attributed with good things, but it's compulsive. You are focused on a singular goal necessarily. It doesn't mean that there's one goal behind it. There's many, many achievements behind that. But you are constantly doubting whether you are the best in the world. And as a result of that, I mean, best in the world sounds extraordinary. We're at university studying.

9:49but you're you're constantly doubting am i doing enough to be the best person that comes through the door of an f1 team in the next year and so as a result of that you push yourself harder and harder and harder you stop doing just the course what you're doing but i started also as soon as i had an hour or two free i was down at snetterton at the racetrack um and then started working with other entities then started writing some software in the background that did something quite clever in terms of motorsports at the same time you start doing not one thing focused but as many things to your um like basically consider it like a tree you're adding just branches to your tree to make sure that it's just not one tall branch but a whole tree that people look at and go okay this is quite special just to dive in quickly you were corrected there by your own humility telling you not to say best in the world right yeah i get the sense that actually with the job that you do now that has to be the aim right i i don't think my humility will ever let me that I'm against peers just straight away in the business, nine other peers of which many of them are multiple world champions in their position.

10:55We've turned up and we've scored a few points. We've done okay. But that's the benchmark. The benchmark is when others look at me and go, yeah, you're multiple world champion and you've pulled a team to the front, you can be compared to, but still not the best in the world at what you do. There's always another level. But that's where you want to be. Without doubt. That's why I joined here. That's why I joined here, because we have the opportunity to, you could do this and join an organization where you're just moving a few little dials around, just fine tuning, or you can get here with the right investment, which is what we have, dig deep, foundations down, and start rebuilding it such that you leave your fingerprint on the sport for many, many years to come.

11:34And that opportunity comes once in a lifetime. And it's an opportunity to do something that I believe I know how to do this. let's go and prove that to the world fundamentally and keep challenging yourself every day but back to the original point the i think you were talking about high performance the humility is what keeps you back and making sure you know that you have to keep pushing yourself until it hurts every day because that's what you need to do to be the best in the world but as well as humility james i see that in your story there's an awful lot of self-awareness as well and before we move on to your subsequent career into formula one i'm interested in that moment when you were at uea university and make the decision that you're on a career path that you can see the next 30 years spooling out in front of you and you decide to change lanes yeah it it was so i think first of all let's wind to university um uh i did all going back a little bit further all of my schooling was in Geneva.

12:37And it's a little bit different to an international school in Geneva. You fundamentally from the age of five until 18, you're in the same school. It's three different buildings on the site, but you never move more than 10 meters. So a bit of a culture shock when I came to the UK and found out people travel miles between each school. But you're very disconnected from the UK. And I wasn't actually sure whether I wanted to complete my university education in Switzerland or in the UK. Decided the UK in the end. And actually UEA was nothing more complicated than my sister was there at the time. And I thought, why not?

13:08It'll be fine. Which in hindsight, it's a fantastic university. There's nothing wrong with that. But probably I could have orientated myself more in a different direction had I been more savvy. Again, it goes back to I really wasn't focused enough on the right journey at the time for me. But irrespective of that, went to UEA. I studied a combination of computer science and mathematics. And it was nothing more than I was good at those two things. I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. But what I did know is, So let's do something I'm good at because you can get through. And pretty much once you've done those two things, you're back in the 90s.

13:41Computer science was always going to be this large area of growth. So you have some skills behind you. Mathematics is just this big area that can apply to near enough everything within the scientific world. It didn't take long. It took about a year and a bit of doing that when I thought there's just zero chance I can do this for the next 30, 40, 50 years. No chance. It's just not interesting to me at all. it's a means to an end rather than something i wanted to participate in and at the time i was looking at what jobs can you do and and there's sort of there's finance there's kpmg there's um delight there's there's a bunch of these but none of them none of them created any excitement to me i'm not someone that enjoys sitting behind a desk at all um and it was you know going back way before then one and some of the fondest memories i have and and we're sitting in front of these cars now you won't see it because the camera's pointed the other way but i remember watching these cars on tv sat on a sofa um at a home in geneva and um at the time you didn't think this could be a career no chance you're sort of looking at it you don't even realize that there's a couple hundred people behind the scenes as it was back then now a thousand people but i started doing more and more research into it and started finding out actually there is careers you can make out of being involved in something that is um taking a couple hundred people and every weekend challenging you to understand are you good enough on the day and that that just overnight triggered with me i went this is it this is what i want to do sat there wrote uh i remember it very distinctly and i've got goosebumps now talking about it but just wrote um i'm pretty sure it's 11 letters at the time i think there was 11 teams but and wrote 11 letters, got really good paper.

15:26It was a good letter as well. There was a CV in there, but the CV was basic because all I had to that point was education, then a couple of jobs that I was doing in the summer always just to earn money, but nothing in this remit. What did the letter say? The letter was fundamentally this. I think Formula One is not just the best sport in the world, but the best industry in the world, Because no other place can you, I'm paraphrasing, it wasn't exactly written this way, but no other place can you challenge yourself every week to the absolute limit of what you're capable of. I can only see my career taking place within that.

16:07And I want your help and guidance in order to help me achieve that goal. I know I may not have everything at the moment, but help me at least understand what I need to do to get there. So it was not a direct, I want a job, because I didn't think that would work. but it was, I will change my life to come to you. Help me drive that. And there were two responses back that were favorable. It's unfortunate. Someone asked me the other day, do I still have those letters? Because what happened is going through it, all of them were rejection letters. Every single one was, thanks very much. Printed on beautiful lettered paper, really thick paper.

16:46And I put every single one on the ball with blue tack, which if I remember correctly, may have cost me on the exit out of that room, because the blue tack actually pulled paint off. But irrespective, they were there. And that became my every morning when you wake up, that's where I want to be. You want to be there? Change everything and let's get on to it. The letters were constructive, but there was two really constructive ones. British American Racing and Williams were constructive both at the time. The rest were very short and concise. We don't have any room for you at this time. Thank you very much, but no, thank you.

17:15But those two were constructive. And British American Racing went further actually to give me a contact within there that I spoke to. and he said look here's is the reality behind it we don't need mathematicians and we don't really take graduates on the company's 250 people so how you got into formula one wasn't sure back then you were sort of mid-30s and you're in formula one but what they did say is here's the here's the issue we need engineering um it's great having what you have as background but you need engineering as a string to your bow um so what i immediately started doing um they didn't request experience but i took it upon myself to go actually what i'm going to do now is bolster my experience every weekend that I'm free and just make sure that I'm doing racing fundamentally.

17:56And so I started in really junior sort of GT categories, then did a little bit of Formula Ford, and then it started building from there at the same time. So just, there was no free minute anymore. And if there was, it means I'm doing a bad job of filling it with building my experience. And one thing that came on board just around this time, towards the time where I was graduating, was Cranfield was starting up a new course, which is engineering fundamentally. And Cranfield for post-degree education is, in engineering anyway, is one of the most respected. It's a brilliant place. Applied to it. There was over, I think at the time, 2 ,500 applications for 20 spots.

18:34I thought, I haven't really got much of a chance at this. Went there and interviewed and got in and was successful to go in. But to get there prior to that, basically it wasn't just doing the motorsport. I was now studying engineering fundamentally whilst finishing off the mathematics computer science degree because I wanted to make sure I had sufficient to get through the tests for the course. You're 20 years old at this stage. You're going up against two and a half thousand other candidates into a world where you're interested but don't necessarily have a background. What did you do to prepare yourself to get one of those 20 spots?

19:07The main thing was just making sure that any minute that was free in the day, train yourself in what you think they're going to want out of you. So they want engineers. And it's an engineering course, to be really clear. So you're in a master's level in engineering. I was the only person on the course without an engineering degree. Simple as that. So I had to have enough foundations that I could at least blag the interview sufficiently that I can get through this. Because some of the aspects of it, when you're in the context, complex mathematics, aerodynamics and structures, it's very, very difficult.

19:39So those are the main areas I started to put a lot of focus into. And again, bolstered it by working with teams. The problem with working with teams is you gain the real tangible world experience, but teams don't even really understand when they're buying a car and the complexity behind all of it. All I did, though, is there was a bunch of books that I read, normally read until... I'm really good at working until very late in the night, so do the normal university bits, but I didn't find that awfully challenging. And it's not because I'm terribly clever. It just felt natural. When things feel natural, they're not difficult.

20:12but I'd spend pretty much from 6 p.m. until sometimes 2, 3 a.m., which is where I felt just really good to myself and I could work through. And you're young, you don't need that much sleep as it turns out, studying basically engineering at the same time. Very focused on what I thought Cranfield would be looking for. And it was sufficient to get me through. I think their thought process at the time also would have helped me, which is we want some level of diverse thinking on the course. We don't just want 20 engineers. Actually, they were quite interested when I asked them, how did I get this? They said, A, you showed enough capacity to learn and grow very quickly.

20:50By the way, the challenge on your shoulders is you've got six months to get to their level, so good luck. But also, you come from a different background. Both your initial education, not being UK-based, but the mathematics and computer science background. We actually think you could form something quite interesting. So that's why we took a risk on you. why does it give you goosebumps now when you reflect because um the main thing is that you you completely changed your life you have this path that's in front of you that that's laid out but you can define where it is and i literally took a right 90 degree turn to it conscious decision that that's the route i'm going down and never doubted it never debated it never moved back and there were hard times i was in a tremendous amount of debt i paid for a lot of this university education worked in pubs and other places to try and make money the the gt racing side formula four they didn't pay any money at all that was just experience growth so i worked um actually for for many years for free in motorsport in order to build up what i had to in terms of experience but i was prepared to put it all online and risk everything to have the opportunity to get into the sport and that was a young man who when it came to formula one knew so little you're now someone who knows so much multiple drivers championships multiple constructors championships knew numerous teams, you're now a team principal, the most senior job you can have in the sport.

22:09So let's move the conversation on to Formula One. With all the experience you've got, if I ask you, what makes a championship winning team? What's the answer? I'd always go back to people and culture. They're the two things that drive all of it. Machines help, they make things more efficient. Computers help, they make things more efficient. But once you have a workforce that is 100 % aligned with the direction of travel you're moving in, that are not fighting each other, but fighting everyone else, that are aligned with each other as one team pulling together, the camaraderie almost pulling when you're in the trenches and you're really suffering, pull you up and want to do harder.

22:51You want to do everything for those around you. You don't want to be seen as the weakness in the team. So everyone is creating the strength that's bolstering everyone forward in the right direction. And a culture of one that is push the boundaries. Don't be afraid of the boundaries. Don't be afraid to redefine what has happened in the sport previously, because that is the beauty of where we are as a journey. We are these small, tiny, in the grand scheme of engineering teams, where we can push the boundaries of engineering, and we should do every day of the week. And that's not something you can find nearly anywhere else in engineering.

23:23Engineering is typically five-year lead times. Make sure you're doing something that's robust and reliable. We are these dynamic groups. this is actually Toto's words but I really like this this phrase the navy seals of engineering but I haven't found my own version of it yet so I'll plagiarize his for the time being absolutely that's what we are we are the best of the best the elite within the sport and you have no bounds fundamentally the cost cap is not really a bound it's actually an opportunity and so the real key behind it is people and culture once you have those two everything else flies you mentioned about being in the trenches and we will talk about Toto we'll talk about aligning teams we'll talk about creating culture but you mentioned really early on there about a winning team is being in the trenches dealing with the hard stuff if i take you back to november december 2008 when you were at what was about to no longer be honda what did you learn in that period and how much were you in the trenches there where you were effectively working for a team that we thought were about to leave the sport and and you had a workforce there not knowing whether they were going to get paid one week to next?

24:30The first thing it taught me is that there's a fragility that perhaps you don't often consider. That actually wasn't that bad. This is going to sound very negative, and I don't mean it to, but I'll give you how it really was having a job in Formula One in 2001, 2002, 2003. When I first joined, within months, about 30, 40 people, remembering the company's only 250 people, gone, lost their job. in 2002 same thing about 50 60 people yeah yeah that was formula one back then and all you did really simple rule of thumb make sure you're not in the bottom half of the team you're going to be okay and to ask one of your answer one of your questions why did i keep pushing myself i was the other way around i wanted to be in the top one percent zero chance of losing my job um always doubted am i good enough always always through all of that um because you're against peers that are incredible at what they're doing.

25:23But that drive is still with me today. I want to make sure that I'm earning my place. This isn't a right. I have to earn it and I have to earn it every single day and that will stay with me forever. And that creates the humility. It creates all the other lovely cultural aspects out of it. So what was a culture like then in Formula One in a period where you knew people were going to get booted out and you had to be in the top half of that business to not be one of them? It was as you would expect it to be. It wasn't a nice culture to be in fundamentally because if you couldn't raise yourself, you'd pull others down.

25:55That's the simple way of doing it, which is why I was talking about being in the top 1%. Now you don't worry about that anymore. You're so detached from it that you're not part of this politics or otherwise. How did you get there? No other way than saying it than just hard work. It was, I lived in Brackley at the time, which is where the team's based and pretty much might have had a sleeping bag at work for what it took. I just, I was there. The real way I did it, that's probably an exaggeration of it, actually. It's not that I slept at work particularly, but I didn't have anything else in my life.

26:24I didn't have family. I didn't have partners. I think it was about work. But one of the clear things I remember, and it would be my advice to anyone else out there as well, when there was a difficult problem, I would always put my hand up first and say, I'll take that straight away. Anything that people just thought, I don't really want anything to do with it. And it could be difficult. It could be a lot of work, my hand would go up first and say, I'll take that on. And just kept taking it on and taking it on and taking it on. Because those that take on those work and fundamentally do a good job with it, you then build your team up around it, et cetera.

26:55But you become a reliable force within the team. You increase your knowledge, your learning, and all the other associations with it as well. And that was sort of how I went about it. And my advice to anyone would be, don't shy away from the difficult bits. It's quite the opposite. push into them can i tell you about a comment you made about when you're in the classroom at school where you said that i didn't want a target on my back so i deliberately chose to be good rather than great and now it sounds like you've made that mentality shift to say i'm not bothered that there's a target on my back i will put my hand up what was that shift like what did it involve i think school as well it has to be recognized that i don't think i was the cleverest person in the room i think there were other people there that were far more intelligent than i was i have a balance i hope a little bit between what i call eq and iq but at school um it was also bullying would be the wrong word it wasn't bullying but you were isolated when you're very clever at school i didn't want that at work it's very different when you're in an environment where you're surrounded by peers that want exactly the same as you do which is you want to be the best in the world you're not isolated you're rewarded so it's a cultural change that went with it where i thought well you did say that there was also a culture where the drag you down that if they couldn't do it.

28:10So it's almost like the adult version of bullying, is it not? It is, but the difference here is you can put yourself so far above the power pit. By describing what I just said, if there's a bunch of jobs, I'll get them done. Simple as that. It doesn't matter what your peers do fundamentally now. You're above all of that. And that approach doesn't work at school. You don't have that direct contact with teachers day to day, if that makes any sense. I mean, it's an interesting analogy. I've never really thought about it in this much depth. It was a good conversation to be having. But for me at the time, it was also based on the fact that the job I initially had was this very kind at the time.

28:50I got a job sort of created for me. But it's not what I wanted to be. I knew where I wanted to be, which at the time was race engineering and then growing. And so what I was doing was when I was pulling on jobs, they were helping me in that direction of travel to things. So now you had breadth across multiple parts of the organization that perhaps others wouldn't at the time. And again, as much as you could be pulled down in certain areas. And by the way, the pulling down, people don't do it to bring the team down. They'll only do it if they think there's someone very close to them that they can just pip ahead of.

29:20But if it's someone clearly whose goals and aspirations are to make us better, make the team better, actually you won't pull backwards, I would say. And that description you said about almost sleeping in the office and being quite monastic in your lifestyle, what were the consequences of that the biggest one is you have no life outside of it as long as you treat this as your hobby your passion your life you don't have any of those other things anymore this is it um and that you form relationships that are keeping you going because everyone needs something there's a support network it becomes okay but it definitely for example um i had a long-term relationship that that was destroyed um for various reasons and and rightly so i didn't see her at all in that period of time family i didn't see perhaps say for once a year around christmas for a few days that was it um i have nieces and nephews that are fantastic i haven't seen them grow up you've got to accept this becomes your sole desire on what you want.

30:29You really have to give up everything for it. Or at least that's the conclusion I came to, to go away and do it. You don't have to, of course. But for me, it was, this is the compromise I'm going to make. And do you regret that? No. No, not at all. It was conscious decisions I was making and they've led me to where I am today. But it's putting it out there that if you are prepared to sacrifice everything, you can have greatness. You can have growth. You can have the direction of travel, but there's no such thing as all of it. It doesn't work that way. Let's talk then about the change in culture at what was, for those that aren't well-versed in Formula One, British American Racing did pretty well as a team.

31:08And then Honda did okay. Braun, one season, amazing. I have fond memories of that time. Absolutely. And then it became Mercedes. The Toyota Wolf arrived. And then by 2014, you won the Constructors and the Drivers' World Championship. I'm really fascinated by this period of change and turnaround, the arrival of Toto, the change to a winning team, the change in culture. There's a lot to pick out there, but I'd almost love just, when I talk about that period, what comes into your head that really signifies the change? It happened before 2014. At the end of 2012, I remember this vividly, we didn't score a point in eight races.

31:49And at the time, that was, I mean, I think by far the worst year. at the end of that year, certainly. I think we won one race that year, which was Shanghai. And you're questioning, am I in the right place? I haven't come here to just get a car going around the track. I've come here to make a difference. The senior leadership team at the time, so there's no one individual in an F1 team. I still maintain that today. It doesn't matter whether it's Toto or me, there's no one individual. It's a group of individuals. It's why I go back to the people and culture element of things. But the senior leadership team at the time, within the era of 2012, 2013, team of Mercedes, we were becoming stronger and stronger as a unit.

32:30And the cultural change happened before Toto came there. And the cultural change was this, have no fear of failure. We've done enough failure. I'm comfortable with it now. Have no fear of failure. We need to change what we're doing. What we're doing is not good enough. It's not the standard in Formula One. The catalyst was Toto. And it's really important to say it's not that he had no part in it at all, far from it is that the direction of travel already started prior to him joining 13 but he mirrors the views that we did and that's why it gelled incredibly quickly overnight because we we had now the impetus at all levels within the organization of enough is enough we're changing we want to be the best what do we have to do what was the consequence i mean that's quite a seismic shift to not have a fear of failure in a sport that is defined almost by winners and losers what was the consequences of that first and foremost is you will as you get a group of individuals and enough of us that stood up and and had no concerns about talking about a failure i mean if you want the most public example i came on the radio at some stage in front of 60 million people and said i've got this wrong but here's what we're going to do um so that gives you the confidence that in the old formula one that will get you fired you're done you make a you make a mistake there was a perception that you're done you're fired as a result of it um and so you have to go against years literally years worth of culture that's built up that way but because there was a strong leadership team and we knew that as long as we stuck together on on what we were thinking as a result of this we've moved forward and others would actually join us in the initial part of it you'd had what you'd expect people would go why are we talking about this doesn't make sense we have to make change but by change they mean that people are failing and then very quickly actually um in 13 especially so 13 it's where all that got applied because the car in 13 was brilliant on one lap fastest car on one lap no doubt about it um but we're probably the only car i think to have qualified first and second and be out the points within nine laps in barcelona that's what it was that was the car we we made a lot of mistakes that year on a number of tyres and setup direction.

34:40And I remember it very vividly, because this issue wasn't Dustin Barst-Lerner, but I remember the board were there in Barcelona and I made some claims that we understood far more what we had before we had the most disastrous race that we had. But not postulated in the way of we're great, it was here's where we've gone wrong and here's the things we are trying to correct it and here's what we expect the outcomes to be. So proper experimental driven and data driven systems. Actually, to the credit of the board, we failed badly, but we showed them how we are then rebuilding from that failure. They embraced it rather than pushed it away.

35:19So there was a cultural change that was actually strong enough. There was a time that a few of us thought, we're done. This is not looking good for us. and actually that the culture change was enough already to take place that we had good momentum that we're able to change and 2013 turned into one of our best years at the end of it and 13 was the foundations that led towards 14 15 everyone was 14 brilliant championship but if you look at the end of 13 especially around budapest we went around from a car that was the fastest in qualifying to the one that can beat a red bull in the race and that only came about because we kept resetting ourselves going through learning processes and make sure we changed everything and we changed a lot on that car so how how did you go about making this culture change and i think the point you make about coming on the radio and admitting failure is a really powerful one like i used to love it when i was watching a race and i heard it's james because i like what follows next is some honesty about actually what's going on here there was very little hiding behind things which you hear a lot of i mean i remember that moment you know to lewis you said i threw away the wind didn't you correct yeah and here you say well we changed the culture it sounds so easy could you give us a couple of tangible things that happened that drove that so that here's here's a little bit of the secret sauce first and foremost you need to have a clear idea of what culture you want in your head but it doesn't matter what culture you want in your head to a certain extent that's not how the culture is created the culture is actually created from your workforce it's created bottom up but you can have an idea you should have an idea a very clear idea of what culture you want you should have some items that help on that journey behaviors values items like that and then you need a leadership team that enact every single one of those behaviors and culture not bits of it every single one of it behave in the way that you want your workforce to be as well it's not words it and it's not um do as i say not do as i do it is behave in the way what were the behaviors um within mercedes it was starting with a failure one.

37:17It is absolutely, first of all, data-driven. Everything, every single decision has to be data-driven. It's not heuristics. It's not I think. It's not I haven't looked at the data. It is data-driven approach to it, experiment-driven. I think this will happen. Here's the data. Here's what the outcome was. Learning loop on the back of it. Make sure that you understand exactly what went wrong, what went right, and learn from it. Because all too often people go through that and then the learning loop's forgotten. You just have a result. That's actually the most important bit of that whole process. The next bit is fear of failure.

37:47That's failure. And the learning loop is the important bit you get out of it. Make sure you embrace that failure. Reward that failure. Show it to everyone and go, here's what I got wrong. Can you learn anything else from it? And the next bit, and this is the hardest bit because humans aren't very good at it, is once you've had that failure, where else are we going to fail in a similar way from that learning? So not wait for it to happen, but how else can you apply that learning to 10 or 12 or 20 other areas where we can stop failure from happening and we can already start learning from it. And the reason why humans are really bad at that is when you have success, you often don't think about the downsides involved with it.

38:21And there's many times in Mercedes where we won by a second, not 10 seconds. And you go, that's done. That's a win. Completely wrong. Why was it nine seconds closer for all the other competitors than it was other races? I mean, we were dominant, so we might as well be honest about it. And those questions actually led to a lot more unlocking of potential. But it's hard for a human to do it's really painful when you fail really hurts doesn't it i think there's i've read this in a book so whether it's true or not but it's about 10 times more powerful having a failure than it is having success so you need you need to be really looking at your success to really break it down whereas the failure hurts so much that you want to get to the bottom of it and that's i mean that's the secret sauce everything there is there enact the behaviors you want make sure and as i say don't say them enact them and then encourage your workforce that this is how you want them to be.

39:11This is how we can become better. And you'll find that in time, it comes through bottom up. And it depends on the size of the organization, how long it takes. Eight people, probably quite quick. A thousand people, quite slow.

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41:16So give us some insight into how you park your ego to do that. Because you're right, it is painful to fail. Sometimes we entrench our views or we defend our position. And I love the learning loop of going back and admitting failure is something to be embraced rather than feared. What lessons did you learn, James, about parking your ego to be able to do that? I'll say this here on camera and on podcast. I'm not the cleverest person in this company. I wasn't the cleverest person in Mercedes. I have no doubt about that. There are many, many other intelligent engineers way above me. I think what I'm able to do, though, is to bring balance between how to communicate information, how to digest it, how to give clear direction.

42:00That's the strength I have. and enough intelligence to be able to understand the very intelligent people in the room in terms of what's good and what's bad out of it. I will always find someone better than me in every regard. I can always find a reset for me. And that's how I live my life. It's not that I want to be beaten by these individuals. I want to then improve myself to become closer to them as much as I possibly can. But this isn't about me as a one individual. It's not about the fear of what people think of me either. because that's secondary to, I just want us to be better. And as soon as you think this isn't about you, this is about the wider good of, in this case, Williams, you become not insignificant, but you're just a part of the puzzle on the journey.

42:44There's something very unique though about Formula One, which is the team sport and the individual. So actually, you know, when you're at Mercedes and you're suddenly focusing on failures, using them as a learning loop, pushing forwards, playing the long-term game, knowing that eventually things will get good, that's actually great for the team who are there and they're going to get their salary and they're going to be okay. It's not so good if you're the driver and you're like, well, I'm only on a one or two year contract. I can't hang around. It wasn't any old driver you were working with at Mercedes as well.

43:16Before Lewis Hamilton, it was Michael Schumacher, right? So I'm interested in how you give those messages to these driven, often quite ego-driven, self-centered individualistic sportsmen that are playing the team game but the driver's results is what really matters to them you've you've probably hit the nail on the thing that makes me one of the most excited by formula one because i struggle to find another sport similar to this where it's a team sport but it starts with beating your teammate you don't beat your teammate you're in question and here's how it's built up and you'll see this a lot with the messaging i've used here with regards to Logan, for example.

43:59The key behind it is that that's just one fight, but actually each individual contributes towards the success of the team, simple as that. Lewis, when he joined us, was, and still is today, within my Mercedes career, the most naturally talented driver that I had worked with, including Michael. Just so much natural talent. The journey we took him on was, it isn't, we'll win championships together. His mentality at the time when he joined was a brilliant one. I can see why it's successful, but it's, I'm going to win every race at all costs. It doesn't matter what the cost is, I'm going to win that race, I'm done.

44:36And if you speak to him today, it's migrated to, he accepts that the second places and third places are how you win the championship. And building and working with a team on the days where you can't win the race will give you far more reward than pushing everyone away in order to win that single race out of it. how did you get in there though because that was 20 years of learning that he brought to the team which was about him winning races absolutely that it wasn't the journey of one individual or even toto or myself or at the time shove i would also say nikki laudo was a strong part of it as well a strong-minded individual that had won multiple world champions and i learned a tremendous amount from him starts with being open and honest with the drivers just simple as that all too often we don't actually go to the real truth behind the matter and we skirt around it they are after all in many regards the best in the world of what they do so it becomes difficult to have a direct conversation and you'll see the way i am publicly the way i am here and the way i am would be off camera is exactly the same it's open honest transparent and it starts there you have that open honest conversation about it which includes when their behaviors are ones that are hurting the team and hurting themselves not helping can you give us an example of that the the biggest thing that um we got into with the drivers 2014 for example was that both of them knew both nico and lewis knew that it was one of those two winning the year they knew by the way before we turned the first wheel in the first race and so um it took quite a while um but my role in this was i constructed a document that created some very clear how we are going to work with each other, how we're going to fight each other.

46:15What at the time was called rules of engagement, changed later to another term that was less military, but racing intense. But irrespective, it was some really clear boundaries on this is how we're going to behave and this is how we're going to perform. And there was a lot to do. And it started with this and it starts with an ethos I believe in today, but the whole first page was about being a sportsman. And to explain that you can win a world championship, but if you've done so in a way that is not fair and sportsman like you will have regrets for the rest of your life yep you have a championship to your name but it'll be sullied it'll be muddied it won't be pure we at the time there we want to win things by doing things just better than everyone else not because we've found other mechanisms we just want to be better than everyone else and that applies to the drivers as it does to the engineers within the team as it does to designers and it was very much bringing on that journey and making sure they're aware that you can become the best sportsman in the world which will create a legacy beyond many, many years.

47:12Or you can win a race by doing something that has perhaps forced or hurt or damaged your teammate. Which one do you want to go down? And it's a very simple choice when you present it to a sportsman, ultimately. They want the one that creates a legacy in many years to come. Michael, incredible man, but still marred by 1997 in many regards. It stands out in everyone's mind. And we created the mindset that that's not how I want to be remembered. I want we remembered that we were a dominant force working together. And between the two of you, within these rules, the fastest driver across 20 races will win.

47:47Not the fastest driver on a weekend, not the one that's done something that's maybe benefited them in the short term, the fastest driver on 20 races. And we'll construct it and make sure it's built that way. And we'll give you each equal opportunity. And they bought into it. And that created a good environment. It doesn't mean that in time we didn't have a breakdown. I mean, everyone will remember 2016 Barcelona. You're talking about when Lewis and Nico crashed into each other. Yeah, absolutely. Still sticks in my mind today because you're taking two elite sportsmen that were constrained within their boxes and just got frustrated.

48:20But actually what you do at the time is you don't back off, you double down and go, this is how it's going to be. Can you tell us what you learn from these great drivers, whether it is Nico Rosberger won a world title, Lewis Hamilton multiple world champion, Michael Schumacher, one of the legends of the sport. They're all enigmas in their own unique way. They don't share too much because I think they sometimes, particularly when they're still competing, they worry that it maybe removes either some of the magic around them or gives some power to their competitors. You've been as close as you can ever get to multiple world champions.

48:52What separates them? They're all different. As every human in this room is different, they're all different to each other. There's literally very few characteristics. You would have thought, this is what makes the world champion. It's these characteristics. It's not. So if I take you through them one by one, Michael, he taught Nico how to work really hard. Michael wasn't the most skillful in the car. I've already said that was Lewis. But he knew how to extract every millisecond out of himself and every millisecond out of the team. He was a leader that absolutely he would say, I'm going to go this way.

49:27The team would follow him there. so much so that both sides of the garage wanted him to do well so much so that one of my regrets my career is we didn't get a win for him that that still hurts me today he deserved a win and how did he take people on that journey with him um a couple of things so first and foremost um you had a genuine interest in who you were and your life i went motorbiking on track with him as in race bikes on track with him in poor card and we had the time of our lives we both still laugh about it um for many years after that um he knew at the time my partner's birthday flowers arrive at home and it embarrassed me because i didn't do that much he would take a genuine interest in who you are who your family is what drives you every single person in the team and that's hard to do and it's not because he's doing it because he wants to gain advantage he does it because he really cares that's that's michael the michael you had front facing in front of the media is a very different michael to what was behind the scenes and that's how he did it fundamentally so he would bring everyone on the journey and lead everyone on the journey he would extract every he would squeeze himself for every millisecond he had he would work as late as he needed to every hour he needed to that was how he operated and Nico learned a tremendous amount from him it formed the Nico that then became a world champion ultimately which is squeeze everything out of you you can at the cost of everything else so much so you end up having to leave after winning that world title Yeah, exactly that.

50:55The sacrifice I talked to you about before that was painful to me where you let go of family and friends and loved ones, he did for that year. And he decided, and all the respect to him for it, that actually that's not the life he wanted. Lewis just had these, as I said, it's this oodles of natural talent. And with him, he's got these tendencies and traits where when you go out in SP1, he's like an octopus all over the wheel. He'll change every setting on the wheel near enough and explore it. But it's what makes him incredible. And if I give you an example of it, there was a time where on simulation in Brazil, it said hold sixth gear up the hill.

51:33Sorry, go into seventh gear up the hill. And within two laps, Nico was doing exactly as we asked him to do. Within two laps, Lewis went, this doesn't feel right, back down to six and was finding a 10th there. And it took until the end of the session before Nico saw the data and saw that. He's this optimizer that he'll use data as a starting ground, but he's got a feel beyond anything else for it. And he has no issue exploring the boundaries. And that originally manifested itself in, you'd often see him go off at turn one. He'd find the absolute limit of braking and it would just push him wide at turn one, then he bought the lap.

52:04And one of our biggest frustrations with him was that out of 20 laps, he did one. You're like, come on, you've got to do more than that. And actually, if you look at the maturity Lewis had between 13 to now, you'll see he completes every lap. He's now found a way of still gaining the experience of the moment of the lap out of it. But it was this perfectionist that wanted, and braking was his strength, his forte. Maximize everything under braking and then I know the limits of the car and then I can build from there and get into the rhythm of things. But his is, because he's explored all these boundaries, he knows in just a few laps in FP1 and he learns the track incredibly quickly what the boundaries of the car is, what the limits are already within his tools that he has available on the steering wheel, which are quite fast for what it's worth and understands therefore how to get the car into the right positioning for as the grip comes up.

52:50Very, very impressive. where others are still just spending seven or eight laps learning the track he's explored quite a bit of the boundaries um now that came with some downsides often often he would change the car so quick on that you'd lose yourself certainly as engineers it's difficult when your data's all moving the tracks moving the grips moving the drivers moved everything on the steering wheel you don't know where you are and then he comes in and we've changed mech bell and aero balance you think okay we're starting from scratch here basically and that's some of the reasons why at times you'll see Lewis drops backwards.

53:19And often when he jumps forwards again, he's gone to a setup that's known and now he's back on the money. But he's able to do that and many drivers aren't. He's able to explore off and accept they'll have a whole session, perhaps in the wrong place on setup, but he's learning from it. And that's Lewis all over. So you have this time at Mercedes, eight drivers, championships, seven constructors all the way around. Definitely eight constructors. Eight constructors, seven drivers. Contentious. Yeah, okay, yeah. Eight constructors' titles, eight drivers' titles, right? You can't say. I can't say. Don't answer.

53:52No, I mean, it is what it is in the history books. Correct. But that was the time at Mercedes. Yeah. And then you make the decision to walk away from one of the best on the grid to join at the time one of the worst on the grid. Please talk us through that decision-making process. for for many years um i'd i'd built up first of all a team behind me so one of the things i've been focused on at mercedes is i knew my long term wasn't going to be doing strategy for the rest of my life loved it to bits it's brilliant job but um for many years built up a really strong team behind the scenes and in fact from from around 21 onwards the hard work was done by them i was simply making a final decision but the hard work was done by them or enacting um more aspects of my job, including team orders, other aspects of motorsport, advising Toto, all that sort of thing.

54:46The reason being was that Toto was kind enough with his time to give me as much of his experience as he could. He knew where he was forming me towards. That doesn't mean I had a job within Mercedes to be a team principal there, but he provided me his time and his knowledge and experience and provided me more and more responsibilities back to what I originally described to you before, where if there's an opportunity, I'll grab it and I'll take it, I'll put it in at the cost of time and sleep and all the other things. So that started happening. So simulator drivers, then young drivers, then race drivers fell underneath me, then started working with our Formula E outfit, started working with our GT3 outfit, started working with elements of finance, elements of the cost cap and other bits and bobs.

55:26Just kept pulling it in. Of course, you can't just keep doing. So what I did is not absolve the responsibilities, but build a team that just did all the strategy bits for me. And so I could focus on that growth. The direction of the path being clear, once you've based yourself out of engineering and you're focused a lot more about how the company runs, you have a better idea of how to step into this role. Not that I ever thought this role would appear, but if it did appear, I wanted to have the maximum amount of exposure so that I'd be ready to jump into it. Simple as that. Toto is incredible at what he does, no doubt about it, and has many, many more years as the best, one of the best team principals in the pit name.

56:06and so it got to a point where i had to make a decision for my life not not for mercedes life and um that decision came when i very swiftly realized that actually i think the growth opportunities i have the growth learning i have i enjoyed learning tremendously and that was slowing down in mercedes i can go into a completely different level by going elsewhere and so i had honest conversations with toto across that year period it wasn't a big surprise to him in the winter and it's why also he was accepting of the fact that he he let me move on he wanted me to move on as well as a result of it um did he give you a particular piece of advice in going into the role that that he could share with us i think he said don't be shit um was his advice uh which i'm trying to do um no uh other than that um he he knows that i've been forming for this for quite a while so there was little he could provide me above it but even today and not just him i would say Fred and Otmar before we left and a few others were guiding voices Zach where I can happily call them even though they're adversaries and not ask for advice but they'll give me guidance on different things.

57:16Can we explore day one at Williams then please because you arrive at a team where they're at a low ebb you know they work hard as hard as every other team all week long and then get no results at the weekend underfunded for year after year some of the stuff here would have been obsolete when you arrived compared to what you were working with at Mercedes. So what do you do on day one? How do you communicate the start of a new period here? The start of it is actually find out what our strengths and weaknesses are. Every organization will have strengths and weaknesses. And there are elements here that are stronger than the Mercedes.

57:46One of them is passion, which is what drives this team. This team still has a family feel behind it, which I like. But the reason why we have a car out the door is not because we have digital systems telling us how to do 20 ,000 parts and how to put them together. It's because individuals would do what it took across a period of three weeks, including sleeping here, as required to get the car out the door. That's what Williams is. It's what it embodies. It's embodied for 20 years or so. But the starting point is you find out what makes organization strong, what makes organization weak. Don't assume, find out.

58:21Find out from the people that have been here doing the hard work for many years. So a lot of the initial journey, and it still is today for that matter as well, is I'm trying to go to every single level of the organization I talk to them. The second thing is you show your vision for where you want to go. And the vision I've shared here is a very clear one. It started with this. I don't care about 23. I don't care about 24. And I really don't care about 25. Sounds strange, doesn't it? But that's not what's of interest to me. I'm interested in, 25 is a bit of a borderline one, but 23 and 24, I don't care about.

58:54We can finish last. Break everything. This is an opportunity you'll never have in your lifetime. Break everything. You have carte blanche for me. You have a free pass to, if we can do it better, let's do it better. Let's talk about it. Don't carry on with the same way we've been doing it for 20 years and we'll go backwards as a result of that but break everything learn and use the experience so for example how we approach racing was we highlighted before the season starts these races and there was say that you could highlight from a distance as well these races we're going to be good at all the other ones i want to do learning on those weekends it is about learning try something you haven't tried before um it doesn't matter if it's a setup direction it's a driving style it's how we do data it's building performance engineers it's um how we use the factory.

59:42Learn on those weekends. Make sure you set out what you're going to learn. Learn on those weekends. You'll never get this opportunity again. Same within the area department. Let's focus on actually doing things from ground roots properly. Do flow dynamics. Not worry about what other people are doing. Understand our car. Do flow dynamics. Do proper design of experiment. Learn from experiment. Feedback to everyone from experiment. You'll see how I've used the actions. they apply here and um to the credit of the organization there was little resistance to that we have a problem at the moment which is always the same problem which is there's a little bit of a taste of success and when there's a taste of success you want to hold on to what you've got but putting the sort of that into context we have as many points less than a top team that score on one race weekend.

1:00:33So it's success by the measure of where we were, but it's not success. I don't want that for this team. I don't want that for the future of this team. We want more than that. And to get more than that, where we are at the moment is on the wrong slope. We have to change everything still. And it's the hardest thing to do. Change. If you look at many organizations, changing what you're doing is incredibly difficult. It's why a number of companies that were some of the most successful in the world, Blockbuster, went bankrupt nearly overnight because you don't change. And the same happened to us. Have you sensed fear from some people here?

1:01:07I don't think it's fear. There's sort of two beliefs essentially in there. One is, I've done it this way for a long period of time. And so that's not necessarily fear, it's comfort. But it's comfort in this works, why are we changing it? And often it's difficult to know what works and what doesn't work. I mean, if I said to you, use your left hand to right with when you're right handed, because it's change, that's not good change. And often it's difficult to differentiate what's good change and what's bad change. So you're not just literally changing everything. We're not going to make people sit on boxes, which aren't anymore, actually.

1:01:41We're going to properly change structures to be for the good. Sometimes people are afraid of the challenge that's going to be in front of them. Sometimes people are afraid of failure. So I go back to the first of those. What you do is you first of all create exactly the right culture. I'm not worried if anyone fails, as long as we are changing things for the good. But what you've done yesterday is now not good enough. And what you're going to do today will not be good enough tomorrow. How do you know though if someone isn't failing because they're not good enough or they're not working hard enough?

1:02:14And how do you know they're failing because they're pushing the envelope? It's a good question. First and foremost, you start by having, it won't be one individual, myself, or even a select individual, which is a management committee. you have a leadership team that know what excellence looks like that's the key behind it all what excellence looks like and how to drive people towards that fundamentally and when you start getting division of what excellence looks like sufficiently down the organization even if the individual doesn't recognize it you'll find a level that does recognize this is what excellence is and we're not anywhere near close to it anymore and you redefine the boundaries where you are even if you don't know what excellence looks like here's where we are today here's where I want you to be?

1:02:53All the way over there. How do we get there? And it's not by doing this. It is by large momentum jumps on where you're going. So to your question, even if you don't really know whether what you're doing is pushing the boundaries or not, change the game. Push the boundaries into something completely different, and you will fail by doing that. And fundamentally, you could say, yeah, but you could be failing already because you're right up against the boundary. I can assure you all of us will look back on what we're doing here in three years time ago was nowhere near the boundary it's much further away than that so it's about defining what excellence looks like defining what the gap looks like and defining a pathway that allows people to get there in a safe way without fearing the failure that comes out of it as the result when we interviewed toto he he told us about on his first day at mercedes he gave a speech to all the staff and he distinctly recounts uh an engineer saying to him I'll believe it when I see it.

1:03:48We've heard these fine words before. And he recognized the need, as you've said, James, to role model, to demonstrate that I'm going to do this. Can you give us an example of where you've given a tangible example of you being prepared to break the rules? Not so much break the rules, but in the period of time I am here, the update that was due for Canada, it's a large update for this team. Everything was on target, and then suddenly everything fell way behind. And we were going through an empowerment, empowerment of our team to say, you tell us whether we can make it or not. And the answer that came back is we can't make it, which I reflected on.

1:04:28Then we had a lot of damage in the race just before on the floors. And now we're in a bit of a tricky situation that there is no existing floors and there's no future floors. So I went downstairs with Fred, our COO, went downstairs, brought around about 50 people together and said the following, we will get this update to Canada. There's no ifs, buts and maybes. We will get this update to Canada and I will be here every evening with you until we get this update to Canada. It's not that I'm useful, I'll be crap at laminating floors. But I wanted them to see that it's the journey that I believe in so much that I will put all of my time into it, not other things, all of it into this.

1:05:06The next element of it is, is what I explained, is we will not have many opportunities of points this year. I know that. But one of them is absolutely Canada. I am confident we will score points in Canada. And thank God we did. Otherwise I'd look foolish. To the extent where we took a new panel unit as well with Alex in Canada, literally all legs in one basket. Not a great way of doing Formula One racing, by the way, but you've got to sometimes back what you believe in to that extent. And I walked around and met a lot of people across the next few evenings. In fact, I didn't have to stay late beyond Friday because it was done a day and a half early.

1:05:44Surprised everyone, but it was done early. But actually some of the best memories I have from this year is walking around and seeing some of the night shift down in the composites area and the floors being built and just seeing them build up over time and the kit building up over time. And that's where you put your actions, where your words are. And I enjoyed every minute of that actually for what it's worth. It's not something you can do habitually day to day, but I wanted to demonstrate to the organisation that this isn't about one of us and I'm no different to the rest of them. I want us to have success and to have success means we've got to do things that are tough and difficult.

1:06:21So that was the start of it. The same words actually got told to me here when I'm here as well, which is there were a number of people, there's something called change saturation, which happens when you've had large amounts of sways of change from different individuals. And this organization is probably the epitome of it in Formula One. it has it's had large amounts of management change over the last 10 years and they become fatigued by it so when you change like yeah we're just changing for the sake of changing again um i had a bit of that at the beginning and actually i'm thankful for it because it means the individuals felt already that they could talk to me openly and honestly so i'd already started to create a bit of that there and thank them for it and said that's fine let's action speak rather than anything else and as you would expect momentum builds momentum so as soon as we had a little bit of momentum on actually the wind tunnels starting to produce some really good things and the update starting to produce some really good things and we're getting things out the door and we're scoring points you build in that momentum with everyone else and you can start to see the direction of travel within the hardest thing is that direction is still very light compared to the direction of travel we need to be we have a tremendous road in front of us we've just started on it and it's making sure we build momentum not slow down or accept that what we're doing at the moment is okay because it's not we're far away from where we need to be and that change needs to double down, not half going forward.

1:07:39Brilliant. It's time for our quickfire questions. The first one of which is, what are the three non-negotiable behaviors that you and the people around you must buy into? Honesty. It's incredibly important to me. Respect to your peers around you to make sure that you give them the time of day you listen to them and you understand what they're doing. And actually the third one I would embody, which is passion here because the passion is what drives it. And I absolutely keep it. It's tremendous here. I hope we never lose it. What advice would you give to a teenage James just starting out? Probably work harder at school in hindsight.

1:08:18You would have been, could have had a better, easier time and would have made your life easier later on. No, I think the main advice I would give is believe in yourself, believe in what you're capable of. And dreams can become reality if you're prepared to sacrifice enough to get there what's your biggest strength what's your greatest weakness biggest strength is i think i have the ability to listen to a wide a wide varied selection of individuals and communicate with a wide selection of individuals as well so in other words i i'm able to understand from from very quickly some quite difficult subjects not the level of depth that many individuals would but enough to be able to talk about it and i'm able to communicate and direct individuals all of my decisions aren't going to be 100 bang on but often within an organization someone that's strong enough to make a decision is what you're looking for because that often is better than just going around in circles i appreciate that's what we do for a living but you get the idea biggest weakness is um i all too easily will get dragged into the details because i love the details and actually there's not enough time in the day.

1:09:30So you've got to focus on the big picture items in order to move forward and the details you have to entrust and empower individuals to get on with it. Sure. What's the single best piece of advice you've ever received and why? It's from a very good CEO who's a good friend of mine who said, trust your instinct. Don't delay the difficult decisions. Get on with them because all you do is regret not doing them six months earlier. And finally, your one golden rule that you'd like to leave the viewers and the listeners with for living a high performance life. I know I spoke about before about giving up a lot in the life, but there is also a balance to it.

1:10:08You need your health. Your health is, if you want the biggest and best investment you can make in life, it's into your health because it will give you returns beyond any others. So eating properly, being fit and healthy just means you perform better at work. And the hour that you take to do that will reward you more than the hour you would spend otherwise the the second piece of advice is um there is going to be a point where actually just taking a break and walking around will give you far more return than doing an extra 10 minutes of sitting there scratching your head fundamentally you'd be surprised how the human brain works but the best ideas i've had aren't sat at a desk for 10 hours it's in the shower going for a run at 4 a.m my brain just wakes up at 4am, have really good ideas, I have a pen and paper and I write them down by the bed.

1:10:53Maybe that says something to you about not very intelligent but somehow my sleeping brain is quite good so it makes up for it. But give your brain the breaks it needs to have the real epiphanies because they don't happen when you just punish it for 10 hours in a row. Listen, thank you so much for sitting and sharing so much with us. We look forward to 2026. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks mate.

1:11:22Damien. Jake. What an interesting individual and what remarkable stories. I loved it. It reminded me of some of our classic episodes that we've been lucky enough to do of hearing somebody tell you the real cost of going after high performance in a hugely competitive industry. And actually, when we spoke about that, and he mentioned not seeing some of his family's nieces grow up, his voice cracked a bit, didn't it? And I think that, you know, he's comfortable with the sacrifice that he's made. But it's a really important conversation to say that if you're comfortable with it, you can do it. There is going to be cost though.

1:11:58There is going to be collateral damage. But it's an argument that you can't disagree with, that if you really want greatness, you have to sacrifice. Yeah, there is always a price to everything that you're paying. Again, just to emphasise here, we're not telling people that you have to work for nothing. We're not telling you you have to sleep in the office. that's a choice that every individual has to make. But you have to understand that the cost of that comes with, that there is a price to be paid. And I think James was really clear about that, that it was a price that he was willing to pay. And, you know, we asked him off camera, do you regret it?

1:12:37And he said, well, I wouldn't be here if I hadn't have done that. So that's a man at peace with his decision. He's also a real master of creating change and driving change. that he's seen in previous teams working with Toto Wolff. I mean, let's not underestimate that trying to change people is almost the single hardest thing that you can do as a leader. Yeah, I think that what he said there is that we all develop the concepts of heuristics and mental models of the way that we do things and we'd like to be as efficient as possible. So what he's coming in and advocating is that what you're doing isn't good enough.

1:13:14So you either have to embrace new ways of working or you maybe have to take your ways and go somewhere else, but you can't exist there. And that is always going to create friction. It's going to create resistance and fear. But I think the way that he's willing to role model that himself, you know, the example of him coming in in the evenings, working late, being visible, is a really powerful message to everybody. The one that stood out for me was that conversation when he came on the microphone and said, I've cost us the race here. And he understood that that's broadcast. to not only the drivers, but to millions of other people.

1:13:50That psychological safety, Amy Edmondson, the pioneer of that phrase, says that change can only happen when leaders role model it because you give permission for everybody else to understand that failure isn't terminal in an organization. James is a great example of somebody that understands the power of having to role model this, not just talk about it. Absolutely. Thank you, mate. Thank you, mate. as always thank you so much for tuning in to high performance and giving us some of your time um i think one of the magic things about james is his ability to change and adapt to the world around him and you can learn all the skills of that in our brand new book how to change your life it's out now wherever you normally go and buy your books don't forget you can listen ad free on the high performance app but there's also loads more exclusive high performance content just go to the app store and search for High Performance.

1:14:42As always, please continue to spread the learnings you're taking from these shows. Remain humble, curious, empathetic, and we'll see you soon.

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