Richard de Krepney, Straight Talk mate.
Thanks Mark, great to be here.
Now. We did something and many many years ago. I think it was the Mike Boris Show, but this is straight Talk. It's a different show. And it's actually timely that you're in here. I mean, you've got for a couple of reasons, and we want to talk again about
your book that you released man years ago. I want to talk to you about the sorts of presentations you make around leadership and teamwork, et cetera, because I think it's really important for people to know about that stuff right at the moment, especially, But also, and I know you've got a new podcast called fly and we want to talk about we were talking earlier, but you know, podcasts are tough things to do, so we'll.
Talk about they're very tough.
We'll talk about fly back. But I just want to talk to you about aeroplanes and or commercial aeroplanes, and wouldn't mind touching on private aircraft as well, because I've got a mate who's got private aircraft which he least out to anyone who wants to use it. So and I think Australians travel more now than we ever have in the past.
I have going to stats to prove mediations growing fifteen percent.
Yeah, in terms of number of aeroplanes.
Nineteen seventies, aeroplanes can't keep up passengers travel, so everything is congested airports, airspace, not enough and not enough aircraft. Some of the new engines have been pushed so hard they're not working. So some of the altar tech is actually better than they need.
Really.
Yeah, Yeah, the airline is actually saying, can we please go back to the previous generation of engines because the new generation engines. You see, everyone's trying to outdo the next manufacture of engines. They say, I'm going to promise five percent on the last engine. They're pushing these engines to the max, and now they're going too far. Gearboxes, turbine blades are overheating, these sort of things are happening
and a lot of engines are being grounded. The aircraft is still safe because you have recording systems that show a degradation over time, so they can predict that the engine's going to have a problem enough one hundred hours, one thousand hours, so they take them offline before they failed.
Hopefully, Yeah, they do.
Only they do, and they repair them. But a lot of engines are grounded around the world, causing troubles for the new as to twenty for seven eight sevens for the for the ABU seventh, all aircraft having problems getting enough engines from the manufacturers. The old engines are working reliably long time, the new engines are having trouble bedding in so.
Now, and I will declare front, I am a nervous traveler, so whether it's commercial, private, And if I had a choice, i'd actually if I had to go to say coins and I'd rather if I had time, would rather drive. And I don't mind the drive actually, but as opposed to taking the risk for inconvenience. For convenience, I should say, which is traveling by plane. And I'm someone who travels literally every week somewhere every week, sometimes twice. So just this,
I do want to talk to you. But the first thing I want to cover off is Q thirty two is.
Thirty that's QF thirty two. That's right.
That that was about fifteen years ago, right, and that was your flight in Singapore changed my life. Let's just take me through what happened again, take an audience through what happened on q F thirty two.
Okay, it was a routine flight from Singapore to Sydney, the fourth November two thousand and ten. So we're coming up for fifteen years and we're we're four minutes after tay coof engine number two exploded.
Got four engines, four.
Engines on this A three eighty. The biggest, most wonderful aircraft in the sky is that you say that absolutely still still the most remarkable aircraft. Three eighty and the A three eighty the quietest, smoothest.
I'm going to ride that down for myself because I'm always on three eighty.
People will divert one thousand miles to start their journey just to pick up an A three eighty. It is so quiet compared to the say seven three seven, it's about four times one quarter of the noise, okay, it is. It is. So it was so quiet on that A three eighty that day that when engine number two explode to four minutes after takeoff, one passenger didn't even know we're in the air. He thought we'd hit a pothole on the runway. So it's really quiet, powerful, spacious, you
don't get chastrophobic. It's not too big in terms of open spaces, so the passengers love it. If you have a fear of flying, you're going to love the three eighty because it calms your nerves. If you get onto a seven three seven that has up to ninety five decibels of noise, then that would really make you nervous, even for a takeoff, and it's about eighty five decibels and the cruise which is safe for no more than
eight hours in the workplace. I mean, the seven three seven is a great aeroplane, but a first flew before Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. You notice first for the in nineteen sixty seven, Wow, and the derived versions from that, but that core technology. Imagine taking a nineteen sixties Ford Mustang and saying what.
A great car actually was a nine sixty six Ford must say? Was it bloody? Your car?
Great car? Let's keep it, and now let's convert it. Just do a few moods over the last forty and let's turn it into an F one racing car.
Right? Okay? Could you would you?
No? That's what you're right? So the seven three seven needs a total rebuild, and there's a lesson. A concept in management called constructive destruction, You get rid of things to use the new tech to build something newer. You don't sit on your laurels. You have to keep changing and adapting. That's manufacturing.
What was the Southwest one of the thi's at Southwest or Southwest seven.
They didn't want constructive destruction. They had six hundred and fifty seven three seven I remember it. So they made a deal with Boeing that that if we don't want to have to do a differences course for all our pilots, so we want the same pilots to get one course of seven three seven for all those versions since nineteen sixty seven, and we don't want to have a difference's course. That gave pressure for Boeing to not change the cockpit.
It meant they really couldn't bring in fly By wy benefits because if they did, they have to change the cockpit there'd be a difference's course. So there was actually a lot of pressure by Southwest Airlines to have Boeing do what they did, which was in retrospect terrible, but in any business it's not right. You should you should get rid of the old tech and bring in a new airbus. Brought in fly By Wy in nineteen eighty.
Four fly By Wy fly by Why let.
Mean in your car, you have you accelerator pedal, you push it down and linkages, bell, cranks and cables move from that accelerator pedal go to the carburettor to let more feel into the car. It's fine, but actually when they built the concord, the fuselage stretches one foot in the crewise because the aircraft gets so hot, so linkages and cables can't stretch one one foot. So they when they built the car court they said, we can't use these old systems. So they've built a digital action though
it was an analog fly by Wy. So you have a sensor on the accelerator pedal, the sensor signal that goes to a distant actuator that will move to change the field. Thing.
Actually this is being opens and closes.
It opens and closes valve like a valve, a valve. It's the thing that a light. So the concept is that that you are now separated. There is no direct connection other than electrical from the app from what you're pressing to what happens at the far end. That gives you amazing ability to interfere or intercept that signal a value to it or to modify it. So, in terms of aircraft, what the pilots do with the thrust levers and the side stick, they are inputs into computers that
massage them. If the computers think you're not doing the right thing, they might even override it. The computers in an F sixteen F twenty two, F thirty five. If the pilots don't evo the ground, the compute and these fighter aircraft are meant to be close to the ground. But if the computer thinks they're going to hit the ground, the computer interferes, takes over and pulls them away from the ground. It's an override. Interesting, maybe the pilots in
Ukraine turned that overright off when they started flying. If sixteens in.
Ukraine, you can't turn that right off.
A lot of F sixteens were crashing from pilots, and particularly in F sixteens, they pull so much g that the blood wouldn't get to the head. The blackout and if they're close to the ground, they die. So when they put in their software to predict whether they'd hit the ground and to stop them hitting the ground, or to get to a safe place, all the deaths from accidental flying into terrain virtually stopped, and that that is
now accepted software through all the fighters in America. The pilots agree that that intervention is actually very good.
Is there something similar in the commercial world, like an override? Not yet? Why not?
Not yet? Well, even in the Air Force when they first tried to introduce this for the fighters in the American Air Force in two thousand and five, the pilot said, no, we're not going to have a computer takeover from us. We don't trust it. And that's what a lot of people fear about, let's say AI or computers or fly by wy They think they don't want to seed control to a computer. And the Air Force sat back for about ten years and said, okay, let's see if you
can stop killing yourself in these f sixteens. They didn't, So the Air Force said, okay, we're forcing it on you.
Now.
You will have it. We'll give you feedback as to how anxious this software is it. If it's so, you'll know if it's about to interrupt. So you've got feedback. You're getting facts about what the thing's thinking. And then if you still ignore those warnings, it will eventually take over, and by twenty fifteen the policy said yes, please, let's have it, and now we'll the aircraft have it. So
again we're talking about fly by wire. The pilots might be requesting something the computers interrupt to get you to a safe place because maybe you're doing something reckless, or maybe you're unconscious and you're about to die. It took long time to build up that trust, and in some parts of the airbus software they the aircraft will not let you stall the aircraft or stalling is when you get to such a high angle that the air coming
of the wing breaks down and you lose lift. So the airbus will protect you from high speed or high angle of attack. None of the aircraft at the moment will interfere and stop you hitting the ground, including the A three eighty, any danisial aircraft, any commercial aircraft. Well, the problem is, you see, and it has gone wrong in one of the A three twenties early on, where the software wouldn't reconfigure and the aircraft the soft they wouldn't let the pilot land to actually the land the
A three twenty to shut down an engine. Now that makes no sense other than when you shut down the engine, you shut off these protections so he could land. I'm getting a little bit complicated here, but I'm saying that overall all this software works ninety nine point nine nine percent of the time perfectly. Sometimes there's glitches. But you know, there are five billion people flying every year around the world, forty million.
Fils, so that six sticks standard deviations from the mean, which is ninety nine point nine percent of the time. If that's applied one in every million, that means I may say six billion, how many people are flying each.
I reckon, we might be I reckon, we might be at six seven eighty six. Well that's sort of because we're getting you're only having two or three aircraft a year crashing. That's about five hundred people. Tragic absolutely for the people killed. But for five hundred people that are killed out of five billion that fly could work at the sigma I just can't do it in my head.
Yeah, so that's well, no, that's it's not even one in a million. So yeah, go on, that's good. Then it's good. It's beyond what is General Electric, which is one of the engine makers. It's beyond their so called six sigma test. All right, so in beyond him being better, let's imagine you have a fear of flying, and twenty percent of the people do. What they need to know is facts, because fear is based on not knowing what's not knowing who's in charge. You can't forecast the future,
you can't see at the front of the airplane. You don't know who's in charge. Is AI flying aircraft? There's no one to talk to, and there's no one to communicate with. I mean we're used to that in life. If things go wrong with businesses. Now does a website for a business even post the telephone number? Yeah?
Right, So a lot of people have different anxiety because there's no one taking responsibility. There's no one to talk to, there's no single point of contact and all these uncertainties and maybe there are crashes and it seems unfair and you you imagine the worst if you don't know what's going on. These are all the vectors for fear based on not having facts, so or lack of communication and
lack of communication. Absolutely, and if you just give the reason that things happen, and that's what I guess I'm trying to do the reasons, well, you will work out then you'll derive. You do the hard way you derive. We'll give them these reasons. Yes I am safe. So let's I'm going to put it really simply. We talk about risk, and risk is probability of that invent times a consequence.
Yep.
Right, Now, let's imagine the consequences the same. Let's imagine the consequences you dying, right.
Well, that that has to be. That's the gravity event occurring, right.
This is the worst. And now we're going to talk about risk, where death is the outcome the consequence. Now, so the risk is equal to the probability because the consequences constant.
Frail is much Put that in a bit of different context. The probability of event occurring is equal to the gravity of the event occurring. No, you're not saying.
That, no, no, no, The gravity is a consequence a gravity. The consequence is what is the outcome when an event happens. Events can be probable and possible, and that's definite levels of probability of an event happening. But the probability of an asteroid coming through this room is very small. But if it does, the consequence is probably fatal for you in may, right, But the risk is still low because not many asteroids come down through your studio. So we
look at risk. So when you look at risk in terms of mortality, there's a thing called a micro mort, and I wrote about this in the second book. So a micromort is one in a million chance of mortality, one in a million chance of dying. When you get onto a horse, you have a one in a million chance of dying from that exposure. One micromort will let you ride a motorbike about eight kilometers. It will you
use about use about forty thousand micromorts. If you climb out Everest, one microwap will take you on four hundred and fifty scenic railway things. You know we have the roller coasters. They are amazingly safe. Right, So one micromorp will get as a horse ride. One micromort will take you ten thousand kilometers on a commercial aircraft almost to America. Right when you walk into a hospital, the chance of you being killed by an accident or an error, not
because you are ill. The chance of you being killed by an accident medical system seven thousand micromorts.
In other words, the risk comparison is if you want to be relaxed about these things. Just look at the risk comparison of flying relatives to go walk into a hospital.
If you want to be scared, be scared of going to hospital. I think everyone should have a person to be with them, to monitor them, an advocate like one of your friends. Have someone there with you because problem is in medicine is they don't ask enough questions, they don't know enough about you, and they make decisions without knowing the facts. Right. So my point is that that one hospital missions equivalent to about seventy thousand one hour commercial flights.
Wow, now are you scared.
I'm giving you reasons, They're giving you facts.
What's happening now is I'm more scared of going to hospital, but I'm still scared of getting on an aeroplane.
Well, we're looking at we're looking at risk, and so yeah, we have to we have the hospital system. There are great people, but it's a broken system. Yeah, I think every they're truly great people in medicine, but a lot of the safety measures in aviation. I'm not present in medicine. I'm an ambassador for Saint Vincent's Hospital. I'm trying to do everything i can and medicine needs help in governance and safety.
So can if we go back to three eighty, the A three eighty, which is the Q thirty two flight, and you're taking off and one of the engines blows up. Let's because I think this is a confidence thing for people like me. Can I just want a couple of questions. One, is it less risky if I get on a plane with four engines? One? That seems to me to be the case. I'm asking you the question. Two, what do I need? What happens inside the cockpit there? So how
many people are in there? And let's say you know how many people have got to help you in the event that one of the engines doesn't as blown up as corn fire?
So safety, Is it more safe with four engines?
Yes?
Right? Because all all aircraft designed that they lose an engine. Then well that's part of the certification. You just assume that you're losing an engine at some point. If you lose it too early in the takeoff, you have to stop the takeoff, but a certain before we actually get off the ground, halfway down the runway, if you lose an engine, you can stop, and if you have two engines, you keep going once you if you get beyond about
halfway down the runway. This is very general. If you lose an engine, you keep going and the performance is designed for you to get safely off the ground and come back and land with one engine gone. So everything, all aviation's predicated on losing one engine. If you're in a two engine aircraft and you lose one, now you're down to one engine. Now, the engines are actually very reliable.
They fail about one in every three hundred and fifty thousand engine hours, so about one in every eight pilots of a twin aircraft. We'll see an.
Engine failure in the whole twin engine aircraft twin.
One in four pilots of a quad aeroplane, because if you have four engines, you've got twice. It's the probability of having an engine failure as a twin pilot because you've got four engines. The thing is that losing one engine in a quad nothing is nothing you really it's trivial. Losing in a twin of a lot more serious. But aviation these days, the problem in aircraft tend to occur
with passengers. They get sick, they get on with drugs, alcohol, stress, the business class passengers generally cause more commotion and trouble than the economy passengers. They come on more stressed. Maybe there's a problem with wars. Politics have to divert around airspace. Maybe there's a problem with the weather. I'm just saying that engine failures that used to be common on aircraft
and not common anymore. And as I said, one in eight twin pilots will ever see an engine failure in the whole career.
And your qre thoo two, what was what? You had one engine down out of four engines? Yes, what happened? What did it like?
So? A little oil pipe there was to take oil to a bearing mount inside the most inner part of the engine. That pipe had been manufactured incorrectly. It cracked because of vibration. Oil went into a part of the engine that should not have had any oil into it, sitting about eight hundred degrees celsius. That the oil catches fire, heats the drive shaft, makes it soft, and the turbine that has been taking fifty thousand horsepower out of the air and now rips itself off that shaft because the
metal's weak. The turbine weighs one hundred and sixty kilograms high tensile steel. Physics say breaks into three pieces, and ours broken too. A few more three pieces hit the aircraft. In our case, that created shrapnel. About four hundred impacts on the airplane from all the shrapnel, two hundred against the fuselage. There were holes in There were holes inside the wing, to the wing, on top of the wing, fuels gushing out. Hydraulics is coming out.
Fewer is coming out.
Fuels pouring out through the holes inside the wing and on above and a bottom below the wing, so that these pieces were going through aluminium. This thick fifteen mealstick through a fuel tank five feet deep and fueled through another aluminium panel. Fifteen meals thick. When airbusts design the aircraft to take a rotorburst, which is what we've got, they assume that piece of the disc, which you can
never contain, has infinite energy. I'm sorry if this is scaring you, but now you won't be scared because they say, that's okay. We just assume we can't stop it. But we offset the engines so the one exploding engine doesn't take out the other one. And we designed the air crafts and no matter what happens with those pieces of shrapnel. We've got backup systems, right. So in our case, those three pieces that hit the aircraft took out six hundred
and fifty wires, knocked out half of our networks. Out of twenty two systems, twenty one were affected. And when you break down in your car driving home, you'll get out and fix it, won't you. You're don electronic car. No, you can't. You can't. You have to call the anrama or a friend. We can't do that. But we have an electronic networked fly by wire aircraft. Half the network's now broken and we have to now work out what
we're going to get at the end of the flight. Now, there are five pilots in the cockpits on this flight. There were two extra captains, three captains. I'm the pilot in charge, pilot in command, and we had a first officer and a second officer. We pulled our brains. We work together. This is not like a committee in a meeting where you might have three chairs. You know, you'd have to be afraid if you went to a meeting with three chairmen, right, Nothing would happen on an aircraft.
It's different. There's a pilot in command. We had two other captains. Everyone pulls their resources. We merge our brains into a super brain. We work as a cohesive effective team. Problems. Everyone knows their responsible to allocate.
Do you allocate? Does everyone have an.
All allocate it? And before the flight, when I was telling the other pilot, the first officer and the second officer before the flight, I said, we have two extra captains on board. They're actually checking my license. They will either renew my license at the end of this flight or they will cancel it because I have to go into training. I said, that's my problem. My license check is my problem, It's not yours. The important thing is the passengers. So you must tell me if I do
something wrong. Don't worry about my check, and don't let those pilots distract you said, in aviation, we have seven checks a year, which is like getting a driving license test with a police commissioner in the back. Seven times a year, we are checked so thoroughly. You know, you worried about an engine failing, But when a pilot lines up to take off the runway, his heart rate's probably going up a bit like Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong's heart rate when he's coming into land on the moon got
to a better hundred and sixty. Not because he was afraid, but because he was aware of all the things that could go wrong. And now he's organizing at different times, different things can go wrong. He's arranging all these possibilities and then working out, Okay, I'm getting ready, what happens if this, what happens? If that, what do I do? And so he's very mindful, very busy, very alert. The
heartbreak goes up. Same for pilots. Before takeoffs. There are seven different areas and during a takeoff, before you leave the runway, seven different points of which pilots have to be preconditioned to act almost instantly on any plane, on all the commercial plane. Commercial very complex and you have to think. And so during the takeoff you are moving from phase to phase to phase, and your response is going to be different. You've got to be sharp. The
heart rates up, but not from fear. They're not anxious. They have a chronic unease for the status quo. Every takeoff. They're expecting an engine to fail, right, that's skeptical, that's but they're ready.
I'd rather they're ready for the.
Engine fail and if it happens to go bang, you know, and everyone's ready. Everyone understands, they're they're ready for an engine failure at any time. If you've ever flown on a helicopter, look at the pilot. They have windows down there their feet and they're often looking down through that.
It's scary.
That's where they're going if the engine fails.
Oh, I've been like it was plenty of times, and I've decided I'm ever going to oar on helicopter.
But my point is that that we train the things that might scare us, We train the difficult things. So number one, it doesn't scare us. Two they become habits, and three we become resilient when things go wrong. We don't suffer the fear response, maybe like the passengers.
So okay, what could that that was important with that resilient piece. So so therefore you're making yourself resilient. Maybe explain to me, because this could be equally applied to business all sorts of things. So what is it that you believe that you do and practice and or pilots do and practice every time there's a takeoff there's landing that makes them resilient? Take me through that process.
Okay, first of all, we can have success, right, everyone's success, And we can have great CEOs that are great because they've never had a crisis. There are fair weather CEOs to think, how do they get there? Because it's been good, they've successful, they've never been charged. Not resilient, right, resilience assume something goes wrong. So even if you're a successful CEO that's never done anything wrong, your resilience is only
tested when things go wrong. So we assume something goes wrong, we have to recover from the problem, come back to where we were to recover, and then ideally we come back stronger. Ideally we learn from our failures. You know, that's what Branson said, if I was successful, it's because of all the failures along the way. You might think the same thing. You know, Dick Smith said he's successful because the first thing to happen to him in business
was he nearly went bankrupt. So if you learn from the errors, whether they're mental or physical, or in the business errors or even national errors, you come back, you recover, but ideally you get stronger. So that's resilience, and we all want to be resilient and resilience applies to us personally, corporately, nationally, and existentially. Right, climate change might be an existential risk. People need to be resilient from the time they're born until the time they die, and so we need to
bring up kids that are resilient. In other words, we need to expose them to the threats or the risks that we were exposed to when we were young that made us great. And I can say that, but just about everyone listening to this podcast probably didn't let the kids write to school. You know, I have a relative that won't let their child walk up some stairs, right, they have to go take the lift because they can't
risk walking up the stairs. So if we overprotect our children, if we stop them discovering threats and handle them, if we stopped them failing learning and adjusting, then they will not be resilient. And then in fact, they become then scared of life. They become anxious, unsure. So the fear that you talk about maybe people having a fear of flying, some people who were not resilient have a fear of life,
and that's anxiousness. It's a lack of confidence. It's a lack of confidence gives courage to be intrepid and fearless. You know, this world's full of disruptions and change, so many disruptions, AI, energy, transport elements, whether everything, politics, How disruptive is politics at the moment. So our world is changed and we must adapt or will perish, because equally
bring is a precursor to death. Now if we have to change in addust, we have to make decisions in areas where we don't have a whole lot of information, So we're going to make wrong decisions. The problem is not making wrong decisions, the problem is recognizing it and changing it quickly, adaptations, adapting right people. People are not measured by failure these days, are measured by how they
respond to failure, which is really sort of resilience. So we need to train our kids to identify, manage rate, live with risk, and to be fearless to take risks, just as you did. And I think that's where we've let our younger generations down.
And so can I ask another question just about just I'm sorry to keep going back to what's going on in the cockpit, but the so just on that example, you had two other captains there who were assessing you at this stage, but you mentioned you had the the other two people, what do you call those.
Check They were actually check captains. They were they were training. They were captains who were there.
To check what you do. But what were the other two guys were?
The first officer?
Yeah, what do they do?
Matt Matt Hicks was in the right hand seat. He's a first officer. He is a pilot, he's a There were five pilots in the cockpit. Myself, I'm the pilot in command. Captain Matt is in my right hand seat. He does things that I asked him to do. But we have for sandord operator.
He is a pilot nonetheless.
Oh yeah, fully, he had ten thousand hours, he was experienced. Mark Johnson, the second officer who's also in my crew, he had about six thousand hours. He had been flying.
Also also pilot.
Yeah, but he's the most junior rank, right, the second officer, the most junior pilot in the cockpit. Hit me flying F one eleven's and hercules in the Air Force. Right now, This is the thing. Not all companies are the same, are they right? Right? Some companies fail. Not all airlines are the same. And in quantas they employed pilots with experience, proven history, and they're exceptional, right, So even my second officer, Mark Johnson, extraordinary experience and we now work together as
a team of three. Now we're being checked by the other two pilots, so.
They're still checking him that the engine blew up or do they get involved.
They they once the engine fails, they canceled the check and they said, now we're coming in to help you. They're supernumery pilots, so don't have a role as such. There's no there's no procedures for five pilots and a cockpit, so they just came in to assist, right, And I told Harry, one of those captains, if all the pilots are looking up, you look down. If we're all looking down, you look up, right, because sometimes people.
So you had to take control. Let's call it control. I mean, I don't know.
I'm the PA. I'm responsible for the safety of the passengers, the aircraft, the cargo, the crew, a whole lot. If someone dies, those pilots aren't pulled up into the court to explain why I.
Am yep, yep. So you're so, you're so, how does someone how do you feel as though you were able to do that? What was it you've done in your past. Let's let's park or extract from you what is a natural instinct and or a natural skill or a natural talent. Was there anything that you've done in your past in terms of day to day practice or awareness or whatever allowed you to be the person in charge as opposed to just because it.
Is a really good question, and because if you understand that background, then you can explain why things happened. On q F thirty two people asked the same question. So I had to write the second book, which I call The Elements of Resilience. I had to work out because a lot of the answers to these questions go back to how you read as a child. I rode motorbikes
through the bush. I tell we're about ten years of age, and I tell my dad we're going off of the day into a state forest of three hundred square miles, And I said, you see your dinner.
That's only you.
We're off with riding motorbikes. Didn't know where we were going, didn't other than them to the three hundred.
Scare mean like you. Let Dad allowed you to do that too, right.
But the bikes broke down. We ended up in hospital a few times, and we had to repair the bikes, had to maintain them. It gave us all these skills of knowledge, and it gave us a whole lot of experience, both mental and physical physical skills to really manue the motorbike hard and to push your body. You're getting out of control, out of your comfort zone. You have to recover. Riding motorbikes when I was young and getting filthy, dirty and cold and wet was a great, a really a
critical part of my early past. So to answer some of the questions, I have to go back that far to the motorbikes. So the second book about resilience, I identify eight elements. Now just bear with me because this applies to you personally, corporately, nationally. Right knowledge, you've got to know something. You've got to learn and you train, you got to you got to commit to a lifetime of learning and change.
To just go back knowledge. So your knowledge about your subject matter a broad knowledge. Then you've got to continue updating about the subject matter.
You've got to know information down to its core. It's getting hard today because we've got black boxes. We don't understand. But if you don't understand the black box. Don't be afraid of it. You must know how to turn it off, which blacks box to turn off, and how to turn it off. That applies in aircraft with that many problems in aircraft because people don't know which computers to turn off when they break. If you have a car with a start button, almost know people know how to turn
that off. If that car misbehaves when it's moving. Now, when it's stopped, you just press the start stop and the car engine stops. It won't do that when you're moving. My point is everyone in the car should know if their car misbehaves to how do you turn off that engine?
I don't know you how do you do it?
Do you want me to? You can google it, but no one knows. That a good point and no one knows. Okay, what do you do? It varies with the car company. But you either have to hold a button in and hold it for five seconds or you hit it five times quickly because you don't want to put your knee up against the button in the cruise and suddenly turn your car off, so they try and avoid your engine
shutting down. My point is knowledge is knowing your systems, and even if you don't understand the black boxes, know how to turn them off, and that will save you many times. You know, Knowledge is knowing because spread most spreadsheets are probably wrong with the calculation. Knowledge is having a sense of reasonableness to know when your spreadsheets wrong, when something's wrong. Knowledge is hard eth work. It will
never stop. And even when you graduate from university as a surgeon, if you don't keep up your skills, you'll drift slowly, drift to failure. You have to change, adapt, learn new systems.
Right, that's two.
That's knowledge and training. How to learn? How's the best way to train? In the Air Force? We this is we're up to two now training. What's the best way to teach someone? You think, well, you think, well, I've taught my kids. I know how to change. Well, maybe some kids were taught how to swim by being thrown into the water. Is that a good way to swim? Or should you say watch me swim that. I'm going to direct you through the maneuvers and then when you're
finally confident you can do it yourself. That's the way the Air Force trains people demonstrate direct monitor works really well? Or do you you know there are a thousand ways, but what way works best. I'm friends with a wonderful pianist called Constantine Shamray, and he plays all around the world. He puts in two hours of practice every day. It's called deliberate deliberate practice.
It's the stuff purposeful hard.
You're getting feedback so that you aresting you have to do things outside your comfort zone. It won't be easy, it won't be pleasant, but you've got to do it.
He's not playing America Room, is he? He's playing like he's actually doing with a purpose and attention, but actually copping feedback from people listening to him.
Correct. And he does that every day and he's now coming up to fifties.
That's Malcolm Gladwell's ten thousand hours of purpose.
He's simplified it to ten per.
Yeah, but it is about purposeful practice as practice.
Correct. Now. Now, you could have a pilot that does deliberate practice. This is a simulator check where they fail the engine and they say yes, you pass, and he goes oooh, that's scared the hell out of me. I don't I never want to see that again. Now that is insufficient. If you're learning, you want to practice something until you can repeat it. In the military, they have to practice the things that are really scary so that
the soldiers are not scared when they see it. Right. Look, if you have an interview an sas soldier I did last week, you'll notice how calm they are. They're not excitable because nothing can excite them. They're a migdaler in their fear circuits, being almost shut down because they're confident they can handle anything. Right, So you ideally want to practice these things until they don't stress you. So I
call that stress proof deliberate practice. If we train those hard engine failse or the things that if we get you up into an aeroplane until we not just conquer your fear, but you actually love being flying, love flying again, then that you now have stress proof deliberate practice to achieve that. So how with no knowledge, training experience experience is critical when you graduate as a part as a driver, you're driving test, you've passed, but you're not a racing
car driver. You are you are proficient, but you're not competent. When you want to have an eye operation, do you go to the doctor that's just come out of the university, or do you go to the eye doctor that's done ten thousand operations right. Experience is important. You can't be competent unless you are have experience. And this I get major arguments with people over this. They think anyone who's passed a test is perfect. No experience count.
That's theory, as the practicality is the experience counts next step.
Experience can be a curse. I'm sure you know many people who've got so much experience now they get confident, conceded over confident hubris. When you ever mentioned the word hubris with someone, that's before they're going to fail, and you see it in the media, Hubris is the indicator of emminent failure. So experience can be a curse. Knowledge, training, experience, teamwork. Individuals will always fail. An individual will never be resilient
because failure is part of the human condition. Teams can together, Teams can be resilient together. Teams can do remarkable things. Q F thirty two was a team effort. It was only successful because of the team. If you're not a team player, you are not resilient. So knowledge, train, experience, teamwork, leadership many types of leaders. The leaders to change leaders for things that don't change so much. You know, production lines.
I think the main thing is each person has to find the leader they want to mimic that the leader they respect. Look for the traits in them. See if they can you can repeat them. Did you have a mentor a couple? Did you have someone you looked up? Who who's the leader that you expired.
To the most or Kerry Packerho was my partner. So he did for the four years four and a half years I was involved in. I was in partnership with him. Yeah, and I aspired to be him in.
Did he mentor you?
He wouldn't. He didn't offer to mentor me, but I used him as a mentor. Okay, it's probably been a way pretty on.
You tell me if I'm wrong. Particularly, he didn't tell me what to do, particularly CEOs chairs. It's a lonely life totally.
He didn't tell what to do. He just asked me questions.
But it's alone the life. You don't want to admit you don't know someone, You don't ask anyone. You're alone. Yeah, and so even the chairs and the CEOs needed mental I think everyone needs a mentor in their life at every stage.
I did it buy observation, though I more watched what he did, and he was pretty brutal questioner. So he never believed anything you said, and he would question you for hours.
He wanted the facts, did he want the reference?
He would just he just wanted to check that you knew the facts. And he would actually the same thing fifty different ways over hours.
He sounds like an Elon Musk.
He was very good.
Elon must assumes nothing. You have to give facts through that.
Yeah, he carried, didn't believe anything, You just onto, onto, onto, you know. For me, that's what I believe is the best way of being a mentor is that you ask questions, don't give answers.
All Right. The thing that I find simplest about leadership is the most important two important things. And I'm repeating John Howard here. He said the most important thing in leadership is your values. That will determine how you think, act and communicate. If you have the wrong values, or if you don't have any value, if you don't have.
Any values, or if you don't know what they are, if you have an articulate.
You know, we've had many prime ministers that haven't lasted long in the last fifteen years because you don't know what their values are, and they change that unpredictable. You can't trust them, right, And because of that, and their second rule for a leader was to keep those you lead really tight. Keep those ones you you immediately manage like as though they're Dyna ditch for you, right, And particularly saying the Hawk Keating Howard years, they had the
most wonderful teams. I think they're some of the.
Howard Alli's and a Downer and Peter Costello who were like just so and Ja Hockey like they never left your side, yeah, unbelieved.
They dine and ditched for it and they were great teams. And the Hawk Howard were amazing managing directors of the country right, with the most extraordinary team. And that's what we lost in the latest prime ministers. They get stabbed by their immediate juniors. It's terrible. I mean, this is what I'm saying. These things about resilience just don't apply personally.
It applies right up nationally. And it's the same elements of resilience, So knowledge, train, experienced, teamwork, leadership, decision making. A lot of resilience comes from being prepared. You look at all your threats to the risk, you build up your standard procedures, you build up your risk management profiles, you come up with policy in your plans, and so when something goes wrong like a pandemic, hopefully you're prepared for it. Right. You just bring the team together and
your action when you're actioning, actioning coming together. If you have set up properly from a crisis, the only thing that happens after that crisis starts is you make the decisions that are dynamic. And there are eight ways to make decisions, coming from your instincts and habits to intuition. There's a thing called urduloup. There's very complex decision making processes. So decision making, and particularly in a crisis, where a decision now that's eighty percent correct is much better than
a perfect decision tomorrow. Right, So decision making is a critical element resilient some people. I mean, the most frustrating pilot is one that can't make a decision. Have you seen people of business a company decisions? Are they frustrating?
They don't last long with me?
So well, they last long in many big companies. It's amazing their last long. But they're afraid of making decisions. So that's element crisis management because life is We're going to be perseptariate crisis faster and deeper than ever before. Many people thought, well, we've had about fifteen crises in the last twenty five years, surely that's the end of it. No, the world's so disruptive that are going to come harder
and faster at a great rate one hundred. So we have to be absolutely understand the crisis management of how to run that, and then risk. Risk is the last element of resilience.
You've got to This is your eighth element. This is your eighth element.
Eight identify rate and live with it. You have to take risk, you have to, but you take intelligent risks. All risks have a mitigation in case that don't work, you've got to back up. If you take a risk without a mitigation, without any backup, that's called a gamble. And if you take a gamble that might kill you, then you're probably going to die. Right the gamble is put on all of your life savings on red at
a casino where you might lose it all. So, and it's surprising how many people don't understand risk and gambling and things like that. We must take risks, but do intelligent risks, and.
You inform risks is what I call. Yeah, but yeah, I get.
It, knowledgeable risks. Yeah, you make decisions. And I'm sure you look at the tennis players. The difference between Roger Federer and Nadal in a game is almost negligible. It might be forty you know, it might be forty nine percent great shots to fifty one, and they're managing the risk. Even if they're going down. They say, all right, yes, I'm losing the game, but I've got to got to keep playing the way I can. I just there's nothing wrong with it. I just have to persist. I have
to understand the risks and keep the game plan. So, yes, you have to understand the threats and measure the risk and then work with the risk. If you don't, if you just work with threats, then you are fearful, right because a mouse might scare you because that scares women. Going flying might scare you because some people die. But if you can take that threat and they'w move it into probability and consequence, you measure the risk, you'd realize, well,
the mice don't kill any people, so ignore that. And even flying an aeroplane is safer than going into a hospital. So measurement of risk will give you guidance as to well confidence. You see, when a pilot moves a thrust leavers up to take off an aeroplane, they're taking off into the unknown. They've got an eight three eighty has four million parts, four hundred million dollars, a thousand computers, and I didn't make them. I don't know how they
all work. You trust the people, the engineers, and everyone did a good job. But things happen. Life is unfair, Terrible things happen, and so the pilot as he takes off has this chronic unease. It's not anxiety, it's not fear. He's got this chronic uncertainty. But he's prepared for things going wrong. So we do go. Now, this is the critical thing it was. Alan Joyce told the conference many years ago he said pilots were procedural leaders. They followed checklists.
Now that's true for about ninety percent of the occasions. What he missed was that for that last ten percent, which involves passengers, politics, wars, the pilot's doing the last ten percent is solving problems, and the problem doesn't exist in a standard operating procedure the pilot has to create
a novel solution to something they've never seen before. So they have to use all these eight elements of resilience to think up a novel solution that no one's thought of to solve the problem because they can't call for help. They can't. And so it's this combination of knowing the standard operating procedures when things are good and having the skill to create a novel solution when things go crazy or black Swan events nine to eleven. This is what
pilots are taught. This is what resilience is. And when you have that feeling, then you can take on anything that life throws at you. You have the confidence and the courage. You might fail a little bit, but then you can adjust and retry. Right. So, and that's a feeling that I called in my second book a feeling of being bulletproof not gun shy, right, bulletproof not gun shy. It's the sheriff that walks out in front of the gunslinger, and the sheriff says, I've done all the training. I'm
looking for his body movement. I've got professional training. I can beat this amateur gunslinger. And he does. So the feeling that when you've got these elements of resilience, you can take on these threats knowing that you'll succeed. This is what fither pilots have when they can launch in a single seaty craft across enemy territory at night. You know, how could you ever build up a confidence to do that if it wasn't you know, a decade of training
and building up all those skills in resilience. So the aim is that all these people, from children to businesses, they all build up these elements of resilience and then you're confident that you can face whatever life gives it.
You tell me about your podcast fly.
Well, the book The Elements of Resilience has been a success. I now toll the world talking about resilience. I talk to medical groups.
I talk to have guests as a guest base.
Well, sorry, I haven't got to that yet. I talk to people who clear runways of snow. I talked to banks, and those talks are and I talk about resilience. They've been received very well. So now I've got a podcast and I bring in different leads of different parts of different industries and I talk about first question, what's your definition resilience, and then the second question, how do we
achieve it or what's the problem. So I'm talking to psychiatrists about children and why they're anxious and how we can solve that. I'm talking to educators on the best way for schools to educate children because I don't think we've been achieving the maximum benefit for each individual. We talk about military resilience and national resilience. You know, at the moment, we have about twenty one to thirty days
of gasoline and diesel in the country. Now, how many Jerry cans of petrol and diesel do you have at home? You don't have to answer that question. A lot of people will think, well, I've never thought of that, But in the seventies when we couldn't get oil, we did. No. I think you still should because we just need. You see, the ninety five percent of our oil comes to Australia from foreign owned ships. If those foreign companies decide they don't want to bring it to Australia, are twenty one
days is they're going to be declining. It's not just twenty one day for you to drive the kids to school, it's twenty one days for the farmer to have a tractor making you food, and if he makes it, it's twenty one days for the freight company to get it to the market, and so the whole resilience of the country might come down to twenty one days of diesel. Remember, we nearly ran out of the ad Blue last year,
which means the truck's virtually shut down. You have to look at all the critical assets in a country, which is military, fuel, energy.
And just general transport systems.
Well, critical things that if you don't have it, it stops. You know, we're the biggest maker of opium, are thirty We produced thirty percent of the world's opium and yet and we could turn that into morphine, but we have to bring it from China, and we nearly ran out of morphine two years ago, so we couldn't give operations and hospitals. These are critical things that the country must protect, regardless of the cost. We were about fifteen refinery is
the turn of the century making hydrocarbon fuels. Now we're down to two and they'll shut down in twenty twenty seven. How resilient are we going to be then? I mean these are national resilience is critical. How long would we last in a war against our key adversary. Well why why, Well, it's down to the ours, really don't it's less than
twenty four hours. But then if that's what we're worried about, why have we got increasing dependence on that country ninety five sorry, thirty five percent, and it's increasing of our jet fuel for our aircraft come from China, and it's increasing where the piecing increasing are dependency on China at a time when we're also thinking that they're a higher risk. And you might say, well, that's not a problem because the military get all their oil and fuel reserves from
their own supplies. No military gets all their fuel from the civil supplies. They have no stock taking. So that's why this topic of resilience is so important, and.
At a national level, at a personal level, at a business level, at a hospital level.
I'm interviewing John Howard's coming on. I'd love to interview you about it.
John, I here last week, Actually did you yeah, sit in the broad there?
He wrote a page in my second book. I have the highest respect for John Howard. He was a wonderful managing director of the country. He took great risks, didn't he to get in He brought in the GST and then he brought in a gun restrictions gun restriction. You see, he was driven by values. He he thought he'll explain them and give them reasons. And so even if people didn't like John Howard, they respected him and they thought he was predictable. So John Howard is really a great.
He's a mentor for me, the grast for me, the greatest prime minister in the in the modern era. So that's what I believe. But that's you know, people can say, well, that's because you're a liberal voter now, because John Howard is. I mean, I also like Bob Hawk for his you know, his person et cetera. It was a great. He was a great. He owned the room, Bob Hook, he could own the room. In other words, people loved him and he had a great team. Yeah, and the unbelievable team.
But I think that John' right is a great managing direction. And I think that you're right. He actually you knew what his values were. He didn't go and say these are my values, but you knew what his values were by the way he executed which I could talk to you for hours, but I got I want to ask you.
Let me say one thing. But I can't get John, how you got everything right except for one. And this is what so many people suffer when we're talking resilience. He stayed too long. Yeah, he didn't know when it was time to go. One must face and have worked that in their mind when it's time to go.
Yeah. So in terms of when it's time to go, you and I got to go. But I wonder if you indulge you just a little, just for a second. I only thought about I don't I've never done this before with a guest, But I wonder whether or not if I could say to you, could I ask you five or six really rapid fire questions about about the aviation in I thought you're going to say, what, desser, I like commercial stuff, commercial avian industry, so and maybe
just give me quick answers. But like, for example, is whether it has the weather changed relative to the safety of airlines?
No?
No, okay, So we're not getting more. Okay, well I won't no more.
No. The weather that affects aeroplanes, that where people being hurt is at high level, and global warming hasn't reached the high levels.
Right, is weather an issue generally at all.
Oh, it's whether the pilots are experienced. Pilots can navigate weather. No, when either not to fly, or to avoid the weather, or to turn back. It comes down to experience and personality. And I think it's very sad to say. I think a lot of injuries occur when people fly into thunderstorms for many reasons. Maybe they're not looking at the radar, maybe they haven't interpreted properly, maybe the radar has failed.
It doesn't happen often, it's very rare. But you know, with forty million flights a year, some some have been flown into thunderstorms and people have been hurt.
So and you just prompted me on another question forty flights. Yeah, I mean, are you serious? Are we talking globally that there are forty million flights? In other words, and therefore, are the sky's becoming more crowded?
In America, they're overcrowded. Washington, there was a crash between a Delta aircraft and helicopter. I think it was Delta. I'd say it doesn't manage an aircraft. Again, in America, aviation is overcrowded. In Washington, there was a collision between a commercial aircraft and helicopter. People are blaming the helicopter pilot for that era. He was one hundred feet too high. No, you should never ever have a single point of failure. Those the two aircraft should not have been in the
same airspace. The problem was that politicians and the airlines wanted more flights, and the airs and air traffic controls set repeatedly no, no, no, we're oversaturated. The politics the politicians won, there were more flight scheduled, the airspace overcrowded, and air traffic control that's using radio communications straight out of the Second World War is trying to manage all these aircraft in chiny airspace. The problem was not the
helicopter pilot. The problem was that those aircraft that hadn't taken off, and that the systems that we use both in communications and air traffic control are totally inadequate in that environment.
Do you think that given the appetite because for new aeroplanes and or anywhere, or just aeroplanes generally, particularly with the rise of place like India, et cetera, where there's you know, once more a time people never flew anywhere, but now everybody's flying, do you think that there is a that we are being stretched for aircraft, and as a result of that, aircraft therefore being kept longer, and therefore, as a result of that, more aircraft reor require greater maintenance.
Aircraft are being held longer because their manufacturers are not able to build new aircraft.
To keep up with the demand.
Yes, but the fact that it's an old airplane shouldn't scare you, because aircraft are maintained by mechanics, they have to meet certain standards. You can keep a car going forever, and people do. They have cars that in museums that will drive. You can keep aeroplanes flying in perfect order indefinitely if you just keep the spare parts up. That's what airlines do. Now. There are some good airlines and
there are some airlines are not as good. So I think if anyone has a fear of flying, just keep to the airline that they're comfortable with and that has a good safety record, and they should have no fears at all.
Do you think Australian pilots, because I'm an often get on planes and other places and other countries, and I hear Australian Australian pilots speaking of the address system Australian pilots up there into their training and their ability and their experience relative.
I think American, Australian, New Zealand Western European pilots are the best in the world, okay, and I rate them all evenly, right and sorry, I think Emirates pilots are also extremely good, so I rate them all evenly. They're all exceptional. And I have no fear whatever putting my family. That's a test for a pilot. Would you put your family on that airline? I have no problems putting my family on any of those countries aircraft.
And then finally, my final question is this, and I've always been interested in this. Given exposure to what's the word exposure to not radioactive radiation, radiation. Given exposure to radiation, is it true to say what is true to say that every time we go up an aer aplane we get exposed to a certain amount of radiation, and that in a lifetime we only should be able we should only have a certain amount of radiation exposed to us in a lifetime, otherwise we run a risk of personal illness.
Is it true, therefore, that pilots have to retire early because they're probably near more than anybody else and therefore being exposed to radiation at a greater rate than everybody else.
No, they're not. You're exposed to radiation when you walk outside. Aircraft have gold on the inside the windscreen to cut down the actuation. There's no increased rate of cancer in pilots compared to the rest of the community. There is a fear that if you go down there the poles where near the magnetic the north and South magnetic poles, you get less protection from the magnetic sphere of the Earth, but most flights don't do that. Look, I'm not aware
of anyone having problems. Radiation is all degrees of shitouse. There is no radiation that's really good for you, and the limits that are there are sort of notional limits. But I'm not aware of anyone with the current regime of rules and limitations, having any effects from radiation.
It was as interesting as I did. I did read somewhere or hurt someone not in relationships podcast, but that I think in a lifetime, and that's obviously fungible, but in a lifetime we shouldn't. We're trying to be exposed to more than fifty I think it's sea bits of radiation per person at an individual, but that's over a lifetime, and then they can measure how much you get exposed to just walking outside of the street at sea level.
Then there's another you know, if you're at Mount Everyan's there's another level, greater, if you're flying aeroplanes, even greater again, et cetera. And then of course we were things like X ray machines, you know, not MRI machines, but CT CT scans, walking through the security at the airports. Blah blah blah blah. Are these real issues that pilots think about.
And I don't know all the numbers. My gut feeling is if you were happy to have a CT scan, which is hundreds or thousands of X rays, then you shouldn't fear any radiation in an aeroplane or walking outside. I mean, you can still get sunburnt walking outside, and we're aware of that, but we shouldn't be worried about ionizing radiation, which is the problem here from either being outside. And I think maybe we should not have too many
CT scans or the whole body. But generally speaking, I don't know a single person who has suffered from radiation damage.
That's interesting. Well, I really so glad to have you back in here again. I think it's probably no. Sixth some years since our last meeting, and the old days when I didn't even have this podcast had a podcasts are different.
Name.
I can tell anybody that you should read his books, two books, but most importantly now you should be listening to Rich's new podcast with the podcast available on Spotify.
The podcast is called Fly the Elements of Resilience YEP, talking about everything we are talking about now with the leaders, and that's on Spotify, it's on any site where you get your podcasts.
And how often you're putting the pods out, it's coming out once per week, one a week. Wow. And you're getting by some of you getting great guests in there to talk about this resilience issue. And it's not just resilience in for pilots as resilience across the board.
It's not for parts at all. I do have one person on saying what it's going to take if you want to be a pilot. These are the skill sets you need before, during, and after. So no, it's resilience for your personal, corporate, national lives from the children that have just been born through to resilience of the elderly that you don't want to help, don't want to let them get lonely or stop moving, you know, resilience for
their life. It's a wonderful, wonderful topic, and I've got the most extraordinary people talking and it's a thrill to do it.
Well. I really do hope people tune into that because that's given your right level of intelligence and obsessiveness with getting things right and understanding of those things, I'm sure everyone's going to learn a hell of a lot, especially business people who listen to our podcast. To say, Richard, thanks Mike,