Welcome to the iPad podcast. OPM has chartered body for the project profession. My name is Emma DaVita, I'm the editor of projects, apm's, quarterly journal and your host
today. I'm speaking to Richard Noble the leader of some truly or inspiring British extreme speed projects on land at Sea. And in the air, these include a bringing the land speed record back to In in 1983 when he drove his thrust to car to 633 mph and 14 years later, he led the thrust SEC team to achieve the first supersonic record at 763
miles per hour. He's also the man behind the Bloodhound project with the mission to reach 1,000 miles per hour on land and to inspire generations of you, engineers and scientists who are pioneering educational program, he's joining us today to tell us a bit about what it takes to leave projects. Like this. Why embracing risk makes for And how to motivate teams if you want to find out more lookout for his contribution to the forthcoming, summer issue of apm's, project journal, and get
a copy of his book. Take risk published by ever. Oh Richard, I just wanted to welcome you to our podcast. Thanks again, for your time. It's lovely to meet you, Emma. This is going to be great fun. I'm looking forward to this, we take, well, I think a good place to start would be for you to just give us a brief overview of A couple of projects for listeners who might not be okay with all your work. And just a bit of background on you, I'd always wanted to do the
world land speed record. That was something that started with me from the age of six when I saw John Cobb going for the water, speed record on Loch Ness and and I wanted to, I could do this. And I was lucky enough to be able to put together an organization. We had no money at all and I built a very Jet car which noted bloody kill me. And then after that, I met a
brilliant engineer. John Aykroyd, and John, and I, and put together an organization to build this land speed record car, and it was a very, very difficult thing to do. The general sort of higher of the establishment was dead against it and we're fighting every sort of battle. But the wonderful thing was sponsorship. Sponsor sponsors will put up money, providing you, develop good, quality of publicity for them at that.
Is great. So that means that you're actually Outside The Establishment system. In other words, you're not taking, you're not getting your money from the city who tried to control everything and, and that way that gives us great freedom. And eventually, of course, we got the world land speed record, 633 miles an hour on our actually achieved its design speed, which was terrific, which was 630 miles an hour. So, that was that was in 1983 was thrust, 93, trust you? Yeah.
Then I suddenly realized my word, think what you could do basically if you can organize these little flat companies you could take on anybody and anything. It's a bit like if you like the SAS in the military, you know, very small organization but very, very, highly motivated. And of course, if you go back to Maslow in one of Mazda is box.
Right at the back, it says, the crucial point was that he found from his experiences, and this, of course, is 18:40 that only 15% of people in a large organization, ever get near to self-actualization levels and self-actualization levels means that you're finding out who you actually are and what you can really do. And so you have to join an organization, which will give you that freedom and latitude. And that is the big motivator and I suddenly realize this
man's. Absolutely bloody brilliant. Wow. And so the next thing we To do is to set up an aircraft company to create a new light training airplane. This was a fascinating experience because of course we were head right up against Sahara. Cool. Organizations of the CAA keep saying here dcaa is fo civil aviation Authority. This is the effects of with the aviation police force. Yeah, they're there to make sure that you that you're safe and you're not going to drop out of
the sky and kill people. Yeah. And it was absolutely fascinating because they Could not cope with this. We also working with door, trying to work with the Department of trade and Industry, who are absolutely hopeless, because they couldn't conceive of actually creating a new all-metal airplane, with a new Aero engine and flying it within 13 months, which is what we did. Hmm, they couldn't cope with
this. So they really couldn't, they just thought it was some law or fraud or something, and I'd all the way through these various projects we've done, which would Largely airplanes and land speed record cars. Basically. We've had big, big problems with the establishment, which is a terrible terrible. Shame. What can project professionals learn from the way you approach projects, right? Well, the first thing of really is to forget everything you've learnt. Okay, let's start off with a
clenched clean sheet of paper. And when you're doing a big project like for instance, like farmer aircraft, what you got to do is Effectively is to consider that you're going to walk through a large wood or porch. Let's go to the forest. We're going to go into this forest in your hopefully get to come out the other side but there are no paths. And so all that every moment you've got to have your fingers on the Gantt chart pulse so you know exactly where you are.
You realize that you will make wrong turns from time to time and you've got to be able to be very quick, but the crucial thing about the whole thing is speed, you've got to move very very quickly. Quickly make your decisions very very quickly. Now we all know that you know most executive decisions are if you're lucky 50% to write. But the important thing is making the decisions and keeping the organization pointed in the in what you believe is the right
direction. And from time to time, of course you can talk against are a blank wall, one something simply can't be done and you've got to find another way of getting around it. Now the wonderful thing about this is that these organizations providing Running a flat organization, you're empowering people properly, not just giving them responsibility, but giving them responsibility with the appropriate Authority. So they can fail the company.
If they wanted to this becomes really interesting because basically, they will probably find the way out that you haven't gotten it in your book, take risk. You are very critical of organizations saying that we've, and as a country, we've come far to risk of us, but without the process and Making things essentially a safe and secure.
How do you how do you pull off a project that Embraces risk because that brings innovative solutions, but actually tie that to a process that keeps everyone safe or things on track or reassures the financial backers that things won't all go wrong in the end but let's start with the problem. That's the problem. The problem is the financial backers. These guys don't Take risk not on our summer levels and you know, and they should not be in
the equation. So, what actually happens is that you come up against a particular problem and the important thing is the culture, you see, we've been taking risks on a daily basis for the last 40 years, and you quickly understand what risks can be taken and what risks should be avoided. And sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you simply have to take, And you got a belt to live with the consequences of it.
So with the Supersonic Car, for instance, we had to have a car, which was steered by its rear wheels, to enormous afterburning turbofan engines, nobody ever built, anything like this. And if we've gone to the city for funds for this, I mean, we've been sharing the doors, almost immediately.
So the risk-taking actually funny enough is that a Mystic thing and what is always say to people is start taking risk now at home gun, And by some extraordinary car is gone by buy a house, which you can't afford go and do this gonna do that. And after a bit every time you take risk, it opens up a completely new culture. And, and it completely new world that you, of course, would have been avoiding because he were
playing the safe game. So you've got to start at home and the wonderful thing about failure. And that's very important is that you learn much more from failure than you ever would do From Success. So, few failures in your V, a very important. So you've got to put failure behind you. So you imagine driving the land speed record car back in 1980s. Basically, you know what do I do? Well this thing is probably got a chance of killing me.
So you put that behind you, you say, fine, what we've got here is a very, very good team of people. It's that is basically a safety thing and and basically you push on and eventually you get that if you're taking high risk and you're giving people responsibility true, Responsibility and autonomy. What do you have to have within those teams to ensure that that things do go? Okay, two things the right people and and good
communication. Yes, that's a crucial to tell me a bit more about the right people. Well, what generally happens with these projects is that we don't recruit people just come and if you're if that happens then basically, you know, that that person is probably very upset or very disaffected with the, with his or her current job and secondly, that they want to innovate and they want to create
and they want an opportunity. So you've got to provide them with the opportunity, which gets them quickly from where they are, which is basically submerged in a hierarchical culture into a flat company. Ultra and to get them up right to the top of my says, pyramid, self-actualization and generally takes about three months. So somebody somewhere along the lines, a new person is recruited in arrives and so on. And I take a look at them and I think, oh my God, hang on a
moment. One because one of our rules in the organization is you must always recruit people who are better than you are. Yeah. Okay. So the organization gets stronger and then what happens is over a period of three months or so that person will change Enjoy out of all recognition and suddenly you think. Wow, I got that rarely wrong. This this person is absolutely bloody amazing and this is how it works. So it's very much, a cultural
thing. Do you have any advice around how to create a sense of purpose, a sense of mission. And how do you go about selling a vision for these projects basically are effectively, single Focus, like breaking the world land speed record or creating a new type of error plane. And basically that keeps life very simple because that's just what you are doing. Yeah, selling the concept is of course, talking about Innovation and change and people want innovation in this world big
time. We got enormous problems because of the risk of us Society, we live in. Can I ask you what kind of leader you are? Well, I'm, I'm not a controlling legal leader, this is the important thing about it. You've got to actually You're working with people not, they're not working for you, they're working. We're all working together. We're all in the same in the same bowl of soup if you like.
Yeah, but basically I happen to be a director of the company and I've got to take responsibility for the entire show and that is that makes me a bit different and occasionally just occasionally I step in and say, hey guys, we can't do that. That's where we're going away away from what we're trying to achieve, but very, very flexible. Our Flagship confidence power project is back for 2022 on Thursday, the 9th of June at Park Plaza.
London, with a bank, hear from industry leading speakers. It's brilliant topics. Such as leadership, sustainability, and diversity, network with project professionals and land. The key skills. You need to thrive in your career, visit a p.m. dot org.uk to book your place. Today, we look forward to seeing
you there. I mean, I'd like to talk a bit about Bloodhound and yeah, the ability to just keep persevering in the face of. Well I love these things, I mean it's so exciting to see the world has changed and it's changed because of two things. One is because basically people are now beginning to accept the fact that they have to change, they really have to change. Can't go on doing the same
thing. I mean the country is in a terrible mess financially at the moment as we know and what you've got to do is you've got to innovate and by innovation of course. You're going to produce new products and services which has which generate much much higher margins which is you know the life to keep on doing the same old thing that you're marching. Just get Decline and decline that Kleiner and eventually you will lose the company.
So we've got that. And then on the other side you've got the the new technology things like computational fluid, dynamics are and and all the rest of it. And it's absolutely fascinating because you can start to apply this stuff to things that have never been done. Before, and you can really innovate and provide you what a team that's that is prepared to join in and take risk.
And they are taking an element of risk, because, you know, they're putting some of their, their life aside to actually do this. They understand the risk, they understand that it could fail but they're going to learn so much from it. And for instance, for a while, we were doing the Bloodhound project, we worked extensively with the with the Army. Well, the Royal Engineers now
this Was fantastic. Because basically, what they are, you have a dyed-in-the-wool hierarchical organization and they're giving us some of their people groups of six to come and work with us and they can't believe what's actually happening there. Being trusted but not being told what to do. Yeah and the the engineers the the Army comes back after us it's absolutely amazing.
You've changed our people out of all recognition that suddenly taking responsibility and Leadership because Basically, people are fundamentally very clever and fundamentally very honest and with Bloodhound. What were the biggest lessons you learned from that? Because you are, oh my God, keep away from the government. Oh no. Um, I'm very very proud of Bloodhound. It's a terrific treatment by tremendous team of people.
Basically, what happened was, the Americans have decided they were going to take what, take our supersonic record. And obviously, we've got to defend this. Our spy position. So we set out to produce this far as Monarch are and of course, everybody said we can't be done and or what do you think you're doing and all that sort of thing? But one or two people thought?
Well, this is amazing. I mean, after all this team did break, the sound barrier, nobody has done that and we got going and with the ministry of Defence, one director, came up with an absolutely brilliant idea which was to use the project as a stimulus. Stimulant For Education. Yes, I'm curious to find out more, yeah, because we could we could make the whole project, all the data on a project live, we could make it available to them.
We're not concerned about IP issues or anything like that. We can just do this thing and share it and it became enormous. I mean we were doing 120 thousand kids a year. The scale of this thing was that we were the biggest stem program in Britain. It was suicide, huge success. So certainly if that gives the Gave the project real credibility. Unfortunately our American Revival was killed in an air crash which was just rotten.
Luck is just very very bad luck and we decided we keep the project going because it was such a creative project and we had some sort of 300 companies working on it and we got the car built but as there were all sorts of enormous problems. Like for instance, these cars have to run on a special sort of surface yes desert surface. And the special surface that we've been using in America, had been wrecked on by a Leisure activity called Burning Man. Oh, the festival year 70,000.
Americans, turn up and run paint themselves. Different colors and online. Stalker sounds like fun. I'm sure it's great fun. Rex our desert. Yeah, so we had to find another one. We find it in South Africa and the South African people put in 1,000 man years of work. Creating this track for us. How's man years. So that they were literally on their hands and knees, picking clearing stones and rocks. Yep. They claim cleared 16,000 tons of stones, we had 300 companies working on it.
Our sponsorship that we'd raised was the total of 31 million and on that excluded all the companies who gave us bits and pieces and made bits and pieces for us. So this is a huge thing and as coarse as a project gets nearer and nearer to Ginger point where it runs, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Cash. Requirements course, gets bigger and bigger these projects actually very, very difficult to plan because the levels of
innovation. And so, you've got to get bigger and bigger deals, and this means that your sponsors have to take greater and greater risk. Not because the project risk. But because you're asking for more and more money to actually do this and we were running to real difficulties and then suddenly a brilliant manly xufu, who's the chairman of the Julie car company. Took a real interest in us and he decided he was, he was going to sponsor us.
So I was commuting back supports of China, putting this terrific deal together and he was so he's a great great man and also at the same time that wasn't enough for us to run the car in 2017 and we needed a bit more and we taken the project to the city and we put the car on show and 8,000 people came in two days to see it. We actually had to sort of put them in groups to get them through because otherwise Some the whole thing was getting too congested and they bought 60,000
quids worth of merchandise or terrific. Great fine, you know, but was gonna be any sponsorship from that. No. Because you're dealing actually with the city. The city doesn't take these sort of rest. It's runs itself, as I select organization, and it doesn't do this sort of thing, but so I went to the chancellor. George Osborne and said, I'm terribly. Sorry, George, we're going to lose this. I can't keep up the cash flow. We've done that. See what we've done all this money so far.
But the fundamental thing is I've got to keep this project moving fast and moving, and I think it's got real values for the country, particularly the education side. And I wondered if you tell so the chancellor set up a program with Bay's to review this whole thing and find out whether this was a value to Britain. Fine. Great. Well, I really welcome this because what they were doing was going through every single aspect of the project, all the accounts, all our planning
everything, and it was great. It came out with very much the same sort of figures as we did, which is great, and they then made us an offer, which was terrific. Oh, fantastic. Now if we've got this offer and we've also got the Chinese deal, which is now signed, and they've made their first payment. This is terrific. Now we're going to get this one. And I looked at all the requirements And they offer, and it's quite clear.
We could meet them all. Hold a meeting with the civil servants had, a very odd meeting with them and I just didn't know, none of us. Could understand what the hell's going on. Yeah. And they just didn't talk to us again. It was simple as that. That was. It wasn't it for the so that was it. I then had to go back to China and say, look, I'm terribly. Sorry, the British government has defaulted on on this offer, we've met all the conditions and I shared all the conditions with
the Chinese and in you. Exactly the situation. Yeah, they decided they couldn't continue because they were going to have to carry the whole thing. And yeah it was absolutely bloody terrible and all this was lost all this time. People's money, everything was just lost because of failure to to sign off on a deal which they'd offered. It was just extraordinary. I kept going, I kept going and 18 months later, the Secretary of State of initially signed off on it.
But it was too late by then we went to brexit, there was no money and you know it was over. What a waste, what an awful waste, what's happened to Bloodhound out of what did you do with it? Well, Bloodhound I had to put blood hard Administration. Otherwise we were going to go insolvent and and it was bought by a third party. He put up his phone, private money and got the car to South Africa. So did run on the desert which was good and they've got up to six hundred and twenty eight
miles an hour. The Next Step was to bring in the the rocket motor which is being developed by our friends in in Norway. And they just didn't make the next step. So the car is now sitting rather full only in a museum and talking to the Bloodhound people. They all think it's probably over which is just an awful waste and terrible shame. But it just shows how vulnerable these organizations are.
Well what's it like driving one of these incredible machines because you have A couple of nasty accident. Oh yes. I mean this is this is the name of the game. I'm afraid things do go wrong but your safety depends on the team. It's about the team doing everything they're supposed to do and getting it right? And communicating, The crucial thing is communicating, I mean something's wrong but God said, don't hide it say so and so we can try and sort it out.
What's it like being in the cockpit, you know, what's actually like, I'd love to find out. Well, You're part of a team and you're setting out to do something, which is your share of the project if you like. And so therefore you've got to develop as fast as you can and you've got to be as professional and as sufficient and and communicative as you possibly can. And the thing about it is that you put your fear behind you. So when you start off you say well that's not the project off.
You say well okay we're going to This fun, I've got to deliver for the rest of the team. So that's, that's what it's about. And I mean, we got to a point where we could drive through us to every day, at over 600 miles an hour. I mean, it's incredibly reliable, there's a fantastic team of people make it sound so angry, you know? Well, I mean, you know, if you're driving at 600 miles an hour every day, it's just, it's just good Venture. It's just gonna be very
graphically. What's it like being doing that? Do it. It's another run and your War always totally absolutely focused on the numbers where you've got to be the speeds. You've got to be and the importance of not ever letting up. As if you let your front foot off the accelerator a little demon, a little bit, it'll affect the top speed big time. So you're flat out right? From the moment it goes, do you feel quite calm when you're doing it? I guess you're my God. I love it.
I love it because I love to think that I could go and drive it again today. Yeah. Brilliant. Well so tell me what are you working on right now? Well working on another project which we have launched yet which is I'm finding very attractive because it's very very difficult. The physics are absolutely extraordinary and the interesting thing about it is it can be done in Britain which would be really great because that'll work really well with
the education side. So what are very early days at the moment? Now the project is very ill, informed that we've got a fantastic team of people working Working on it and just hope that we're going to deliberate and make it public very soon. When do you hope to launch it? We hope to launch it sometime this year. Yeah. Have you got any last pieces of advice to project professionals about around the idea of risk taking risk, please? Please take risk.
Try to create something, which is different, you're going to bigger margin for it and also, change your life, good do Some do risky things but it's only jumping out of airplanes with a parachute do change your life, and, you know, and then you will then realize that there is an awful lot of excitement to be had from taking risk. Fantastic would have brilliant white Hyundai poker. So I just want to say, again, thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much.
Keep we keep us posted about your project when it launches. Yeah, I will go. Of course I will. Yeah, Thanks again to Richard for joining us and to you for listening to this episode of the APM podcast. Don't forget to look out for more episodes in this series or to write a review as wherever you get to. In podcast, you'll find us on Spotify, Apple podcast, scuba pull calls for more. We welcome you to get in touch with your comments feedback and suggestions by e-mailing us at a
p.m. podcast at a think publishing. .Co.uk, this podcast has been brought to you by APM the chartered body for the project profession. For more information on a p.m. visit, a p.m. Dot org.uk. by APM the chartered body for the project profession. For more information on a p.m. visit, a p.m. Dot org.uk.