[00:00:00] Dan: Hello, and welcome back to We Not Me, the podcast where we explore, how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond.

[00:00:14] Pia: And I am Pia Lee. Dan Hammond, there is a little bit of tension up in your geopolitical region at the moment.

[00:00:23] Dan: There is. Yeah. It's yeah. Sort of seems that a few times in your life, when you sort of start to look at different regions of the world and think, oh my goodness, could this be the next one that blows up? Yeah, the Ukraine is, um, yet certainly worrying everyone at the moment, adding to the global tension. I would say much saber rattling at the very least over there at the moment.

[00:00:44] Pia: This reminds me of when Rob was talking to us in the very first episode, until we about teams come together to solve significant performance challenges. And the situation both is happening in the Ukraine is both a political one and a military one there too. So intense, intense environments. And I think that's, we thought we really needed to have a discussion about that because it's a different type of teams that come together and a different type of leadership. 

[00:01:18] Dan: Yeah, I sort of amusingly, if Winston Churchill said politics is almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. So obviously that's a, his usual witty self looking at it, it's a really serious matter and politics fails and, and war steps in, but it creates these really intense situations.

[00:01:39] So, our guest today has managed to. Both sides of this. And this is someone that you met a little while ago pia, isn't it?

[00:01:46] Pia: I did. I met all my studies over 10 years ago. And Jim Molan has served as a major general in the Iraqi war, and also now is a Senator in the New South Wales state government. And it really interesting over the passage of his career to, to understand what is some of the thinking, because these are intense and often adversarial environments. And so I think it's, in fact, he's going to be really interesting to understand you know, how do you think, and how do you operate inside those environments?

[00:02:27] Dan: Yes, indeed. And probably, I think probably for a lot of our listeners, a new world, but also probably quite a challenging one. Sometimes these, uh, the worlds that, um, that Jim has inhabited have been quite controversial actually. So I think he'll have a lot of light to share on, on teams working in, in intense environments. 

[00:02:49] Pia: And welcome, Jim, it's just great to have you on the show today. 

[00:02:53] Jim: Thanks, Pia. It's great to be here. It's great to see you again. After many years,

[00:02:57] Pia: It is, and it is an a, and we did reminisce that um, we met probably about 10 years ago when I was a student and you were a general, which sounds a little dodgy, but wasn't the case at all. 

[00:03:09] Dan: Sort of a bad joke.

[00:03:10] Jim: I thought you were running the show here. That's the impression I came away with.

[00:03:14] Pia: Exactly. So yeah, I was studying for my masters and you came in and did a fantastic talk to us why we were, while we were on that, about the military and leadership, and then you came and presented to our clients and it was just really impactful. So I think, wow, the passage of time, we've all moved in slightly different directions from those days. And I think this is what will be. Still really interesting to talk about teams and their relevance in that.

[00:03:41] So before we start, I'm going to hand over to the card Meister, Mr. Hammond, who will ask you a very important question. 

[00:03:50] Dan: Jim? Yes, absolutely. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. I know you have a very busy agenda in the Senate, so we really appreciate it. So here's the deal. We we have these conversations starter cards just to get to you get to know a little bit about you. Three packs in front of me, a hard red pack, a medium orange pack and a simple sort of simpler green pack.

[00:04:12] All of them will have a question on them that we're going to ask view, which, and I'll select one at random. Which pack would you like a card

[00:04:19] Jim: Let's go straight to the red.

[00:04:20] Pia: Oh God You I knew it. I just knew it.

[00:04:23] Dan: I had a tenor on that, but it had very poor

[00:04:26] Jim: caution to the 

[00:04:27] Pia: I got to pay you. 

[00:04:28] Dan: Okay. Let's let's do this. Oh, wow. We have to take it because it, here it is. My biggest disappointment about myself is.

[00:04:37] Jim: Do I have to answer that now? Or I can I call on my team? 

[00:04:40] Pia: Phone a friend?

[00:04:42] Jim: I can find my wife. She knows. She knows how to supporting. I am. Okay. The biggest disappointment about myself it's a serious question and it goes to the fact that you should be prepared to admit these things. And having admitted them, of course you can then address them. The most serious disappointment I think I have about myself is sometimes the difficulty I have in showing empathy towards towards people and towards, towards issues. I w we both in the military and in politics, we tend to deal with people who people who hold such strong ideas, incredibly strong ideas, based 99% on emotion and emotion is very important. Emotion gives you the power. It gives you that gives you the motivation and it drives you.

[00:05:32] But if I, if emotion is, if emotion is the only thing that drives you then and if I detect that in a person, then I can be quite dismissive of them. I am aware of this as a problem that I have. So I avoid it as often as I can. And I must admit that I am getting much, much better without being silly about it in, in being empathetic in understanding everyone's problems.

[00:05:59] Now that's probably been assisted by the fact that moving from the military where you are established in a position. And you have the authority of that permission position. You're only successful. If you can lead the people who come behind you but you have the authority as the position given to you by an a statutory authority and the name.

[00:06:22] So I find the general if I'm commanding something. The S the final site in politics, it is of course, totally different in, in politics you depend on being able to convince volunteers, people who don't have to take any notice of you, people who disliked. People who don't care. And that requires the ability to be empathetic.

[00:06:43] And I've been in situations where I've sent people off to war. I assist battalions going off off to East Timor. I stood with their families as they got on airplanes and flew off and stood again with them when they came back I've. I relate well generally to people, but in the issues.

[00:07:02] And particularly when you're facing issues of tiredness of exhaustion, which is what we work in most of the time, both in politics and in, in in in the military then I worked very hard on being empathetic. I worked very hard but you know, w we I've been through battle.

[00:07:20] And I say to people that in the entire year that I was in Iraq, I did not raise my voice on one occasion. I use foul language. I can tell you and express great disappointment, but I did

[00:07:32] Dan: At low volume.

[00:07:33] Jim: I did not raise my voice on one occasion because no one was working directly against me in that. Whereas in politics, of course, lots of people are but in the military we had one aim and we all worked together as a team for that. So empathy was what was, although that was difficult because the issues were enormous in politics, of course at the whole aim of our system of politics is adversarial. And therefore empathy is often very hard to show.

[00:07:58] Pia: Yeah, it's interesting. Cause one of our uh, Gillian Coutts talked about compassion. And and Dan and I talked about that and it is, it's a whole topic that I think we need to get our heads around and we're becoming, it's very easy to become judgemental, and as you say, adversarial, and to make yourself right, it's much harder to ask a question and actually get curious and to try and understand somebody else's viewpoint. 

[00:08:22] Jim: Pia, I'd also say that it depends what you do, what you are doing. If you are putting together a team which might be a group of people who hold different views in a select committee, in a parliament, or are you trying to motivate young men and women to risk their lives to win? These are two vastly different things. And what I found in the military is that people look at you and you can see them saying to you is this idiot going to get me killed? You know, You'd meet most of the soldiers I worked with him with in Iraq were American soldiers and they didn't know, they couldn't put place Australia on a map most of the time, but I'm asking them to go out and do quite extraordinary things. And I could see him the first time through they sign, is this idiot going to get me killed because and they can always defeat you because you can't be everywhere. They can go out and say, yeah, we're doing great stuff, boss out here.

[00:09:17] But and they're just, they're hiding behind the door. So does that level of compassion, the level of compassion you can show sometimes in the military, the mission is more important than the individual and you are expected to do. I've yet to find that in the parliament, but it could be there 

[00:09:35] Dan: It's not in the manual. Yeah, it's true. Um, So Jim, you have in your answer to that question, which was which is very honest you've hinted at a lot of this already. You've talked about these two worlds that you've spent a lot of time in serving it. And indeed could you just give us a potted history of Jim Molan how'd you get to this seat today? Take us through the, into those worlds.

[00:09:56] Jim: Well, I was born in, I was born in Melbourne to a kind of uh, uh, in those days, I guess you would have said an upper working class. My father was S was a salesman. He'd just come home from the war. And he was uh, it was, uh, it was a technician. He was a radio. One of the attended the first radio technicians course in Australia was a warrant officer throughout the second world war got to the highest level of, technician in the war.

[00:10:20] The war was the most exciting thing in his life. He learned how to smoke and drink in the war. the rest of his life, I think was a slight disappointment to him. So many Australians were like that. But he. He my mother of course, like so many, so often a mother holds the family together, had conservative views, was a religious woman. And there were six children and she ensured that every one of them went to university.

[00:10:43] I was the fourth child. My father wanted the children to go to work at about the age of 14 to get a job and uh, uh my mother Fought against this view in my three elder sisters, but by the time it got to me and given up on that view, so I'd been totally defeated. So I, and when I said I wanted to join the army at the age of 17, he was, they were both very happy about that.

[00:11:06] And I joined the army. I spent 40 years in the army. Um, My base trade was infantry, but I was also a helicopter pilot, a trainer, a staff officer, and a diplomat. And I spent five years in our embassy in Jakarta, another example of different teams from different cultures coming together, extraordinarily different cultures coming together to to achieve an aim. So I had 40 years in, in the. I got out in 2008 and I wrote a book about Iraq. It's called running the war in Iraq, a modest title. But that was my job. I ran the war in Iraq for a year. 

[00:11:46] And I I then went into a number of business ventures, I was a consultant probably the most interesting con consulting that I did was to the Israeli government as part of a seven person. What they called a high level military group, where they had seven generals from around the world that they would bring in and ask us to make a report about a particular issue. For example, the first one was uh, the ethical conduct of their 2014 Gaza war. The second one was the threat from Hezbollah to Israel. So we'd spent, we spent 10 days in Israel, met everyone from the prime minister down to the tank drivers and the fighter pilots. Then go back to London, write the report and then take it to the United nations who totally ignored it.

[00:12:29] But it was a great experience and an extraordinary experience. And it gave me a view of a nation. Which faced destruction for 50 or 60 years of its existence. And only now is facing some levels of security because we may be in the similar position going into the future in our region.

[00:12:50] I was asked by the liberal party when they are an opposition under Tony Abbott to assist them with their defense policy, which I did, and then Scott Morrison grabbed me and said, come and let's talk about border control. So I spoke to him about border control and we worked together for some years and he credits me with being the co-author of what is called operation sovereign borders.

[00:13:11] I then decided to run for the Senate and like most people who do it first time, I was grossly naive. I actually thought in those days that if I could speak to 102 people in the pre-selection committee that there was a vague chance that they might vote for me. Section 44, took someone out. I was able to go in to politics for the first time in section 44. I lasted 18 months. My party then had another pre-selection and bounced me out so I was bounced out for four, five months. I then ran in the 2009 election below the line. My support has set me up and ran me below the line and I achieved in that absolutely astounding thing Pia and Dan for some reason 137,000 Australians in new south Wales voted for me as their first preference vote. They had to find me on the Senate ticket below the line and vote for me.

[00:14:04] Pia: Well, if there's 137,000 listened to this podcast, we'll be Very happy. as well, actually, that, that will help us. 

[00:14:11] Jim: Absolutely. I did a 60 Minutes the other day. And it's well, over 8 million people have watched it on, on 60 Minutes. So maybe we can crack that, but that's how I that's fundamental. How I got there with Arthur sinner, Dennis decided to go to the U S and I've then went was preselected to replace Arthur. So here I am.

[00:14:31] Pia: So that's, I mean, that's quite, it's quite interesting. Isn't it? Jim, you've got two different, they look completely different, but they sound quite Arduous? both, but you know, quite intense, both those environments. And definitely that what I'm interested in, what we're focusing here. is we're looking at the teams that existing in both. 

[00:14:50] So we've got this concept that was actually created by general McChrystal, around team of teams. So looking at how do you create an organization to mobilize action through these interconnected teams? I guess my question first is how did you see this operation? When you were in iraq under warfare. And do you also see this operating within the machinations of politics and government?

[00:15:20] Jim: No, I don't think you do. And quite often, even the members of the teams don't see how the teams are working, how all the teams are working and what the military consists of is a myriad of teams. But we've been doing military work filing and succeeding for so long now that, and we have the enormous luxury that most civilian organizations don't have, we train and rehearse. Most have been an organizations from my observation, just put teams together and start working. And yeah, they might do some motivation. They might give direction to their people, but we have a formal system which takes young men and women in right at the bottom level. It gives them a, roughly a year's training makes them soldiers, sailors, airmen and at the officer level, we bring them in, we give them at least 18 months training. We then give them we may give them four years training, a university degree, we socialize them, and they understand how the teams work together and how the teams fit together. So that's a really big advantage. 

[00:16:21] And I was very lucky because I went from one I've had an extraordinary. Honor on a number of occasions of being able to be part of a foreign countries, military, and because we stratify and formalize our own teams quite often, you take them for granted. So I would take for granted in an Australian unit, that someone is the boss, that there's a process around the boss to make decisions that, that the direction from those decisions come down in a particular way, you try to do those decisions, you consider them, you have a. From the lower levels to the upper levels, you have a parallel, you have a command structure within a unit, but you also have a parallel and most brilliant system of the regimental Sergeant major and the company Sergeant major and the platoon Sergeant, who have a chain of access to the boss, which is not the command chain run by lieutenants and captains and majors. And that applies to the army as a whole, the Navy, the air force as a whole. And it ensures that, that these teams are working, that there's a formal fallback. 

[00:17:23] Well, I've had the privilege of looking at the German armed forces. When I did a posting to Germany at the British army. At the Indonesian armed forces and at the American armed forces and the Iraqi armed forces and the marked differences you would never think that the Australian military and the American military are different, but they are vastly different in culture and in how they work. But we work very hard and I've attended uh, uh, when I was a Brigadier, I commanded a mechanized brigade of say eight battalions, about 5,000 soldiers. And over the two years I commanded those. I took part in what the Americans cook called their what their generals war course. So it teaches you how to fight a war, which is something that, that you take for granted that we do, but we don't do it. We didn't at that stage, we didn't do it at the top level.

[00:18:13] So, so w we became very good bureaucratic generals, but we weren't good war fighting channels. I attended this two year part-time course, which culminated in six weeks. In the U S where I took the command team. So of those eight battalions in the brigade, I took, 30 or 40 people from the top of each, the commanding officers the sub unit commanders the communications organizations that linked us our computers, we all went over there for six weeks and we fought nonstop for a long period of time in that six weeks, two big battles. And it was a battle set by set in North Korea, run through computers, and it was as though we were reinforcing the American Australian and brigade reinforcing American forces and no sleep, no nothing. It just went and went now. Where had played the north Vietnamese army, all their careers. They were 10 times better than the north Korean army. And it was an extraordinary experience to fight against them. And every mistake that we made, they punished us. They knew the mistakes. They knew the likelihood. If you, if. I remember I had to very quickly follow up another American unit. And I got people going very fast, but I didn't ensure that they were covered by air defense. And of course they drove outside their ed offense, their defense umbrella, and they were, yeah. And that's what happens.

[00:19:37] So, so those teams that I found in America, when I went to Iraq, it was the same muster, same commanders, much the same organizations, some of the same units, because the American army is not big. And so th they were doing much the same thing. So I knew their weapons, their procedures, their leaders, and the wave and the culture. So that's an integral part of teams. So I came in at a key, in a key position as chief of operations for them. And I had to know their culture, which I did.

[00:20:03] Coming into politics I think is a much, much different, but I think that I didn't come in and assume that I knew anything. I didn't come in and say, Jim's a general, therefore he should be given X, Y, and Z. I came in as a brand newbie. And I sat there and I did my duty and I, I did all my committees. I traveled, I spoke to people. I assumed that I would have absolutely no privileges at all as a backbench Senator. And they were very happy about that because they gave me nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

[00:20:39] In the first three days, I was in parliament. I was attacked by the labor party as a war criminal, but as I was advised, keep your mouth shut and we will defend you. And those that attacked me on day one, but just do it as I talk, but they did it with vehemence, I tell ya, and I set up a back bench there and watched my colleagues defend me. And there's teams come together. I've seen others at our ministers who have been targeted by the opposition and teams come together, good teams who perform well in parliament, who defend, uh, but I guess in a business, in a business one, doesn't assume that everyone supports you. It's quite funny. It's I used to make the joke that in the air force where the officers go out, single pilot in fighter jets to fight the war, if the pilot says go left well the aeroplane will definitely go left. In the Navy where you've got 200 people on a ship. If the captain says, go left, well, most of the people will probably go left, but in the army, if the boss says go left. I tell you what the troops look at it very skeptically. You can't just say, go left troops. You got to say, go left and I'll be standing there watching you. And the reason we're going left is very good and is why and I'll check your 10,000 times. And I love you all, but go left.

[00:21:54] Dan: That was, and it was actually that's the question I was hoping to. It was, I was thinking of asking actually, if the um, uh, going back to the military this thinking about that team of teams, balancing sort of control and direction from the top, if you like, with autonomy. So w and w how does that balance, how has that balance struck in order to react quickly to what the enemy does, changes, changing the landscape, whatever. How do you best balance that? Do you think those two?

[00:22:23] Jim: Well, it's done in a very formalized manner and it's trained and practiced and in good units, it is fabulously effective. In the a general we'll give a commander's intent. As part of his orders the work, when we try and generals, we try and generals to write a commander's intent. You as the general. Roger commander's intent on about a page. This is what I intend to achieve and how I intend to achieve it. It's stylized and everyone knows what should be in a particular part. And really that's the General's contribution. The rest of the technical detail is the control and the control is invariably done by staffs south. The general says I would like 150,000 troops to move to the border of of of Ukraine and frighten everyone. That's all the commander has to really say I'd like them to be there by a certain time and everyone keep your heads down.

[00:23:17] And then the staff system does the control. So the commander doesn't sit down, wraps himself around the, the, the axle in the past, in early in my career, we used to have commanders writing 40 page directives. And sometimes you may have to do it, and sometimes w when I was in Iraq, for example, we had one water, one operation order, it was the order to invade Iraq, and it was very detailed and complex. It listed all the units that were doing it. It concerned the invasion of Iraq, but from then on fundamentally, what we did is that we cut orders from that. So we would put out what was called a frag order at a fragmentary order. And that w we didn't have to say, we're in Iraq, we've got 10,000 units and these are there and they're all here. And they're all there because knew that.

[00:24:03] Now at the end of the day, I would write as the chief of operations, there are only two people who that in Iraq at the strategic level, who could write frag orders, fragmentary orders. And that was the general himself, the four-star general and me as chief of operations. So I would write the frag orders, which would move troops left, right. And center, tell them what to do. It was really more. More than four or five lines and it would set the next day up and it might do things, but other occasions you might need a longer thing.

[00:24:32] So it stylized very much and peep, and it comes it's. It's very interesting. When you look at a general and his staff, because it comes back to human nature. If you are a person who doesn't mind criticism who can take criticism, who understands the role of criticism, I used to define to my staffs what I considered to be failure. And that is that the generals in his office and the door's closed, and two staff officers standing outside the door, and they're saying, I told him this wouldn't work. He's tried this three times before and it didn't work on those occasions and it won't work again. And I'm not going to tell him again. That's failure, that is gross failure. But you know, the way we work it is that the way, certainly the way I worked it wasn't I could get 85% of my decisions relatively right, because I had 40 years service. I was experienced and I had only a certain amount of information was coming towards me.

[00:25:26] But to get me from 85%, not to a hundred percent correct, I needed desperately needed the staff to do that. And we would talk, we would have a w we would have a stylized situation. I would collect the staff and I would say, okay, what I intend to do is to go from a to b. Intelligence officer, what is the enemy likely to do to me? And they'd say, well, he'll go to D pull something into X and threaten Y and I'd say, okay, well, that's great if he does. I will prepare units to move to Y and X. And I will move other units prepared to do something if he hasn't, if he hasn't met it. Okay. Intelligence officer, what is he going to do?

[00:26:04] So, so you build up in a war game situation a very quick, because you got to make these decisions very quickly. And we, our standard decision-making process was about 40 minutes long and and we could make these decisions after a while because people said, if people understood that if you say to Molan, Sir no no that's wrong, we've tried that before and it didn't work, have a think about doing this boss and you'd say, okay, well let's try and do that. Or two people say two different things, you make the final decision and they back those decisions up. So it's a very intuitive decision-making process, but you've got to be someone who can take criticism because after the event we have, what's called the quick.

[00:26:47] And after the event, you have a, you know, you might've done this thing. If you've fought the battle and you say it, you collect the staff, you collect your commanders and you say, okay guys, how did I do? And they say not bad, sir, but next time you got to do this faster and that faster, we didn't have this, we couldn't move to there, you know, this kind of stuff this is what makes teams work. And then they have the confidence. Those teams have the confidence that people will listen to them. What they say is important. People will use their expertise and it just gets stronger and stronger.

[00:27:20] Pia: And this is where question and it also, when you talked about the Hurly burly of politics, it's the, and this relates, I think, to businesses as well, and other organizations, it's this challenge. Sometimes the friction point between serving the higher intent and self-interest. And sometimes politics can be seen particularly. to the people who voted people in As self-interest playing out and not higher intent. And in you're really hoping for the mobilization when we get into a situation like a war or a battle or defense, that higher intent is the key driving, driving element. And certainly for these team of teams having that purpose so clearly articulated, you know, that's I think sometimes as an ordinary Australian, that's where you really wonder, and maybe I think maybe even Dan in the UK, you really you're really wondering as the ordinary taxpayer here, have we got a purpose and a higher intent in the country. And how does that get communicated? So we're aligned as teams behind that as we would be in a critical incident like a battle or a warfare.

[00:28:33] Jim: I think you're quite right. People often come to me, particularly journos and an interview, and they say, you know, it's 12 submarines the right number of submarines for Australia to have. I hate the question because it makes me appear to be an arrogant turd. And I say, well, the answer is pretty simple. It depends what you want to do. You either need a hundred submarines or you need one submarine, so what do you want to do? Well, no, one's got any w w we are w we're in a stage now where, and I keep saying it, when people say what's what's the one thing you could do expecting me to say 12 submarines or national service, that's a great one that people keep coming up with. I say the most important thing that we could do in Australia is come up with a strategy.

[00:29:15] We're in this extraordinary situation, but last 75 years, we have fought as a nation Australian series of war. We've hardly been at peace out of that entire period of time. But every time we go to war, we send the Australian defense force a long way away. If it's not ready to go today, then it'll go in six months time. It chooses the place that it wants to go to fight. It chooses within the battle area, what fight it will fight. It chooses what weapons it'll take and when it gets sick of it, it comes home. And, none of you will be able to probably list the last war that we definitively won. 

[00:29:47] Dan: If We think of our audience, listening to the show, their team leaders, their team members, w you've accumulated wisdom over this time, what's what could you impart to our listener if they're, if they want to be working successfully in teams, is there anything you could leave us with?

[00:30:02] Jim: I've been asked this question many times and I used to give a series of lectures at our staff college when I was the only general who'd gone away and done a general ship on a battlefield. Now, many more of our generalists have done, so our leaders have done. So I used to say that the most important thing is to be technically proficient in the military to be technically proficient you've got to be able to carry people along with you, you've got to be able to express yourself. You've got to understand the complexities of how I headquarters works. No matter what size of their headquarters, whether it's three men or a thousand men and women you've gotta be able to understand the war, and you've got to be able to understand the politics. I think that is the most important thing. Then if you're a nice guy that's fantastic. But if you're a war winner but you don't relate to human beings, we can get people standing behind you who can relate to human beings. I had a famous event with an American general when I commanded a brigade in Darwin and he visited and he was known as a real so-and-so and I gave him a brief and he got sick of my brief. He just walked out and. Okay then he's the four-star general. I was a two-star general a one-star general at the time, but he had this American two-star Marine that used to wander around behind him, apologizing to people. Well, that's fantastic. You can do that in my view, the most important thing. Can the CEO I worked the bottom line can the chairman of the board carry the board with him, so we do the right things that work the bottom line. Can the prime minister when government that's what we paying for, can the prime minister keep him in government? That's th that in my view, the technical issue of that overwhelms absolutely anything else.

[00:31:48] It's very broad. It's not just being the foreman of the organization. You might've been the former. Now you're the CEO. You've got to have other things which come in. So you must be in my view, technically proficient as I define technical proficiency. But if you have something that's wrong, it's better to have this guy technically proficient who makes vast amounts of money for the company and surrounding by people who can compensate in areas where he or she can't.

[00:32:14] Dan: That make sense. I must say I know a few married couples where one of them goes around apologizing for the other. So it makes perfect sense. It's good to know that generals do the same. Jim, thank you so much for joining us today and taking time out of your busy schedule. And you've really shared some gems with us that I think will be really useful for teams and for our listeners. So thank you so much again for your time.

[00:32:34] Pia: 

[00:32:37] Well, you know, if you have a dinner party, if there's going to be two subjects that, you know, that might cause a bit of a Raul at the dinner table, it would probably be it politics and a and wall. So I think cam I think unlike a rather famous podcaster you, you know, who may be almost in our league here, dad, Joe Rogan, he has a few more fewer listers of we do, but it, you know, we can have discussions and conversations that are contentious. And I would have imagined that some of the things that you ever said, not everyone's going to agree with them, but I think they were still valid. And it's important to have the conversation, particularly we're considering these two intense environments that he talked about.

[00:33:21] Dan: Indeed. Yeah. If you want to ruin a social gathering, just bring one of those two up. But yeah. So I, I think it's, um, as you say, not everyone's going to even know those worlds, but they're both contentious for different reasons, but I think it was fascinating listening to Jim cause you can draw out a number of things. I think one of the, um, I was really surprised or they sort of, it reminded me actually, because I knew from, working with Rob actually, who mentioned in the top of the show, but, you know, command only goes so far even in the military and you need that sort of that the ability to have, have intuition and yeah, it was, it was, it was surprising for Jim to actually say even as a general, he can give orders, but actually people don't always ha they can fake executing them. So you, you have to bring them along and they're going to just make sure that you're keeping them safe. So that, those same elements of leadership matter, you've got to bring people along with you. It's not just that your rank.

[00:34:21] Pia: and the stakes are high. So they're human beings and they're going to think, what was it? He said, well, this idiot get me killed? 

[00:34:27] Dan: Yeah, 

[00:34:27] Pia: Yeah, 

[00:34:28] so it doesn't matter how many pips you've got, that faith is not blind, the skepticism there. And I think that's, that's healthy too. I think what was interesting too, is he was talking about how much they rehearse and what strikes me about that is in business world, we don't really rehearse for critical instance. We just find ourselves in them. Exerts when you develop assessment centers, which actually brought me back a little bit of sort of memory,

[00:34:57] Dan: I know a little bit of nostalgia. I

[00:35:00] Pia: So we used to create simulated critical incidents, sometimes three, six hours long, uh, involving different characters actors and put teams of people through that scenario is really intense, but it brought up preferred behaviors and they weren't ones that you were consciously choose. So it was real insight about what you'd learned for yourself. And yeah, just, just reminded me on it. 

[00:35:28] Dan: I thought the same that at first I thought, yeah, people, we just don't do that in business, but actually yeah, we've, we've built them and run them. And a little bit like a war game, I suppose you, you build them that they are really simulating potential future environment.

[00:35:43] And the behaviors that come out are real, you know, the number of times we said to people, this is what we observed and they say, you know what? I do that for real. And the teams would say, that's how we act. That's how we act. 

[00:35:54] So there's definitely a role for that rehearsal, which is very much in the military where they're rehearsing for the sort of specific moments. But there's, there's a, there's a role for that. I think for teams, if they can, if they can manage it.

[00:36:06] Pia: I do remember one particular manager contacted me who had met. Uh, a bit of a stuff up in his coaching situation and had exactly the same situation occurred two weeks later with his team. And he said his learning, because it's such a going back to last week, such a visceral experience, he was able to take that learning and apply it and actually get a much better outcome with his team members. So they are important. 

[00:36:36] Dan: And it's the other bit that I drew out from, it actually was the importance of feedback, even in the military. I don't know about politics so much. Honestly. I imagine they've got a barrage of feedback from all kinds of inappropriate quarters, but two to think about a general saying after, you know, it, what they call the hot, hot wash-up, you know, right? How do we do? And they're saying, well, so. You could have done that more quickly to. So that seems to be the, at the heart of it, like so many teams, if you can build that climate of feed well and competence of feedback, but definitely have a process where you do it regularly and a culture where it can be said and heard, you've got yourself a real key to improvement there and, and a way to prepare for that next significant performance challenge.

[00:37:22] Pia: Yeah, absolutely. And your stress testing your own. Decision-making because he said it only goes up to 85% on your own. You've got to get it to a hundred and he cannot do that on your own. It's a failure of the team and leadership. If you have got people who didn't agree with it and didn't speak up. Um, and I think there's real, there's real elements think, okay, actually, however, technically proficient. I am, I'm probably going to get it to 85. And maybe it's, uh, maybe, maybe the ego speaking. What do you think you're on a hundreds, whereas in actual fact, the realistic part is 85. I think that keeps you grounded and always gets you to ask good

[00:37:59] Dan: Yes, indeed. Yeah. There's no real point having a team if you're not going to, if you're not going to involve others and, um, in decision-making and get feedback afterwards. So it's, it's just, yeah, it comes right back down to these lovely little groups that we talk about every week.

[00:38:13] Pia: And I think, they're tough environment and it's, uh, it's a good insight listening to Jim about how to operate in those, in those environments. We can all draw stuff out for, for our teams. So what is next

[00:38:28] Dan: Well, I just mentioned, um, culture and, um, it's a, it's a word that's B is often used. It's thrown about probably, quite a bit. I've certainly thrown about myself. And next week's guests spends his life looking at organizational and team cultures. Kevin Brownsy, he's the CEO and founder of red pill consulting works with organizations to really help them to align, culture to strategy and help them to get their teams to, to deliver on it. So, uh, he's got some surprising and it's surprising views sort of that we'll really, I think, inform our listeners in a new way about what culture is and what they can do about it.

[00:39:06] Pia: Put some clear definitions around it.

[00:39:09] Dan: exactly right. That's it for this episode, you can find show notes and resources at squadify.net, just click on the We Not Me podcast link under Resources. If you've enjoyed the show, please do share the love and recommend it to your friends. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of origin, FM. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:39:29] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.