Tom Withington
Tom Withington looks at a venture that blends RAF leadership skills and corporate consultancy that will, it promises, improve executive’s decision-making abilities.
What do fighter pilots and business leaders have in common? This is not the start of a bad pub joke but a serious question and readers would be surprised how many characteristics these seemingly divergent professions share. Teamwork, initiative and an ability to work under acute pressure are vital attributes whether you are flying a Tornado fighter-bomber through enemy airspace at 200ft, or whether you are approaching a deadline to submit a bid for a multi-million pound contract.
Justin Hughes, a former Royal Air Force (RAF) Red Arrows and Panavia Tornado F3 Pilot, and director of Manchester-based training consultancy Mission Excellence for the past two years, has been articulating the ‘fighter pilots way of doing business’ to his desk-bound counterparts in Blue Chip firms from the United Kingdom and beyond.
How does he do this? Through presenting conferences, seminars and training sessions which explain how RAF fighter pilots, operating in an extremely dynamic environment, deliver consistent outstanding results against a plan and how such techniques could be useful to any company level. Justin Hughes is ideally suited to job. After graduating with a degree in physics, he joined the RAF and was awarded the Wilkinson Sword for Outstanding Leadership during officer training. Flying the Tornado F3, he was later selected for the Red Arrows and spent three years with the team, performing over 250 displays worldwide and serving as the prestigious unit’s deputy team leader and later executive officer. While serving with the Reds, he experienced challenges which could be a nightmare in the business community. The word-class display team has to cope with an extremely high turnover of staff as pilots are reassigned to other units after their tour of duty with the Red Arrows. “Every year the team replaces three pilots and starts the year’s training, having replaced a third of the work force, yet every year they consistently achieve world-class standards. There is no reason why that cannot be repeated in business.”
His company can also call on an impressive mix of his contemporaries who between them have amassed thousands of hours of flying experience, often in demanding and hostile environments such as the Balkans, the Gulf and the Falklands.
Mission Execution
In helping companies change the way they think about decision-making, Justin and his colleagues ask them one simple question: “Does the business plan get executed?” ‘Execution excellence’ – doing things logically and doing them well – is a vital part of a fast jet pilot’s professional life. For Mission Excellence this is a ‘transferable skill’ which can be applied to the business world to help managers and staff “close the gap between expectation and performance.” The company stresses that its business is not simply giving after dinner speeches with amusing anecdotes but that it is, instead, about looking very closely at the clients business, its corporate objectives and how these can be achieved in the best way possible, and ultimately how to measure these results on the clients balance sheet.
Mission Excellence stresses the importance of several key factors in decision making. It is imperative for the pilot and manager alike to comprehend the “threats to execution excellence.” Secondly it is imperative to remain focused in “a rapidly changing environment.” “Information overload” has to be beaten, while “professional integrity and honesty” are absolutely vital for fast-jet pilots when their aircraft may be travelling at high speeds. For those in the business world, Justin notes that, “the phone may be ringing, their boss may be pressuring them, with the project deadline looming, so they too have to prioritise their tasks.”
Effective debriefing
However, an important consideration for the fighter ace is being able to debrief with their peers after the mission to ensure that similar mistakes are not repeated in the future. For Justin, this has a direct application to the business world and he encourages companies to implement a ‘learn not blame culture’. He adds, “Learn the art of effective debriefing for continual improvement. Less than five percent of the people we work with have a quality debriefing process in place. If you don’t debrief you make the same mistakes again. You need to set up a frank and open learning environment. It’s not about apportioning blame.”
Ultimately, by the time that Justin and his team have finished working with the delegates he hopes to have encouraged them to think about values such as breaking complex tasks into manageable ‘bite sized’ pieces through logical analysis. Development of leadership, teamwork and communications skills are also essential along with defining accountability, balancing optimism, motivation and realism and soundly implementing plans. How is all of this achieved? The training is delivered through a series of multi-media presentations. Exciting cockpit video footage is supported with interactive exercises in a series of seminars which are specifically designed for the client. The opening speeches are tailored to company’s core business. Delegates are then given notes which summarise the key issues and follow-up Masterclasses can be devised to encourage them to think about how they can transfer what they have learnt directly into their workplace. Since launching his company, Justin has struck the right chord with a host of impressive Blue Chip clients including Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Saatchi and Saatchi and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Into the cockpit
In collaboration with Ultimate High – an advanced flight training school staffed by ex-military fast jet pilots, located at Kemble airfield in Gloucestershire, Mission Excellence has taken its management training a step further by offering a two-day “Top Gun” experience. Mark ‘Greeners’ Greenfield is the director of Ultimate High and has himself been an ex-RAF Hawk pilot. He later worked as a risk manager for American investment banks and was global head of credit risk for Credit Suisse Financial Products in London.
Hosted at Goodwood airfield in Sussex, the Top Gun experience is run for 12 corporate delegates notably senior managers from the business world. They are introduced to the tools of the trade that the RAF uses for mission planning. The mantra of ‘plan, brief and execute and debrief is central to the exercise as both companies believe this approach is as relevant to planning a new product launch as it is to planning a bombing mission.
On Day One the delegates are tasked with performing a ‘desk top’ exercise. Hypothetical aircraft fleets are at the disposal of the participants, as they become ‘Air Component Commanders’ for the day. Their task is to defeat their opponents, in this case their competitors, by using these aircraft. The delegates are asked to plan an attack mission using their ‘assets’; namely their virtual aircraft. On Day Two it is time for the delegates to take to the skies in Ultimate High’s Bulldog training aircraft. This after they have planned their own hypothetical bombing raid against a fictitious target on the ground. The fledgling pilots will perform a reconnaissance of the ‘target’ which could be a conspicuous landmark such as a mobile telephone mast. Mark Greenfield notes, “We give them various tasks to think about in the air, just as they would at their desk. If you have a bunch of conflicting tasks you have to prioritise, just as you would in real life.”
Back on the ground, it is time for debriefing. Delegates review their mission and discuss what could have been improved. Justin insists that the exercise has serious relevance to the business world: “It’s a high value team building exercise rather than a ‘let’s play soldiers’ exercise. Our focus is on the delivery of some transferable skills which are relevant to just about all businesses.”
Mission focus
By the end of the Top Gun experience the Hughes/Greenfield team hopes to have instilled in the delegates a cultural approach which is similar to that practised by the military. “This is very execution and results focused. In a fighter mission you have to have your aim very clearly defined and have to have an end state.” As well as taking lessons from exercises such as Red Flag, the training imparted by Justin Hughes owes much to the ‘Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action loop (OODA loop) devised by USAF Colonel John Boyd. Formulating his theories as a fighter pilot high above the Korean peninsula during the Korean War, Mr Boyd believed that victory in the air-to-air combat would belong to whoever went the quickest around the OODA loop. This is because whoever circulates the loop fastest is forcing change quicker than their adversary. So, what is the end product of all these presentations, seminars and training? Mission Excellence believes that this should be “a clear focus on your execution issues. A motivated and inspired team. An outstanding teambuilding experience.”
