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The value of failing upwards

20th May 2022

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison

Failing stings; there’s no doubt about it.

Whether it’s a failed test in school or a failed business in adulthood, failure is never a pleasant experience. Often it leaves us uncertain of our future or can make us question our abilities. For many, failure is the end of the road towards whatever it is they’re pursuing. Whilst understandable, this is certainly not a mentality I try to encourage in others.

On the other hand, there is a small cadre of those who choose to push past failure – to grit their teeth, dust themselves down and pick up the challenge again. Throughout history, there have been scores of men and women who have refused to be beaten by failure and adversity, and who have seen failure as something to overcome and ignore. However, I don’t necessarily subscribe to this viewpoint either. In fact, I see failure as something quite the opposite.

Over the course of my life, I have come to see failure a little differently. I see failure as something that can bring positive change. Not just for the failing party in question, but for everyone involved. I know this may sound counterintuitive, but bear with me on this.

I’m not the only one to have come to this realisation. Silicon Valley in America has been vocal about the ‘fail fast’ mentality that companies have grown to adopt; one which encourages firms to try innovative and disruptive new approaches, and to focus on the rewards – risks are encouraged, but must be calculated.

Both Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – perhaps two of the most successful men on the planet – have reiterated their belief in the importance of failure. Musk has delivered several speeches on his rate of success/failures, arguing that without his countless failed projects he would never have experienced the success that he has now attained. Bezos, meanwhile, has strived to make his conglomerate “the best possible company to fail in”, arguing that a company that encourages its workers to try, fail, and try again, is a company that will nurture resilience and innovation.

Failure is becoming fashionable. It’s gone from being a dreaded outcome or a badge of shame to being considered the fast track to experience and growth. In years gone by, if someone made a mistake costing their firm thousands of pounds they may have been fired on the spot. Nowadays people have come to realise the error of that way of thinking. Why would you fire an employee that just gained valuable experience and knowledge on how to never make that mistake again?

Failure is something I’m intimately acquainted with. When my first company (Essex Air Conditioning) collapsed, I learned a slew of lessons. These ranged from how to balance my interests with my income, to how to pick myself up after a hard loss and avoid failure in the future. Without the lessons I was taught by my greatest failure, it’s doubtful that I’d ever have had the insight and experience required to grow my second company Cloudfm to the heights that it’s reached today – far surpassing the success of my initial firm.

“Ok Jeff” I hear you say, “I get it – failure builds experience. I watched chitty-chitty-bang-bang too, you know” and whilst yes, that is a key part of my argument, it’s not the only part.

Failure can be a great teacher – but it can also be a motivator, it can be a source of insight, and most importantly it can even set the stage for changes that affect all of society in profound ways.

One of the best guests I hosted on my Doing the Opposite podcast was Mandy Hickson, England’s first ever woman fast jet fighter pilot, fighting on the front lines. Mandy fought in the skies over Iraq in a Typhoon class jet, flying into dangerous missions and ensuring the safety of British soldiers on the ground, and changed the structure of the RAF in ways that no one could have predicted.

Yet had it not been for a failure she experienced early on in her career, the impact that Mandy had on the RAF – and on the many women who have followed in her footsteps – may never have come about.

Despite being commended as an excellent pilot during her studies and her time in her University Air Squadron, Mandy found her progress blocked by a series of computer aptitude tests. After two unsuccessful attempts, she was blocked from taking the tests again – effectively ending her career path towards being a fighter pilot. The regulations were clear: two strikes and you’re out.

Mandy wasn’t willing to accept that her failure would be the end of her career. With the support of her mentor, she experienced the full range of benefits that are imparted by failure. She learned from her failure, reconsidering how best to approach the issue; she became motivated to change the rules, to bend the structure of the RAF to her will; she gleaned insight and understanding of the ways in which the system was flawed; and most importantly, she saw that there was a need for drastic change – a change that would ultimately lead to the alteration of the regulations and structure of the RAF itself.

Mandy was certain that the tests contained an unseen bias. She noted that 70% of women failed these tests, whilst 70% of men passed, a strange disparity given the aptitude of all the participants. After having written countless letters, chased down leaders and presumably called everyone in the RAF’s phonebook, Mandy wore down her superiors and they agreed to let her fly a Typhoon as a ‘test case’. Having proved herself as an exceptional pilot in combat, the RAF agreed to re-examine the tests and found that she had been correct. There was an unseen bias favouring men.

The tests were swiftly altered and a new cohort of women fighter pilots were able to pursue their dreams and follow in the footsteps of Mandy. A path that would never have been open to them, had it not been for her initial failure and her tenacious refusal to accept it.

So, what can businesses and leaders learn from Mandy’s story?

Firstly, failure isn’t the end. In fact more often than not, failure is the beginning of something new. It can allow you to shed your former limitations and exceed them in your second attempt. Businesses should obviously not court failure intentionally, but when finding themselves in a situation where failure is a guaranteed outcome, should seek to apply the mantras below.

Failure can be a source of experience and learning. There’s no shame in failing, but there is in failing to learn your lesson from the first time. Understand where you went wrong and make sure you won’t make the same mistake twice.
Failure can be a source of motivation. Nothing is more aggrieving than failure, but it can also provide the determination and grit to improve yourself and your processes.
Failure can be a source of insight. Sometimes it takes failing to spot a problem that otherwise may have remained unnoticed, to find an innovative solution.
Failure can be a source of positive development ,not just for you, but for those around you. Sometimes failure allows for changes that can have far ranging implications which can bring benefits in ways that could not be predicted beforehand. One person’s failures can open the door to successes for entire groups, teams and businesses.

Failure isn’t always positive. Often it can be unpleasant, even traumatic, but it also allows for change, growth and sometimes leads to successes that eclipse the scale of the initial failure.

So if you’ve tried and failed, take a step back and look at where you’ve gone wrong. You might just find that you’re one step closer to success.

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The opposite: Invite criticism into your life

20th May 2022

“I am still learning.“
Michelangelo, aged 85

Atul Gawande had spent the majority of his life learning. As a surgeon at the prestigious Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, he had dedicated nearly a decade to studying his craft, and another half a decade honing it. His impressive tenure had seen his complication rates drop far below the national average, and he was already considered one of the foremost surgeons in his field. It was at this point – undoubtedly the height of his career thus far – that he noticed something strange.

Atul had consistently improved year on year, with his number of complications dropping at a steady rate, until, five years into his time at the hospital, his performance (while still stellar) began to improve at a slower rate. A few years later, he had hit a plateau. Unable to continue to develop his skills beyond what seemed to be an educational brick wall, he made a change – he hired a coach.

It’s a commonly held belief that some amongst us excel simply because of talent and skill. The reality is that excellence is driven by diligence. Those who seek to develop themselves beyond what is considered their limits are those who achieve beyond what is considered possible.

John Daly – often considered one of the most naturally gifted golfers in history, but notoriously fond of heavy smoking and heavier drinking – once called out to Tiger Woods as he saw him leaving early one morning, asking him why he was always practising in his spare time (as opposed to enjoying his success). Tiger responded, laughing, that if he had Daly’s natural skill, he wouldn’t have to practise either.

Despite his infectious charisma and his undeniable natural talent, Daly never reached the level of excellence that Woods did. His performance was inconsistent, and his natural talent was never fully realised. Woods, meanwhile, excelled far beyond all of his peers. Not because he was more naturally gifted, but because he worked endlessly on his craft. Throughout his career, even into the later stages, Woods always sought to improve upon himself, seeking any source of coaching, information and insight that would increase his aptitude on the links.

There is always the risk (never realised by Daly) that you can get too comfortable in your excellence. No one is too good to improve their craft and no-one reaches a point where they cannot improve further.

So what is the key to world-class excellence? Natural aptitude helps, constant practice is certainly a key element, but the true secret to continued development is simpler than that. You need guidance.

To many surgeons at the level that Atul had reached, the idea of asking to become a student once again was laughable. Indeed, many of them were considered experts within their fields and would only consider returning to a classroom as a teacher, not a student. As Atul considered this, it occurred to him that in the eight years that he had been practising, no one had given him any notes on his performance at all.

Determined to improve upon himself, he recruited a former professor of his and invited him to sit in on an operation. Having executed the procedure flawlessly, he went to speak to his professor. He found him sitting with four pages of handwritten suggestions for improvement. Stunned, Atul realised that although he had been unable to see any scope for improvement in his work, an external set of eyes had noted things he had not even realised he was doing.

The lesson to be drawn from this is simple, albeit profound. Although we may not perceive it ourselves, there is always room for further improvement and the easiest way to find that insight is through guidance and coaching

In the world of business, many leaders may consider themselves infallible experts, but there is a sea of untapped insight that can be used to improve operations and skillsets. By inviting others to comment on our performance, even the most experienced business people can find ways in which to improve.

It’s also worth noting that not all sources of insight are those perceived as ‘more expert’ than ourselves. A common practice amongst trailblazing businesses is the concept of ‘reverse mentoring’. This is where junior employees are invited to advise executives, to present insight that only someone at their specific level may have. I imagine that other leaders may have had a similar experience of struggling with a technical problem, only for a more tech-savvy junior employee to exasperatedly suggest a simple fix. By encouraging juniors to share the skills, the skillset of the leader becomes that bit more effective.

So if you feel that you’ve reached a plateau, don’t let pride become the enemy of perfection – look for coaching and guidance from any and all sources, and you may just find there’s still a lot to learn.

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Open up, or prepare to close down

20th May 2022

“Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous”
Brene Brown

There’s a common misconception that business has to be ‘tough’, that it has to be gritty and cutthroat, and that success is a zero-sum game.

Whilst there is an element of truth to this – after all, businesses are often in direct competition – those who embrace this philosophy run the risk of being consumed by it. Those who view business in this way begin to see competition and conflict wherever they turn, and ultimately risk coming to regard their own workforce through this distorted view.

Sadly, some entrepreneurs still view their workforce as a tool for their own success – as something to be wrestled with to ensure the maximum value from the minimum investment. Dissent is quashed, concerns are brushed aside, and order amongst the rank and file is treasured above all else.

I rejected this ideology, and chose to do the opposite. Where others saw dissent, I saw valuable insight, where they saw employee concerns as a threat to their leadership, I saw them as a challenge to improve my company. Most importantly, where others cultivated an uncompromising persona, I embrace the power of vulnerability.

Vulnerability can be mistakenly viewed as a weakness in men, and in particular, men in business. I disagree. Vulnerability takes guts, determination, and strength.

After the failure of my first business, I decided that my next venture would embrace the value of vulnerability. I knew that to succeed again in such a competitive field, my business would need a team who believed in me, who shared my goals and ambitions, and so I set to work creating an environment where trust among my employees was the ultimate goal.

It certainly wasn’t easy! I had to reshape my way of thinking and restructure the chain of command in such a way that I was always open and accessible to my workers. I sought to understand their concerns and make them a priority in our operations. I encouraged workers to speak to me directly, and even set up a direct hotline to my email address so that anyone in my company – from the directors to the interns – could come to me with their ideas, fears, critiques and concerns.

Four years later, my business had grown from a garden shed start-up to an empire worth £70m.

So why is vulnerability so powerful? How can being open with your employees have a direct correlation with success? The answer is that vulnerability has a powerful ripple effect.

I’m sure many of us can relate to the sensation of being overwhelmed and not knowing where to turn. Many people will have felt that they can’t bring the problems they are experiencing to their superiors. It’s a claustrophobic feeling that leads to stress, which in turn leads to falling performance and burnout, which in turn leads then to wider business problems. Left unaddressed, this negative cycle could cause issues with quality and standard of work, or could damage relationships with stakeholders such as suppliers, partners and clients.

Now, let’s imagine that our hypothetical employee was able to turn to their manager or boss, and explain in an open setting how they have been struggling. A great manager will recognise the issue immediately and will work with others to ensure that the employee in question is given the resources and support required to break out of their rut and continue to deliver excellence.

This will boost the employee’s self-confidence and will allow them to go on to help others who may be struggling within their team. Not only will this ensure the continued delivery of excellent performance, it will have a positive effect on morale – not just for the employee in question, but for all those who work with them.

For vulnerability to work, it has to be used from the top-down. Just as the employee felt comfortable with bringing concerns to a manager, a manager must be able to speak openly to a director, and so on all the way up the ladder.

Vulnerability is a two-way street. You can’t expect your subordinates to be open with you, if you can’t be open with them. It’s vital that leaders share their honest feelings, their concerns and their emotions. You can’t mandate vulnerability; you have to exemplify it.

So, how can we embrace vulnerability? It’s not easy, but with the right mentality, and consistent effort, it will yield outstanding results.

Firstly, prepare to feel uncomfortable. Opening up to others will initially feel frightening, at the very least it will feel a little bit awkward; but once you have – and when your employees open up in return – it will start to become second nature.

Secondly, you have to approach vulnerability with sincerity. People are intuitive, so any faux vulnerability carefully curated to inspire openness will be detected (and rejected) by your employees. Vulnerability isn’t a tool to be used to self-serve, it’s an ethos that can only be shared with others when you’re honest with yourself.

Thirdly, give others permission to be vulnerable. Encourage genuine dialogue beyond the usual boardroom discussions. Try to gently draw out moments of vulnerability and when employees do open up, nurture that trust by taking their concerns and insight seriously. When I was encouraging my workforce to engage with me, I shared my email with all employees with the promise that any dialogue between us would be utterly confidential, I only requested honesty in return.

If you can embrace vulnerability yourself, you will encourage your employees (or colleagues, friends, partner etc.) to engage with you honestly, openly and with the belief that you value their input. The ripple effect of vulnerability means that your business can thrive in an atmosphere that rewards openness. The morale boost will be beyond anything that team-building and away-days can generate.

Vulnerability isn’t a good business person’s hidden weakness. It’s their greatest strength.

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The opposite: Trust is not earned, it’s granted

19th April 2022

“You must trust and believe in people, or life becomes impossible”
Anton Chekov

Trust is a tricky thing.

For a long time, I believed that trust was one of those things that was impossible to quantify. To many people, trust is a gut feeling or an instinct – not something to be calculated. I always felt that (to quote a Supreme Court Justice talking about pornography) “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”. Even so, we base so much of our lives on trust. Indeed, when you stop and think about it, it seems crazy that we operate so much on instinct.

Trust is a vital part of any business’ operations. If you can’t trust your employees, you can’t guarantee your results. If you can’t trust those in leadership, you can’t guarantee your best interests. Trust is the foundation upon which we build our relationships, our businesses and our society as a whole.

There exists, however, a handful of people who weren’t content with living lives based on instinct alone and sought to understand why we have faith in the people we do. They wanted to provide an explanation for why we trust the way we do – and the Trust Equation was born.

There are two parts in any interaction based on trust. First, the person who reaches out and is ‘trusting’ and the recipient of that trust, who is (or isn’t) ‘trustworthy’. The Trust Equation serves as a valuable method for determining just how ‘trustworthy’ that recipient really is.

Complex looking, I know – but bear with me here, and we’ll break this down piece by piece.

Credibility, at its core, is the extent to which someone is competent or has suitable credentials. Perhaps they’re well known in a field as an expert; or as someone who has had a great deal of experience. Thinking about credibility encourages us to think about how capable someone is at performing a particular task or role.

Reliability, on the other hand, is less easy to measure by checking a resume. Reliability is the extent to which someone can be consistent, has a reputation as someone who does what they say they will do and has references from others to back it up.

Intimacy, however, unlike the previous two parts of the equation, is a lot less tangible. Intimacy is a measure of how secure you feel when dealing with someone. Do you feel at ease sharing information with them? Do you feel confident in their personality and the way in which they respond to you?

Finally we come to the bottom half of the equation – self orientation. Simply put, this is a measure of how much you believe that this person is in it for themselves. A high score on this part of the equation is an indicator of someone who may be driven by more selfish motivations – approaching you for their own personal gain or interest. Perhaps they’re interested in gaining your trust to develop their own career, or to line their own pockets. It’s a tricky thing to gauge, but it’s also the most important part of the equation, with the highest effect on the final score.

When approaching someone with your trust, use the formula to try and get a feeling for their level of ‘trustworthiness’. Give each part of the equation a score out of ten, based on the guidance below and plug it into the equation. An ideal candidate will have high marks on the three top variables, and a low score on the bottom. Using this framework, we can peel away the layers of what it means to be ‘trustworthy’, and figure out for ourselves whether we should place our trust in them or not.

Trust is the key to building strong relationships – both in business and in life. It interacts with every part of our business processes, from hiring a new employee; to finding new business; to partnering with other companies and even the process of considering expansion. It’s hard to gauge with a gut feeling the extent to which we should trust others, but with this framework, it’s possible to dig a little deeper, take the control away from the gut and give it (at least, in part) back to the mind.

What this approach helps us understand, is that if you can identlify a high level of self serving in an individual, it is highly likely they will have a materially lower element of trustworthiness, irrespective of the other components of the Trust equation.

I’m not saying that every decision should be made by busting out the calculator, but for those vital moments where it really matters to decide whether to trust someone or not, considering this equation will make a vital difference.

Trust me.

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My invitation to Buckingham Palace

8th April 2020

Close your eyes and picture this – on 11th June 2019 I found myself standing in the opulent surroundings of Buckingham Palace, asking myself how I got to this point in my life. Less than 9 years ago I was working on an idea in my garden shed: fast-forward less than a decade and here I am receiving a prestigious Queen’s Award for Enterprise, by none other than Her Majesty The Queen herself.

It was back in 2011 that my joint co-founder, Derrick and I joined forces to create a radically different facilities management (FM) company – Cloudfm. With a background in facilities management, we shared a vision, born from our struggle with the flaws and limitations in traditional FM models, to transform and restore trust in this failing industry. And it was from sheer frustration, passion and belief, that led us to create Cloudfm.

What did we develop? A transformative technology led solution. Why does it work? Because it corrects failures in conventional ways of operating. How do we deliver it? With investment in technology and our people.

We invested in our very own purpose-built training academy and opened it to all our employees, our clients and our suppliers. With highly specialised trainers, we provide the best training opportunities to learn new skills, broaden skillsets, and progress – not just within the business but for our employees’ future careers as well. And we continually invest in developing our people to ensure that all teams, at all levels of the organisation, are the most highly skilled in the industry – and the most effective.

I truly believe that it is because of this investment and trust in our teams, our suppliers, and working in partnership with our clients, that following a highly competitive process, Cloudfm was presented with this incredibly sought-after award. An award received for our outstanding contribution to an industry, our continued commercial success, and one where we were commended for correcting failures in the conventional ways of operating.

This is how I got to be invited to Buckingham Palace – for thinking beyond the realms of possibility.

When travelling to London with my colleague James, Chief Systems Architect, we were excited, proud, and as you can imagine, nervous. The invitation to Buckingham Palace was something that neither of us ever thought in a million years that we’d ever receive. It was such an incredible honour. As we approached the Palace, driving between Union Jacks flagging the driveway, we felt really humbled.

At the gates, it was an absolute honour to walk the red carpet into Buckingham Palace. James and I were absolutely blown away by the sheer magnificence of the location. It took us some time to take it all in. We were there of course, to represent not only ourselves and our fellow co-founder Derrick Hidden, but also every single member of our team that has contributed to our win of such a prestigious award. It was a tremendous privilege to meet HRH The Prince of Wales, along with other members of the Royal Family and our fellow award winners, and to truly understand the significance of receiving such an accolade.

It’s hard to believe that this is the first time a maintenance company has been credited for innovation in 10 years, and the first time ever that a Hard Services Provider had secured the award. The award recognises our outstanding contribution to the FM industry, and I can tell you – that feels good. Not to mention the fact that it’s personally approved by Her Majesty The Queen.

It is a huge honour to receive a Queens Award and I hope that our recognition will inspire you to think innovatively, focus your passion, and believe in yourself and others.

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What I learned from a fighter pilot

8th April 2020

You might be wondering how the CEO of a facilities management company crossed paths with a fighter pilot?

Recently, I was privileged to meet Mandy Hickson, one of Britain’s first female pilots to serve on the front-line in Iraq. Mandy piloted a Tornado GR4, one of the world’s fastest and most successful combat jets in the RAF.

The jet has a maximum speed of 1.3 Mach, which to you and me, means when an aircraft flies at Mach 1, its speed is 717 miles per hour! And it will come as no surprise that the Tornado is not cheap – it comes with a price tag of between £21 and £21.6 m.

After learning this my immediate thoughts were that Mandy must be highly confident, astonishingly fearless, and an incredibly quick thinker.

So, how did I meet Mandy?

Well it came about when we invited Mandy to address our employees at our 500-strong conference; we wanted to inspire them to think independently and in an agile fashion – I believe these are key qualities of a highly effective person, and something that Mandy has the monopoly on, I would say.

And on stage, under the bright lights of the conference, Mandy delivered a vivid insight into the leadership, teamwork and communication required to define and then realise specific goals, in high pressure situations.

For anyone whose expectations of fast jet pilots are from movies such as Top Gun, Mandy is no disappointment. Mandy’s address was spell bounding and full of humour, and as a speaker, one I would thoroughly recommend. Mandy is one of those individuals worth seeking out. Like all combat pilots, she was trained to make decisions under circumstances at the very limit of what human beings can cope with and has successfully paved a career using her experience to advise leaders in the private and public sectors.

What she highlighted for us, were two key qualities – integrity and freedom – which happen to be two of Cloudfm’s values.

With integrity we speak truthfully and sincerely, we act with honesty and fairness and we take ownership for our actions, keeping to our word and are therefore trustworthy.

To have freedom is to challenge the status quo, try new things and to be our best self, and to give ourselves and each other, the freedom to learn and grow.

I wholly believe that by adopting these qualities not only do we become more efficient, but we work even better as a team and business.

Going back to Mandy, she had a clear affection for the aircraft she flew, but what of the two people inside it?

In the most high-pressure scenarios, combat pilots rely on some of the most rigorous training. Mandy was unequivocal on the value of this but, perhaps surprisingly, she spoke of the balance between being conditioned to react effectively in a split second and being taught to question your actions and reactions over a matter of seconds, minutes and hours.

I truly believe that the ability to think independently and in an agile fashion is the one most relevant to the world of business.

‘Situational awareness’ is the aviation industry term for this, and one that Mandy spoke about with absolute enthusiasm. She spoke of the DODAR methodology (Diagnosis, Option, Decision, Action, Review) as a useful structure to support decision making in a dynamic environment. And it’s the last of those steps – to review – that helps ensure the quality of decision-making in business, increases over time.

“Even as junior officers, we were always taught to question how decisions had been made during a mission, and why individuals had done what they had,” Mandy explained at the conference. “And over my time in service, that resulted in huge improvements to the way we ran our organisation.”

Interestingly, Mandy had a slightly different way of thinking about how mistakes can be used as an opportunity for learning. For her, it is not about an absence of blame, but of ensuring responsibility and accountability. “A blame culture is unsafe, because then nobody speaks up about mistakes,” she told us, “but a no-blame culture is equally unsafe, because that says that no-one has responsibility for their actions.”

What an effective organisation does is understand that even the world’s best professionals are still human beings, and that they will make errors. They will look for short cuts and fall away from ideal behaviours over time, but so long as we make it part of everyone’s responsibility to share and analyse their mistakes, then together we can maintain and improve the systems that prevent catastrophe.

This is a theme that Mandy was passionate about: “For every one catastrophe, you’ll have on average 300 mistakes that have no ill effects – that’s 300 opportunities to strengthen the systems you have in place, and help everyone perform at their best. Those opportunities are exciting. When I make a mistake like that, I can’t wait to tell people about it, because it helps make everyone better at their jobs.”

This empowerment is key to the culture of effective decision making in the RAF. Not only are junior members of staff empowered to ask questions of their superiors’ decisions, but they are empowered to make major decisions themselves, even in the most challenging circumstances. That’s something that should have resonance for any leader in business, who wishes to build better decision-making skills within their team.

That’s a long way from how most businesses operate, but it’s clear that the benefits of doing so are huge. Nurturing leadership and decision-making skills throughout the hierarchy is a goal for almost all high-performing businesses. And that is one lesson from the world of military aviation that it is possible for leaders in any organisation to adopt.