Lessons From Afghanistan & Capturing Somali Pirates | Roderic Yapp | Modern Wisdom Podcast 133

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 - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If we got into a firefight and some civilians got injured, we would allow them to come into the base, we'd patch them up and we'd give them US dollars. And so it's sort of a really kind of blunt compensation tool. And this was kind of when I really early on learnt that lesson of be very careful what you measure and the way in which you incentivise people. Because after a while, we started to get the same girl coming in over and over again. And the boss sort of sat us down and said, you know, you guys haven't been in a firefight. There's been no contact in the area in the last few days. I'm right in thinking that. I was like, yeah, 100%, nothing, no fights with the Taliban. Okay. So why is this girl coming in with fresh gunshot wounds? On close inspection, we realised that they're not

• 0:44Speaker 00

  556 rounds, they're 762. So it's not our, it's unlikely to be our weapon systems that are causing these. And what we found out was that this girl's 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. A, it's an accident of history to be born in the UK and how lucky I am. And B, I don't understand this place.

• 1:23Chris Williamson?

  I'm joined by Roderick Yap, former Royal Marines officer, now moved into business. So we're going to be talking about some of your background today, also about how that's translated across into this new, the new world that you've stepped into, one that's even more dangerous, even more vicious than the one that you were in before. Roderick, welcome to the show.

• 1:43Speaker 00

  Thanks very much, Chris. Very happy to be here.

• 1:45Chris Williamson?

  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?

• 1:53Speaker 00

  So my first career was as an officer of the Royal Marines. I left university in two thousand and three, two thousand and four, struggling to remember now, really with an aspiration to do sort of something completely different. And I remember there are a number of reasons that sort of, you know, caused me to go down that route, but fundamentally it really was sort of seeking a challenge and trying to do something that was different. And I found in life that, you know, if you, 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, that's what I chose to do. So I joined up in two thousand and five. I served for seven years. I was lucky enough to go to Afghanistan,

• 2:36Speaker 00

  got civilians out of Libya in two thousand and eleven during the Arab Spring, and then towards the end of my time, specialised in counter piracy and did a couple of tours off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean. So I had an absolutely fantastic time. Left when I turned thirty for a sort of number of reasons, primarily kind of 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.

• 3:05Chris Williamson?

  Why did you say fortunate enough to go to Afghanistan?

• 3:10Speaker 00

  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. You know, we were going, 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 and then frankly done a sort of series of exercises or prepared for a war that wasn't going to happen. You know, within twelve months of passing out of training, I was being shot at and being tested in a really hostile, dividing environment. So I consider myself lucky to have been there, done that, but also survived it and come out the other side.

• 3:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that. There's not many people I know that would have said lucky for being selected to be shot at in Afghanistan.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  It's it's a sort of slightly strange way of looking at it, but I mean, there are a number of people that, you know, that I sort of work with even now, sort of former Royal Marines officers, you know, who joined the the Corps in the sort of nineties and and didn't and weren't lucky enough to kind of experience that, you know, they were maybe going to Ireland, uh, which wasn't as 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 to go and experience it. And and I was lucky like that.

• 4:35Chris Williamson?

  So talk me through what it's like coming out of university, because I had a bunch of friends as well who were in O T C when they were at uni, um, Officer Training Corps, and they had the potential, oh, maybe I'll go Sandhurst, maybe I'll do whatever. What's it like being a student and, you know, going out on the lash a few nights a week, like most of the people that all of us know if we went to uni with them and oh, 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?

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Um, yeah, about that. Um, although for some it was much shorter, um, because of the way the rotations worked. Uh, guys joined up as civilians in August two thousand and five, and by Christmas two thousand and six, they were on the front line, leading thirty guys.

• 5:24Chris Williamson?

  Shit the bed.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  And I was like, like, you know, you look at every other grad scheme, right? You look at what P W C, Deloitte, all these other companies off year. You tell me one, right? It gives you fifteen months of leadership training in some fairly demanding circumstances, and your first job is line managing thirty people in combat. I was like, there's there's no one that offers any level of development anywhere near that.

• 5:50Chris Williamson?

  That's an interesting analogy, a way a way to draw it across. Yeah, you would, I mean, I had, again, one of my, the housemate that actually was in the O T C, J T. Um, he went straight out of uni at twenty one and did the, uh, Aldi graduate scheme. Uh, 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 fifteen months later.

• 6:13Speaker 00

  True, it's uh, but if you think of it like that, you know, if you think of, you know, when you're in your twenties, you've got an opportunity to take risk. You know, because frankly, you haven't been playing the game long enough for it really to matter. So, you know, even if you join the army, you join the Marines, you decide it's not for you. You can always join a graduate scheme twelve months later. You know, you're not going to be significantly behind anyone over the course of a forty, fifty year career, or whatever that is. So, yeah, I, I, I was, I loved it. You know, I look back on it being proud to have served. Uh, 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. There's strengths, I think sometimes limitations to that. Um, but I wouldn't change a single thing about it.

• 6:59Chris Williamson?

  Do you think some form of conscription or some form of more encouraged sign up would be useful for a lot of people? A lot of young people now?

• 7:08Speaker 00

  So I wouldn't, I'm not a believer in uh, any form of sort of conscription. I, 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, 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, they really talk about their national service.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  And in that instance, that is military. But they talk about it with a real sort of sense of pride and they hugely value the skills and the change in perspective that they get from it. Um, so it doesn't have to be military, but I do think that some form of sort of, you know, voluntary or military or you, you, you would get to choose an avenue to go down. I think that would be genuinely a good thing.

• 8:13Chris Williamson?

  The people that I know that are in, the nurses, the doctors, that are working in healthcare, that are working in the law enforcement in across the world, all of these, all of these people have a perspective that I think unfortunately, those of us who have only ever worked in an office or, you know, run our own business or been an entrepreneur, like I think that I have a good perspective on the world because I've travelled to different places to go and like have a party holiday. I don't know, I haven't met the locals of, you know, Afghanistan. I haven't really, I've been to, I've stepped foot in that direction once and it was Dubai. Like that's not, that's not a representative example of what that area of the world's like.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  And I think, you know, that any, any perspective is useful. The more extreme you can go to, the more sort of you realise kind of how lucky that you are. When I, so when I was in Afghanistan in two thousand and seven, 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'd patch them up and we'd give them US dollars. And so it's sort of, sort of a really kind of blunt compensation tool. And this was kind of when I really early on learnt that lesson of be very careful what you measure and the way in which you incentivise people. Because after a

• 9:39Speaker 00

  while, we started to get the same girl coming in over and over again. And the boss sort of sat us 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. I was like, yeah, a hundred per cent, nothing, no fights with the Taliban. So, okay. So why is this girl coming in with fresh gunshot wounds? On closer inspection, we realised that they're not five, five, six rounds, they're seven, six, two. So it's not our, it's unlikely to be our weapon systems that are causing these. And what we found out was that this girl's family were effectively shooting her, bringing her in and using as a cash cow to make money. And then when we realised the game

• 10:23Speaker 00

  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,

• 10:33Speaker 00

  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 around how someone can make that decision. Um, and I, I, I think the most, the, the, 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 will probably kick back on some of these things that I say, but I think that this is, I, I think of things in, in terms of, is it useful or, or, or not so much?

• 11:18Speaker 00

  And I think of Afghanistan frankly, as a country much like the Middle Ages. Think of Britain, you know, 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, that's just the way it is. It's just that level of development. It's more like travelling back in time than it is like travelling to a different part of the world. Um, so yeah.

• 11:45Chris Williamson?

  What a story, man, wow. I, I, you're right, I have no values that I can extrapolate out.

• 11:56Chris Williamson?

  I have no working model of human nature, human behaviour, that I can expand to make that story make sense.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  E- exactly. And then so, right, so now, if that's the context that you're faced with, now effectively deliver a change programme. Fast track eight hundred years worth of development inside four to six years.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  That's the scale of a task. And and you just realise that, you know, you go there for six months and and you just can't really get your head around 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.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  And try and have some sort of impact there. It's just a different planet.

• 12:52Chris Williamson?

  Have you reflected on why it is so different? Is it just emergent? 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?

• 13:11Speaker 00

  I haven't read it, but I think something, you know, like prisoners of geography probably shines a bit of a sort of view on that. Afghan is 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, you know, inward outward migration that say, you know, 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 even things as simple as someone was saying to me, you know, animals that you're able to domesticate, you know, we take that for granted in Europe, but that has had a significant impact on on how we've been able to fight,

• 13:53Speaker 00

  effectively, you know, move, you know, you take something like a horse, right? We take horses for granted in Europe and sort of this part of the world, they're sort of fairly, they're able to kind of survive here. But, you know, you take something like a zebra and a zebra can't be tamed. So, you know, how that has an impact, I kind of don't know. But I suspect it's kind of 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.

• 14:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  You know, all these kind of things.

• 14:39Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting to talk about the cosmopolitan sort of thing. I don't see any students saying, I'm gonna go and do my gap year in like Baghdad, or no, they're not sending themselves over there. So it is, and then bizarrely, there's two sides to it, right? There's part of me that wants to look at that story and say, what fucking savages, 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

• 15:23Chris Williamson?

  they had and gifting them wealth in that they would never ever be able to access themselves? Like, oh, well, maybe it's a little bit more, again, I just have no, I have no way to frame that.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  I mean, I think it's, it's, it's really, so if we, if we stick with that kind of, if we view it as a sort of different time zone, you know, 800 years prior or something, something akin to that kind of era, you, you sort of move past, I guess you kind of, it becomes easier to sort of move past judgment. You know, 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. And 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, where the sort of founding fathers

• 16:18Speaker 00

  maybe had some differing views on slavery, you know, and people are like, oh, this is really bad.

• 16:24Chris Williamson?

  George Washington owned slaves and like.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, we've got to, we've got to raise them from history. And I'm like, well, hang on a sec. If if the subsequent generations judge the past and the behaviour 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 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 you sat there with your grandchild and they turn around and go, I can't believe that you used to do that.

• 16:56Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  What are they going to be talking about? And I've no idea, really.

• 17:00Chris Williamson?

  I think it'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 did, you you threw away fifty percent of every chicken, all of the chicken breeds that you made literally just into a meat grinder. I'm not a vegetarian

• 17:41Chris Williamson?

  or a vegan, but I've spent time around some ones that are terrifyingly clever and I'm kind of drinking the Kool-Aid at least a little bit from them. But yeah, like, you you did what you just, they were born and then taken away from their mum so that their 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 twenty twenty 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 like, yes, but it wasn't now, it was then. And now is now, and in the future, it won't be now either.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 18:53Chris Williamson?

  No, especially with the frictionless communication which we've got, you know, like if if Kevin Hart can get borderline cancelled, the hardest working, one of the best, the best paid comedian on the planet, if he can get borderline cancelled for a tweet that was a decade ago, like,

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:11Chris Williamson?

  None of us are safe.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Which he's apologised for countlessly.

• 19:15Chris Williamson?

  Which you like, no, what the, what do you think the the store manager at Asda? Or, you know, the the guy in the military, you know, what what do you think the the Marines officer now, oh, like, he's had Facebook since he was ten or twelve or whenever you're allowed to get it or something like that. Fuck me, like, it's so, I'm just, I'm glad that I didn't have social media until I was at least borderline an adult, because I would have been, I'd have been making mistakes all over the place. And you're right, like,

• 19:46Chris Williamson?

  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, 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 bigot, racist, homophobe, transphobe, xenophobe, da, da, da, da, da, da, you know what 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, that can then get taken out of context. And obviously, the people that are that are in these positions of public renown, there's even, the stakes are even higher for them.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I completely agree. I mean, I think people. People assume that just because you say something, it's a kind of clearly articulated, you know, carefully thought through.

• 20:42Chris Williamson?

  Window into your soul.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  Thought, and it's just not. I mean, I haven't got a script in front of me, neither have you.

• 20:47Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  We're having a conversation. So I don't really know what's going to come out next. And there's a risk that comes with that.

• 20:54Chris Williamson?

  A little bit.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  But that's part of it, right? That's part of it.

• 20:58Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, you're very right. So I want to, I want to find out about the fact that you were a pirate hunter. Tell us about, tell us about being a pirate hunter.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  So piracy was really interesting, actually. I did my first tour off the coast of Somalia in late 2010, and I was the intelligence 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, it's not the same as Islamic fundamentalism. Fundamentally, this is a business model for them. And the moment they feel that they cannot, the, the, the risk outweighs the reward, they'll sort of pull back and they won't do it anymore.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  So I went off to, so 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, or 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 state's really choppy, it's like driving fast on a very bumpy road. You trash the boats, you can't get up to the sort of full speed. Whereas the big stuff, because it frankly doesn't really have any impact on that,

• 22:35Speaker 00

  they can just charge straight through it and basically outrun the small boats.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  So again, a couple of tours off the coast there, arresting and interdicting pirates who claimed that they were fishermen, despite the fact that we'd sort of have a 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.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Again, really. A really interesting tour that both of them were that sort of 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, you know, because I know, no, no, this happened obviously quite a while ago. And basically you can sort of see my forearm there. What this guy had was, I'd say probably about a ten, ten 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.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  It had just been sort of wrapped up. He clearly had some antibiotics pumped into him and he'd survived it. And I remember saying to my Marines, you know, like, guys, you, you can, you bitch and moan when there isn't, you know, a second dessert on the ship. This guy has been shot through the wrist. He's clearly survived it and now he's got this sort of permanent injury. And again, you sort of realise 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 of this country, actually,

• 24:18Speaker 00

  go and wander around Somalia, you know, go to sort of some far east 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 history thing, you know, if your family's larger on the line, your values change very, very quickly around what you are willing to do and what you're not willing to do.

• 24:43Speaker 00

  And again, yeah, another, another great experience. Yeah, off the coast of Somalia, was lucky enough to recapture a pirated vessel as well, which was, yeah, which was a good experience.

• 24:53Chris Williamson?

  Wow, I want to hear about that in a second, but one of the, 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. And I wonder how many of the people who have civility and tolerance and all the rest of it as their frontline of personality and how they identify. I wonder how long that would stay if it was dog eat dog.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  It'd be very interesting to find out. I mean, the number of people that said to me, you know, I would never be able to kill someone. And you're 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, necks. 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 sort of studies around evil, the sort of various experiments that have been done, context and

• 26:09Speaker 00

  the way the environment shapes our behaviour 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 that got out of 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, 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.

• 26:45Chris Williamson?

  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 with her jaw hanging off or her mother or father is purely by roll 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

• 27:28Chris Williamson?

  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's wisdom. Like, one thing, one counter argument to myself, and 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 jaw 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

• 28:12Chris Williamson?

  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, if I, it's no 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 standards of the Somali pirates, but where you are, when you are.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  No, I completely agree with that. But I think you're right with your starting point, which has to be a sense of, do 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, and you just have to look at the data, you know, any, any data, you know, if you look at sort of infant mortality, literacy, violence against.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  Women and girls, all of that is getting a hell of a lot better. Um, so ripping apart the system and throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I I don't agree. I think actually it is about sort of incremental, steady change.

• 29:35Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 29:35Speaker 00

  You know, we have a welfare state and this a welfare system in this country. That's a good thing. Um, I don't think that many people take advantage of it. Um, others might disagree with me, but by and large, I think it is a it's a great thing that we have that and that we're able to pay for that.

• 29:49Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  Um, that's that hasn't previously existed.

• 29:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  That's a relatively recent invention.

• 29:55Chris Williamson?

  Wasn't it the, I think the U N had the the a target of halving world poverty within, I think it was forty years and they did it within like twenty five or something. And the change in when uh poverty across the world, people that were living below that particular, which I think is actually only about four thousand, I think it's about four thousand dollars a year. Is

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:19Chris Williamson?

  Is it around about the the barrier for that? And they hit it within essentially half the time or like two thirds of the time.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, it's it is 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.

• 30:36Chris Williamson?

  How do you, what I was trying to do with my second analogy there was, how do we hold two 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.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 30:53Chris Williamson?

  Whilst we can be better. How do we hold those two things in our mind at the same time?

• 31:01Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't think they're 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.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  I'm really thankful for everything I've got, you know, two healthy children, you know, a wife that loves me. Um, and a business that is, that frankly, like, is work that I love doing and I'm really enjoy it. Like, I've, I'm, 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.

• 31:38Speaker 00

  You know, largely happy about, but that doesn't mean that I feel I've achieved everything I want to. Um, I still have a sort of really strong drive and a desire to, I guess, improve the situation for other people.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Or improve the status quo. I, I get uncomfortable.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  I get uncomfortable when

• 32:05Speaker 00

  people give me really nicely, you know, refined, you know, 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. Um, and I'm kind of happy with that. Um, 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, I think that you can hold those two, two things in your mind.

• 32:42Chris Williamson?

  It comes back to nuances as well, though, doesn't it? What we were talking about before. You've got to be able to have that subtlety in your conversation and to be allowed to play with ideas. Because it's, you know, we're, we're trying to work something out here. You know, your kids 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, 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. These things are challenging and I think it's a, there's a lot of laziness that comes from people who want to be able to just put a single, a tweet length.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:25Chris Williamson?

  Like conclusion to whatever it is, or, you know, back from that even more and just a label, like a single word.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's what the trouble, that's one of the problems is that I think, you know, everyone wants the executive summary.

• 33:39Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  You know, I don't, I don't want to know the working out. I don't know how you got to the answer. I want the executive summary. I want the Twitter answer.

• 33:46Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  And it's like, yeah, but there's, there's no depth. There's no understanding there. Um, there's no ability to adjust a way of looking at things depending on that context. The world is a really, really complicated place. Um, and I think just reminding ourselves that the, the rule just grappling with trying to understand it a little bit better. Trying to understand ourselves and other people. Um. Uh, I, yeah, I think being comfortable with that, being, being comfortable with uncertainty is a kind of key skill in the modern world.

• 34:22Chris Williamson?

  Taking that across to the armed forces and the way that that works, obviously the, the whole reason that you have a um 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, right?

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 34:48Chris Williamson?

  How, is there a mindset change that happens when people join? You know, let's say that someone comes in and someone has this particular worldview, which is very, very complex. And then they need to kind of, they're 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 is. Do you watch people change sort of when they join and they potentially go from one type of person to another?

• 35:15Speaker 00

  Um, I think there are certain, so the, the military is far less command and control than people think it is.

• 35:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  So a lot of the time you get this view that it's all about, you know, you are told what to do.

• 35:27Chris Williamson?

  Yes, sir.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yes, sir. No, sir. All of that kind of thing. The kind of, you know, full 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?

• 36:13Speaker 00

  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, this is what I want you to achieve. This is the end state that I've 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,

• 36:58Speaker 00

  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. Um, 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 in any way. I'm left to kind of work it all out.

• 37:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I've been thinking a lot recently about the, um.

• 37:36Chris Williamson?

  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

• 37:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:47Chris Williamson?

  where you are going. And you need to be accountable to someone if you don't go in that direction.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 37:53Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  A hundred percent. And I the accountability thing, you know, when people say, what's the one thing you miss about the organisation? It's like, it is a hundred percent 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 or my sergeants to do something, it was absolutely going to 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.

• 38:46Speaker 00

  And, you know, if it was something really simple, like, you know, I needed to book a hire car to go and have a look at a range. You know, someone would say to me, okay, so where is it you're going? Oh, I'm going over to this place in, you know, Castle Martin on the edge of Wales. Okay. So what I'll do is I'll book a hire car and I'll get it to come to your house the night before so you can leave early. I'll make sure there's one of those, this is back in the day when there was 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. It's like, like hundred percent so much more accountable. You know, by seeking an understanding of right, 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?

• 39:28Chris Williamson?

  Is that partly due to the common purpose?

• 39:32Speaker 00

  I think it's more to do with the common understanding of you're like me, you're one of us. You know, you wear Royal Marines Commando, you know, on the side of your shirt, you wear the green beret.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  I'm here to help you be successful and vice versa. And I mean, it's unbelievable what can be achieved when 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.

• 40:08Chris Williamson?

  Is 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?

• 40:18Speaker 00

  I think so. I think generally speaking, the people that don't look out for others, the people that don't

• 40:27Speaker 00

  adhere to the values, you know, of the Royal 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 in 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.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  People will find you out, people will say something that comes back to that accountability point of view. People will say, you know, I know that you think you're you're pretty awesome, but I see you, you're a selfish bloke. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold you to account for that, I'm gonna 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 weight.

• 41:19Chris Williamson?

  The stakes are much higher as well, you know, it's not, it's not just that person, that same person who might be the guy that calls out the person who doesn't go and clean the big gun. In twenty years later, in corporate world, might actually let it slide. It'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, isn't it?

• 41:51Speaker 00

  It's, 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 an environment where the team does become, the team comes before your needs. You know, that's a really difficult thing to get your head around, 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. It's a hundred percent true.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  So, so yeah, I think, I think it's difficult to experience that and therefore it's difficult to recreate it.

• 42:33Chris Williamson?

  Right, let's get back to Somalia. I wanna, I wanna find out about the pirates. So first off, why, why is Somalia a hotbed for it? Was there just like some guy that was there that said, oh, this, this seems like a good business opportunity. We're in the right location. Or some fella just started selling boats and AK-47s?

• 42:52Speaker 00

  So, no, I think it's, 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, 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.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  And you've got these sort of various autonomous regions. So around Mogadishu is largely sort of quite chaotic. Al-Shabaab, ISIS, Islamic fundamentalists. North of that, you've got Puntland, which is slightly more.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  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. Um, 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, um, access to, to weapons, um. And, and fundamentally, yeah, uh, uh, you know, it's an opportunity. It is an opportunity that people have decided, yeah, we're gonna go, we're gonna go after this.

• 44:17Chris Williamson?

  The fact that you said it was a, it's a business, these people see it as a commercial enterprise was, there's really sort of, I don't know why. I, I, I don't know why I thought that it would be because of something else, some sort of distaste for the, the ships that were going by or something like that. It's just a, a opportunity to make profit.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  It's a business model. And I think, you know, the, the, you know, what? If you again come back to the sort of ratios and the numbers, you know, ten thousand dollars to them is more than they can expect to earn in their entire lifetimes. So, yeah, again, I haven't done the numbers, but call it a couple of million quid. What would, what would some of the 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. Um, for them, you know, again, it's life and death. It is literally, it can be as simple as that. You know, there is, there is almost no other way to provide for their families. So they choose to go and do this. Which again is, is why I, I won't judge them.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  Cause if I was born on that side of the world, would I be comfortable to pick up a rifle and go and fight my family? Well, I did it here, so probably.

• 45:30Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Do you think that, are there some of the pirates that you encountered that did it with glee?

• 45:38Speaker 00

  I don't.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  I don't think so, certainly not. With us, they were fairly contrite.

• 45:47Chris Williamson?

  I mean, they've been caught.

• 45:49Speaker 00

  But they've been caught.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  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 launches in a very kind of, I've got this. So fuck off, otherwise this is going to be a black hawk town. 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.

• 46:20Chris Williamson?

  Sophisticated as well.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, a lot like, you know, primitive, yes, but capable, definitely.

• 46:29Chris Williamson?

  What's their, what's their MO then? Talk me through how, how they go about trying to take down a ship.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  What they'll do is, um, you'll have maybe two, probably two small skiffs. Now, a skiff is twenty to thirty feet long speedboat with a pretty heavy motor on the back of it. As in something with probably fifty plus horsepower, something that can get up to sort of thirty 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.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  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's going into the prevailing weather, if it turns one way, it kind of creates a,

• 47:26Speaker 00

  it creates almost a calm area to one side. And what they'll do is they'll come up alongside, if there are no, if there's no barbed wire, I mean, it's literally a question of putting a ladder up. Uh, and climbing on board. Like the battle of Hastings or like some Lord of the Rings thing, like just. Yeah, not, not too similar to that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly that. Like it's a, it's a ladder straight over the side and then straight up. Um, so what they're looking for is, is a vessel with a low freeboard, so. A, a deck that's very close to the water, so that that, that is easy to do. Um, and they're looking for something without sort of any kind of countermeasures. If there are things like barbed wire running around the outside of the ship.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  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. Uh, 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, like, that's incredibly simple. Very, very innovative. Um, 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. Um, once they're on board, uh, they're going for, they're going for the bridge. The bridge is the control centre of the ship. They're going to try and get in there. Um, and they are going to, um, ultimately use violence and aggression to sort of take the thing over.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  They then take it into Somali territorial waters. They stick it in an anchorage, they contact the ship owner and they start ransoming. And that's basically how it works. Um, 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 fanatics, so they will, they won't. Uh, they won't go after ships that have people on board with weapons who are protecting them. Um, and particularly sort of high freeboard, there's a whole kind of risk criteria. Um, that, that, you know, that you can sort of look at. Um, I mean, once the ship's alongside, you know, those crew are in pretty, pretty dire straits because now they're looking at.

• 49:36Speaker 00

  We're not talking weeks here, we're normally talking months of negotiations to get the price down. Um, and then the sort of the the payment of the ransom, and that's generally what's done. Um, I think is largely a money drop in cash. Um, and that's it. They got off, take their money with them, go back to shore, ship goes on its way.

• 49:58Chris Williamson?

  Wow. So what, tell us about the particular incident that you had where you recaptured a vessel.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  So, um, the ship in question was a vessel called the MV Monte Cristo. Uh, is a fifty five, fifty five thousand tonne container ship, so a pretty big container ship. Um, had pirates on board, uh, 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, you can control the ship from the engine room, um, largely. So that was kind of the, the, the sort of the thing to do, lock everyone in there. Uh, and then, and just sort of keep everyone safe. Now, if the crew are isolated from the pirates.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  It's actually a relatively simple boarding because you don't have hostages mixed in with pirates.

• 50:52Chris Williamson?

  Shoot anyone that isn't in the engine room.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  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 sort of categories of a, of a boarding, and a level four is a hostage rescue, which is. Pi- you know, pirates are on board, they're in amongst the crew. That is a very difficult situation to, to sort of deal with, that's, you know, remit of special forces. We used to be able to deal with the 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.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  Fully, uh, black overalls, you know, dark sunglasses, helmets, body armour.

• 51:41Chris Williamson?

  Bad ass, say bad, say bad ass.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it was the best job I had. It was, it was just brilliant.

• 51:48Chris Williamson?

  Did you listen to ACDC pumping out the speakers on the way down? Is that, is that a thing that you can do?

• 51:54Speaker 00

  I feel I've, I've missed something there. I feel that, yeah, listening to some of that would have been, would have been pretty special.

• 51:59Chris Williamson?

  Some Brian Johnson pounding down on the, these Somali pirates and thinking, shit, Brian's here.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  I mean, they, they were, because of the, like, because, I mean, Marines are fairly big, physical, physical guys, covered in this kit with all this body armour. 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, if a guy, if you come across a guy who's sort of six foot five and, and built like a brick shit house in a pub, you are unlikely to startle him if, 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. You know, we would grip them, we would control them, um, we would, uh, put plastic cuffs on them as quickly as possible.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  They were not, we never, we never hurt any of them, but we were, 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, um, it's not aggressive, you're not trying to hurt them. Um, so, so, yeah, uh, we, um, we recaptured the vessel, released the crew. I remember going down into the engine room.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  And it was probably the only time in my career there 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 in Afghanistan very often, um, ever. Uh, there was this sort of overwhelming sense of, you know, gratitude and thanks. We then, because it was an Italian flagged vessels, the Italian, uh, government wanted to prosecute them. I think one of the first successful prosecutions for piracy in, in god knows how many years.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Uh. They got carted off to uh they got carted off to Rome. Uh. I went there and acted as a witness of the for the prosecution, which was fascinating.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Going into sort of one of these mafia style, you know, courtrooms with all the sort of, you know, uh uh rooms alongside where they could put all the sort of, you know, large numbers of mob bosses and I'm there, there's a sort of few pirates in there. Um. What I noticed interestingly again comes back to, you know, beware of your incentives. All of them had put on weight. So I was like, hang on a sec. We're gonna we're gonna send them to prison in Italy, and that's probably a better outcome for them.

• 54:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  The big left in Somalia.

• 54:30Chris Williamson?

  Eat better, nicer climate, more.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  Human rights, you know, and I don't get me wrong. I'm like, I'm 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? Um. So, yeah.

• 54:48Chris Williamson?

  Get the boat, couple of million quid, don't get them out, like, holiday at Rome.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, prison, prison in Rome.

• 54:55Chris Williamson?

  Do you know how much?

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Three, three meals a day.

• 54:57Chris Williamson?

  Do you know how much time they got?

• 54:59Speaker 00

  I I think it was sort of between fifteen and eighteen years, sort of in the sort of.

• 55:03Chris Williamson?

  Serious.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  In that kind of. Yeah, I mean, it it was. Yeah, they're not messing about. Um. But then I don't know what happens. I don't know what happens after that. Um. So did they get sent back? You know, that creates kind of another question. And this is part of the issue is that, you know, the the, you know, the government, NATO, Euro, you you know, Europe, we 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. And I think it's much quieter than, well, it certainly is much quieter,

• 55:43Speaker 00

  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 uh but certainly it's much quieter than it has been before.

• 55:52Chris Williamson?

  Was it a bit of a golden era or a hot, at least a hot era when sort of two thousand and ten ish and before then?

• 55:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, completely. Um.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  It was, yeah, the number of, the number of piratings, the number of attacks was escalating rapidly. Um, this was something that people didn't really know, you know, how to, how to deal with it. You know, the carriage of weapons, it's, the, life at sea is a lot of kind of grey areas. So, you know, let's say you bought, you bought some security guys in India with some rifles. And they get off in Djibouti, which is your kind of high risk area.

• 56:32Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Like, are there any implications around gun running then? Cause they're getting on with rifles again. So it becomes all, and, and I know that there have been people who've been really sort of caught out with this. Um, I believe actually rather unfortunately, there were still some British servicemen serving time in Mumbai when it, all of that kind of stuff went sort of south very quickly. Um, and, and again, it's, you know, it's, it's ungoverned space. You can't go out to those kind of places and, and sort of handle weapons and assume that it's kind of all okay. Um, cause it's, again, it's a, it's a dangerous and a, and a deeply, you know, complex and nuanced world out there.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  You know, you don't really know what's going on in those places. So I was never tempted by the maritime security world.

• 57:23Chris Williamson?

  Right, yeah.

• 57:26Chris Williamson?

  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, some, some areas of the world are living in is so drastically different from ours.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Oh, completely. And, you know, again, it's, it's, it's just, that's, I, I, 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 it will change the way you think and see the world. It will change the way you interact with people. Um it'll change, it'll change everything, everything about how you, how you think about human behaviour and that's a massively valuable lesson.

• 58:20Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. So you finished Catching Pirates and decided that you were going to go into the world of business and leadership?

• 58:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I I got some really good advice when I left, which was, you know, don't, 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. Um I worked for a company called Urenco based up in uh Cheshire. Really interesting environment, you know, I I did, I did a degree in ancient history, so I'm going to work in the nuclear industry, you know, no real concept of that. Um uh very safety critical culture. Um the words nuclear and accident don't go well together. Um and it's unacceptable to take any form of sort of personal risk in order to get the job done, whereas

• 59:12Speaker 00

  you know, my health and safety was a helmet and body armour and plenty of ammunition going into that world. That required a complete uh mindset change for me. Um but what I fundamentally realised was that, you know, it doesn't matter whether you're leading a team of Marines, uh leading a sports team, leading a business or leading a group of uranium enrichment technicians. Ultimately, team performance is dependent on leadership, culture, behaviours. The context really, I think people overstate the value of having had to work in the industry that they're in. Um it's relatively easy to understand that. I think it's more under, more important to be able to sort of understand people.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  So I sort of became interested in in effectively in leadership. Um in taking the skills that I learned in the military and sort of coaching leaders and helping them to sort of improve the performance of their people. Because fundamentally, that's what I enjoyed most about being in the Marines, uh helping others to get better. I got a real sort of kick out of that.

• 1:00:14Chris Williamson?

  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?

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  Um, I would take the standards. I wouldn't necessarily have the.

• 1:00:35Chris Williamson?

  The dress code.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, but the sta- standards are a really interesting one because I think, you know, what you,

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  what you're willing to accept um in terms of standards of performance, standards of behaviour, uh is really important because that sort of sets the tone for your organisation. Um, I've already talked about the accountability. I'd absolutely take that. That would be invaluable in any organisation because you'd be able to just get so much more done. Um, I think the key thing that I would take 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.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  And actually, what I try and work with people to change is that you're, 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. Um, 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. Um, 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

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  and I make them like five percent 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.

• 1:02:20Chris Williamson?

  I, I think you're right. I recently spoke to Benjamin Dennehy, who is the UK's most hated sales trainer. And he was talking about um 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, it's 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.

• 1:02:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Chris Williamson?

  Um, and yeah, it's that going from doer to enabler.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I think that's I see that sales classic, absolutely classic and the organisation. Often people, yeah, sometimes people have said to me, do you know what? I was much happier when I was just doing the selling. And I'm like, that's, 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, do you want to just? Do you want a pay rise or do you want a team?

• 1:03:17Chris Williamson?

  Um, yeah, because you can negotiate, you can negotiate yourself high and just say, look, I just think I want more money. Like, I'm, I'm the best seller on the floor, the best seller 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 organisation. Um, but.

• 1:03:44Chris Williamson?

  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 organisations as well is that. Respect tends to be emergent, not dictated within an organisation. 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 pirates a couple of years ago. Like, why should I listen to this schmo like talking about, you know, he doesn't, he's, he's not been at the coalface. He's not, you know, earned his keep. He's not done this, that and the other. And you, the, the.

• 1:04:30Chris Williamson?

  Problems that a good leader and a good manager within an organisation 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 leadership skills. Then you need to be able to get them to listen to you, then direction accountability, da, da, da, da, da, da. Like, it's challenging. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't surprise me that we have dysfunction within organisations.

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I, I think it's. It's a 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 I haven't got the statistics to hand, but you know, that's well known that most people don't like what they do for a living.

• 1:05:18Chris Williamson?

  Eighty five eighty five percent of people are either um nonplussed or actively disengaged with their job. It's only fifteen percent of people. This is US data. Fifteen percent of people who are actively engaged with the profession that they have.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  I mean, fuck, that's a waste of potential. Like, you know, that is, that is a real waste, and there's no other word for it. You know, and I think, I think one of the things that, you know, I've realised about myself is I I don't like inefficiency. I don't like waste. I was really startled by your, you know, your observation of, you know, you, hang on a sec, you take fifty percent of what's useful out of the chicken and you just chuck away the rest, you know. But I think about from an efficiency point of view, I'm like, fuck, that's awful. You know, it it it drives me mad, um, because that's something that could benefit someone else. So it's just that.

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  That inefficiency is a real shame. And I I think that's kind of one of the reasons I sort of went out on my 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 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, ninety percent of the time, I agree with you. That's true.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  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 to you and go. Chris, do you want to call an ambulance now? Do you 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, fundamentally, that's what that's what leadership is. It's all about behaviour. 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 and I, you know, I don't pretend to,

• 1:07:32Speaker 00

  I don't pretend to be an expert. You know, I hate it when people say, oh, you're a leadership. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm learning more about it. But if I, if I assume that I'm an expert, if I assume I'm elite in anything like that, it creates the conditions for complacency and I don't want to do that.

• 1:07:49Chris Williamson?

  You've got to have that learner's mind, I think, with things like this. And

• 1:07:53Chris Williamson?

  it would appear that you're importing some effective strategies, right? Some, you know, structures and processes from your past life, life, lives, um, that are, that are really going to be beneficial. But on the flip side of that, like, again, nuance, 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

• 1:08:36Chris Williamson?

  in, within organisations and businesses, uh, and even been a part of it myself, right? It's like, mate, because I'm telling you to. Like, and I don't want to have to pull that pin. I don't want to have to use the, that, that line, but, you know, ineffective leadership.

• 1:08:55Chris Williamson?

  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, well, fucking hell, I've got to, 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 nonplussed 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,

• 1:09:39Chris Williamson?

  but they actually, 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 da, da, da, da. Oh, I must be a terrible manager. I must really be a really bad leader. I just can't get the team to listen to me. I can't get them to buy into what I'm doing. You know, I try and give them the processes and give them the structures and give them the support. And then it just, I get nothing back.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's astonishingly common. And 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? And they're like, yeah, I know them reasonably well. 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 do they do on their weekends? What do they do with their disposable income? Have they got children? What are their names? How old are they? No. Right. Well, 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.

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  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, you know, it's a really easy, you know, talk about practical takeaways, you know. Sit down with your team and, and say, look, I just want to get to know you. So this might sound a bit invasive, don't ask, don't answer anything you're not comfortable with, but. You know, those kind of questions. And if you say that your team is too big because you've got eight or 10 people, I did it with 30 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?

• 1:11:29Speaker 00

  The answer's fine, either one is fine, but help me so that I can help you. In managing your career and, 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 P T I, that's what I want to be in the Royal Marines. Okay. You're going to start running a couple of circuits a week and 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. Um, you've added some really inventive stuff to this, hasn't just been the sort of, you know, usual kind of circuit. Um, they've been fun, they've been interactive, um. I can set you off on that course.

• 1:12:12Speaker 00

  That's, 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.

• 1:12:19Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting that.

• 1:12:23Chris Williamson?

  Friendships are often built around vulnerability. Uh, I 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, that is what gets you a seat at the table.

• 1:13:06Chris Williamson?

  What actually starts putting food on the plate is to do with, well, you know, why, you, 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 this morning. Hey, man, did you watch? Uh, don't fuck with cats on Netflix or like, do you know what I mean? Like that, that's what, and I say a lot of the time to the guys. So I run a nightclub business. 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 mommy and daddy. They party a lot and we're trying to fill nightclubs.

• 1:13:48Chris Williamson?

  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, they've literally just got let go by their mom and their dad. Maybe I'm about to bring on, this is going to go out after I promote them, so it doesn't really matter. I'm going to bring on four, I'm going to 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 they, that you want them to do, bond about anything that isn't to do with work.

• 1:14:33Chris Williamson?

  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 or you, why don't we go to the gym? Let's say that you're doing. You're in filmmaking or, you know, like day trip, whatever it might be, like taking an interest in someone in everything that isn't work.

• 1:14:59Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:15:00Chris Williamson?

  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. Like, 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, 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.

• 1:15:39Speaker 00

  It is a, 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 of 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're, you know, chatting up girls and going out on the piss together, doing whatever young people do these days, um, 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, look, 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

• 1:16:24Speaker 00

  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, that's a tough one.

• 1:16:36Chris Williamson?

  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 you're like, 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, you are right. The, the waters get very muddied very fast. Um, and.

• 1:17:03Chris Williamson?

  In a business that's maybe a little bit more bureaucratic than the one like ours, our the World of Club promo literally is the Wild West.

• 1:17:12Chris Williamson?

  Yet in a more typical business organisation, people need to, they need to draw some incredibly bright lines about what is and is not sort of acceptable friend behaviour as well, I suppose.

• 1:17:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think that's, that's something that is probably slightly more unique to your industry, but each industry kind of has its own sort of lines on sort of what's acceptable. I think provided when you're within your organisation, 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.

• 1:17:51Speaker 00

  What matters is that there is a line, everyone was clear on what that line is, and there are consequences when you step either side of it. So I could be, you know, as a sort of young troop commander in the Marines, I could get as hammered as I want, I could be up till sort of five o'clock in the morning, you know, in, in, in the centre of Taunton, which is where I was based, doing whatever I wanted to do. But at eight thirty, I needed to be clean shaven, 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 the sort of probably an element

• 1:18:32Speaker 00

  of respect to doing that. But if you'd slept in, your company commander would come and kick your door down and be 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 organisation was. That worked really well there, might not work well everywhere else, but it doesn't really matter. Everyone was clear on the expectation and the standard.

• 1:18:58Chris Williamson?

  Got you. Rod, man, this has been awesome. Thank you.

• 1:19:01Speaker 00

  Thanks very much. No, I've really enjoyed it too.

• 1:19:03Chris Williamson?

  Great, great conversation. So Leadership Forces, where can people go to find out more?

• 1:19:08Speaker 00

  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 personalise the message. It'd be nice if you said you listened 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.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  It might not be this week, it might not be next week, but I'll always make time for a phone call for anyone that wants it.

• 1:19:55Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 1:20:06Speaker 00

  Thank you.