Hello folks it's roger from there be giants and welcome to another episode of giant talk, i'm really really excited today because i'm you know we like to bring sort of slightly alternative perspectives to the world of objectives and key results and everything that kind of wraps around them and as you know we're big big fans of making sure that you have the right type of culture that underpins OKRs.
So today we're going to bring you that sort of cultural perspective from the view of a military service and that military service is the British Royal Air Force and I'm really pleased to have our guest join us from the Air Force today. We have Nick Corrigan. So welcome Nick.
Hi Roger, good to meet you. You too, you too. uh so let's start off by kind of getting to know you a bit where you fit in what you do if you would please so my name is nick corrigan i'm a flight lieutenant in the royal air force of our 17 professions in the royal air force i work in the military training specialist profession so we are probably one of the smaller cohorts including our non-commission which is our physical training instructors include there's about
680 of us some people that full-time regular military personnel and then some who are reservists as well right so your area of the earth air force is is responsible for doing the training the development and i guess as you've mentioned you know that goes from physical all the way up to flying fighter jets doesn't it yeah so our our workforce is deployed as we we do some delivery but we are generally there in more of i suppose a learning and development assurance governance
design perspective both in the synthetic environment in the physical environment psychological environment human performance world and also the planning environment so we plan and deliver training and execute it in line with the forces is intense so the Royal Air Force is broken into different forces so currently I'm based as part of global enablement and I specifically work. In the engineering and logistics force at Royal Air Force Wittering.
Okay all right excellent thank you for that so the the reason why I was curious to get you on Giant Talk was as I mentioned a moment ago you know the culture that underpins OKRs has a huge impact on whether they actually you know deliver any value for the the organization, you know, they can be just a tool for command and control, or they can be a genuine tool for, you know, empowerment, growth mindset, continuous learning.
So, and you mentioned that part of your brief is around human performance. So just expand on that and perhaps how that then kind of underpins the culture that you guys have built and want to continue to reinforce. So we're 27,000 strong in the Royal Air Force. And our biggest asset on our profit and loss is obviously the monthly payroll.
Role so our human performance element is we do we have physical things that we have to endure you know our pilot workforce will have to endure you know g tolerance that type of stuff our dismounted close combats of the royal air force regiment will have to soldier in respect to that output as we all will as within our force protection responsibilities so the broad principles of human performance in the project that were there
were about moving eating thinking and sleeping better rather than just, you know, being probably a little bit over stoic, a bit toxically stoic in respect to just kind of grizzling it out and we'll hope that, you know, that we're not going to do that or we'll hope that a human error won't happen.
So our human factor training, which is an annual mandated matter for us around that kind of engineering bit of things that can go wrong and that came out of the report from Charles Haddon Cave after the Nimrod disaster. Is really important. So the human performance of how do we both effectively manage, deliver the set requirement in training to enable the Royal Air Force to fight and fly and win.
Okay. And what do you do? So that kind of sets the scene or sets out the standards for those that participate in, you know, the training and all the activities that come as a result of that. But that's only the start, isn't it? Where developing and reinforcing a culture is concerned. What do you do to kind of make sure that people have got the message and continue to reflect the values and the behaviours that you expect them to show as members of the force?
So I think there's different mechanisms. So there's one, there's our PMER, Professional Military Education. So everybody at every rank has some form of professional military education in respect of their air and space power knowledge. Agnostically, we all have to keep our human factor diversity.
Quality diversity training, our physical fitness, fitness our oral hygiene and our physical and our physical health into you know regular annual checkups so there's there's the driving license which is the stuff that you need to do the competencies yeah you know and that's everything that i've just outlined including your information management passports that type of stuff which is really important for safe and secure systems probably in our world more than ever before and
then the other side is is then probably how you learn to drive which is your professional military education you know so for me as a junior officer as a flight lieutenant, I complete four weeks professional military education, during my flight lieutenancy, which should be around a six year to seven year period before I promote. And then if I promote, if I'm selected for promotion, I'll then do a further eight weeks.
So that professional military education focuses on air and space power, leadership, command leadership and management. And then equally for our colleagues in the non-commission pathway, as they ascend through the various ranks, they'll do five-size courses from anywhere from two to four weeks to support that command leadership management.
Right. Okay. Okay. So there's a huge amount of training, and I love the distinction you make between sort of getting your driving license and then learning how to drive. Yeah. That positions it really nicely. Is there anything that happens on an ongoing basis, you know, framework standards that people work within to, like I say, from one training event to the next, they are, you know, they're not forgetting it. It's not drifting away. It's not falling outside.
Yes, I think that's probably our profession's role is we're the oil in that machine that supports that continuous growth that continuous improvement so the requirement setting will change inevitably because the defense landscape the defense reviews the world changes so what is it that our people need to be equipped to deal with versus then also the delivery of that and how those courses are designed as a matter and that's what the defense systems approach to training looks after so what's
the requirement is the first question i think the bit that then comes with that is within the day-to-day level of an employee for one of the better phrase coming in for a service person in our world coming in is what are they doing to advance themselves to grow and then in their annual objective setting so i think we have a really useful reporting system around our objectives right there's only you know we have a mandated objective which is really important for us which is equality
diversity and inclusion.
And everybody has that and we're held to account on that i think that's a really powerful bit for us and then the seven other objectives you agree with your first reporting officer and your second reporting officer which generates that output but because that's going to link into their command plan going to link into how we fit or shape within the force irrespective of what role you're doing and what rank you are so those for me those objectives drive your your requirement
drive your personal growth and then will also then give you the opportunity to advance and to say so i you know in my case at the minute i'm driving hard for promotion so i'm trying to demonstrate project work or the ability at squadron leader that i can operate at that level in one of my eight objectives and so i can deliver something so that might be something social that might be something in front line that might be you know a particular piece of work
or staff work for the for the commander that i work for um or that might be something that tests that individual so it's I think that's really beneficial. We can scale up or scale down depending upon the individual's place at that moment in time in their situation. Okay. And so I'm starting to get a picture that you obviously have, you know, a performance framework, perhaps, as you might describe it for individuals.
What about teams, though? Where do teams focus in this performance framework, so to speak?
Yeah so we so john adair's model team tasking individual pretty prevalent across the military very much you know kind of leadership 101 how do you balance team tasking individual because you can't put 33 into those three things and try and balance them there's going to be different times when we need to focus on the team that whatever formation that might be that might be a group level you know in in my case at support force level or a wing level or a squadron level or
even at flight level and then everything down from there so where does where does teams focus is one is our values respect integrity service and excellence you know which is ap1 within our so air publication one ethos calls values and standards of the royal air force.
The other bit as well is is what are we trying to do and why so if i take the the combat estimate which is a seven question process for land which predominantly the army would use but we're trained in it what is the situation how does it affect me that's the first question you talk i change to what's the situation how does it affect us because from that team perspective how is the team going to get to achieve what we need to achieve in the command and to think of command as a downward process
is relatively myopic for me commanders across all levels our greatest rank is our corporal that's the first formal leadership position in our hierarchy structure why aren't we making great corporals make great corporals the rest will look after itself so that's basically that that's that's junior to middle management isn't it so to agree i mean probably you know as a as a flight lieutenant i spend more time dealing with corporals than
a potential sergeant than deal with potentially flight sergeant warrant officers but that's because the position that i suppose i hold within my daily terms of reference the big bit from there is you to really hone in on that team point of view is, you know, in the San Antonio Spurs in sport made this point, so many individual, so many teams rather, focus on the individual.
Well, let's focus on the team. Let the team look after itself with accommodating time to grow, accommodating time to think, accommodating people. But not at the sacrifice of what the mission in our world requires us to do. So we've got to balance that. And that's the commander's responsibility. I call that greenhouse management. You've got the greenhouse, you've got the sun coming through. There's going to be a point when you need to put the water on.
There's going to be a point when you need to open the vents and let some air in. And you might even need to let the door open, But what you've got to do is make sure that door is tethered down so it doesn't smash when the wind gets too much. You know, that's for me, and that's the craft. And we talk about craft a lot. My coaching and management expertise, I have a background in professional sport before I joined the military. The craft of coaching.
So for me, it's not the what, it's the so what. So what are we going to do about this?
And if we ask in the we, the implied plural, will normally get to a solution which everybody can understand and collaborate on further and i think that's a really powerful term and we're now in a place where our our training and our training objectives at squadron level we're now talking about things in the royal air force like interoperability well if you do that i can do this so this collective training bit yeah for me roger that's that's
where the gold is collaboration difference of thought collective training that's the attitude and approach for me yeah and well you just nailed it because i was just about to say i'm hearing that there is increasing collaboration there which when we take okrs into into clients is is often one of the primary goals that they want to see because traditionally they've got a lot of siloed activity usually by function that's going on and they're not talking
to each other and they need to get that cross-functional collaboration going so So that's where we kind of have to break the traditional view of teams, which is teams within functions to genuine teams that are focused around a particular priority, a particular goal, which actually means, you know, you need to pull in support contributors from multiple areas of the organization because very rarely does a priority fit nicely and neatly into one little area of the organization.
Certainly not a big one anyway. It's not a big priority. Okay. So you use one of my favorite questions there, one of my favorite acid tests, which is the so what. And when we're helping clients to develop powerful key results, typically they default, first of all, to defining an action. And then when they present us with that as their key result, we say, okay, but so what? So what if you do that? So what if you deliver that? So what if you enable that?
What's it going to give you? What's your true measure of impact, of success? Where's your evidence? Do you find yourself kind of putting those challenges to teams when they're trying to define what success looks like? I think for me, that's probably our biggest tension to manage is what are we asking them to do? What are our technical experts, particularly in the engineering workforce, who are massively, one, well-trained, two, passionate, and three, talented?
And that's in no order. of around where can we push them? What does that mean for us to deliver our air and space power for UK defence? How does that fit in the puzzle that we live in? So when you're asking a team to do something, it's about challenging creatively, and getting them to collaborate effectively. So we have to be as junior commanders and as all commanders in my head, we have to be compassionately ruthless about what we're asking people to do.
And we need to do that with respect for them and their environment and we have to do that with the excellence that I believe that we are known as the Royal Air Force for. You know, we are the first independent air force in the world, 1918, stood up by Royal Commission for four years. 106 years later we're still here as an independent we're the first independent air force and even if you look at the united states air force that wasn't formed until after the second world war.
And from that perspective and that's different that's just a different story so that's so what point is so what does this mean what does this mean for where we're going what does this mean for the context of potentially the battle that's changed or the operational picture that's changed what does it mean for the political military economic strategic social and infrastructure so So that Promethe acronym, P-M-E-S-S-I, is something as a junior commander, that's our railroad, you know,
sorry, handrail, so that we don't become so obsessed with the mission objective. If you focus on the main effort, which is the thing that you need to do to achieve that mission, it won't look after itself. So the best way I can kind of probably pictorialize that is if you're climbing through a sky ladder and you need to pop the, you know, you're in a fire, there's a building, You climb up that ladder and you need to pop the hatch to get up onto the top to be rescued.
Well, you've got to pop the hatch, haven't you? So you need to climb up the ladder and you've got to get up the stairs to get to the ladder. So that's your process, right? Yeah. So focus on that process. Focus on that refinement. Make sure that safety is never compromised. You know, I was recently on exercise in Suffolk where the heat is really hot this time of year. Brilliant. Great learning opportunity.
But what are the safety measures that are put in place that both policy demands of me and ethically, I can, I can put people through. So if somebody says, you know, oh, you can only exercise and, you know, and you can only conduct that exercise where, you know, the magic number on the thing is, you know, the magic number on the temperature gauge is 3.0. Do I run people at 2.9 for longer? Yeah.
Or do I actually use the rest and work rate table to say we've achieved the task, let's get them into recovery? And that's probably the bit of the so what is within the tactical aid memoir and the land environment for the army, and obviously we cross-pollinate quite a lot, recuperation of your personnel is a legal requirement of a flight, platoon, or divisional commander in the military. So put that into the work setting, into the day-to-day business world.
Recuperation and the so what of people should not be forgotten. Because if you look after that bit, which comes back to our human performance element, that links back to your ladder going through that building analogy. A fresh, revitalized, reorganized, coherent person is going to perform for you. I think that's a really powerful frame there. It's not just asking the so what question, but asking it from a number of different perspectives.
Where you've been, where you're going, what does it mean for our people? You know there's some really really powerful frames in.
That which i think are excellent takeaways because one of the things that we and just to connect it back to to the objective part of okay ours is that a very poorly defined objective is just an instruction to go do something yeah sell more you know increase sales for instance that doesn't explain what what's driving it what's behind it what you know and if we were to use your frame you know so what does it mean for where we've been what does it mean for where we're going and what
does it mean for our people and there's also ability there so i was recently chief of staff on an exercise which is the second in charge of it so all the people so the exercise play and then the real world support the stuff that needs to happen to enable that learning to play so that's a busy job we we meet three times a day something called a CAG a command action group which crosses both the real world and the exercise world because safety
is an issue you know we've got to maintain safety we're carrying weapon systems that then they weren't live in that exercise you know it's blank firing still risk is needs to be understood and in my reflection one of the bits that I'm probably most proud of is I put a risk challenge in it every CAG which was everybody in that room who was a leader so rank doesn't matter there was you know air specialist one which is our lowest rank there
was a wing commander in the room was given an opportunity to look at the five biggest risks that we were carrying around the training and.
Of everybody on the safety of everybody and to challenge there and then and i suppose that's probably the pride that i'm showing there and a bit of a prag maybe is we were a you know permission to do things differently i know you and i know the late great chris monk who sadly passed away a few years ago from you know values in business was you know the ability to do things differently is what what i seek in myself and in that command of leadership and that's that's
the so what so So what are you going to do to make sure that your training plan is delivering for your people that the taxpayer is giving you money to do? Well, do you know what? I'm going to get everybody one minute a day, three minutes a day, the opportunity I'm going to give for three minutes a day, the opportunity for everybody to challenge me about risk management. Not so that we dilute the training, but so that potentially we stretch ourselves further. That's so what for me in action.
So does that mean challenge upwards as well? You're inviting challenge upwards. Upwards yeah with in line with service discipline you know chain of clans there we wear ranks we salute we do that type of thing the answers and the answers are at the base of the pyramid.
Enable people grow your people to challenge authentically creatively and in an understood manner to deliver and that will that will come that's the same for me do people do people feel safe enough to do that because you at one point you know you're saying you know you're acknowledging Acknowledging the fact that there is a very strong, clear hierarchy in terms of the command structure. But then, you know, on the other side of the coin, you're then saying that you're
actively encouraging, you know, challenge. And often that is upwards challenge. People have to feel psychologically safe to do that. So how do you go about creating the safety or the perception of safety so that people can make that challenge without fear of perhaps them being blackmarked for their next promotion? I think the first thing is an objective reporting system.
I think the second bit that comes with that is it's incumbent on all of us to set the criteria for the meeting or for the CAG or for whatever we're in. What are we trying to do here and why? So come back to our first question on that estimate. And then the other bit as well is the highest performing teams agree in public and disagree in private. There's nothing wrong with a bit of passion. There's nothing wrong even with losing your temper. So Alex Ferguson definitely did that and said that.
But if you do that in a way that you can evidence is respectful and understood, but you're dealing, everybody's busy. So you're dealing with real busy people. So how do you make a point? And I kind of look at that as the golf bag analogy. You're allowed 14 clubs in championship golf. When you go out on the open or the masters, maybe, you know, maybe my group captain doesn't need Nick and his three words to come and smash him in the face.
Perhaps I just need to chip at that. But equally, maybe some of the guys prefer a bit more explicit.
So it's incumbent on us as all of us, to be great coaches great mentors and to take people with us how you make that point is contextually driven in the environment so pick your moment that doesn't mean we filter or we fettle upwards what it means is at the right moment we all have a responsibility to each other to make sure that our training is quality assured and safe yeah and what you what i'm picking up from that is that obviously you know you might
say a high degree of emotional intelligence on on on the communicators part on the leaders part is is necessary because you know as you say some some groups will want it quite bluntly some groups might want it with a little bit more sugar coated around it and it's about understanding how best to deliver that message and build that respect because you're 100% right you know massive ingredients of psychological safety is is respect and I'm just going to draw this back to OKRs for a second
when we're helping clients to build up their OKRs you know the leaders will will define the ones at the top which are the ones or perhaps even at the center if you're not using a hierarchy which shows. The direction, the long-term direction. But then the next question should be, right, what challenges or opportunities do these then throw down for us to either overcome or seize hold of? And how do we go about either seizing them or solving them?
And that is not for leaders to, they might have their ideas about how they should go about that, but it's not really the most effective way of gaining buy-in, of gaining commitment, is not for them to define how to do it. It's about getting those that are at the front, at the bottom of the pyramid, as you said. They're the ones with the answers. They're the ones with the insights.
So yeah we do a lot to to to encourage that to come forth but if they don't feel safe if they've never had sorry if they've never been asked to do that before we often see them go hang on a second what you're asking me i only work here in my world so this the the fable the fable and i'm deliberately using that term which is psychological safety i'll tell you one thing it's not psychologically safe so now that i've now that i've dealt with that in terms of our core business which
is war fighting what i'll tell you is i'll deliver i'll tell you in the you know we will support you to get home we've got a fantastic welfare system so we'll try and create our version of psychological safety so we're really challenging ourselves at the minute in the service to be more agile, to pick up and go at short notice because that's what that's what the command plan, demands of us so how do we backfill on that to give our people a relative form
of safety and assurance that they know that they can go at a minute's notice. Because what psychological safety should be in our world is, I need to go and do this right now to defend the UK. So if I've not prepared them, so why would I induce any form of stress through poor preparation? So actually, what I need to do is to get them more comfortable being uncomfortable. And that's where we sit at my wing level at this minute. We're an expedition with a distant wing.
We're generally the first in, along with Airframe, wherever we go in the world. So turn that on its head. What a fantastic, fantastic, exciting opportunity. You and I speak on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Operation Overlord. Really well planned. Nearly didn't happen because of the weather.
You know, those fellas had no psychological safety. So let's grab hold of our, let's grab hold of our uncomfortable levels and take charge of, so how do we create, up and down the chain, psychological safety?
Deliver on your hierarchy of needs and then deliver people to know that that's efficient and provides for them the rest look after itself yeah because ultimately you're going to ask them pretend but not well hopefully not but you could potentially ask them to to go to war which is which is probably not us not it probably won't feel like a safe environment to go into so your point being if i understand you is why then.
Create an environment which feels unsafe before that you want them feeling as confident and as secure as possible going into that when you make perhaps the ultimate ask of them you're right but but chaos generates order so we can't rehearse everything what we need to do is no what we need to do is prepare efficiently and effectively so you understand me absolutely right but what is their responsibility what kind what capacity can i give back to them so the capacity
i can give back to them is is if you go forward your family's going to be looked after there's a fantastic welfare system and that's really short and comes over and can land us blunt but if we look at our ability for our support to our people differently and challenge it so that we don't over top up so the kind of classic pint pot of capacity why are we overflowing that that pint pot because sometimes just a pint is just enough in that sense
yeah yeah yeah just when i you know you touched upon on a couple of examples and particularly when you were talking about the example of the CAG. As I understand it, the CAG is a feature of when you're out on a practice. Probably not the right term, but yeah. In order to build that growth mindset, you need to be always constantly learning. And there is a large part of learning is learning from things that don't always go to plan. So yeah, all right. You can label those as failures if you wish.
We prefer them as learning opportunities, but whatever. but in an organization where you where where literally failure is not an option how do you go about creating that opportunity for learning and you mentioned that you know agile is a huge goal for the goal and you know agile true agile is is iteration you you try something see if it works you test it if it doesn't work you then refine and try again how do you how do you make
room for that in a in an organization that is heavily process driven has a really strong command and control hierarchy and like i say where ultimately failure isn't an option so i think the first thing is your quality of training so you train objectives the second thing is permission to do something differently seek that from above.
And then the third thing is have some confidence to try. So the exercise that I just mentioned, where we have that command action group, and that happens on operations, and the battle rhythm will dictate how often and how frequently we move. But when on home plate as well, we'll still have the equivalent of the CAG. That might be squadron execs or wing execs or heads of sheds or whatever that looks like. So we paused an exercise for nine hours to capture learning.
Again, we're proud of that as a team. What's going well? Where do you where do we need to challenge you are you being challenged what's not going so well.
How can we potentially accelerate further safely can we push this scenario further, so all of those mechanics that you know it was a 250 person exercise and i'll send you the the link if you want to show that to you know if you want to put that into this or for your own that would be fantastic yeah about what we were doing was we were testing ourselves, but to pause an exercise rather than getting to the end of an exercise seven days later and saying yeah
it didn't go that well well actually halfway through a 14-day exercise turning around saying hey i'm going to take the pressure off now you're out of scenario so what so what's going well so what's not going well so what do you need from us and so what else can we do to support your learning now we internally validate and externally validate all of our work so participants and directing staff will have a anonymous validation form that will be sent to them and through the through the laptops
obviously through the the it system that we use we then collate that and we'll form you know a post-exercise report that will come from that and say here are the biggest things in real world and here are the biggest things in exercise world that prevented challenge and learning so your lessons identified that's what that will generate obviously it's the military so So we use lots of acronyms. So it's, you know, LI is Lessons Identified.
It's different from Lessons Learned. Because Lessons Learned. Is different if we identified those the li's from last year or from when the sex size has run yeah, right have we then put that into our design phase as we go forward into that cyclical nature of running that exercise in 2025 yeah have we got after that and have we absolutely nailed with that lesson identified and is it valuable to allow that to occur or not occur again, so that's for me that's your gold around that analysis
in that process so it's creating an environment up and down the chain anonymous feedback upward feedback group feedback all the different ways that you can facilitate learning to cap and then to analyze effectively and that's what the defense systems approach to training allows us to do all right okay so, basically you know you'd be on exercise you'll pause and it's it's not quite the same but we We design into the work that we do with clients regular retrospectives.
So you don't wait until the end of the year to go, what works, what didn't work, and what can we learn? Because the immediacy effect means you probably only remember the past four or five weeks anyway. So we build that into usually every three months when they come to the point of review and reset.
And it's powerful. It's powerful. And in the in the maelstrom of of, regular day-to-day activity in in all organizations and i'm sure the rf is no different there's a million and one other things to do that could distract you from actually just taking that you know that pause to go what's worked what hasn't and i like your distinction between li and ll because something isn't necessarily learned until something has actually fundamentally changed yes
so lessons identified and lessons learned i think that's a that's a nice little distinction thank you so nick you've been really generous with what you've shared and i think what just to kind of wrap it all up and put a nice little bow on top what would be the three takeaways that you would give to listeners you know from your experience if they're trying to to build an organization, a culture, which is really going to underpin OKR's growth mindset, that sort of thing.
What would be the three takeaways that you've seen work really well in the RAF setting? So the first thing is what I've said is to hold that lightly. That's just my experience. Obviously other aviators, commissioned and non-commissioned in the service will have different views. So my one person's advice, so don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It's easy yeah easy sometimes said than done the second point as i already you know alluded to quite proudly a member of the first independent air force in the world innovate that's what we do and that's i believe that's what the royal air force does exceptionally well so innovate but test challenge adjust and refine within that innovation bit you're not going to get to perfect without learning and identifying and hearing and understanding
that that's what the bigger requirement, the bigger picture is. Um, and then I think the third thing is, is in, you know, we talk about being, you know, being fit to fly and fight. Because we need to fight to go and win wars. That's our core business. So spend time holding yourself to account regularly and use evidence, but also trust your gut. If it doesn't look right, guess what? It's probably not right. But why? So be curious. Be vulnerable as well as an organisation and be curious.
And those for me are kind of my guiding principles in my craft of being a commissioned officer and also from a coaching perspective, those for me don't think necessarily are going to go massively wrong there. Nice. Okay. I think those are three really, really cracking recommendations for people to take away. Nick, you've been a star. Thank you very much for giving us your time. And yeah, it's been great having you on Giant Talk and thanks very much to our
listeners. and I look forward to having you join me on another episode very soon. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Roger. Cheers. Cheers.