Modern Wisdom - #133 - Roderic Yapp - Lessons From Afghanistan & Capturing Somali Pirates

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

Roderic Yapp is a business coach and former Royal Marines Officer. What was it really like to be on the front lines in Afghanistan? How do you recapture a ship which has been taken hostage by Somali pirates? What are the universalities we can learn about our own nature from seeing these cultures at war? Extra Stuff: Leadership Forces - https://www.leadershipforces.com/ Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi friends, welcome back to Modern Wisdom, my guest today, Roderick YappX, Marines Officer, now turned business leader applying what you learned during his time in the armed forces to the world of business. And we don't really talk at all about business, we talk a lot about some of his fascinating experiences during his time in Afghanistan, he chased Somali pirates and recaptured a vessel from them at one point. So yeah, I'm not going to be fucking with Roderick anytime soon. In other news, Johnny Newsurf coming around, going to film some more episodes of the next few weeks. Me and Video Guiding got a couple of dates booked into film some short form YouTube stuff as well and the new Bro Trip episode 2 coming out on the Modern Wisdom YouTube channel very soon. But for now, please welcome the wise and wonderful Roderick Yap. Thanks very much Chris, very happy to be here. Looking forward to speaking to you. So, give us a bit of background. What's your heritage, where do you come from and what did you do? So my first career was as an officer in the Royal Marines.

I left university in 2003, 2004, Struggles were in Moda. Really with an aspiration to do something completely different. I remember there are a number of reasons that caused me to go down that route, but fundamentally it really was seeking a challenge and trying to do something that was different. And I found in life that, you know, if you're faced with a series of sort of paths, choose the one that's the most difficult because then you're going to learn the most about yourself. And ultimately, that's what I chose to do. So I joined up in 2005. I served for seven years.

It was lucky enough to go to Afghanistan. I got civilians out of Libya in 2011 during the Arab Spring and then towards the end of my time specialised in Canterbury, and did a couple of tours off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean. So had an absolutely fantastic time. Left, when I turned 30 for a number of reasons, primarily kind primarily domestic, got married in my final year, didn't really want to be an absent parent, and have since then been working in the corporate world before starting my own business. Why did you say fortunate enough to go to Afghanistan? Because I think whilst I did choose to join the Royal Marines, I joined at a time where the operational tempo was

really, really significant. We were doing sort of back-to-back tours of a really demanding environment. And I think that I consider myself lucky to have been out to those places, been tested in that environment, because I think I'd have found it really frustrating if I'd gone through training, has been tested in that environment, because I think I'd have found it really frustrating if I'd gone through training, and then, frankly, done a sort of series of exercises or prepared for a war that wasn't going to happen. Within 12 months of passing out of training, I was being shot out and being tested in a really hostile, divining environment, so I consider myself lucky to have been there done that, but also survived it and come out the other side.

Yeah, I get that there's not many people I know that would have said, lucky for being selected to be shot out in Afghanistan. It's a slightly strange way of looking at it, but I mean, there are a number of people that that I work with, even now, former Royal Marines officers who joined the core in the 90s and weren't lucky enough to kind of experience that. You know, they were maybe going to Ireland, which was in the sort of kinetic and as aggressive as sort of Afghanistan and Iraq. So they were just just because of the political situation, they didn't get the chance to go and experience it and I was lucky like that.

and I was lucky like that. So talk me through what it's like coming out of university because I had a bunch of friends as well who were in OTC when they were at uni after training core and they had the potential, maybe I'll go Santa's, maybe I'll do whatever. What's it like being a student and going out on the last few nights a week like most of the people that all of us know if we went to uni with them and I may see what rugby on Saturday stuff like that and then you know within how long is it before you're on tour two years Yeah about that although for some it was much shorter because of the way the rotations worked guys joined up as civilians in August 2005 and by Christmas 2006, they were on the front line leading 30 guys.

Shit the bed. And I was like, you look at every other grad scheme, right? You look at what PwC, Deloitte, all these other companies offer you. You tell me one, right? It gives you 15 months of leadership training in some fairly demanding circumstances. And your first job is line managing 30 people in combat. There's no offers, any level of development, anywhere near that. That's an interesting analogy, a way to draw it across. Yeah, you would, I mean, I had again one of my, the housemate that actually was in the OTC, JT, he went straight out of uni at 21 and did the Aldi graduate scheme. And that's like widely regarded as, you know, sort of one of the toughest ones that you can do. But he wasn't getting shot at 15 months later.

True, it's, but if you think of it like that, when you're in your 20s, you've got an opportunity to take risk because, frankly, you haven't been playing the game long enough for it really to matter. So even if you join the army, you join the Marines, you decide it's not for you. You can always join a graduate scheme 12 months later. You're not going to be significantly behind anyone over the course of a 40, 50 year career or whatever that is. So yeah, I was, I loved it. You know, I look back on it, being proud to have served. It made me the person I am today, it informed a huge amount of the way in, I think, and sort of see the world, this strength. So I think sometimes limitations to that. But I wouldn't

change a single thing about it. Do you think some form of conscription or some form of more encouraged sign-up would be useful for a lot of people? Love young people now. So I wouldn't, I'm not a believer in any form of sort of conscription. I think it's really expensive. And also you end up with an enormous number of people in the military that, frankly, don't want to be there. But I am in favor of some form of national service. So, you know, you come out of university or just before you go to university, there are enough problems in the UK that you could take a group of people and say, right, you can either join the military or you can work in this charitable area,

you know, push people out of their comfort zone, get them dealing with people that come from a completely different background, completely different part of the UK. You know, when you talk to people, and I've spoken to a few people from Israel, they really talk about their national service, and in that instance, that is military. But they talk about it with a real sense of pride,

and they usually value the skills and the change in perspective that they get from it. So it doesn't have to be military. But I do think that some form of sort of voluntary or military, or you would get to choose an avenue to go down. I think that would be genuinely a good thing. The people that I know that are in the nurses, that are doctors, that are working in healthcare, that are working in the law enforcement across the world, all of these people have a perspective

that I think, unfortunately, those of us who have only ever worked in an office or run our own business or been an entrepreneur, I think that I have a good perspective on the world because I've traveled to different places to go and have a party holiday. I haven't met the locals of Afghanistan. I haven't really, I've stepped foot in that direction once and it was Dubai. That's not a representative example

of what that area of the world's like. And I think that any perspective is useful, the more extreme you can go to, the more sort of you realize kind of how lucky that you are. When I was in Afghanistan in 2007, we would basically have this really sort of strange routine whereby if we got into a firefight and some civilians got injured, we would allow them to come into the base, we patched them up and we'd give them US dollars and sort of sort of a really kind of blunt compensation tool. And this was kind of when I really early on learned that lesson of be very careful what you measure and the way in which you incentivize people.

Because after a while we started to get the same girl coming in over and over again. And the boss sat down and said, you know, you guys haven't been in a firefight. There's been no contact in the area in the last sort of few days. I'm right in thinking that, yeah, 100% nothing, no fights in the Taliban. So, okay. So okay, so why is this girl coming in refresh gun shot wounds? On the close inspection we realised that they're not 556 rounds they're 762 so it's not our it's unlikely to be our weapons systems that are causing these. And what we found out was that this girl's family were effectively family were effectively shooting her, bringing her in and using as a cash cow to make money. And then when we realised the game was up and we weren't doing this anymore, they shot

her with an RPG and she came in with no lower jaw. And I remember thinking like a couple of things, fucking A, it's an accident of history to be born in the UK and how lucky I am and B, I don't fucking understand this place. I cannot understand, I cannot relate my values from where I come from and now as a father of a six year old daughter and a three year old son, I cannot get my head round how someone can make that decision. And I think the way I kind of rested with it, or sort of where I got to, was that it's unhelpful to think of some of these places in terms of geography.

And some people were probably kicked back on some of these things that I say, but I think of things in terms of, is it useful or not so much? And I think about Afghanistan, frankly, as a country, much like the Middle Ages. Think of Britain in a sort of feudal system and you're probably not too far wrong. And ultimately, that helps you understand it a little bit more.

That's how they behave. That's just the way it is. It's just that level of development. It's more like traveling back in time than it is like traveling to a different part of the world. So yeah, what a story, man. Wow. I, you're right. I have no values that I can extrapolate out. that I can extrapolate out. I have no working model of human nature, human behavior, that I can expand to make that story make sense. Exactly. And then so, right, so now, if that's the context that you're faced with, now effectively deliver a change program,

fast track 800 years worth of development inside four to six years. That's the scale of a task. And you just realize that you go there for six months, and you just can't really get your head round it, because you don't really have any of the mental models, any of the concepts to understand how they think. It is so far removed, you might as well go to the moon, and try and have some sort of impact there.

It's just a different planet. Have you reflected on why it is so different? Is it just emerging? Is it because of a lack of contact with the outside world? This is me speaking as someone who really doesn't understand sort of where the culture of Afghanistan comes from? What's the reason for it being that backward? I haven't read it, but I think something like prisoners of geography probably shod a bit of a sort of view on Macs. Afghan is of Afghanistan's a very sort of mountainous

and a very kind of isolated place. It doesn't, I don't think it's got the same sort of, inward, outward migration that say, you know, Europe has. I don't think it's had the same access to. Yeah, I don't think it's had the same access to. Yeah, I don't think it's had the same access to. Even things are simple as someone was saying to me, animals that you're able to domesticate. We take that for granted in Europe, but that has had a significant impact on how we've

been able to fight effectively, move. You take something like a horse, right? We take horses for granted in Europe and this part of the world, they're fairly able to survive here. But you take something like a zebra, and a zebra can't be tamed. So how that has an impact, I kind of don't know. But I suspect it's those kind of things, a kind of cumulative impact of a lot of things, one of them being climate, you know, access to a variety of sort of different cultures that can cross-pollinate the ability to grow different crops to be,

you know, anywhere near, say something like the enlightenment taking place, that probably never really got there until relatively recent. Yeah. You know, these kind of things. It's interesting to talk about the cosmopolitan sort of thing. I don't see any students saying I'm going to go and do my gap year in like Baghdad or no, no, like they're not sending themselves over there. So it is and then Bizarre, there's two sides to it, right?

There's part of me that wants to look at that story and say what fucking savages, like how dare you do that to someone. And then on the flip side of that, I think, well, would you have said the same thing about someone in the 1400s in the, you know, in the 1200 AD, would you have said the same if someone was coming in essentially freeing these peasants from this life that they had and gifting them wealth, that they would never ever be able to access themselves. Well, maybe it's a little bit more, again, I just have no way to frame that. I mean, I think it's really, so if we stick with that kind of, if we view it as a sort of different time zone,

800 years prior or something akin to that kind of era, you sort of move past, I guess you kind of, it becomes easier to sort of move past judgment. If you take your ancestors, I should imagine, 800 years ago, your ancestors probably did some really unpleasant things, but they did what they had to do to survive, they did what they were taught to do, they did, I guess, what they thought was appropriate,

given the context that they were faced with. I think that it's really easy to judge people with a historical perspective. You often get this in the states at the moment, you know, with the sort of founding fathers maybe had some different views on slavery, you know, and people are like, oh, this is really bad. So Washington owned slaves and like, yeah. Yeah, we've got to erase them from history. And I'm like, well, how can I say it? If the subsequent generations judged the past and the behavior of the people that came before them, it's a really easy question to sort of judge them and go, well, you know, that was disgraceful.

My challenge is to what are your grandchildren, what are your great grandchildren going to judge you for? You know, a hundred years time when you're, you know, if you live to that age, you're sat there with your grandchild and their tenor and go, I can't believe it used to do that. What are they going to be talking about? And I have no idea really. I think there's a more interesting question. I think a very good suggestion for what that might be is factory farming. There's a lot of very clever people that I know who think that in a couple of hundred years or more,

let's say that we're able to create a cost-effective, grown, petri dish meat, which allows people to hit that particular caloric requirement, but without having to create animals literally to be slaughtered. I think that that world would look back on us and think, hang on, you threw away 50% of every chicken, all of the chicken breeds that you made literally just into a meat grinder. I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan, I spend time around some ones that are terrifyingly clever and I'm kind of drinking the cool aid at least a little bit from them. But yeah, like you did what you just, they were born and then taken away from them mum so that the mum would give milk so that you could drink the milk as opposed to, you know, that, that to me, I think is one of those.

And you're right. The beauty of hindsight is that it's 2020 vision. And you have this amazing perspective where you're able to see, oh, well, this is framed within the values of now. And it's, I guess, but it wasn't now. It was then. And now is now. And in the future, it won't be now either. Yeah. And that's the thing.

And I get that's one of the sort of, I guess my concerns about the modern world is that it's so easy to take someone out of context. It's so easy to make a sort of snap judgment on someone that maybe says something and is kind of thinking out loud and people are so quick to jump all over that stuff. And it can be really, really damaging to people's careers and reputations. And I think it shuts down debate, which I don't think is helpful. Not at all, not at all.

Especially with the frictionless communication which we've got, you know, like if Kevin Hart can get borderline cancelled, the hardest working one of the best, the best paid comedian on the planet, if you can get borderline cancelled for a tweet that was a decade ago, like, yeah, none of us are safe. No one is safe. For which you say? To apologize for countless things. Which you like know what, what do you think the the

store manager at Azda or you know the guy in the military you know what do you think the the marine's officer now or like he's had Facebook since he was 10 or 12 or whenever you're allowed to get it or something like that. I mean like it's so I'm just I'm glad that I didn't have social media until I was at least borderline and adult because I would have been, I'd have been making mistakes all over the place and you're right, like the reason for communication is that you are allowed to play with ideas. If that's what you like to do, and I'm one of the people that does like to do that,

you're supposed to be able to play with ideas. What are the bad? I'm not supposed to have to make sure that I'm saying it in a nerfed environment where it won't get leaked out beyond the boundaries of people who actually know what I'm talking about. I know that I'm not a big at racist homophobic transphobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic xenophobic I mean, like list off whatever it is that someone's going to accuse you of doing, because you wanted to work, try and say something that was not even half-formed in your mind, can then get taken out of context.

And obviously, the people that are in these positions of public renown, there's even the stakes are even higher for them. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I mean, I think people assume that just because you say something, it's a kind of clearly articulated, you know, carefully. Window into your soul. So, and it's just not, I mean, I haven't got scripted in front of me. Me too. If you. Yeah. We're having a conversation. So, I don't really know what's going to come out next. And there's some risk that comes to that. But that's part of it, right? That's part of it.

And yeah, you're very right. So I want to find out about the fact that you were a pirate hunter. Tell us about being a pirate hunter. So Piracy was really interesting, actually. I did my first tour of the coast of Somalia in late 2010 and I was the intelligent officer. So what my job really involved there was effectively looking at aerial photographs of camps and trying to get my head inside the sort of mind of a pirate. Piracy is interesting because it's not

the same as Islamic fundamentalism. Fundamentally, this is a business model for them. At the moment they feel that they cannot, the risk outweighs the reward, they'll pull back and they won't do it anymore. I went off the coast of Somalia late 2010 and then again late 2011. And the reason it was sort of September to December was because as the monsoon changes, as it moves from southeast to northwest or all the other way around, you get a period of sort of very calm water in the Indian Ocean.

And when the water's calm, small boats can get a reasonable speed up and they can effectively hunt down merchant shipping. When the sea states really choppy, it's like driving fast on a very bumpy road. You trash the boats, you can't get up to the full speed, whereas the big stuff, because it frankly doesn't really have any impact on that, they can just charge straight through it and basically how run the small boats.

So again, a couple of tours off the coast there, arresting and contradicting pirates who claimed that they were fishermen, despite the fact that we sort of have helicopter over the side, over the top as they were chucking weapons and ladders over the side and there was sort of a complete absence of fishing gear. Again, really interesting tour that's both of them were that really changed my perspective. One of my guys, we arrested some pirates and one of my guys said, look, we've got a guy here who's

been shot and I was like, patch him up. Is that no, no, no, this happened obviously quite a while ago? And basically, you can see my forearm there. What this guy had was it's a probably about a 10 degree angle in his forearm and one forearm was about that much longer than the other. And I looked at this and I looked at his sort of wrist and he'd clearly, you know, he'd been shot in the wrist. He'd had a really catastrophic injury and it had never been splintered correctly. It had just been sort of wrapped up. He'd had some antibiotics pumped into him and he'd survived it. And I remember saying to my Marines, like, guys, you can you bitch and moan when there is a second dessert on the ship. This guy has been shocked to the wrist. He's clearly survived it.

And now he's got this sort of poem of injury. And again, you sort of realize that huge amounts of the world are totally ungoverned. And the people with the biggest stick or the most weapons, they're the ones that rule the roost. And while we might bitch and moan about the state, if this country Actually go and wander around

Somalia, you know go to sort of some faries parts of you know Ethiopia or you know other parts of the world that are less developed See how they live and then ask yourself how well you've got it Because I think most of the time you find actually again coming back to this sort of accident of history thing You know if your family's lives are on the line, your value has changed very, very quickly around what you are willing to do and what you're not willing to do. And again, yeah, another great experience off the coast of Somalia was lucky enough to recapture a pirate investment as well, which was, yeah, which was a good experience. Wow, I want to hear about that in a second. Sure.

One of the things that's coming to mind is, I wonder what would happen if nuclear war broke out tomorrow or there was some sort of catastrophe that meant it was pretty much every family for themselves. I wonder how many of the people who have civility and tolerance and all the rest of it is their front line of personality and how they identify. I wonder how long that would stay if it was doggy dog.

It would be very interesting to find out. I mean, the number of people that have said to me, you know, I would never be able to kill someone. And you know, just like, well, I'll give you a situation. You come home, someone's got a knife to one of your children's, you know, next, you have an opportunity to take a shot at very short range. Would you do it? Yeah, I'm like, right. So the context is, the context has changed your view on that. Of course you would. You know, given the right situation, people are capable of some fairly unpleasant

and violent things. And I think, you know, if you probably sort of, you know, if you looked into the studies around evil, the various experiments that have been done, context and the way the environment shapes our behavior is hugely powerful. I can't remember the name of that experiment where it was done in the US where the people were sort of shocking each other or shocking an actor. You know, there was I think the prison experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, they got out control. All these are normal people within a relatively short space of time, capable of doing some

really unpleasant things to others. So I'd be very careful when people say that they're unable to do those kind of things. I think given the context and the situation they're presented with, I think we're all capable of violence if we have to be. The thing as well that you keep alluding to is that the only reason that you or me or anyone that's listening isn't that girl or me or anyone that's listening, isn't that girl with her jaw hanging off or her mother or father is purely by role of the dice. Your consciousness could have been that one, could have been a different one, could have been whatever one,

and the fact that you happened to be born in one of the best countries in the world, in the best time in history, with the most wellness and the longest lifespan and the best economic opportunities and continue to roll it out from there. You know, and I do the same. I catch myself all the time complaining about, I can't believe that my dopamine receptors are being manipulated by Facebook and then go, what are you talking about? You've got this oracle in your pocket which has access to all of human history is wisdom. One counter argument to myself then, I brought this up on a previous podcast was, I agree that we need to have perspective when we make judgments

about the world that we live in, right? We need to think like it could be so much worse, you could be being attacked by Somali pirates, you could have half of your job being blown off for, you know, a couple of hundred dollars or whatever it might be. But on the flip side, the only alternative to that is, well, I'm just going to go through saying that this is good enough as our standard of living increases and as the resolution

and the fidelity with which we look at the state of society and technology and how we are all combining ourselves together, as that improves, we have to look at it with an increasingly sharp eyeglass, because otherwise, in fact, it's not point looking at today by the standards of 50 years ago, because it's not useful. It has to be, okay, so where are the failings that we have right now, based on the qualities and the opportunities and the technologies and everything else, the understandings that we have, how can we improve this right now, not by the standards of Afghanistan, not by the standard of

the Smiley Pirates, but where you are, when you are. No, I completely agree with that. But I think you're right with your starting point, which has to be a sense of, you know what, it's pretty good. It's all pretty good right now. That doesn't mean we don't have issues, it doesn't mean we don't have problems, but by and large, you just have to look at the data. You know, any data, you know, if you look at infant mortality, literacy, violence against women and girls, all of that is getting a hell of a lot better. So ripping apart the system and throwing out the baby with a bathwater, I don't agree. I think actually it is about incremental steady change. We have a welfare state in this,

a welfare system in this country, that's a good thing. I don't think that many people take advantage of it. Others might disagree with me, but by and large, I think it is a great thing that we have that and that we're able to pay for that. That hasn't previously existed. That's a relatively recent invention. Wasn't it that I think the UN had the target of halving world poverty within, I think it was 40 years, and they did it within like 25 or something, and the change in when poverty across the world people

that were living below that particular, which I think is actually only about $4,000, I think it's about $4,000 a year? Is it around about the barrier for that? And are they hitting it within essentially half the time? I like two thirds of the time. Yeah, I mean, it's astonishing actually kind of how good things are. You know, the murder rate, for example, another one massively down on where it used to be.

How do you, what I was trying to do with my second analogy there was, You know, the murder rate, for example, another one massively down on where it used to be. How do you, what I was trying to do with my second analogy there was how do we hold two things in mind at the same time? The first one being we are living in the best time that there ever has been in one of the best countries that there is to live in, whilst we can be better. How do we hold those two things in our mind at the same time? I mean, I don't think that mutually exclusive. I think you can be grateful for what you've got,

but harness that thirst and that ambition to improve the status quo. I mean, I'm really thankful for everything I've got, you know, to healthy children, you know, a wife that loves me and a business that is, that frankly, like, is work that I love doing and I'm really enjoying it. Like, I've, you know, I'm, I'm a nine on the scale of, you know, gratitude. Really, I've got nothing, nothing that I'm not, you know, largely happy about. But that doesn't mean that I feel I've achieved everything I want to. I still have a sort of really strong drive and a desire to, I guess, improve the situation for other people or improve the status quo.

I get uncomfortable when people give me really nicely refined answers to the way things are because I just don't think the world works like that. I think everything is kind of a work in progress. And I'm kind of happy with that. I think you can hold those two things. I think you can, I think you can love, for example, I think you can love your children for the person that they are. But I think you can have high expectations of them and you can hold them to account.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So I don't see them as mutually exclusive. I think that they are. I think that you can hold those two things in your mind. It comes back to nuances, while there doesn't it, what we were talking about before you got to be able to have that subtlety in your conversation and to be allowed to play with ideas, because it's not, you know, we're trying to work something out here, you know, you could do better than anyone else on the planet. And even you are still thinking, okay, so how can I even just express briefly what I mean when I say that I like

my children, I love them for who they are, but I want them to be better. You know, even if that's all that you're grappling with is to try and linguistically make it make sense. How do you then deploy? You know, it's difficult. It's hard. Massive. How do you then deploy? You know, it's difficult. It's hard. These things are challenging. And I think it's a lot of laziness that comes from people who want to be able to just put a single, a tweet length, like conclusion to whatever it is, or, you know, back from that even more, and just a label, like a single word. Yeah. That's what the trouble, that's one of the problems is that I think, you know, everyone wants the executive summary. You know, I don't want to know the working out.

I don't know how you've got to the answer. I want the executive summary, I want the Twitter answer. And it's like, yeah, but there's no depth, there's no understanding there. There's no ability to adjust a way of looking at things depending on that context. The world is a really, really complicated place. And I think just reminding ourselves that we're all just grappling with trying to understand

it a little bit better, trying to understand ourselves and other people. Yeah, I think being comfortable with that, being comfortable with uncertainty is a kind of key skill in the monologue. Taking that across to the Armed Forces and the way that that works, obviously the whole reason that you have a line of command within the Armed Forces and operating procedures is to try and simplify that decision-making process, is to try and have some guidelines for how you bring order to chaos. Is there a mindset change that happens when people join? Let's say that someone comes in and someone has this particular world view,

which is very, very complex and then they need to kind of just, right, okay, forget all of the gesticulating, forget the, is it right, is it wrong? It just needs to be, you follow the orders. Do you watch people change sort of when they join and they potentially go from one type of person to another? I think there are certain, so the military is far less command and control than people think it is. So a lot of the time you get this view

that it's all about, you know, you are told what to do. Yes, sir. Exactly, yes, no, sir, all of that kind of thing. The kind of, you know, Thor Metal Jacket drill sergeant, erasing your personality. And whilst there is an element of that that's required, fundamentally, all of those lessons in the

early days are really, can you follow simple instructions and can you meet our standards? Now, if you look at any form of operational excellence, the first step in operational excellence is to standardize the process. That's all the military is doing. So, can you iron your shirt, can you polish your boots, can you pack your kit, can you do things to a certain level? Right, okay, you can. Right, the next step is to now move on to weapons. Can you keep your weapon system clean, can you handle it responsibly? All of these kind of things, they're just building blocks in order to get you to understand how to use this equipment safely. But then you get to this stage where you're put into a position of responsibility or authority and things are chaotic

and you need to make decisions. And what the military are very good at is is giving people an end state. So if you were working for me, for example, Chris, I'd say, look, Chris, this is what I want you to achieve. This is the end state that I set you. This is the future that I want you to get to. How you achieve that totally up to you. Come back to me if you need support or extra resource.

The how is up to you. Now, because we leave the how up to you as an individual, that makes you unpredictable. And being unpredictable in combat is really, really important because the moment you become predictable, people can effectively ambush you because they know what you're going to do next. And that's how it's done. It's all done around a sort of common language of intent. What is my commanding officer, what is his intent, what does he want to happen? And then how do I use the resources I've got in order to achieve that in my own way? But it's not prescriptive anyway, I'm left to kind of work it all out.

Yeah, that's interesting. I've been thinking a lot recently about the elements that we all need to help us perform a little bit better. And I think for so many people, it's direction and accountability. You need to know where you are going and you need to be accountable to someone if you don't go in that direction. 100% And it's interesting that you have identified in the way that the

military is pieced together that that that really is two of the key elements. 100% and I the accountability thing you know when people say what's the one thing you miss about the organization it's like it is our 100% the accountability. People I never felt that I had to give an order. I think if you have to rely on your rank in the military, you failed somewhere along the line to build trust, to build that relationship. But like if I asked one of my corporals

and my sergeants to do something, it was absolutely gonna happen. I could set my watch by it, because they would work through the night to make sure it did happen. They wouldn't clock off at five and go, I can't get that done. There was just a different sense of ownership. They took responsibility and they delivered to that end state.

And if it was something really simple like, I needed to book a higher card to go and have a look at a range. Someone would say to me, okay, so where is it you're going? I'm going to go to this place in Karls Samartin on the edge of Wales. Okay, so what I'll do is I'll book a higher car and I'll get it to come to your house at night before so you can leave early. I'll make sure there's one of those, this is back in the day when there's a tag to go across the bridge. I'll make sure there's one of those in there and I'll get you a slightly bigger one so it's a more comfortable journey. Just like, like, 100%, so much more accountable.

By seeking an understanding of what is it you're trying to achieve, you're trying to do something relatively simple there. Okay, so how can I best help you to achieve that effect? Is that partly due to the common purpose? I think it's more to do with the common understanding of you're like me, you're one of us, you wear Roma in Cimando, on the side of your shirt, you wear the green beret, I'm here to help you be successful and vice versa. And I mean, it's unbelievable what can be achieved

when people have that mindset, when they genuinely believe that their fundamental priority is to support the success of others. It's very customer focused to use some corporate speak, if I can, very customer focused. Is part of that the shared experience of going through the preparation to get to where you are? The fact that you all have that commonality.

I think so. I think generally speaking, the people that don't look out for others, the people that don't adhere to the values, you know, of the raw Marines, they don't survive. They get, they get found out. And fundamentally, the group makes it uncomfortable for them to sort of stick around and be there. So, you know, you can't be, you will find it certainly very difficult and training if you're one of those people that, you know, at the end of an exercise, disappears off to clean your personal weapon rather than helping other guys get around some of the heavier machinery to clean that. People will find you out and people will say something, it comes back to their accountability point of view. People will say,

you know, I know that you think you're pretty awesome, but I see you, you're a selfish bloke and I'm going to hold you to account for that. I'm going to say that to your face. The pressure ultimately creates that environment where you just don't have time for people that don't pull their way. The stakes are much higher as well. You know, it's not just that person, that same person who, maybe the guy that calls out the person who doesn't go and clean the big gun,

in 20 years later, in corporate world, might actually let it slide. Because he's like, oh, do you know what it is? It's not fucking life or death. But it actually is life or death. The stakes are a lot higher. It's a shame that we can't port that those stakes across to the corporate world.

It's difficult. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's very hard. Because people have no context for what it's like to work in the environment where the team does become, the team comes before your needs. That's a really difficult thing to get your head round around putting the needs of the group above yourself. But once you're in that environment,

it's the closest you'll get to blood relatives and family, you know, the word brotherhood is often used to describe the relationships relationships between men in combat and it's 100% true So so yeah, I think I think it's difficult to experience that and therefore it's difficult to recreate it Right, let's get back to Somali. I want to find out about the pirates. So first off, why is Somalia a hotbed for it? Was there just like some guy that was there that said, oh, this seems like a good business opportunity. Were in the right location or some fellow just started selling boats in AK-47s?

So, no, I think it's a combination of a couple of things. One, huge numbers of ships go from the southern coast of India up through past Yemen, past Somalia, and up through the Suez Canal. I don't know what the statistics are, but some enormous percentage of trade goes through that route. So, there's a lot of ships going that way. Secondly, Somalia, again, it's unhelpful to think of it as a country. It's largely ungoverned space. Yes, it is a country on a map, but outside of Mogadishu,

the Somali government doesn't have a huge amount of control. And you've got the sort of various autonomous regions. So around Mogadishu is largely sort of quite chaotic, Al Shabab, ISIS, Islamic fundamentalists. North of that, you've got Puntland, which is slightly more, slightly more governed, but I certainly wouldn't be looking to go there on holiday. But then, you know, in Somali land to the very north, I mean, you could fly there from London. And you could, if you wanted to, go on holiday there and you'd probably be quite safe. So it's that kind of ungoverned space access to weapons and fundamentally, yeah,

it's an opportunity. It is an opportunity that people have decided, yeah, we're going to go after this. The fact that you said it's a business. These people see it as a commercial enterprise. There's really sort of, I don't know why I thought that it would be because of something else, some sort of distaste for the chips that we're going by or something like that. It's just an opportunity to make profit. It's a business model. I think if you again come back to the ratios and the numbers, $10,000 to them is more than they can expect to earn in their entire lifetimes.

So again, I've done the numbers, but call it a couple of million quid. What would so for criminals in our country do or what numbers, but call it a couple of million quid. What would sow for criminals in our country do or what would some people do for a couple of million pounds? Probably again, it kind of changes the sort of risk reward criteria for people. For them, you know, again, it's life and death. It is literally, it can be as simple as that. You know, there is almost no other way to provide for their families. So they choose to go and do this. Which again is why I won't judge them, because if I was born on that side of the world, would I be comfortable to pick

up a rifle and go and provide for my family? Well, I did it here, so probably. Do you think that are there some of the pirates that you encountered that did it with Glee? I don't. I don't think so. Certainly not. With us, they were fairly contrite. I mean, the big court, but they've been caught. Even when we'd fly the helicopter past, they had a sort of understanding of our rules of engagement. You know, they would hold up, you know,

rocket propelled grenade launchers in a very kind of, I've got this. So, fuck off otherwise this is gonna be a black hotel. Because you know, if they turn it and face it at us, that's a threat to life, we can engage them and we can shoot them with snipers. They were switched on to that kind of thing so they knew our rules and engagement as well yeah I mean a lot like you know primitive yes but capable definitely what's the what's their ML then talk me through how they go

about trying to take down a chip. So before I do that, I'm just going to, I'm getting a couple of notices saying that my phone's getting battery is dying. It's a pretty record anyway. So all I'm 25, 25, 15, 15. I can't help but I can set this up. I'll say that it goes to that chart. I'm not sure if that's charged or not.

Are you trying to use an induction charger like on its? Yeah. Yeah. It might work. Give me two seconds. Let me just fiddle about. That's fine. Yeah. Got time. 45, 15, 15.

Sorry. Don't worry, don't worry. Okay, we got it. We have got it. The light is coming on, which means it should be charging. Let's just get that right. That will not move anything. What if it's come down? The whole house of cards will be down and then the battery's going to go. Let's just get that right. That will not move anything. What if it's come down?

The whole house of cards, the whole house of cards, and then the battery's going to go, OK, so MMO of things. So what they'll do is you'll have maybe two, probably two small skiffs. Now a skiff is 20 to 30 feet long, speedboat with a pretty heavy motor on the back of it

as in something with probably 50 plus horsepower, something that can get up to the 30 knots relatively quickly. That's one of the ways in which you can identify them because of course why would a fisherman require an expensive high-end engine. They don't. So the way they'll do it is that they will they will shadow the vessel one on the port side one on the starboard side And what they're looking to do is is trying to get the vessel To turn one way or the other because if the vessel is going into the prevailing weather if it turns one way it kind of creates a It creates almost a calm area to one side. And what they'll do is they'll come up alongside. If there's no barbed wire, it's literally a question of putting the ladder up and climbing on board.

Like the bad luck. So what if Hastings are some Lord of the Rings thing? Not as similar to that. Yeah, exactly that. It's a ladder straight over the side and then straight up. So what they're looking for is a vessel with a low freeboard, so a deck that's very close to the water, so that that is easy to do.

And they're looking for something without sort of any kind of countermeasures. If there are things like bar wire running around the outside of the ship, I've not seen it, but I have heard what they'll do is they'll take a grappling hook, chuck it onto the barbed wire, attach the grappling hook to a bucket, put the bucket in the water, and then the barbed wire gets pulled back as the ship tries to drag the bucket. Now again, that's incredibly simple, very, very innovative. But all that does is create enough of a gap for them to get up underneath. And these guys are obviously pretty thin and they're only carrying a rifle. Once they're on board, they're going for,

they're going for the bridge. The bridge is the control center of the ship. They're going to try and get in there and they are going to ultimately use violence and aggression to sort of take the thing over. They then take it into Somali territorial waters. They stick it in an anchorage. They contact the ship owner and they start rampaging and that's basically how it works. The only real way or the way in which you combat it is really with guys on on board with guns. They won't, again, this is a business model, they're not genetics, so they won't go after ships that have people on board with weapons who are protecting them and particularly sort of high free board. There's a whole kind of risk criteria that you can sort of look at. I mean, once the ships alongside, those crew are pretty, pretty distraight because now they're

looking at, we're not talking weeks here, we're normally talking months of negotiations to get the price down. And then the payment of the ransom ransom and that's generally what's done. I think is largely a money drop in cash and that's it. They got off, take their money with them, go back to shore, ship goes on its way. Wow. So what tell us about the particular incident that you had where you recaptured a vessel? So the ship in question was a vessel called the MV Monte Cristo. It's a 55,000 ton container ship, so pretty big container ship. Had plurals on board, and an unarmed security team. And what this unarmed security team did was effectively

get everyone into the engine room, lock it down. You can control the ship from the engine room, largely. So that was kind of the thing to do. Lock everyone in there and just sort of keep everyone safe. Now, if the crew are isolated from the pirates, it's actually a relatively simple boarding, because you don't have hostages mixed in with... Shoot anyone that isn't in the engine room. Fundamentally, you can get on board, and if it goes a bit kinetic and round start going down, you haven't got that added risk. So there are various categories of a boarding. And a level four is a hostage rescue,

which is pirates are on board, they're in amongst the crew. That is a very difficult situation to deal with. That's a remit of special forces. We used to be able to deal with a level three, which is the crew are locked in the safe room. There are no other crew, it's only pirates on board. We would go on with the sort of black roll kit, you know, fully black overalls, you know,

dark sunglasses, helmets, body armor, and say bad, say bad stuff. Yeah, it was the best job I had. It was just brilliant. Did you listen to AC DC pumping out the speakers on the way down? I feel I've missed something down. I feel that yeah, this is something that would be what would be pretty special. Brian Johnson pounding down on these Somali pirates and they think you shit, Brian's here. I mean, they were, because of the, like, because I mean, Marines are very big, physical, physical guys,

covered in this kit with all this body armor, the guys look physically imposing, and there was a, there was a logic to that because it's a little bit of sort of, almost like, you know, dog psychology, you know, the guy, if you come across a guy who's sort of six foot five and built like a brick shit house in a pub, you're unlikely to start with him if something goes down. So it's that same sort of thing. You want to appear physically imposing. We were respectful,

but very, very firm. We would grip them, we would control them. We would put plasticuffs on them as quickly as possible. They were not, we never hurt any of them, but we were sort of firm. As you'd expect, a police officer in the UK to be dealing with someone that's potentially dangerous, it's firm, it's not aggressive, you're not trying to hurt them. So, yeah, we recaptured the vessel, released the crew. I remember going down into the engine room, and it was probably the only time in my career that was a real tangible sense of we've delivered some real value for people because they were

overwhelmed with emotion. They were crying, they were cheering. You didn't get that enough, I've got to start very often. Ever. There was this sort of overwhelming sense of gratitude and thanks. We then, because it was an Italian flagged vessels, the Italian government wanted to prosecute them. I think one of the first successful prosecutions

for piracy in God knows how many years. They got carted off to Rome. I went there and acted as a witness for the prosecution, which was fascinating. Going into one of these mafia style courtrooms with all the sort of, you know, rooms alongside where they could put all the sort of, you know, large numbers of mob bosses. There's a sort of few pirates in there. What I noticed interestingly again comes back to, you know, beware of your incentives.

All of them had put on weight. So as I hang on a sec, we're gonna send them to prison in Italy and that's probably a better outcome for them. Yeah. The big left in Somali. You're gonna eat better, nicer, climate, more human rights. You know, and I can't get me wrong, I'm like, I'm totally comfortable and all fine with that.

But I'm like, how's this a disincentive to that kind of behaviour when, you know, capture ends up in this? So yeah. Get the boat, cut the of million quid don't get them out like holiday around Yeah prison prison in Rome. Do you know how much three mills are doing? Do you know how much time they got? I Don't I think it was sort of between 50 to 18 years sort of in the sort of serious in that kind of yeah, I mean it was Yeah, they're not messing about but then I don't know what happens I don't know what happens after that so do they get said back

you know that creates kind of another question and this is part of the issue is that you know the you know the government NATO euro you know Europe we sort of want to do something about that but we're not kind of totally sure on how to solve that problem Ultimately, it's been solved by the market for private security, I believe you know enough guys on ships with guns Sooner or later these guys basically like look we can't get on to anything Um, I think it's much quieter than well. It certainly is much quieter Just the number of attacks the number of pirated ships um, I'm a little bit out of the loop with all of that stuff now, but certainly it's much quieter than it has been before.

Was it a bit of a golden era or at least a hot era when sort of 2010-ish and before then? Yeah, completely. It was, yeah, the number of, the number of piratins, the number of attacks was escalating rapidly. This was something that people didn't really know, you know, how to deal with it. You know, the carriage of weapons, life at sea has a lot of kind of grey areas. So, you know, let's say you board some security guys in India with some rifles and they get off in Djibouti, which is your kind of high risk area. Like, are there any implications around gun running then? Because they're getting on with rifles again.

So it becomes all, and I know that there have been people who've been really sort of caught out with this. I believe actually rather unfortunately there are still some British servicemen serving time in Mumbai when all of that kind of stuff went sort of south very quickly. And again, it's, you know, it's ungoverned space. You can't go out to those kind of places and sort of handle weapons and assume that it's kind of all okay because it's again it's a it's a dangerous and a deeply you know complex and nuanced world out there you know you really know what's going on in those places. So I was never tempted by the Maritime

Security Law. Right yeah. It just strikes me how different some areas of the world are. I know this sounds stupid, like obviously, obviously a lot of areas of the world are different, but when you say it like that, when you say that, you know, these, the values that some people are living by, and essentially the time that some civilizations are living in, and some areas of the world are living in

is so drastically different from ours. Completely. And again, it's just, that's, I hugely value travel, I hugely value any kind of experience that takes you out of the ones that you're familiar with because you can, it will change the way you think and see the world, it will change the way you interact with people. It'll change everything, everything about how you think about human behaviour and that's a massively valuable lesson. So you finished catch my pirates and decided that you were going to go into the world of business and leadership. Yeah, so I got some really good advice when I left, which was, you know, don't go and do something similar to what you've done before.

You know, really push yourself and go to a sort of different environment. So I went into uranium enrichment for a couple of years. I worked for a company called Urenco based up in Cheshire. Really interesting environment. I did a degree in ancient history, so I'm going to work in the nuclear industry. No real concept of that. Very safety, critical culture.

The words nuclear and accident don't go well together. And it's unacceptable to take any form of sort of personal risk in order to get the job done, whereas, you know, my health and safety was a helmet in the body armor and plenty of ammunition going into that world, that required a complete mindset change for me. But what I fundamentally realized was that, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're leading a team of Marines, leading a sports team, leading a business or leading a group of uranium enrichment technicians. Ultimately, team performance is dependent on leadership, culture, behaviors. The context really, I think people overstate the value of having had to work in the industry that they're in.

It's relatively easy to understand that. I think it's more important to be able to understand people. So I became interested in effectively in leadership, in taking the skills that I learned in the military and coaching leaders and helping them to improve the performance of their people. Because fundamentally, that's what I enjoyed most about being in the Marines helping others to get better. I've got a real sort of kick out of that. So if you could take some of the values that were common in the armed forces and import them into the business world or some of the elements, what would be some of the things

that you would take across? Would you have iron shirts and shiny shoes? I would take the standards. I wouldn't necessarily have the the dress code. Yeah, but the standards are a really interesting one because I think you know what you're willing to accept in terms of standards of performance, standards of behaviour is really important because that sort of sets the tone for your organisation. I've already talked about the accountability, I'd absolutely take that, that would be is the sort of leadership view that you are there to improve the performance of your people. I think so often in organisations people get promoted to a leadership position because they're good at doing stuff and what that does is it reinforces the mindset of the doer.

And actually what I try and work with people to change is that it's not about you doing things now, it's about that group over there, it's about spending time improving the performance of the team. You have been promoted because you're good at playing the instrument, but now you've got to conduct the orchestra, to stop playing the instrument. It's a totally different way of thinking. And I think organisations generally don't do a very good job of it. They sort of promote people and then kind of expect them to sort of get on with it.

And that's the sort of problem or that's the issue that I hope to address in some small way. Really because if I work with someone relatively early in their career and I make them like 5% better at leading people. That has an impact not just on their current team, but all the people that they work with for the rest of their life. And that is in some small way going to contribute towards making the world

a better place, and that's why I do it. I think you're right. I recently spoke to Benjamin Denahee, who is the UK's most hated sales trainer. And he was talking about when he goes into sales companies and a lot of the time they will have a good salesman, really, they know top performer, they think right time to move this person up, they give him a promotion, they make him a team leader, and they lose a good salesman and gain a shit manager.

And yeah, it's that going from doer to enabler. Yeah, I think that's how I think, I see that sales classic, absolutely classic. And the organization often people, sometimes people have said to me, you know what, I was much happier when I was just doing the selling. And I'm like, that's okay.

You need to, I think not everyone, management isn't right for everyone. Leadership isn't necessarily right for everyone. I think you kind of have to ask the individual, look, do you want to just, do you want to pay rise or do you want to team? Yeah, so you can negotiate yourself, I just say, look, I just think I want more money.

Like I'm the best seller on the floor, the best seller on the team, the best, on the team, the best whatever. Like, yeah, and there is, there's a, because we are our jobs now, so much. There is this desire for natural progression, this sense that if you're not moving up within the organization, but unfortunately, I think a lot of the skills that make someone a good member of staff don't necessarily translate up to being a good manager. But one of the difficulties that I see and a lot of the listeners might be able to see this within their own organizations as well is that respect tends to be emergent, not dictated within an organization. So if you just import some manager

who's never worked in fucking Uranium before, and he's got some classical history degree and was just shooting pirate a couple of years ago, like why should I listen to this schmo like talking about, you know, he doesn't, he's not been at the cold face. He's not, you know, earned his keep, he's not done this that and the other.

And you, the problems that a good leader and a good manager within an organization has to get past, like these sort of invisible hurdles or steps that you need to climb. It's like you need to be able to get the respect of people sometimes without having earned it by coming up through the system. Then you need to actually have good the system, then you need to actually

have good leadership skills, then you need to be able to get them to listen to you, then direction accountability, it's challenging. It doesn't surprise me that we have dysfunction within organizations. Yeah, and I think it's a real shame, it's a real waste of potential. Potential for those individuals in those jobs, potential for those people in those leadership positions. You know, most people, and I haven't got the sort of statistics to hand, but you know, it's well known that most people don't like what they do for a living. 85% of people are either non-plus or actively disengaged with their job.

It's only 15% of people, this is US data, 15% of people who are actively engaged with the profession that they have. I mean, fuck, that's a waste of potential. Like, you know, that is a real waste. And there's no other word for it, you know. And I think one of the things that, you know, I've realized about myself is I don't like inefficiency,

I don't like waste. I was really startled by your observation of, you know, you hang on a set, you take 50% of what's useful out of the chicken and you just chuck away the rest, you know. When I think about from an efficiency point of view, I'm like, fuck, that's awful. You know, it drives me mad.

Because that's something that could benefit someone else. It's just that inefficiencies are real shame. And I think that's kind of one of the reasons I said of what our home I own decided to sort of start this was because there's so much of it. And it's so often, you know, the solution is offered by someone that believes that leadership can be summarized in three, you know, acronyms. You know, it's about being, you know, responsible

or courageous and accountable. And I'm just like, no, because if you're telling me it's all about empowerment, I will find a context of where it doesn't work. So, for example, if you were to say to me, look, Rod, leadership is fundamentally all about empowerment. I'd say, yeah, 90% of the time I agree with you. That's true. But if you and me were crossing the road together and we saw someone in front of us get hit by a car and had their legs taken off, the last thing you want me to do is turn around and she'd go, because you want to call an ambulance now, she'd think that's the right thing to do. It's totally inappropriate, right? It's a totally inappropriate way of behaving.

And I think that, you know, if I'm to mention, that's what leadership is. It's all about behavior. You don't get to decide whether you're a good leader or not. Other people do. That's one of the paradoxes of it. And it requires good judgment. It requires, you know, a clear sense of who you are,

what you're good at, what you're not good at. It's a very broad subject. requires a clear sense of who you are, what you're good at, what you're not good at. It's a very broad subject. I don't pretend to be an expert. I hate it when people say, oh, you're a leech. I'm learning more about it. But if I assume I'm an expert, if I assume I'm in any thing like that, it creates the conditions for complacency and I don't want to do that.

You're gonna have that learners mind, I think, with things like this. And it would appear that you're importing some effective strategies, right? Some structures and processes from your past life, life lives that are really gonna be beneficial. But on the flip side of that, like again, new on subtlety,

individual situations that we come up against, all that sort of stuff. You said earlier on about how, when you were in the armed forces, you would never have to kind of like pull rank on someone or use your title. It's like, because I'm your commanding officer, like if you have to say that because I'm your commanding officer line, it's like you've kind of lost. But how many times do you have this almost parent and child situation that I've seen in within organizations and businesses and even been a part of it myself, right? It's like, mate, because I'm telling you to, like, I don't want to have to pull that pin. I don't want to have to use that line, but, you know, ineffective leadership, misaligned

values, someone being in a position that they don't want. And for anyone who's listening, you know, who might be in a managerial position and thinking, my fuck, you know, well, I've got to pull that pin all the time. I need to, you know, like crank the handle really hard on all of my staff to get them to go, you know, from a compassionate side, we've just given you the statistic that 85% of people are either essentially non-plussed or actively disengaged with their jobs.

85% of the people that you are trying to manage, potentially 100% because I don't know how that skews. The top 15 might actually be all people in like top end positions or whatever. All the people that you're speaking to, a big majority of them, don't give a shit, but they actually genuinely do not give a shit about what it is that you're telling them and you're trying to get into work every single day and try and make this more efficient and do do do do do do do do do do do must be a terrible manager must really be a really bad leader I just can't get the team to listen

to you I can't get them to buy into what I'm doing you know how to try and give them the processes and give them the structures and give them the support and then it just I get nothing back yeah it's it's astonishingly common it's again, it's really sad. I mean, you ask people like, you ask people and they say, you know, how well do you know your people? How well do you know your team? Are there, yeah, I know, and reason of you are. It's like, okay.

Do you know where they were born? Do you know where they grew up? Do you know what school they went to? Do you know where they went to university? What did they study? What did they do on their weekends? What did they do with their disposable income? Have they got children?

What are their names? How old are they? No. Right, but then you don't know your people. And if you don't know them, you can't pull those levers in order to manage them and sort of stoke the fires of their ambition or their drive. But equally, if you don't know them, the unwritten message or the underlying message

is that you don't give a shit about them. That's what they think, that's what they feel. Now they may never ever tell you that, but that's the reality of it. So it's a really easy talk about practical takeaways. Sit down with your team and say, look, I just want to get to know you. So this might sound a bit invasive, don't ask or anything you're not comfortable with, but those kind of questions. And if you say that your team is too big because you've got eight or ten people I did it with thirty people every single time

Because if you don't do that the unwritten messages, you don't give a fuck about them And it would be really important like you know speaking to Marie Do you want to be the next regimental Sergeant Major or do you want to do four years? Get a skill get a trade and then punch out the answer is fine do you want to be the next regimental Sergeant Major or do you want to do four years, get a skill, get a trade and then punch out. The answer is fine, either one is fine, but help me so that I can help you in managing your career and using work that comes across my desk to help you move in that direction. So it's a really simple example, we'd have to do troop circuits. I want to be a PTI, that's what I want to be in the Royal Mar direction. So it's a really simple example. We'd have to do troop circuits.

I want to be a PTI. That's what I want to be in the romaries. OK, you're going to start running a couple of circuits a week. I'm going to give you feedback on them. And then at the end of the year, I can write you up and say, you understand the principles of exercise. You've added some really inventive stuff to this. Hasn't just been the usual kind of circuit, they've been fun,

they've been interactive. I can set you off on that course. I can't do that unless I know what that individual wants to do. So I'm really surprised that when people don't know that stuff. It's interesting that friendships are often built around vulnerability,

tend to say that the best friendships that you have are the ones where you or the other person can tell each other something that in the wrong hands would be catastrophic to the way that other people see you. And that you bond around something, which actually isn't necessarily to do with friendship. It's kind of like outside of that realm of friendship. And when it comes to leadership and managing people, a lot of the time you don't bond and the deepest connections that you have don't come

to do with anything to do with work, because work just gets you through the door. It's like if you don't turn up on time and do the job that you're paid for, you're sacked. Like you fuck off. Like that is what gets you a seat at the table. What actually starts putting food on the plate is to do with Well, you know, why you like going to the gym? I like going to the gym

Why don't we do that? Hey, man? Like I brought you a coffee in the smile. Hey, man. Did you watch you? Don't fuck with cats on Netflix or like did you know? I mean like that. That's what and I say a lot of the time to the guys So I run a nightclub business. So we have 400 staff that work for us. I have eight to 14 managers who are young guys and girls, you know, between the age of 19 and 22, 23, and they have a team of 30 to 60 people below them who've never worked for anyone before. They've just been let go by mummy and daddy.

They partied a lot and we're trying to fill nightclubs. That's what we're doing. It is the most chaotic environment for a leader to try and come into and these guys haven't led shit. They've literally just got let go by their mum and their dad. Maybe I'm about to bring on, this is gonna go out after I promote them,

so it doesn't really matter. I'm gonna bring on four new guys this week. I'm sitting down with them in two days time and these kids came to university. One of the lads is from America. He can't even drink back home and I'm going to ask him to start recruiting and managing a team. But one of the first things that I tell the guys to do is like, look, if you want to get your team to buy into you as a person and to do the thing that you want them to do, like, look, if you want to get your team to buy into you as a person and to do the thing that they that you want them to do, bond about anything that isn't to do with work. As soon as you start talking to them about, even if it's just what's your favorite

drink, things that are analogous to work, it's like, oh, well, that's cool. Like, why don't we go out for a drink, then you can roll that into going out to one of our events. You know, that's on the side of things. Let's say that you're doing a fitness business. Why don't we go to the gym? Let's say that you're doing you're in filmmaking or like day trip, whatever it might be, like taking an interest in someone and everything that isn't work pays disproportionate dividends because they categorize anything that is to do with work. They immediately lump it under like one type of communication. It's like, oh, I might as well, even if it was a WhatsApp message, it might as well be fucking email. But as soon as you shift it out of that and you think, well, this person actually cares about me, that's where, and that's

that analogy between sort of that and vulnerability. It's like friendship actually gets built around something which has got fuck all to do with friendship. And a lot of the good relationships that I've had, best relationships I've had with my staff that have worked for me over the years, have had absolutely nothing to do with what we've achieved at work. The achievements at work have come of a byproduct of the things that we've done outside of it. It is a difficult line to get that right. So the way I've kind of thought about it is you very early leading a group people have to work out the difference between being friendly and friends because if they become your friend and your best mate where you're going out together and you know, you know, chat

and up girls and going out on the pitch together do whatever young people do this day. The next day like they don't turn up to work, you need to have a performance management conversation with that individual. You need to be able to say, that's unacceptable. And I think that knowing the boundary, I think you only know the boundary once you've kind of got it wrong or once you've overstepped it with someone and you've become friends with someone and you're like, yeah, do you know what? That was a really difficult person to have performance management conversations with and maybe they exploited our friendship a little bit to kind of get away with some poor performance. That's a tough one.

When you pull that pin as well, when you do the, mate, we need to have a chat. When you do that, it, you watch the walls of the friendship fall down as well, because sometimes people might have thought, I thought I was getting special dispensation here, I thought that we were mates, and it doesn't stop the fact that we're not mates. It's not to do with the fact that I'm not friendly, but you are right. The waters get very muddied very fast. And in a business that's maybe a little bit more bureaucratic than the one like I was, the world of clad promo literally is the Wild West.

In a more typical business organization, people need to, they need to draw some incredibly bright lines about what is and is not sort of acceptable, friend behavior as well, I suppose. Yeah, and I think that's something that is probably slightly more unique to your industry, but each industry kind of has its own lines on what's acceptable. I think provided within your organization, your leadership is clear on what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, and then they all live in line entirely with what is acceptable all

the time that's fine. It doesn't matter where you draw the line. What matters is that there is a line everyone's clear on what that line is and there are consequences when you step by the side of it. So I could be, you know, as a sort of young group come under in the Marines, I could get as hammered as I want, I could be it up till sort of five o'clock in the morning, you know, in the center of Tornton, which is where I was based, doing whatever I wanted to do. But at 8.30 I needed to be clean, shave and showered, and in front of my guys, ready to do troop fizz. Now if I was absolutely suffering and as we went for a run, I, you know, I was sick.

Obviously you don't want to do that every day. Weirdly, I would earn a sort of probably an element of respect for doing that. But if you'd slept in, your company commander would come and kick you to order. Like, this is, you would get that. You'd find that consequence real fast. That was totally unacceptable. And again, it's like it's one of those that's that part of the way part of the culture for what that organization was. That work really well there might not work well, ever else, but it doesn't really matter. Everyone was clear on the expectation and the standard. Got you. Rod, man, this has been awesome. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Now I've really enjoyed it too. Great, great conversation. So leadership forces, where can people go to find out more? Yeah, so leadershipforces.com is my website, as with all websites, as with me, it's a work in progress. I do most of my sort of thinking on written form on there, but I'm an open connector on LinkedIn.

So don't bother personalizing the message. It'll be nice if you said you listen to this podcast because then I'd know where it came from, but just hit me up with a sort of connection request, I'll always accept, and always willing to have a chat with people who think maybe I can help them out, whether that's people from a commercial perspective, but equally anyone that is looking to resettle out of the military I know how difficult that journey is and I'll always give people the time it might not be this week it might not be next week but I'll always make time for a fun call for anyone that wants it. Rod awesome man thank you very much you know what to do ladies and gentlemen like share and subscribe links to

what we've talked about today will be in the show notes below but for now thanks for your time man. Thank you.