Episode 303 · 21 May 2026 · 1:22:33
What can veterans teach us about leadership? With Danny Wareham, Major General (Ret) Matt Smith and James Hardie
Featuring Danny Wareham, James Hardie
What can veterans teach us about leadership? With Danny Wareham, Major General (Ret) Matt Smith and James Hardie
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Intro and how leadership in the military compares to everywhere else
What is Mission Command?
panel interview#mission command#military doctrine#leadership
Mission Command as the military term for what great businesses do
panel interview#mission command#business leadership#military analogy
Is Mission Command formally taught or caught?
panel interview#mission command#military training#leadership education
The trust gap: trust as a starting point, not a prize
panel interview#trust#leadership#workplace culture
How do leaders respond to being challenged?
panel interview#leadership#challenge#feedback
Purpose, meaning and staying for more than the pay
panel interview#purpose#meaning#employee engagement
The liminal state of transition into civilian work
panel interview#transition#civilian work#liminality
Calmness under pressure: leading in crisis
panel interview#calmness#crisis leadership#pressure
Top takeaways and where to find the guests
Show notes
What Can Veterans Teach Us About Leadership? — with Danny Wareham, Major General (Ret) Matt Smith & James Hardie
Guest: Danny Wareham — Certified Business Psychologist and author of Constellation · Major General (Ret) Matt Smith — 32-year US Army veteran and head of the Master in Business for Veterans programme at Emory University · James Hardie — former RAF helicopter pilot and organisational psychologist
Most organisations say leadership matters — but many are just guessing. We promote based on length of service, confuse being "in charge" with being a leader, and create cultures where capable people are too afraid to speak up. The military, however, has spent decades perfecting the art of building instant trust and providing the clarity needed for independent action.
In this special live edition of Truth, Lies & Work, Al and Leanne are joined by three exceptional experts to explore a straightforward but powerful question: what does the military do differently when it comes to leadership, and what can businesses actually learn from it?
From Mission Command and the "trust gap" to calmness under pressure and the liminal state of transition, they unpack the leadership lessons hiding in plain sight — and why veterans often struggle in civilian roles, not because they lack skills, but because organisations aren't built to receive what they bring.
🔥 Key Themes Covered
1. What "Mission Command" Actually Means James Hardie and Major General Matt Smith break down Mission Command: providing a clear goal and the "commander's intent," then trusting your people to figure out the "how." While most businesses are flexible at the top and rigid at the bottom, the military provides a structure that empowers disciplined initiative at every level.
2. Trust as a Starting Point, Not a Prize Danny Wareham explains the "trust gap." In the military, trust is often assumed based on shared competency; it only reduces if proven otherwise. In civilian life, we often make people earn it slowly through "presenteeism" and internal politics, which slows down performance and kills initiative.
3. Leadership Emerges, It Isn't Assigned The panel discusses leaderless leadership (or constellation leadership). If the mission and culture are strong enough, they can effectively replace the need for a traditional "boss." Leadership should shift situationally to whoever has the most relevant expertise in the moment.
4. The "Liminal State" of Transition James discusses his research on veterans moving into civilian roles. He describes the "liminality" — the uncertain journey between two identities — and why veterans often struggle, not because they lack skills, but because civilian organisations aren't built to receive what they bring.
5. Calmness Under Pressure Major General Matt Smith shares a powerful story from ground combat in Afghanistan, illustrating that a leader's most effective tool in a crisis isn't shouting — it's maintaining a level of calmness that signals to the team that everything is under control.
Top 3 Takeaways
Give people the "what" and the "why" — then trust them with the "how." Mission Command works because it provides clarity of intent while empowering disciplined initiative. Most businesses over-specify the how and under-communicate the why.
Trust should be a starting point, not a prize. The military assumes trust based on shared competency and only reduces it if proven otherwise. Civilian cultures that make people earn trust slowly through presenteeism and politics are slowing down performance and killing initiative.
Calmness is a leader's most powerful tool in a crisis. Not shouting, not micromanaging — a level of calm that signals to the team that everything is under control. That signal travels faster than any instruction.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
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Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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AHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work. What you're about to hear is from one of our recent LinkedIn Lives, a live panel discussion where we dig into the big questions shaping modern work. If you'd like to join us for the next one, just search for Leanne Elliott— that's me— on LinkedIn and hit follow. We announce them there first, and we obviously launch them there first. Right, let's go. into it after a quick message from our lovely sponsors.
BThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
AWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all. Every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation, into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
CNice.
BCheck out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Just cut in and say we're live.
AYeah. Welcome everyone. We'll always give it a minute or so to hopefully have as many people join us live as possible. In the meantime, Uh, happy birthday, Mr. Danny Ware.
DOh, bless.
AWhat do you think?
DYeah, that is lovely. Um, yeah, I couldn't actually eat it now because I was, uh, woken up with a dozen doughnuts. No, I'm still trying to get rid of that sugar coma that seems to be encroaching on me. Well, I mean, that is lovely, Lee.
AYou're welcome. I did bake myself. True story.
BShe did.
AUm, so do you want to blow out the candle? Big blow? Yeah, I can't see it.
EYeah, you didn't put it on screen, did you?
CI'm speaking of time delay.
EThank you, that's lovely.
FWe're live.
CBrilliant.
BAmazing. I will definitely clip that, your face doing that, Dani. I will use that as our screenshot. Leigh, we are live.
AAmazing. Welcome everybody. Welcome to Truth, Lies and Work Live. The Award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture. You know this, we are brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Lianne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
BMy name is Al, I'm a business owner.
AAnd together we help you simplify the science of work and create amazing workplace cultures. Welcome everybody. Today we are talking about leadership and specifically what businesses can learn from the military. Now that might sound like an unusual place to look. The military and the average workplace don't have that much in common, right? Well, maybe they do. The military has spent decades solving problems that most businesses are still struggling with. How do you build trust quickly? How do you give people enough clarity to act independently? How do you create cultures where leadership comes from whoever is best placed to lead, rather than whoever has the biggest job title? And right now, with organizations facing more uncertainty, more pressure, and faster change, those questions matter more than ever. So today, we are asking, are the leadership models most businesses rely on actually fit for purpose? And what could they learn from people who've had to get this right at the highest stakes environments imaginable? To explore that, we have brought together 3 brilliant guests. First, birthday boy, Danny Wareham. Danny is a certified business psychologist, accredited coach, and author of Constellation, recently shortlisted as Leadership Book of the Year at 2026 Business Book Awards. Congratulations, Danny.
FThank you.
AHis work sits at the intersection of culture, personality, and leadership. And his central argument that culture itself can replace a leader is one we're going to get into today. And we're also joined by Major General Matt Smith, retired from the US Army after nearly 32 years of service. Yes, amazing. Matt has led at every level from small units to commanding Joint Task Force North, overseeing 2,700 staff across 18 federal agencies. He now leads the Master in Business for Veterans program at Emory University, helping veterans translate decades of leadership experience into civilian careers. And finally, James Hardy. James is a former RAF helicopter pilot with over 20 years in the aviation industry and recently completed a master's in organisational psychology at Birkbeck University of London. His dissertation focused specifically on what it feels like to move from military leadership into civilian workplaces and what that experience reveals about how most organizations are built. Let's get into it. Welcome, everybody.
BHello. Hello.
DGood morning.
BHello. And happy belated birthday. Don't feel left out. Happy belated birthday, James. Yes. Happy belated for last week.
AYeah. Happy, happy belated birthday. Um, just a quick note, we will be going— also joined by associate producer Georgia. Hello, Georgia.
BOh, she's just gone. Oh, she's back.
FShe's back.
AShe's back.
FGood.
EUm, hello.
BJust shapeshifted.
AWe'll be going to Georgia throughout the conversation to reflect on your comments. At the end, we will have a Q&A session with all of our panelists, so do pop your questions in the comments and we will come to them very shortly. Let's dive straight into it because we have so much to talk about on this topic. Matt, I want to start with you. What does leadership actually look like day to day in the military, and how does that compare to a typical workplace?
CSo I think leadership looks a lot in the military like it looks everywhere else because the common denominator are human beings. And for years I've used a joke that, hey, this job's pretty easy except for communicating with humans. So I think that the trans— to go to your opening comment, Lee, the transferable thing is the reps and sets that military leaders get with the human condition that can apply in any environment because that condition is generally universal. And the reactions to the environments differ a little bit. But inside the military, to your point, there is a tremendous amount of collaboration And less kind of directive, kind of the public perception of in-your-face leadership than people realize. Because it turns out when you're going to ask people to do things that are potentially very dangerous to themselves or those to their left and right, you want to create a little buy-in first versus just saying, because I said so.
AAnd Danny, what's your take on this? Because as Matt said, we have this incorrect assumption of what leadership looks like in the military, and you talk about leaderless leadership. Does that exist in military units? Do people call it that? Do they call it something else?
DYes, they don't call it that. And I think we might have our first psychologist, it depends kind of view as well. Because there are times both in military and civilians where there is a more kind of hierarchical approach to leadership. There is a time when leadership is a person, but there are other times when leadership is a process. And that happens quite a lot in the military. It's intentionally set up in the military that we will plan and hope that everything is predictable in a certain way and build contingency. But because people understand what the plan is, why we are here and what we are here to achieve, That allows for a more sort of, we'll call it leaderless for the sake of ease, but that allows for people to have slightly more autonomy within guide rails so that people can be driven by the goal and the method rather than by the person that's instructing.
AAnd is that something that you saw, James, in your career in the RAF? Was that how things worked?
EYeah, I believe so. I mean, the whole thing with, you know, you're creating leaders and you put them through a process. For the RAF, it was initially 6 months of initial officer training and then continuous leadership training as part of your role disposal as you move through the flying training system, in my case. And other people went through other different parts of training. At each different level, you're getting additional responsibility, but you've kind of had the whole ethos built in. It was probably like 10 or more years later when I started to realize, you know, even as a civilian by then, that some of the things that I hadn't really thought about for a long time were very present and necessary. But I only knew them perhaps because I had had some other training, albeit maybe somewhat formally, sometimes a little bit more informally, but things suddenly started to matter a lot more once I started to manage a team of people in a civilian organization. And I realized then that I could apply those lessons of, if you want to call it leadership, but management as well, just like understanding what the process is, what your intentions are, how do you communicate with people? And that's something where I think Matt just said a moment ago as well, it's about, you know, typically someone asks you for a leadership solution in their company, it's a communications problem they've started.
AAnd with that, Matt, I mean, We will absolutely dig into later on that transition and with that, the research that you did, James, at Birkbeck. But Matt, in terms of the students you work with at Emory, what do they find the hardest to explain to civilian employers about how they lead and what they think leadership is?
CYes. So I think it's the hardest thing for the students isn't necessarily explaining what they could bring or do bring to a business workplace. It's realizing the transferability of those skills and those experiences and then translating it into a language that'll resonate with a different audience. That's really the hardest thing because everybody, we're all formed by our lived experiences. And if we don't have the perspective of the other environment, A, sometimes that's intimidating, but B, it's hard to know how to communicate in an effective way if you don't have any experience in that new environment.
BYeah. And I mean, I've got a note written down here, the words mission command, and I don't think many people have heard of it.
CWe only have an hour, right?
BI want to get all of your thoughts on that. So, James, can we start with you? Can you tell us, what do I need to know about mission command? What does it mean?
EYeah, I had to make sure I didn't get this wrong. It's kind of, it's a, but I think of it as initially there's a part where there's a responsibility or, you know, maybe the more senior part of the organization and they have to, they're responsible for selection and maintenance of the aim. And then that falls down into the rest of the organization through a thing called commander's intent. That means that the commander at any level has a certain amount of responsibility for action. You might have heard of the sort of strategic corporal, it's something referred to by Clausewitz and also Napoleon, I think, even referred to this idea that you could, at the lowest level in the organization, they would have an understanding of what the overall intent was and therefore they could take independent action as long as it had broad alignment or maybe narrow alignment. So they might seem at the end they've taken the bridge, they've successfully achieved their objective, but they realize that there's another— there's an opportunity to just quickly take out something else. Or they might realize that that's not worth doing. So they have to make a decision then. But they've also got the same considerations around— and I think it's really interesting when you look at how the Army does their sort of their assessment. Well, every part of it does it. The military does it to some degree. It's like, what resources do we have? What skills do we have? How are we going to achieve our objective? What are the risks? What else do we need to help us get this done? That just starts to become kind of naturally built in. You almost feel like you're winging it at times, but you're not. Then there is, in the military, it's a much more formal process in terms of orders. I think that's where I mean, my father was military as well, so I guess some of it was, you know, and I went to military school. So from a very formative and young age, I was kind of getting involved with stuff. But I always relate back to this kind of parade ground thing where, you know, it's on the word of command. But in order to give the word of command, you first, you get people's attention. So it might be parade, everyone listens up. If they don't listen up, you don't see them all put their shoulders back, then you shout it again. 'Cause they might not have heard you. So that's where the shouting at people kind of comes from. And it's, you're doing it across a big open area. You don't need to shout at people all the time, but sometimes it's appropriate. You get their attention, then you tell them what they're gonna do. And then on the word of command, you execute and off they go. And that's where it comes to this idea of legal orders as well. So you want the order to be agreed and accepted at the point where you give it. And that's where the consensus building comes in, collaboration, talking to people, discussing with it. The last thing you want is an order to be dissented against at the point where you give it. That causes an awful lot of paperwork. And the other thing is that you really should have made sure that you had all that opportunity for loyal dissent where you could. And normally, even if you've only got a minute, there's a chance for a bit of loyal dissent. I'm thinking we should do this, what do you reckon? That's why I think that the military does have that on its best day. That's what it does really well. It doesn't always do it so well. It has issues. Of course it does. It's a human organization as well.
BInteresting. Matt, thoughts?
CSo I think the concept of mission command that James just laid out quite well is the military term for what's behind Danny's idea of the leaderless organization. You know, it's predicated on a couple things that James mentioned that I would add in just to foot stomp it. The ability to communicate effectively is essential to successful mission command and to empowerment of the brainpower and disciplined initiative of all the members of any team. And then there's a degree of trust that's required. So sticking with James's example, the folks on the parade field, the uttering of parade is management of expectations. Hey, there's something coming. I just communicated this to X number of people. They'll then, because they've been trained in a culture of how to operate, comply with whatever the next command is. But they're also trusting in the person marching them around that they're not going to march them off a cliff, for example, to be extreme about it, right? And the trust from the person to the formation or team in a business environment is that everybody's bringing their best to the table and that they're going to perform in a way that is supportive of the rest of the team. So it's a two-way street and communications and trust are central to it.
ADanny, I feel like if you and I were playing like org psych bingo, we'd have a full house by now because I'm hearing like empowerment, trust, you know, all these lovely words that we want to see in terms of communication and clarity and agreement of a purpose and a mission. How does this translate to a civilian organization, or perhaps the absence of in a civilian organization?
DIn my idealist world, it translates perfectly well. There were a few other things. I mean, I'm surprised you didn't call out job analysis in there, Leigh. What are we actually trying to achieve, and what are the skills and the behaviors that we actually need to achieve that? And what the services do really well is systemize how they get to that point. Things like the combat estimate, which is just a series of questions about our resourcing and what's available. What do we need to achieve this job analysis output? Or mission command, which is ultimately how do we make sure that everybody understands exactly why we are here and why it's important? So what is our motive and what's our intent? If we translate that across to Civvy Street, that's how businesses should run. It should be, what are we here to achieve and why is it worth achieving? And we can phrase that around things like having an emotive vision. The second is, well, what do we have to make that journey? Well, that's your strategy. So in my idealistic world, I don't know why we don't kind of do this as the kind of norm. The challenge we have is that a lot of civilians, their only experience of the military is A Few Good Men or things that they've seen on their TV. So they have this kind of view of the military as being very dogmatic, very dictatorial, an authoritative command and control kind of approach. And it's not. It's just that some of the artifacts that they have, like Shouting Parade, can appear that way if the only thing you are comparing it to is platoon. That's not what the military is. It's not what the military's ever been. It's always been about what are we here to achieve and why is it worth achieving so that we can have this kind of autonomy within a framework, within guardrails. So yeah, long meandering answer as you'd expect from me, but I don't know why we don't do it already. I have a few hints. Some of it is that kind of preconceived ideas of what militaristic leadership is like. And some of it is because we're not historically very good at actually explaining what we're here to achieve and why is it worth achieving when all we do is make Wellingtons or widgets or whatever it might be.
AYeah, I think the resource aspect is huge there as well, isn't it? What Matt said there, I mean, I'm getting excited as a psychologist. If I sat in front of a leader in a business that was like, what do you want to do and what resources do we have to achieve it? I'd be like, I'm not sure you need me at all. I think I can leave. And James, this is what Danny was saying about kind of misconceptions around military leadership. Your research did look at this, didn't it, and found that civilians often assume that military leadership is just top-down orders. Where does that come from, do you think?
EYeah, I think there's elements of stereotyping that go on throughout society. People like to put people in little boxes, and even when I was on my degree, I remember it's actually one of the modules, leadership and performance management, One of the lecturers said something like, well, you'll find this part easy because you were in the military. I was like, well, it was over 20 years ago. What box did you just put me in? Then they kind of retreated. It was perfect. They were very concerned about that, that they might have also done what they kind of try and hardwire us not to do. The stereotyping is a convenient thing, but it also creates other issues. Sometimes there's an issue around— even as people are leaving, there's a sort of There's a thing called stereotypical threat where people are concerned that they might actually reinforce the bias, so how they act in work might be— they try and be very different to what they were. That might also cause them a certain amount of dissonance and concern about how they're operating as a person. Whether or not the acceptance of them occurs, that is something that organizations, I do think, need to to consider how to address as they recruit people. But it kind of goes back to, like, you're recruiting all sorts of people all the time. So, what is your onboarding process? When you're onboarded into the military, there's a very distinct indoctrination process, an explanation of how the rules are and what culture kind of expectations are. But even then, culture changes as soon as you integrate a more diverse group of people. So, as soon as you get a different person into your organization, your culture is already changing. And that might be because they— you've discovered a gap, you did your selection and assessment process, discovered that this person might be a great fit in your organization, they were available, so you hired them. But now you've got to accept that that's going to change things around here, unless you've got a very, not very well, you know, maybe an organization that's very not growing, and you just, you're just replacing holes that appear with replacement people. and you're not looking at it as like the growth, then you're going to have a lot of problems. But, um, the thing about stereotyping is, is something that we should always be a bit wary of. As soon as we put people in boxes, we're typically wrong about it. And there's a lot that people can offer from, you know, from a military background. And it's not even— I think it was what stood out to me in a group of people that were pilots and engineers in our intake at Middle Officer Training. The diversity amongst them was just amazing. You know, they're amazing people and it's a cross-section of people.
ADid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
BWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
AAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
EAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
BAnd you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Athe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
ESeamless, seamless.
BTell us about your latest episode, Phil.
EUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the worlds of politics, business, and brands as well.
AIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that will be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Can thinking make beer taste better?
EIt can.
AAnd are we all just status-seeking monkeys?
CI am.
BGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
ABut come back.
BYeah, come back.
EDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
BI'll cut that out.
CKeep that in.
AI'm curious, Matt, in terms of this idea of mission command, is it formally taught in the military or is it absorbed through experience? What's the intention behind it?
DSo it's both.
COne of the points I loved about your LinkedIn post about our gathering today was the idea of like, oh yeah, here, you know how to do this. You had a previous job, so certainly you're going to be successful at this one. Like, so the implied No training takes place, right, in the traditional civilian workplace. In the military, to James's point, there's always some type of initial entry training, and then there's specialty training. And this idea of mission command, especially for leaders at whatever level, is constantly reinforced through that recurring— training process over the course of years or decades in my case. Then there's the experiential development that occurs when a leader at whatever level tries to do it, right? And we sometimes learn through very frank feedback in some harsh environments whether our technique of implementing that type of leadership style is effective or not. And one of the things that I think the military probably— this will sound a little bit strange, but one of the things the military benefits from in terms of leader development is the severity of the potential cost of mistakes. is so high and has such a long-term effect on the person making the decision or trying to build the plan that the feedback mechanism really, it corrects very quickly if it doesn't go well. And if you see that it does go well, the positive reinforcement is significant. So yes, and I guess is the answer to the question, Lee.
BI love it when someone says yes and, it's great. And also, it depends. We are going to be answering your questions. So if you've got any questions for these incredible guests, then please do pop them in the comments. It's underneath the LinkedIn, the actual event, I think, is where you can actually put them in and we can see them. First of all, we've just got Gina— I'm sorry, it's a tiny screen, I can barely see— Gina Chang, I think it is, saying brilliant, James. She loved what you said. So Yeah, please keep them coming. Please keep them coming, Leigh.
AI want to talk a bit more about trust because I hear that we've got a bit of a trust crisis going on in organizational life at the minute. And in the military, it feels to me like trust is the starting point. What does the difference actually cost us, do you think, Danny?
DSo, it's such a complicated question, and I've I've thought about trust a lot and I think there are different types of trust. I've used the example before of my best friend. I know I could call him at 3 o'clock in the morning and he'd come out and save me from a flat tire, but I will not lend that man money. So do I really trust him? Do I trust him to turn up on time for a social event, et cetera? So for me, trust is contextual. It's not just a, we have trust or we don't have trust. I've had leaders in the past that I know that I could trust with my secrets and my worries, and I trust that that would not go anywhere. I've had other leaders that I wouldn't do that, but I know that they're incredibly capable and competent at what they do, and I trust they are going to do what they said they're going to do. The reason for the preamble though is that my research with the military versus civilian trust is Military trust has this, it almost uses competency as a proxy for trust. So I recognize that you've gone through the same type of training as me and you understand what we are here to achieve. And that even though I don't know your wife's name or your kid's name or anything, and there's no evidence that you've actually got my back, I know that you will have my back because we've all got this benchmark of of capability and competency. In the civilian world, we tend to dismiss competency. So certainly in my research, if you've got 20 years of experience as a project manager, but you were new to the project management team, you were treated as if you were brand new. So that competency and expertise didn't count for trust. And the common underpinning between the two, even though it's interpreted differently between civilian and military cohorts is trust is your body's response to somebody else having your wellbeing at heart. In the military, we have systems that help reinforce the fact that I have got your back. In the civilian world, we don't have systems to do that. So we figure it out interpersonal relationship-wise. So we build trust on an individual basis, Rather than on a systemic procedural basis. So that's kind of the— what is trust? Our interpretation of trust is very different at the moment between how the military build and how civilian build. So if trust is the bedrock of leadership, then we really need to ask more challenging questions around, well, if we're starting with trust, then how do we create opportunities to systematically build opportunity? to develop trust. So, yeah, does that answer the question, or have I just sidestepped that completely?
ANot at all. No, it answered it beautifully. And my follow-up question, it has to be, what can we do to build that trust systemically in organizations? Are there things that leaders can do?
EYeah, I think, if I may say, 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's psychologically. If you think about things like self-efficacy, confidence is built in the, in, 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, Air Force, 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, 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 how, you know, some, you know, no matter how youthful they look beneath their hat, they, you can, you can get an idea. Well, they were in that, that conflict. That was 10 years ago. Crikey, that's interesting. So you've got an idea about experience. And I think that all helps with this creating a certain amount of resilience in the organization, optimism, and also the 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 have— they don't change from Air Force to Army very much. very often. They 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 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 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 now join. And I think one of the things that people do have a certain envy of, of the military, is that disciplined hierarchy. And I think it's interesting 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. You know, it exists, it's the backbone, but, you know, woe betide you if you have to use that every day to get, you know, 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 there's some links to the Industrial Revolution that suggest that leadership was almost invented as a proxy for poor management that was going on and having to give some sort of morale boost to industrialization. That'd be another discussion as well.
BMatt, is this trust gap, we're calling it, is that the first thing you think that veterans notice when they move into civilian roles?
CSo 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 as both Danny and James were speaking earlier, that trust is assumed, you know, to the previous point that both of you gentlemen commented on within the military because of common experience, et cetera. And it's the opposite, as Danny, I think you pointed out, where it has to be proven in the civilian world. 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. For 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, Danny, what you think of that, but—
DYou must have read my mind because my eyes must have been going as you were saying the 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'd never heard that phrase before, but if the man next to me gets slotted, we don't stop the mission. What 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 while they'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 might not be the same specific capabilities as 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. That's not your job description. That's not your lane. So yeah, whereas in Civvy Street, we tend to frown on anybody not performing at absolute 100%. 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?
BI love this. Georgia, have you got any thoughts on this or anything? Any thoughts from the comments?
FI have a really great question from a lady called Andy, actually. What happens when someone makes the wrong decision under mission command? How should leaders respond?
BDo we want to, I don't know, should we start, James? Should we start with you?
ESure. I mean, firstly, how do you know 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 invent it. I'm sure it's been around for 2,000, 3,000, or however many years, Sun Tzu probably as well. But the point is, and it goes to kind of Carl Weick, if you want to do your psychologist and sensing and sensemaking and turning 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 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 classic, that you go and take a look anyway. It doesn't matter what the wet guy says. Off we go, and then 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 might— 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 didn't— 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.
BMatt, your thoughts on this?
CYeah, I would just build on that by saying to James's first point there, that it's like, how do you judge, you know, wrong versus right? Like in terms of wrong, I could say, hey, 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.
ADanny, 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?
DSo, 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. We are 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. 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 protect yourself in some way. There are 3 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 well in civvy street. It does work, and there are some case studies that we'll probably talk about, but the key things are, to quote, we've had Sun Tzu called out. I would shout out the philosopher Mike Tyson. who says, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face.
CThat's one of my favorites.
DYeah, 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, 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, and 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 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. There'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 third thing, of course, so we've got this implied trust. 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 rattle your cage, Lee, around return to office mandates, but we conflate visibility and presenteeism with trust. I can see what you're doing, which is obviously nonsense. 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's the long— the too long, didn't read. Where are you going and why are we going? And we are just crap at explaining that in Civvy Street.
AAnd 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?
DSo again, a really interesting question. There are some that do it intentionally and 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 kind of cultural world. And then creating an environment that rather than saying, this is what we are trying to achieve, and let's chunk that down into this function, this department, this job role, this set of KPIs. Instead, the companies that are very good at, and CICs, et cetera, that are very good at doing this are able to say, this is where we're heading, and 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, et cetera. 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 organizations that have high command and control kind of cultures, you'll get little kind of pockets, little silos of fiefdoms that are almost trauma bonded around, it's not a great place to work, but our bit's all right. Our bit of the boat is dry even if the rest is sinking. And in here, this is how we get things done. So 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 When you are looking at things like constellation 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. It 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.
AAnd Matt, I'm curious, the work that you do with students on the MBA program, how much of that is talking about articulating this this reason and mission and purpose, the meaning of the work, is that something that you work with them to articulate?
CSo 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 flip 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. But to Danny's point, as well as another one James made earlier, it's all, I think, and I don't have any research unlike you 2 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? And then how do we create a culture to leverage those traits to the maximum benefit of the organization? 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.
APretty impressive. 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's, that's causing the most damage?
EWell, so mostly I'm, I'm working with, um, smaller businesses at the moment. Sometimes again, I've worked with other larger teams or other organizations, but As a smaller business starts to grow, so the founder has a clear idea about what it is they want to achieve, and that 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. They've got to become a leader and create followers amongst the people that they're getting on board, and that can be a real challenge. But 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, 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, uh, 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. And he was talking about—
AJames, you broke up at just the moment.
BSorry, James. Sorry, you broke up. Someday they're about to say you're— and it was going to be like the The quote of—
AWe're all waiting for that thing to happen. Yeah. Oh, sorry.
BCould you just go back to say what you said?
EObserve. 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 gonna 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. In 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 sort of 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, 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 you're being somebody at the same time, which is great for your own personal feelings about things. You know, we're all human, we'll do it to one degree or another, but I think there is There's a deal of issue. 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 like saying that somebody's toxic, you know, it's thrown at people like, and then I think it's often as not, it's unfair. They're also quite often, they're part of the system that creates them. So if they might not, and they might be stuck between a rock and a hard place too. So how do they go about managing that? How 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, and, and, you know, so they end up trying to do other things. Um, and the military doesn't have, you know, you don't have control over the pay. Um, that's provided by the government, but you kind of get away with some of that because a lot of other things are provided. Um, you know, the community, the healthcare, all those kinds of things that are built into it. So that, that's kind of useful.
BUm, and you didn't join, if you joined for the pay, well, 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 there— do either of you gentlemen have anything to add to what James just said?
DTo 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, do I know what I'm doing? The military massage those 3 needs really well. They create the sense of belonging through whether it's uniforms, whether it's 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. Whenever we've got a place, whenever we've got to go and fight, you boys always give us a lift. And 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 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, but we're gonna focus on bring a cake to work day or let's all dress in red for a certain cause day. But 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. They stay in for 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 table.
BAny thoughts?
CThey certainly don't stay for the pay.
BWell, I tell you what, let me ask you this question then, because I've got a note down here that Leon has written for me saying that, 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?
EYeah. 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 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. Those are places where it wasn't an official meeting, but something important occurred there. But the liminality part, I would put it like the process that you're used to, your position that you're used to in your place, those kind of things. Um, and then you've got to go through this transition to a new, 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, I really, you know, I, 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. It's like overused. And I felt that a group like veterans could show that, or maybe explore the fact that, do we really value leadership as much as we say we do? And I've been in the civilian, I've been out for a lot longer than most of my friends. I left in 2000. So, the liminality is that uncertainty part, if you like, as you transition from one thing to the other. And you can tell in a way, I still haven't got over it. That's part of the formative nature of recruiting large, mostly young men, giving them concrete solutions to problems. This is how we do things around here and you will do it that way. And then letting them grow a little bit. And obviously, then there's also been— there's more diversity in the military now, women 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 to the good, I believe. 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 all changing all the time as well, is it? So you get into this kind of psychological identity stuff, which creates uncertainty again. I think that that can be somewhat stressful. 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. I wanted people who were in mainstream organizations that nearly everybody else could recognize. And then to think, we onboard people from different places all the time, whether they're 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. Often, we recruit from the competition. How do we onboard those? If we can't do it right with something, 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.
AAnd 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?
BYeah, 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.
FI do have, um, 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 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. And I'm wondering if that research could be, you know, variable to this index as well.
BYeah. Who wants to take that?
CI 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.
ADanny, what are you thinking?
DYeah, 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 in both military and civilian cohorts outside of combat. There's a lot of team building, we might call it. But just whilst it's in my head as well, if you want help understanding liminal, Al, a couple of episodes back, you picked up 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 were in limbo between where you were going from to, you had no control, you were just kind of bobbing along. Yeah, sorry, that was a random thought that just popped into my head.
BI know what it means now.
DYeah, yeah, between states with some random traveler who's just decided to get in your car.
BSorry.
DBut to come back to your question, Georgia, I'd be interested in that research if I could If I can 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. We tend to work very much towards individual goals, what's my targets, et cetera. And I think military can understand a lot more around navigating some of the interpersonal challenges that we have in Civvy Street, which are kind of, there are systems to kind of reduce the amount of friction around those, how do I earn trust kind of relationships? So I think this isn't an either or, 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 told us in the synopsis.
CBrilliant.
FYeah, it was a chap I just met on LinkedIn called Michael Olin, and he's doing his PhD in it. It's super interesting.
EI bet he'd really I think the mention that you did of debriefing is important, and it goes back to something like learning, the ability to learn from mistakes. And it's not everyone, 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, should we, what should we learn from it then? And trying to sort of go into a debrief mode. And it was like, we'll just all have to remember. We're not going to remember.
DThe stakes are slightly different though, aren't they? You can't hide a mistake in a lot of military projects. If something went wrong, we know it went wrong. A border changed or we lost a weapon or whatever it might be. There's nowhere to hide that mistake. Whereas in Civvy Street, and I'm conscious I've said Civvy Street about 20 times in this conversation, I'm going to bring it to the classroom next week, by the way. But there are some mistakes that actually, if you stay quiet, 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's absent. And I've seen a lot of silent organizations. You can't be silent when the stakes are as high as they are in some of those military contexts.
EYeah. And aviation does a lot on that too. And it's also been tried, attempted to be translated into, say, medical services, the NHS, like how do we manage? all of that kind of thing. And I think we, you know, it's not to say the military are perfect at it all, but they do have a sort of, uh, at least they have a, they probably have some rules that say they should do it that way. It doesn't mean they do it all right all the time. They get things wrong too. Um, but I think the, on a good day, uh, there is a, there's a lot to learn. And, and, 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. So, you know, there was a, 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.
AI 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 actually 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 up 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 from leadership in the most pressured situations 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?
CYeah, that's an interesting statistic. I'd be interested in how they measured that, but that's wild to even think about. I 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, you know, 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? 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. And 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.
AWow. Danny, I feel like we're leaning into emotional regulation here. Is that fair? Why does that matter, do we think, under pressure?
DIt 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 Wojcicki experiment where they have CEOs and Harvard graduates compete against kids to build a spaghetti tower with a marshmallow on the top. 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 further research behind that around what are the communication approaches that happen. And actually in the CEOs and the Harvard grads and the MBAs and so on, everybody is talking, everybody is contributing and trying to almost 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, it's time is actual action. Whereas with the kids, very few of them actually speak. It tends to be 1 or 2 at the tops. And where we see this replicated in things like, I researched some high-performance esports, they have the same thing where they simplify the language and simplify the communication. They 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. 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. Instead, we don't do that. We recognize that sometimes the place is on fire, but we do nothing around fire training. We just send people into the inferno. So yeah, there's 2 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.
CSo that analogy or metaphor, I guess it was, is 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.
BMm-hmm.
CYou know, and I don't know what it is or how, 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. That's an interesting comment.
EThe phrase that comes to my mind and experience was about stretch goals. And I distinctly remember a time when, I mean, I was like handed a new set of numbers and I'm like, okay, so, you know, do I get any extra resources? No, no, just, you know, One old colleague of mine, he called it a PUDUMA. It's when it's pulled directly out of my— You can offer stretch goals to people, but you kind of got to have the— it's either got 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 was also some studies that I'm aware of where one of the plates, obviously, once you, once you've signed up for the military, you're in, you're in for a term and 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 quiet quitting to some degree and you don't want that either, because that affects all the cohesion and everything. But there are like critical points. It might be like week 5, we lose 10% of our recruits. So they figure out what it is about maybe week 4, and like, what can they do to kind of help people get over the hump of week 5? Now, it might be that week 5 is a test week or something like that, but how do we make sure that we prepare them better? And then they end up with a higher throughput, they end up with a higher finish rate for the whole course, and that's when you've brought your, you know, your absolute volunteers in. They'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 of it. It goes to sort of work and wellbeing. 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. And 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. And it's a very expensive and sort of thoughtless way of using people or human resources, as you might say, human capital, to kind of throw that one in there as well.
BDo you got any thoughts? Because I've got a question, kind of a final question I want to ask. But just before I do, is there anything that anyone could respond to what James just said?
DI'll go on record. I hate stretch goals. There should be science behind what you are— why is the target the target? And I know it's a bit of a leap, but Mao Zedong, when in the Great Leap Forward, he asked all the producers of China to estimate 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 produce and you end up with 50 million people starving. 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.
EInteresting.
AYeah.
CSo it struck me that, James, the example you gave about the week 4, week 5, 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. So it's, it, 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.
DYeah.
CAnd 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. So thanks for that example, James.
BWell, talking of specific things that people can do differently, I mean, people who— we've covered an awful lot in this chat. Is the one practical thing that maybe a civilian leader could do differently starting this week? Do you want to start? Let's just start with James.
EYeah, 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 this general pattern, you don't want to die for your country, you want to make the other guy die for his country. 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, and that's what maybe prompted me to go and do the master's— but, um, how do you have time to read all the stuff? Because I was sending stuff out to people, 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 expensive. So once you learn things, you can educate others, you can advise them, you can delegate to them, you can understand, you can build up this other thing, which I'd like to sort of, you know, is this transactive memory in your own organization of knowing who knows what about what. And 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. I know that the accountants know what they're doing. I know that they were 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're getting from everybody else.
BBrilliant. Matt, thoughts? I mean, maybe one thing you wish people— in fact, no, I'm asking you 2 questions. Terrible interview technique. What's your thoughts? The one thing that someone could take away?
DI think so.
CA, 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 3 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, those, being candid, Honesty is assumed is a very powerful leadership tool that can help to build trust.
BLove that.
DDanny, 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. Instead, if you start with what are we here to achieve, 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? So 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?
AI 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. And I asked them, why do you do what you do? Why do you work here? Why do you enjoy it? 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 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, you know, in front of their clients. It even fed into the development. So 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 us live?
FNothing in the chat, Leanne.
ALovely. Well, thank you so much, Danny, Matt, James. Absolute superstars. 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 be pop in and answer any questions or reflections with you. And this will also be the audio on Truth, Lies and Work podcast on Friday. So go and check that out if you want to re-listen.
BJust 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?
DIt's Constellation. It's available at every bookshop, although they may have to order it if they're out of stock. It's also available on Audible, Amazon, everywhere. It's available everywhere.
BFabulous. And James, if people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to go?
EI 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.
BFabulous. And Matt?
CProbably 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.
BFabulous.
AFantastic. And I just want to say as well, a special thank you to Andy who 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?
CNot for a bit.
AOkay, well, we'll circle back to that. Thank you so much, everybody.
CTake care. Thank you, guys.
AThat'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@truthliesandwork.com. And if you enjoyed this, please do leave us a review. It genuinely helps more people find the show. See you soon.