303. What can veterans teach us about leadership? With Danny Wareham, Major General (Ret) Matt Smith and James Hardie

29:21Leanne:answer it beautifully and my follow-up question it has to be what can we do to build that that trust systemically in organizations are there things that leaders can do yeah i think if i may say the you know one of the things the military is continuous training it's always training training training training and that helps to sort of stretch and build people psychologically if you think about things like self-efficacy confidence is built in the in in training areas and then you go out and apply it and the other thing that i thought it was an interesting thing to look at just the uniform a uniform is like a walking around cv you can see anything that you need to know about that person by the very uniform which you know which branch they're in airports navy or or the army so you know you know exactly who to take the mickey out of for what reasons when you start meeting them because you've got to start with that and then uh but then you see what badges they've got on what courses they've been on you can see their rank and experience you can see their medals which might be an indication of hat you know some you know no matter how youthful they look beneath their hat um they uh you can you can get an idea well they were in that that conflict that was 10 years ago quite that's interesting so you've got an idea about experience and and i think that all is um helps with you know this creating a certain amount of resilience in the organization optimism um and also the sort of longevity of careers so there's another thing that also happens in the military people don't tend to get recruited from someone else's military they might change branches they might have exchanges but we don't you know So we don't have, they don't change from Air Force to Army very often.

30:59They certainly don't usually change from one to another, except maybe between the Five Eyes kind of militaries and that. There may be a little bit of transfer there. But you don't have the people joining your military from someone else's. You don't have usually very many takeovers and mergers and acquisitions, which create other issues. you have a lot of things that that are that give a certain continuity and security and identity and then when you leave obviously that's different that's going to be different in the organizations that you you now join and I think one of the things that people do have a certain envy of of the military is that is that disciplined hierarchy and I think it's interesting because Because it's the one thing that whilst it exists all the time and it is properly enforced when it needs to be, it's the last thing that you come to use.

31:53It exists. It's the backbone. But it won't betide you if you have to use that every day to get things done. You will be exhausted. You use the established processes and systems and you do things consistently as well as you can most of the time. and you leave real leadership to the times when you really don't know what to do and it's complete chaos and disorder and you have to adapt and i think this is where maybe is this there's some links to the industrial revolution that suggest that leadership was almost invented as a as a proxy for core management that was going on and having to give some sort of morale boost to industrialization um there can be another discussion as well matt is this um this trust gap we're calling it is that the first thing you think the veterans notice when they move into civilian roles so it is yes if not the first it is definitely early in the process that that becomes apparent because the i was thinking of this uh as both danny and james were speaking earlier the trust is assumed you know to the previous point uh that that both the gentlemen commented on within the military because of common experience, et cetera.

33:14And it's the opposite, as Danny, I think you pointed out, where it has to be proven in the civilian world.

33:27The, because the military, to James's point, has all these iterative training opportunities where somebody can positively or negatively, unfortunately, reinforce that they know what they're doing or not. It allows for the growth of trust in almost a subconscious way over time. The trick or I think the challenge in a civilian business environment is that there is no training cycle. You're just doing the business every day. So we're leaders. I think you'd have to get very imaginative to figure out how you can create these iterative experiences for your team members to foster that trust. I don't know.

34:24Danny, what'd you think of that? You must have read my mind because my eyes must have been going, as you were saying. The other thing that I found in my research that backs up exactly what you're saying, Matt, is there is almost a tolerance of underperformance in military contexts. And what I mean by that is there was a great quote from one of the interviewees who was a Navy commander who, when asked if you could remove the leader from the group, said, if the man next to me gets slotted, and I've never heard that phrase before. But if the man next to me gets slotted, we don't stop the mission.

35:04What happens is everybody else picks up the slack. Whereas you compare that to City Street, if the project manager goes off sick, then the project might actually stall for a little while we're doing it. But the reason that works is because everybody there knows what are we here to achieve and what's the reason we want to achieve it. And I recognize that the guys next to me or girls next to me um might not be the same specific capabilities the person that's now no longer available but that's enough because we all need to pull together because the mission is paramount not our positions not that's not your job description that's not your that's not your lane um so yeah there is a whereas in in civvy street we don't tend to we tend to frown on anybody not performing at absolute 100 you know we we rank and yank them we mark them down in their pds whereas it shouldn't be about you it should be about are we any closer to achieving this goal i love this georgia have you got any thoughts on this or anything any thoughts from the comments i have a really great question from a lady called andy actually um what happens when someone makes the wrong decision under mission command how should leaders respond uh do we want to i don't know should we start james we start with you sure i mean firstly how do you know it's it's the wrong decision and how did you come to that decision would be where you would be you might be protected to some degree the other thing i think is a really critical thing on this is it's not the plan it's the planning so you can have a plan and this is an eisenhower thing so you know i didn't bet so i'm sure it's been around for two three thousand or whatever many years sun soon probably as well but the point is and it goes to kind of car bike if you want to do your psychologist and sensing and sense making and turning uh nouns into actions but it's the if you have a plan you know it's going to fail to some degree but it's the planning that allows you to consider the alternatives and then you can pivot and and go the other way and it's like we knew the weather was going to be a bit bad we decided to take a look at it that was typically a kind of classics that you go and take a look anyway It doesn't matter what the better guy says.

37:17Off we go. And they go, oh, he was right. Okay, we're going to have to go around it. But now, if we hadn't had a look, we wouldn't have had the chance to take a shortcut, which might have been a good one. And that's the sort of thing. So understanding that going through a planning process gives you options so that in the event that a decision reveals itself to be not the best decision because some information was lacking that you maybe didn't have at the time or something in your process was lacking. then you can still pivot. I think that's the opportunity there. Matt, your thoughts on this? Yeah, I would just build on that by saying to James' first point there, it's like, how do you judge wrong versus right?

38:06In terms of wrong, I could say, as long as what we're doing isn't immoral, illegal or unethical, we're probably okay within some limits to keep proceeding. And you just continue to try different solutions to accommodate or accomplish that distant purpose that you're trying to achieve as an organization. And you just keep iterating on it until you get closer to achieving the purpose. And then you double down on whatever it is that got you closer. That is a way to view that question.

38:45Leanne:Danny, I'm hearing in the back of my mind is learning culture, psychological safety and everything Matt and James were saying there, particularly around iterations. How difficult is that in civilian organizations? So in practice, it's quite tough because we all have our own agendas. What we think is right that we bring to the metaphorical battlefield. And we're not always aligned in what are we here to achieve as a shared collective. And that results in things like office politics, which is ultimately about control. You know, how do I control my bit? It leads to things like gatekeeping or weaponizing of information and keeping things to yourselves in order to provide a level of psychological safety to yourself or protect yourself in some way.

39:37um there are three things around the military approach to this that we could learn quite well that would break down some of these barriers around why it doesn't work as as um as well in in civvy streets it does work and there are some case studies that we'll probably talk about um but the key things are to quote we we've had sun tzu shout uh called out i would shout out the philosopher mike tyson who says everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face that's one of my favorites yeah and that's ultimately what mission command is it's the plan and plan and plan and how do we prepare ourselves because that punch is probably coming um but we still got to move forward so how do organizations get a little bit clearer on not being wedded to the plan not being wedded to the this is the methodology that we are going to follow.

40:29And if something goes wrong, then we down tools and we replan and we reschedule. That's how you end up with projects running on for much, much longer. I'm looking at you, HS2, but running on much, much longer than they probably should do. The second thing is that layer of trust that even if I don't know interpersonal things about you, I still recognize that you come with your scars, you come with your medals and you come with your your CV on your chest and that's enough for me. I don't have to trust you with my wife, but I trust you to get this done with me right now. And systemizing that in some way in Civvy Street would go a long way towards that.

41:08There's a lot more transparency in the military, a lot more openness in the military because we can look into people's capability. Whereas if you think of your average office or service industry, we don't tend to see the battle scars that people have had and we tend to create environments where actually we're supposed to hide those things and not show when we've made mistakes when we've not had learnings in the right direction and then the the third thing of course so we've got this implied trust um just segueing that trust is built on competency a lot of our trust in civvy street is built on interpersonal or visibility which is why you see a lot of i won't i won't rattle you cagely around return to office mandates but we conflate visibility and presenteeism with trust i can see what you're doing which is obviously nonsense um how do we create processes that allow people to explain their competency and how do we create frameworks that allow people to know what are we here to achieve and what can you contribute towards it that that's the long issue the too long didn't read where are you going and why are we going and we are just crap at explaining that

42:16Leanne:in civvy street and i want to stick with you danny just for a second on that clear sense of purpose that direction where are we going how many civilian organizations have you seen that genuinely have that and what does it cost it or cost the organization the people in it when they don't so again a really interesting question there are some that do it intentionally and they they use very militaristic approaches so they're very clear on creating a a vision that is emotionally connective so what's the difference we're trying to make in the world or what's the impact we want to leave they are then very intentional around breaking that down into measurable steps which we would call missions in in kind of cultural world and then creating an environment that rather than saying this is what we're trying to achieve and let's chunk that down into this function this department this job role this set of kpis instead the the companies that are very good at and cics etc they're very good at doing this are able to say this is where we're heading because this is the impact we want to make this is how we want to achieve at least one of the steps on the way to that journey what can you contribute towards that and in an environment where we have a huge skills gap in the uk i don't understand why you would go down a prescriptive here's your job description here's your kpis etc and not allow people to contribute other skills and experiences and education towards a goal so there are some companies that are really good at that however i've also seen it manifest in bad companies as a defense mechanism so where you have um organizations that have high uh command and control um kind of cultures you'll get little kind of pockets little silos of fiefdoms that are almost trauma bonded around you know it's not a great place to work but our bit's all right now our bit of the boat is dry even if the rest is uh is sinking um and in here this is how we get things done.

44:29So we've all got our own back. We're all watching for outside influence and politics from outside. And that becomes almost a leaderless leadership approach. Because when you're looking at things like consolation and distributed leadership, they work exceptionally well where there's uncertainty, where there's threat, and we require autonomy from the group to contribute on the fly very quickly. Traditional leadership models are fantastic where everything's predictable and structured and they match kind of the production lines of the 1800s as James alluded to earlier. So anywhere that you get high crisis management this style of working tends to naturally manifest and naturally happens for better or for worse and sometimes that's a protection a defense mechanism against the wider organization not really being a great place to work or a place that great work is done either.

45:22Leanne:And Matt, I'm curious, the work that you do with students on the MBA program, how much of that is talking about articulating this reason and mission and purpose, the meaning of the work? Is that something that you work with them to articulate? So yes, and a lot of our, educational effort on that subject is spent, unfortunately, talking a little bit about what Danny was just highlighting in that, hey, look, the environment you're about to step into may not have these fundamental characteristics that you were used to in the environment you're coming from. So we kind of flipped the script on them a little bit and do a little management of expectations as they're going through the transition process of this year in our program to try and prepare for some of those contingencies.

46:29But Danny's point, as well as another one James made earlier, it's, I think, and I don't have any research, unlike you two gentlemen, just a hunch based on experience. It's very hard to separate the culture from the leaders, right? So a lot of different examples of that, but, you know, to James's point about onboarding in the military, it's very well-developed. It's, regardless of which Western military you look at, it's been done for centuries and refined over that time. And then you think about, well, predisposition towards military service or in the civilian business environment, what traits lead somebody towards a particular industry, sector, functional area within a company?

47:28And then how do we create a culture to leverage those traits to the maximum benefit of the organization? You know, so again, all that in response to your question, Lee, to say we spend literally the first several weeks of our program doing values determination exercises, psychological profiles and assessments in order to try and set up students to make informed judgments about the types of environments they may want to pursue as they leave the military.

48:09Leanne:brilliant and i think we could stick on on just this aspect of purpose and meaning for for a while so before we move on i just want to get your view on on this james you're working with growing businesses now is a lack of clarity on purpose and meaning the thing that that's causing the most damage well so mostly i'm i'm working with um smaller businesses at the moment sometimes again, I've worked with other larger teams or organizations, but a smaller business starts to grow. The founder has a clear idea about what it is they want to achieve. In a way, one of the hardest things they've got to do is now add staff to that mix and select them to join their mission, if you like.

48:51They've got to become a leader and create followers amongst the people that they're getting on board. That can be a real challenge. One of the challenges, I think, is that actually as you build an organization, some people are going to look at it. I'm going to go back to somebody called John Boyd, who is an ex-US Air Force colonel and sort of strategist, and he's famous for the Observe, Orientate, Decide Act. But he had this famous phrase where he said, one day in your career you're going to have to decide.

49:24Leanne:James, you broke up at just the moment. Sorry, James. Sorry, you broke up. Someday they're about to say, and it was going to be like the quote we're all waiting for could you go back to say you said observe yeah some John Boyd he's the person who he observed this observe, orientate, decide, act the sort of OODA loop that he's famous for and he said to somebody that he knew at some point in your career you're going to have to decide whether you want to be somebody or do something and one of the things that I think is interesting about that is that as people come and join your organization, you've got to figure out whether they want to be somebody or do something in your organization.

50:09In other words, they might just join your organization because it's got a structure that they can climb. And that might be okay. You can have that kind of ambitious person in your organization. But it's different to the purpose that someone else joins for who sees alignment in you achieving something as an organization that could otherwise not be done by them on their own and and you know there's going to be the full gamut of people in any organization but it's like how do you step up to that sort of top right corner where you might end up with both you're actually doing something really important and purposeful and and you're being somebody at the same time which is great for your own personal um feelings about things you know we're all we're all human we'll do it one degree or another but i think there is there's a deal of issue i i really take a bit of exception some of the time about the amount of labeling we do around toxic managers and stuff like that and and like saying that somebody's toxic quite you know it's thrown at people like and then um i think it's often as not it's unfair they're they're also um quite often they're part of the system that creates them so if they might and they might be stuck between a rock and a hard place too so how do they go about managing that?

51:20How do they deal with the lack of resources that means that they can't give out the rewards that they'd like to? They're not wholly in charge. So they end up trying to do other things. And the military doesn't have, you don't have control over the pay. That's provided by the government. But you kind of get away with some of that because a lot of other things are provided. The community, the healthcare, all those kind of things that are built into it. So that's kind of useful. And if you joined for the pay, well you know i i have a question here about a word i've never heard before and i heard you talk about it james before we go on to that is that do either of you gentlemen have anything to add to what james just said i to bring a little bit of psychology in self-determination theory is all about relatedness am i safe am i part of the group autonomy do i have control and competence i'm do i know what i'm doing the military massage those three needs really well they create the sense of belonging through whether it's uniforms or the shared language to the point that people won't transfer from the army to the navy and actually when they don't have a crisis to coalesce around then they argue the army and the navy argue with each other you know whenever we've got a place whenever we've got to go and fight you boys always give us a lift it's kind of the same with competence there's constant ongoing training now again think of that in your typical organization how much work is actually put into creating belonging safety and relatedness how much is put into competence beyond your sort of onboarding training and then how much is actually you be you what can you contribute towards this this greater good that we're trying to do and we're not always very clear on that so we tend to over index on what we think relatedness is so we build csr campaigns and esgs and we build you know but we're going to focus on bring a cake to work day or let's all dress in red for a certain cause day but it's all a little it can be a little bit tokenistic because we don't invest in the competence and the autonomy side of those underlying human needs that help growth and for me again anecdotally i think that's why people don't leave the military you know they stay in for the very long careers because it gives you that sense of identity and that sense of camaraderie it recognizes the skills that you bring to the table and it allows you to use those skills at that time any thought they certainly don't stay for the pay well i tell you what let me let me ask you this question then because i've got a note down here that Leon has written for me say James you wrote about veterans experience a liminal state when they transition I don't understand what that word means so can you explain what it means and then what does it actually feel like yeah so the whole thing about liminality just struck me at the time as being very important it's the journey from one place to another there are also there's also kind of like in between spaces that you might be aware of in your own workplace, like the sort of water cooler moment.

54:35Those are places where it wasn't an official meeting, but something important occurred there. But the liminality part, I would put it as like the process that you're used to, your position that you're used to in your place, those kind of things. And then you've got to go through this transition to a new space. And that creates a lot of uncertainty. And for the veterans that I interviewed, it wasn't just about them though initially they were obviously very that was part of their concern but it also came out like how much it impacted their families and I I really you know I did the research because I was trying to find something where I could look at leadership which I've got a little bit of a bugbear with um it's like overused um and I felt that a group like veterans could show that may or maybe explore the fact that do we really value leadership as much as we say we do in and and i've been in a civilian i've been out for a lot longer than most of my friends i left in 2000 so um the the the liminality is that uncertainty part if you like as you transition from one thing to the other and and i know you can tell in a way i still haven't got over it uh that's part of part of the formative nature of recruiting large you know mostly young men giving them concrete uh solutions to problems this is how we do things around here and you will do it that way um and then and then then letting them grow a little bit and obviously then you then you've there's there's also been um there's there's more diversity in the military now um women in in in in the military everybody you know there's a whole cross-section much more than it was even when i joined in the 90s that's and that's all the good ugly the the um the liminality is also then how you come to terms and your sort of autobiographical sort of stories about how it was and how it is and that's sort of changing all the time as well as you so you get into this kind of psychological identity stuff which creates uh uncertainty again and i think that that can be somewhat stressful and you one of the one of the things i had to do when i was doing my research was to say i want to recruit people to talk to about this but what i don't want is people that have actually kind of gone back to the military or another paramilitary organization so i kind of excluded them just so i wanted people who are in um mainstream organizations that nearly everybody else could recognize.

57:09And then to think, we onboard people from different places all the time, whether they're, you know, immigrants to our country, whether they've come from a different organization with a different set of, supposedly different sets of values or maybe the competition, you know, often we recruit from the competition. How do we onboard those? And if we can't do it right with some group like the military as they come out and clearly have to go and find civilian jobs, then how can we do it with everyone else? That's what I wanted to look at.

57:39Leanne:and it's such an interesting piece of research we have talked about it on um truth and lies before so i will leave a link to that episode um should we have a quick break for comments before we we move on to our closing questions yeah georgia um thoughts what's going on and did but you're a psychologist too so let's jump in tell us what you think i do have an interesting anecdote actually i was doing some um research recently because i was talking to a chap who's doing his PhD and it's potential is all based around psychological safety and firefighters and how their shared experiences drive the psychological safety and trust within the team but almost it's forced because they are forced to stay in an environment with each other and they have no choice of who they are staying in that environment with but because of this shared experience and the debriefing and reflection that they managed to get they build up an additional layer of trust.

58:38And I'm wondering if that research could be, you know, variable to this index as well. Yeah. Who wants to take that? I think it goes to the common experiences, right? It's just a different type of common experience in that example. And the commonality is, I mean, I'll defer to James or Danny, but it seems to be one of the building blocks of trust.

59:14Leanne:Danny, what am I thinking? Yeah, it gives you a, it's a shared language and vocabulary, isn't it? It's not necessarily a form of sort of trauma bonding, because there's an awful lot of bonding that goes on in both military and civilian cohorts outside of combat. There's a lot of team building, we might call it um but just whilst it's in my head as well i've if you want help understanding liminal al um a couple of episodes back you picked up a uh a traveler in your car they just got in your car no reason at all at that point you were in a liminal state you're in limbo between where you were going from to you had no control you were just kind of bobbing along and yeah sorry that's a random thought that just popped into my head um i know what it means now yeah yeah between states um with with some random traveler who's just decided to get in your car but to come back to your question georgia i i'd be interested in that research if i could um if i could have a look because it does seem that there's a lot that we can learn from each other I think civilians can learn more about what it means to be driven towards a specific shared goal, which we don't tend to do.

1:00:33We tend to work very much towards individual goals, what's my targets, etc. etc um and i think military can understand a lot more around navigating some of the interpersonal challenges that we have in civvy street which kind of there are systems to kind of reduce the amount of friction around those how do i earn trust kind of um kind of relationship so i think this isn't an either or it's i think the two of us as industries can really learn an awful lot from each other and this research seems to show that as well from what you've just um just told us in the synopsis brilliant yeah it was um a chap i just met on linkedin called michael olen um and he's doing his phd in it it's super interesting i bet he'd really enjoy the conversation i think they mentioned that you did of um debriefing is important and it goes back to something like learning the ability to learn from mistakes and it's not everyone but but i found it quite frustrating when someone would say well this went wrong and we must learn from our mistakes and i'm like in the meeting kind of going okay so we should we what should we learn from it then try to sort of go into a debrief mode and it was like we'll just all have to remember we're not gonna remember the state are slightly different though aren't they if it if you you can't hide a mistake in a lot of military um projects if something went wrong we know it went wrong you know a border changed or we lost a weapon or whatever it might be there's nowhere to hide that mistake whereas in city street and i'm conscious i've said city street about 20 times in this conversation um i'm gonna bring it to the classroom next week but there is there are some mistakes that actually if you stay quiet um then it might be better than bringing it to life is the kind of way that people rationalize it it's that if by admitting this mistake is it going to be weaponized against me well actually i'll just stay quiet and that that lack of psychological safety in organizations i always say silence is the tax that organizations pay when safety is absent and i've seen a lot of silent organizations you can't be silent when the when the stakes are as high as they are in some of those military contexts yeah and aviation does a lot on that too and it's also been attempted to be translated into, say, medical services, the NHS.

1:02:59How do we manage all of that kind of thing? And I think it's not to say the military are perfect at it all, but they do have a sort of, at least they probably have some rules that say they should do it that way. It doesn't mean they do it right all the time. They get things wrong too. But I think on a good day, there's a lot to learn. And equally, I think there's a really interesting aspect of post-World War II, the sort of the analysis of what happened in World War II. We basically mobilized the whole of the nation into the military and that changed the military. And it changed society immediately afterwards as well.

1:03:36So, you know, that's a really interesting aspect of what goes on when you mobilize and you bring in new ideas, you create wider diversity of thought. things start to change fundamentally everywhere.

1:03:52Leanne:I want to stick with this idea of consequences and pressured environments that you've led us perfectly to by the way. Thank you. And Matt I want to ask you about this. I was reading some I think I even talked about it on the podcast some nuts statistics that a 1 % increase in pressure tactics from a manager in a civilian organisation can result to a 90 % increase in intentions to quit, which is extraordinary. Yet, you know, we're all leading in pressured situations at the moment. What can we learn from leadership in the most pressured situations and imaginable that we might be able to apply to organizational life in a way that is more effective in terms of how we lead and manage?

1:04:40That's an interesting statistic. I'd be interested in how they measured that, but that's wild to even think about.

1:04:54I had an example to answer your question that happened to me many, many years ago. And the gist of the situation was American soldiers engaged in direct action ground combat with the Taliban and literally all hell breaking loose. And counterintuitively, the feedback I was truly blessed, lucky, whatever adjective you want to use to receive years later, was your calmness on the radio let us know that it was going to be okay. Now, that I will take to my grave as a case in point where I did the right thing, but I think to your question, Lee, to unpack it, it's leadership in such acute environments where so much is at stake in terms of life and limb, to say nothing of very expensive pieces of equipment, is directly transferable in all these situations, but in the, in City Street, but not necessarily in the obvious way or the preconceived notion way, to go back to some of our previous points, that our cultures assume, right?

1:06:31It's so at the point of greatest friction, the leader or leaders of a team need to remain calm so that they can clearly see what's going on.

1:06:48And I think that would be the biggest lesson that I could bring from my military experience. And I was just lucky to have found out that epiphany.

1:07:01Leanne:wow danny i feel like we're leaning into emotional regulation here is that that fair why does that matter do we think under pressure it does and there's a lot of research into what happens under pressure and for me there's probably two sides so there's things like there's a famous um wojek experiment where they have ceos and harvard graduates compete against kids to build a spaghetti tower with a marshmallow on talk um the bit that's always held up in that example in that research is about how kids experiment and try things and so on but actually there's there's further research behind that around what are the communication approaches that happen and actually in the in the ceos and the harvard grads and and the mbas and so on everybody is talking everybody is contributing and trying to almost um find their position in the group so there's a lot of noise and as a result there's a lot of frustration which stymies when when the pressure's on its time is actual action whereas with the kids they're very few of them actually speak it tends to be one or two at the tops and when we see this replicated in things like our research on high performance esports they have the same thing where they simplify the language and simplify the communication.

1:08:23They take the emotion out of it completely. So it's only factual information that's being passed. And as a result, you reduce the amount of emotional labor and the amount of friction that's actually happening and allow people to just do what they need to do in the moment. The second is we don't practice in Civvy Street. We don't practice being under pressure. The military spend a lot of time doing things like war games where they can see what it's like to emulate these sort of situations we constantly bemoan about how the only constant thing is change and the world is moving so fast and we're in a VUCA environment and all this kind of stuff and then do sweet bugger all about it we just carry on working in the same way rather than how do you stress test your processes how do you make sure that your people have the opportunity to build resilience because you're going to have that emotional labor and that emotional impact um instead we don't we don't do that we we recognize that sometimes the place is on fire but we do nothing around fire training we just send people into the into the inferno so yeah there's two parts one is kind of functional around the language the communication the approach that you use but the second is let's not ask our people to be more fireproof if we're not putting out the fires ourselves yeah so that that analogy or metaphor i guess it was is uh goes back to again one of our previous points which is like in the military it would be considered perhaps literally but certainly metaphorically criminal to do the same thing and continue failing you know and i don't know what it is or had i guess depending on that corporate culture, how you raise the level of visibility, which gets back to trust and the ability to surface, you know, mistakes one has made.

1:10:17That's an interesting comment. The phrase that comes to my mind and experience was about stretch goals. And I distinctly remember a time when I was like, handed a new set of numbers. And I'm like, okay. so uh you know do i get any extra resources no no just uh you know we we one one old colleague of mine he called it uh paduma it's when it's pulled directly out of my

1:10:50you can offer stretch goals to people but you kind of got to have the the the it's only going to be well worth the risk and the risk of failure because you're going to impact the team and if you've got a problem with intention to quit there's also some studies that i'm aware of where one of the plates obviously once you once you're signed up for the military you're in you're in for a term you can't really just quit and you know there's certain other things to prevent that but there are points where you might choose to leave or be or maybe you're quite quitting to some degree and you don't want that either because that that affects all the cohesion and of thing but there are like critical points it might be like week five we lose 10 of our recruits so they figure out what it is about maybe week four and like what can they do to kind of help people get over the hump of week five there might be that week five is a test week or something like that but how do we make sure that we've prepared them better and then they end up with a higher throughput they end up with a higher um um finish rate for the whole course and that's when you You brought your absolute volunteers in.

1:11:58They're young people. They're not sure whether they can do it or not. They're not qualified to know whether they can do it or not. And they have to trust the system. But sometimes the system defeats them a little bit. And I think that's the other part. I mean, it goes to sort of work and well-being. Always be thinking about, like, are we prepared? You know, it's like system-level stuff. Do we have the right systems in place? Are we protecting our people as much as is reasonably possible? and understanding that nurses are going to have to deal with death and firefighters are going to have to go into burning buildings, but we give them as much protection and training and all that thing as we can.

1:12:32And then lastly, how do we repair people when we ultimately potentially break them? And sometimes, you know, that's a whole part of the organizational psychology section on it. It's like there are organizations that seem to think it's either okay to just repair or replace. and you don't always have that reality of the opportunity to do that. It's a very expensive and thoughtless way of using people or human resources, as you might say. Human capital, kind of throw that one in there as well. Do you have any thoughts? Because I've got a final question I want to ask, but just before I do, is there anything that anyone could respond to what James just said?

1:13:17I'll go on record. I hate stretch goals. there should be science behind what you're why is the target the target and i know it's a bit of a leap but if mal zedong when in the great leap forward he asked all the the producers of china to estimate their their crop return for rice and all of them put a stretch goal on their targets and that filtered down and you ended up overestimating how much rice is going to be produce and you end up with 50 million people starving um stretch goals are i mean that's an extreme example but they are pointless what's my goal if i overachieve it great if i don't great but this is what we're aiming for and let's have some science behind that interesting so it struck me that james the example you gave about the week four week five and and trying to get to a better return, if you will, for the military training pipeline, that is a quintessential business problem that's almost universal to industry or sector or whatever.

1:14:26So I will use that again as well in the classroom because it's yet another example for any of the corporate leaders that are listening of experiences that don't seem obvious from military that translate directly upon a modicum of reflection into the business world. And I've said for years to different civic and military leaders in the United States, hey, you're already paying for this experience through your tax dollar. you might as well harvest some of it for your company's ends you know thanks for that example james well talking of specific things that people can do differently i mean people who we've covered an awful lot in this chat is is the one practical thing that maybe a civilian leader could do differently starting this week uh do you want to start uh let's just start with james yeah i mean i think that you need to always be learning and willing to find out and learn from other people's mistakes you know i think of his general pattern um you don't want to die for your country you want to make the other guy die for his country uh like that is competitive in business so if you can't figure out how best to sort of learn from other people's errors and there's plenty of information out there but i do remember someone in my company uh where i used to work asking me how do you have time to this was before i started my degree that's what maybe prompted me to go and do the masters but um how do you have time to read all the stuff because i was sending stuff out feel have you read this in harvard review and and all this um and i was kind of looking at him he was you know like how do you not have time i mean are you literally doing everything on your own experiences that's pretty that's pretty expensive so once you and once you learn things you can you can educate others you can advise them you can delegate to them you can you can understand you can build up this uh other thing which i'd like to you know is a this transactive memory in your own organization of knowing who knows what about what and that is that's amazing once you've got that it's like i don't even need to learn all these other things because I know they know that.

1:16:54I know that the accountants know what they're doing. I know that they're going to give me the reports. I need to be able to read the reports, but I don't need all the other stuff. I don't need to become an accountant. I think sometimes people think they have to become the experts, but in a lot of ways, effective leaders, they excel broadly by having good generalist knowledge. And from that, they're able to bring formal and informal capabilities to the party. That gives them authority. That gives them meaning, allows them to provide alignment and the commitment that they gain from everybody else.

1:17:25Brilliant. Matt, thoughts? I mean, maybe one thing you wish people... In fact, I'm asking you two questions. Terrible interview technique. What was your thoughts, the one thing that someone could take away? So A, thanks for calling on James first. B, I would say have the courage to be candid with your people. And whether it's to Danny's point, talking about a mistake or three that somebody has made that affected the business adversely so that that can be prevented in the future. Or whether it's something from your own personal experience in life that reveals some degree of vulnerability. I mean, being candid, honesty is assumed, is a very powerful leadership tool that can help to build trust.

1:18:21love that danny where are you heading where are you heading whether you define that by the emotional vision or by specific missions or the goals and objectives you want to achieve where are you heading there are so many organizations that don't know that and you end up with people doing what they think is right you end up creating places that are great to work at um instead if you start with what are we here to achieve you can that then becomes an anchoring decision point so what are the behaviors that we need to make that more likely now culture becomes a strategic driver that encourages those particular behaviors if you need team working then why do you have reward mechanics that encourage individualism, for example.

1:19:10So in my experience, there are so many organizations that don't know that North Star. I would always start there because it anchors everything that you can then make decisions around in your business. And it's one thing we can absolutely take from military context. What are we here to achieve?

1:19:27Leanne:I love that. I remember one of the most powerful conversations I had with a member of staff of an organization I was helping with their leadership development. um and I asked them why do you do what you do why do you work here why do you enjoy it um and he looked me dead in the eye and said I help business leaders sleep at night and I was like wow he was an accountant but he felt that in the organization he was in working so closely with entrepreneurs and and growing businesses that everything they did to help business owners sleep at night and that fed into their SLAs it fed into how they showed up to their in front of their clients it even fed into the developments of every member of staff regardless of level was trained from day one on how to have these conversations with clients because that was their their mission I thought that was that was super cool so yeah I'm with you on that one Danny Georgia before we head off do we have any final comments or questions from people who are with is live nothing in the chat Leanne lovely well thank you so much Danny Matt James absolute superstar so knowledgeable I learned so much and I know our audience will as well if you are watching this back still put down your comments or any questions in the in the comment section below we're all active on LinkedIn so we will pop in and and answer any questions or or reflections with you and this will also be the audio on truth lies and work podcast on friday um so go and check that out if you want to re-listen just before that can i just quickly check so if someone wants to go and learn more about danny constellation leadership is that the book where do they buy it it's constellation it's available at every bookshop um although they may have to order anything out of stock it's also available on audible amazon um everywhere it's available everywhere fabulous And James, if people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to go?

1:21:24I can go to my website, coursecorrection.co.uk. I've got a blog out there and a knowledge center. I try to write something quite regularly. Try and offer this idea of leading with ease. So you can tap into me there as well. Fabulous. And Matt? Probably LinkedIn. It never ceases to amaze me, given the commonality of my name, that people can find me easily on LinkedIn. So there you can connect to what I do at the school as well as other things. Fabulous.

1:21:57Leanne:Fantastic. And I just want to say as well, a special thank you to Andy. You helped us coordinate this session. Much appreciated. Thank you all so, so much. It has been such a pleasure. And I think we need to end things by once again saying happy birthday, Danny, and happy belated birthday to James. Matt, do you have a birthday coming up? Not for a bit. We'll circle back to that.

1:22:23thank you so much everybody thank you thank you guys

1:22:28Leanne:that's it for this one thank you so much for listening if you would like to connect with any of our panelists you'll find all of their details in the show notes if you'd like to be a future guest on one of our linkedin lives we would love to hear from you drop us an email at podcast at truthliesandwork.com and if you enjoyed this please do leave a review it genuinely helps more people find the show see you soon