Jeremy: Welcome to Learning from the Edge. I'm Jez.
Jaime: And I'm Jamie. Each episode we speak to expedition teams, mountain rescue professionals and people who've led in genuinely tough conditions. And bring those lessons back for anyone leading teams when the ground keeps shifting.
Jeremy: We're on a mission to raise our collective game, because the gap between average and excellent leadership has never mattered more.
Jaime: If you're exploring how to navigate uncertainty and build teams that thrive in it, come and join us on this journey. we're really excited this month in terms of our guests that's going to come on. And I know Jez, it's someone you know really well and you've got an amazing history and relationship going back with. And given how long we've known each other and that you know John, this is the first time that John and I would have met. So I'm really looking forward to spending a bit of time with today. So the person we've got on this month is John Peck. John is a former army officer and Metropolitan Police Commander who spent decades leading in some of the most demanding environments imaginable. From inner city London at its most volatile to unclimbed Himalayan peaks, the Sahara Desert, the North Pole and the Atlantic Ocean. In 2004, he became the oldest British person to row the Atlantic unsupported. He wasn't an elite athlete, he just refused to stop. And for the past 30 years, through his consultancy, Tiger Teams, John's worked with senior leaders and organizations to do what extreme environments taught him to do, build teams that perform when it matters most. He's the author of Restless and The Seven Seas to Success, and someone who knows from hard experience that human connection isn't just a soft skill, it's what keeps you moving when everything else say stop. And I thought it'd be lovely just to start this conversation. Jez or Jerry as he's known to John by I guess going back to when you two met.
Jez: 2007 John, I think it was.
John Peck: In the olden days.
Jez: some while back. And that was an Occupational Psychologist's convention around applied emotional intelligence, I believe it was. And can you remember that moment?
John Peck: Yeah, I can actually. We had to walk around the room. It was kind of like one of these classic warm up things, ice-breakers I call them. And so we had to walk around the room and try and find somebody with something in common. And anyway, this guy came up and said, hi, I'm Gerry. I said, what have you been up to? He said, I've just come back from Kyrgyzstan. I was going. No, you're not serious, are you? I've just come back from Kyrgyzstan. And we've both been out. We'd been doing some crazy mountain biking thing. And I'd been taking a team out there doing some climbing, on climb peaks or something. And we were just about to start doing some work within a city, young people, kind of youth workers who were working, trying to stop. the reduce the level of gun and knife crime. And I said to Jerry, look, you're a young guy. Why don't you give me a hand? Why don't you give me a hand doing this thing? He said, what do want to do? I said, we need to find these leaders in the inner city. Take them away to remote Scotch Island and do survival stuff. And let's hope if they all survive, we'll bring them back. And that will be kind of wonderful. And let's see what we can do it works. Now I'm joking, of course, it was fine. But then if it works, then we'll do more. Anyway, we did and we took the first group away and it was just probably one of the most mind blowing things I've ever experienced in my life of these great people from parts of London where they're not familiar with, they tend to be quite territorial, I think, the people we were dealing with. And suddenly whisk them up on a train to Scotland and then on a boat and then onto an island. was quite extraordinary, but it had profound impact on them and indeed on us. And they went on to do absolutely amazing things, way out, way beyond things that they would have normally done. They went out to Chicago, lived alongside the gangs, the gang leaders out there and learned a lot about violence, how to stop kind of getting away from violence. I would never have been up to it if Gerry wasn't so fearless because he set off into the heart of these inner city areas and I was absolutely terrified, Gerry kept saying, no, it'll be all right, it'll be all right. But there we go. So yeah, that was how we started and then we went on to do loads of stuff together.
Jez: It was a very special time, John, it really was. those youth workers, it's just so courageous, anybody working with gangs, guns and knives in inner city areas, and to go out and meet people who were, you know, lot of rough diamonds, and they'd all been there, credible messengers, and then to give them the opportunity to experience themselves on a stretch. activity way out of their own comfort zones. I mean, we were pretty out of our comfort zones going into where they lived. But to match that and then take them through a process with a team of people that they didn't know before, none of them knew each other, did they?
John Peck: even threw some neighborhood police officers in the mix.
Jez: There were yachts, yachts, yachts and probation, all sorts. Anybody who was on the kind of the cutting edge and it was just to experience that common humanity between them all and the care I think of all the, to help save one life. I think that was the whole idea behind it. we ran 19 of those programs didn't we John? At least over 200 people coming on those and...
John Peck: It's wonderful.
Jaime: We chatting about it, I guess, a bit before we started recording, John, we? And I think we all share the experience of working with teams, with groups in outdoor areas and in wild areas. There's just something, we're saying, obviously it's really hard to put our finger on, but there's just something remarkable about it's the ability to shift people, both, I guess, themselves and the way they work together and communicate together.
John Peck: And phenomenal changes can take place. mean, if you take it on a commercial level, I met a client, over 10 years ago, and I won't mention the organization, but it's a household name, this thing, and this particular guy who's leading it was trying to bring in some massive change program, which was unthinkable, the way that people were going to be operating, they would have to change the whole way of working. And he was tearing his hair out and somebody had introduced me to him and I said to him, how long will this take you to do? know, if you just say, forget about me, but how long will it? Will you be able to do this? said, I'm not sure, John, if I could do this, you know, well, how long will it take? He said seven months. I said, OK, I'll do it in four days. He said, what do mean four days? I said, I want the whole of your team. I want to take my way up to the Lake District. and we'd do some stuff with them in the outdoors. And at the end of it, they'll tell you what to do, how to make the changes you want. And he was like, I can't possibly take away five days, four days, whatever it was. He said, I'll do two. I said, I can't do it in two days. So we agreed on three days, I think three and half days. And it was transformational. mean, this business saved five million quid in the first three months. But it was another, and the guys were very capable. said, guys, obviously I'm using a generic term. They were highly capable individuals who knew exactly what, you know, in the heart, what they needed to be doing. And all they needed to do was just to coalesce in a, in a, in a straight line and head, head towards something. And, and over the last 30 years, that's all I've been doing, you know, in the work capacity is just bringing teams together. I just love it.
Jaime: Yeah, it's really special work, isn't it? And we're still going really nicely, I guess, on to the topic we were really hoping to talk to you a bit about today, John. And as you know, Jess and I have been kind of trying to, look at the way kind of expeditions are there, look at the way we work outdoors and think about what is it that's so special that we can really start to translate as you're doing into the way that teams operate. I guess one of the reflections that we've got is that if you are going to get teams to genuinely perform, not just writing values on a wall, not just kind of writing out procedures, but genuinely perform, particularly under pressure or when it's uncertain, it has to be about that connection. It has to be about those relationships and it has to be at the centre of it.
John Peck: Definitely. And it kind of veers on into, you know, a bottle of wine in the evening, know, where people really then start to open up. But the word I know it's a much-reviewed word, the people have to become authentic. And something about being in the mountains, you can't talk. Rubbish, well, you can talk rubbish, but you know, you're not a mean. I won't use the word I want to use, but you can't talk kind of unauthentically because it doesn't work. It sounds a bit stupid, you know. And so I think getting people into that kind of precious situation where they have to rely on each other to support and then seeing the honesty, you know, flow out, you know, and the kind of the truth. as people see them, is incredibly, incredibly powerful to be around. I love it, you know.
Jaime: and
John Peck: I just love doing that work and when you get to that level, anything can be achieved.
Jaime: Yeah. When you're taking groups out then, John, and is it a conscious thing, I guess, particularly when you're, and whether you're thinking about taking groups out or whether you're thinking about some of the expeditions that you've worked on? Have you consciously thought about the need to develop human connection and those relationships as a foundational practice?
John Peck: I think I learned very early. I mean, I was lucky. I was a young army officer. So, and leadership was incredibly important to us in the army. Well, it must be still now, but, you know, and you as an officer had a lot of responsibility for your men as it was, you know, and so I would take them up into the jungle for, you know, they'd be up. in the jungle for kind of 10 days at a time or whatever. And it was just me, you know, my platoon sergeant and these folk who I became a bit of a father figure to, although I was only young, I used to write their letters for them because some of them hadn't had the privilege of learning, you know, to write at that stage. And I kind of realized that if you get it right, people would do anything. in a really good way. They'll do it. They'll take on any challenge you want. But for me, it's critically important that you lay the groundwork for it. And I remember when I went to the Himalayas, were taking an unfashionably big group of 12 or more police officers at this point who had various levels of experience. So we took them to the north base of Ben Nevis and trained snow and ice stuff. We took them to the Dauphiné and we got them doing serious kind of eye level stuff. And so by the time we got to him and us, they were just a really, really tight team. There was only one guy who wasn't part of that process. I pulled him in at the last minute. He's the company I knew from work and he said, you know, could he come and... as a base camp manager and I brought him in at the last minute. And it proved really difficult for him because he had no connection with these guys. He couldn't, he hadn't trained with them. He wasn't taking the same risks as them. And, you know, they couldn't, he found it really difficult to connect. And when I came down off of Peak, which had been pretty traumatic, you where we got stuck up there for a few days, we came back down to the base camp and there just wasn't that feeling that was there before. It was, you know, people were just fed up and wanted to go back and, you know, and it was and it only ever happened to me a couple of times when I moved someone in at the last minute. Disaster.
Jaime: How much that do you think was personality and how much do you think if that was kind of preparation or almost as you say in terms of not having been part of that?
John Peck: I think it was personality but having said that, I mean, we work with all sorts of people on with all sorts of kind of, you know, at some level there may be mental health issues that are driving their behavior, which can be rather extraordinary at times and dysfunctional. But if you, you, if you know, if you've worked with them and you do it from position of love, you know, and people realize that you're kind of you that you're really want to be caring for them and try and make it the best for them as it can be. Everything flows. It all works. And so with this particular guy, I think it was just a square peg in a round hole. And I should have realized that before I went. But it's not nothing wrong with him, by the way. was just he was placed in an impossible situation. So that's why I'm just so particularly nowadays where with the health of COVID and all this, people working from home, which is a great thing. But you know, very often, if we're doing a team build, people won't have met each other face to face before. And so they'll only ever met on screen, you know, to talk to each other. So when they start getting into deeper, meaningful conversations, it brings a whole new experience to things.
Jez: And John, I know from being part of your teams that it's crucial in terms of getting to know each other in those early stages. What are the conditions that you create? you want to think out loud really, because I've experienced it, there's some magic that you bring to it. What would you say is a helpful approach to take? in those formational moments.
John Peck: Well, I think people can sense if you're safe. You know, they can sense, well, hopefully they can sense that, you you're not going to do something horrible to them or, you know, but for me, I think what's, what's quite, quite nice is that very often they won't know anything about me. I'm just another member of team. But, know, in this case I'll be years old. So I'm probably twice the age of... those people in my team, which they think is a bit funny. And I think when we were working with youth leaders, they thought it was an area of just who's this old dude coming along, you know. So, kind of, but then at some stage we do sort of talk, which is hopefully meant to be fairly inspirational. And I'll talk about various different adventures I've had, but. And in the talk and I think in the book Restless, what I try and do is not say how brilliant it all was, but how it nearly went pretty wrong. Most of these adventures, you know, were pretty, but they had a huge potential for chaos. And that for me is the bias, that's the elixir of that critical moment where it's all going wrong. And I mean, the classic was I was in the car recently and we were in a quiet country lane. We got a puncture. And I don't know if you're anything like me, but people don't change tires anymore. mean, most modern cars don't have a car that you can change. But this car, this old car of mine did. So I to hoof everything out of the boot, which is a huge pile of junk. Imagine this remote. And I couldn't, my wife was there, we couldn't find the little nut, you know, the little nut that goes, and I'm really starting to stress out thinking this is all going horribly wrong. And because we were in a boat, we couldn't get any contact on the phone. And eventually found the nut, got the wheel off, put it back on, drove off. You know, and things like that give me an enormous buzz. So, you know, if you get some crazy DIY project where I haven't got a clue what I'm doing, you know, I just love that whole challenge thing. I'm addicted to challenges, I think, really.
Jez: I do want to put in a word there, John. It does sound like you're completely reckless. I know it says restless in your book, the new book you've got out, and we will put a plug to it. And it's in the show notes. It's an absolute banger. It's brilliant. But John, you are actually incredibly methodical when it comes to bringing a team together. And I know that because I've seen that. it's been part of it. I'm thinking of a polar challenge that you took a team of rather high performing CEOs and we were up in the Lake District and remember doing that kind of team formation with them and running some diagnostics as well. Diagnostics but some profiling to anticipate those moments where you might have strong characters coming together and clashing horns I suppose.
John Peck: Jerry, it's interesting because I'm going to be having a drink with a couple of those guys in a week's time. And they still remember that experience. Probably isn't that experience the latest as much as they did the polar expedition. then they loved it. And that was another expedition where the only thing that went wrong is we had a member of our team shift at the last moment. In other words, the people, the guy who'd been training us all. who was going to be in a tent with me and another guy. Various operational reasons had to drop out. He wasn't one of my team. And they brought in this Royal Marine Sergeant, you know, who was quite hard nosed and was very, very difficult to deal with. You know, I found it very difficult to deal with him. And he was, you know, was everything that you'd expect from a tough Royal Marine. and didn't take didn't suffer fools gladly. And I think he thought I was a fool, you know, so and it made that a really, really tough experience for me. But you know, it was tough enough, really, because I was 60 years old and trying to pokes around at that age, you know, that we trained hard for it and stuff. But again, you know, we hadn't our team had trained, but then you switch some of the last minute and you're in trouble. And that's what's happening in business all the time now. You know, they're they're just moving out all the middle layers. And so the people at the top, don't have people that they can give them, pass it down, give someone something to do. There isn't anyone. So they're stuffed with it, you know, relying on AI. But they're lonely, you know, it's a lonely old world, business people. And therefore it's really important that we kind of have other things in our life. Which we can, which will stretch us, you know, and I was just talking before we came on air about this paper that a good friend of mine sent me, which was talking about high performing teams and we're talking about things being counter phobic, which was weird expression, you know, which is as far as I can make out is that you deliberately do something that's difficult in order that you can relieve your anxiety. because you're so intensely involved in that challenge that the other things don't matter. So when I was running Stoke-Newington police station as a divisional commander throughout the times of the troubles of mid 1980s of the riots, you know, there was some tricky situation every day I'd be called in, every night I'd be called in for some drama or other, you know, and we were living on a knife edge just after Tottenham riots, would we get hit next? And that has enormous implications of the kind of chaos that can ensue afterwards. But, you know, I had to have something else. I had to have this other event, which was to take a team of novices to climb unclimbed peaks in MLS. And it was...
Jaime: you think about those experiences, John, and you say you've got one part of what you're doing there, like on the front line in really challenging circumstances in your police work, and then you've got this experience of taking those colleagues out to the MLA line. When you look back across those two experiences around the team dynamics, the conditions that you were working in, what kind of parallels can you draw or what difference is, I guess, in terms of the way you prepare lead teams in those different scenarios.
John Peck: Well, I guess the most simplistic way of looking at it, if ever I'm struggling from thinking about what I should be doing in my role as a leader is that classic model by John Adair. a very famous army colonel, you know, who had this three circles, the task, the team and the individual. The task is huge and we've always got to be constantly focused on making sure we're doing what we're being paid to do and what, you know, what we want to do and to get the results that we want to get. But then you got to look, watch your team. And I was on a call with someone earlier on, he said, you know, Jon, can we need to give the team a bit of kind of airing, take them out, you know, get them away from work. They're working their socks off. You know, we need to kind of give them a bit of kind of time to get it. You know, and then the individual. The individual is the one who comes in your office in tears because there's some horrible thing that's happened in their life. And you have to drop everything, everything all around you just to give them time. Because, you know, that's what they need right now from you as a leader. But then in middle there's this little bit about self, which is how on earth are you going to keep yourself sane? And with me, I'd escape an adventure. And it's like a fell running in the in the mountains or I go climbing with a mate or I do something anything row from London to Paris, you know, in a rowing boat, anything. So I'd always have done when I was kind of in the tube, you know, hanging out and kind of all the sort of bodies and, know, thinking, oh, this is a bit grim. I'd be dreaming of my next adventure. So it's who you ask the question, Jamie, I've always had an adventure in my back of my mind. And there's always something I look forward to, don't think, wow, yeah, you know, a few months time I'm going to go out and do this and do that. And so I've only got to hear someone say, have you ever heard of this particular mouth? You know, and at end of this night, kind of my ears break up, I think, I wonder if I could do that. That sounds really good. So yeah, that tends to be the way for me. Keep saying.
Jaime: So John, it's really interesting. You mentioned John Adair's model and Jez and I have kicked around a lot, I guess, over the last year or so. And obviously it was created at a certain time in a particular context. Things may be a bit more stable, a bit more certain. I guess one of the questions that we had particularly around the word task is in really quickly changing environments like we have now, particularly in the world of business and we always have when we're out in the mountains is sometimes tasked a bit narrow in that almost by the time it's briefed, that the conditions have shifted and therefore actually is common purpose and a common kind of clarity around the journey as important or more important. Interesting thoughts.
John Peck: I think a lot of it is being able to kind of handle that uncertainty. I think if you read the rest of this book, I don't know if you read the bit when I was stuck in the jungle with a of kids, know, my kids and, you know, their mates and the guide had gone missing and we were in the middle of nowhere, had no idea how we were going to get back. And the fellow who was with me was a... was an ex SAS guy and he spent a lot of time in the jungle, a very confident guy. Look about my age and he was looking anxious. And I said I'd brought with me a book by a guy called Ernst Hofstetter who talks about he used to measure business culture and he'd look at different elements internationally. So you could say if you're dealing with the French or if you're dealing with the German, you know, you'll have a certain propensity for this, that, the other. And one of his measures was what he called uncertainty avoidance. So it was, you know, someone's kind of determination to avoid at all costs uncertainty, know, which is almost impossible to do in these days when things are moving so fast in such hectic ways. aside from that, model that he presented was his stuff around, you know, what he would say is that if you get anxiety, which is one thing, and then you get uncertainty, they have no object. And therefore what you've got to do is change uncertainty to risk, which then has an object. you know, hence the counter phobic stuff, but you can then do something with, you can attack it because you can do a risk analysis and you kind of work out. And anxiety is all pervading. It's terrible. It kind of, you know, it just keeps you awake at night. So you've got to work out what is it? What is it I'm frightened of? you've got to kind of, fear is very good. It's a really helpful thing to have. It keeps us safe and keeps us sane. Anxiety is terrible because it's just all pervaded. So I think whatever the situation is, you've got to try and think, OK, where are we right now? What's going on? You know, and I think there's that. You know, there's a triangle model that talks about three corners. One is around, you know, making up around planning and strategy. The other one is around skills and the top is around mindset and it's performing under pressure model. So, you know, if you've got to, you can work on your strategy. do as much as you can that you can control. You get your skills and everything I've always done, I always go with people much better than myself. Whatever it is, rowing across the Atlantic, whatever it is, I go with people who better than me. And then the big thing is to mindset thing at the top. And that's what we've got to spend our life working on. And that's the bit that's most fruitful. Because if you can keep your mind under control and stop it, you the old kind of chimp. paradox thing, stop the chimp from barking away and causing mayhem. You you stand a good chance of surviving in most situations, I think. But you know, if that one gets, the chimp gets out of control, you're in big trouble. If you look at people like Joe Simpson, Touching the Void, I mean, what an incredible book. That guy who, do remember, fell off, know, had to cut the rope and he fell down into this deep crevasse and crawled out for three or four days with a broken leg, know. Doug Scott's done the same thing. I mean, what did they, they didn't have much of a strategy, did they? That was a pretty uncertain situation they found themselves in. And then, you know, they didn't, what skills they have apart from dragging themselves along the ground. try and get back to some sense of, into somebody who'd help them. But it was their mindsets, anything. So I think in the work that we are doing, is to help strengthen people's mindset and help them develop their resilience in a way that allows them whatever the situation they encompass, you know, and then help them get an appetite for grit You know, it's... Just before he came online, Joe and I were talking about a guy who worked with us up in the Scottish islands, a guy called JR, who used to drive a big, fast, rigid inflatable boat. And he'd be there, you know, in all weathers to kind of get us in and out. And I was preparing a speech for his funeral. And I said the thing that I remember about him, he had grit running through him like a rod of steel right the way through him. And he was the guy that, Himalayas, when the guy dropped out because of altitude sickness, JR took his little team up to the summit to do a first British ascent. With no qualifications at all, very little experience, but he's got lots of grit. And I think that that's what we can try and develop. But we can only do that by standing a bit closer to the flame every now and then.
Jaime: That's really, I guess two of the themes I'm hearing through a lot of this conversation, John, particularly when you're thinking about your lessons from going on some those expeditions yourself and your extensive work working with teams. It kind of feels like kind of this slight duality between the fast and the slow. Like it feels like there's something that's really important to you in terms of like giving space to the slowness of of building connections and really doing that in a way that is heartfelt. almost the quickness and I know you're, but the five C's you talk about these kind of stretch exercises. And it feels like there's almost something interesting that happens between those two bits where if you're constantly building that, those relationships and stress testing them, it just builds it up and it builds people. Like you talk about the kind of capability to to be able to manage uncertainty to be able turn it into risk. Is that fair enough? It feels like there's quite an interesting combination of those factors in how you're working.
John Peck: Yes, I think in this because each time you know that circle, there's a kind of choice between you know the cloud the two circles about now you and your health is to extremity of the most difficult and hardest and toughest thing you can ever do and the comfort zone we live in you know, and each time we stretch that comfort zone out, you kind of know it gives us more capability. But you know, also, I think there's underlying all this stuff in the book, The Seven Seas that I wrote. The first word, the first word appears in the first chapter is the word care. And people thought, people said to me, a funny word to use, know, because it sounds like you're going to a care home, which in my case won't be that long. But the care thing is, whether you, how much you seriously do care about something. And if you get, know, and I coach people, I'm coaching people to row the Atlantic. I coach four women. Last year, one who was 70, one who was 50, one who was 30, one who was 20, to row across the Atlantic. Never done anything like it before. And they were just amazing. three airline pilots at the moment. You know, but for them, really, it's about how they're going to get on with each other, stuck in a rowing boat endlessly for a sort of, you know, for weeks on end with no escape. And so I think it's the same for work. know, work needs to be an exciting place. And if we work with clients, we say, look, you really must decide if you want to work with us, because what we want to do is to bring some spirits of adventure to your business. If it's not there already. or to light the flames that are there already and get them kind of burning a bit brighter. And just like anything, you know, if you get any rugby team, any other sports team, football team, you can't go on without a coach. And so, you know, I had a call earlier today from someone, can you take our team away for a couple of days because they're just, we need bit of a boost. You know, well, you would do with it with the sports team. You know, of course you wouldn't just expect to turn up. You know, on the rugby pitch, I've never done anything since the last match. You constantly need to be coaching each other. And that's what we should be doing. That's our job. And, know, whether we're coaching individuals to be leaders or whether we're coaching teams, you know, it's just great work, you know, and we can make huge differences for people.
Jez: So John, this is a bit of a provocation. Would you say human connection is a leadership nicety or the last competitive advantage that can't be automated?
John Peck: It's absolutely, it runs through like a stick of rock, cherry. And if we're not getting it, you can tell if a team is dysfunctional, you can tell the first time you meet them. And you can, just sense that whole atmosphere about them, it's just kind of discomfort. They don't really want to be with each other. They don't want to come on the team, Bill, because they're worried, who are these people? And do I really want to spend time with them? You know, so that's the darkest, you know, but then if you get a team who are up for it, they can do anything. And then beyond that, they're all on their WhatsApps, buzzing each other. You know, and it's just like, and like I was saying earlier on, Jerry, you know, it's a bit like my sons, and we've been to lots of weddings, I've got three sons, and they're all in their 40s, and lord, they're mates, and we occasionally get invited to their weddings. And you can always tell if it's a good wedding. if the stags have been on a stag do and the hens have been on a hen do. Because when you end up on the morning of the wedding, we're all sitting in our suits, you around these round tables with very smart silverware and everything, you know, and you kind of... You can tell that it's been a good stag too, because they're all buzzing around the table, just pointing around around each other. Oh mate, what a laugh. We had such a good time. Do you remember this? Oh, don't tell anybody about that. Don't tell everybody about that. know, the hens are kind of henning it and the stags are stagging it, you know, in the most lovely way. And it's a joy to be around them. There's a whole buzz in the room, you know, and then the speeches and everyone's cheering and you know, that's because they've had a team built. It's as simple as that. No, they've gone out and done crazy stuff.
Jaime: Thanks again. It's amazing to hear you talk about this, John. One of the things that guess came to me, always took me back to the start of this conversation. You're talking about the example of the team you worked with where it was going to take them seven months to build something and you were negotiating between kind of two and four days. I guess just the bit, I'd just like you'd love to get your reflection on. think Jess and I is kind of, I guess, our sense here is that as the world gets more complex, as things are changing, as we start to get more remote from each other.
John Peck: Yeah.
Jaime: The potential to learn from the sorts of conditions we need to create on teams and how we lead on expeditions and in wild places becomes more relevant than ever. As you said, when you get that right, it allows you to thrive in those situations. When you get it wrong, as you said from your experience, it's a real challenge. But it feels like one of the biggest, biggest challenges of our time for teams and organizations, and I experience it daily, people don't want time. They don't have the time to spend on these things or they don't think they do. And it just feels like the biggest risk in terms of we're just not equipping teams with the capacities, the capability, because we're not creating the time for them to develop them. And it just, feels like one of the biggest travesties and we're seeing it. We've all seen all the stats about disconnection and disengagement at work. And I think Your word care just comes right unless we really care about it just feels like we're hiding to nothing, especially if we're expecting people to perform in, in, I guess, external conditions that that much more uncertain.
John Peck: Yes, it's kind of this return on investment piece that's always so difficult because you know, it's, mean, years ago, did millions of years ago, when we first started out, I was invited to do some work with British Aerospace, sent to one of their places up north. And we went into pitch for the business against some far more bigger players than us. And the people said to us, okay, so, How do we know though that you're capable of doing what you say you're doing with these people? I said, look, give me 12 people from across your organization, okay? Just mix them up. I want to be high potential if possible, but from anywhere you can in the organization, give me 12 people. Give me them for four days, okay? And I'll send them back to you. And if you're not satisfied, this is a leadership program, if you're not satisfied, then pay me a penny. And my mate was going, God, between what you're doing, you know. And they went away and they said, they brought me up the next day said, we've spoken to our lawyers and they were saying, how do you define satisfied? You're
Jez: Yes.
Jaime: I said...
John Peck: the great British aerospace, you'll know whether you're satisfied or not. And the poor people came, they loved it and they never looked back and they, we'd had 12 courses and that's where our business got started. But we were, and that was, that was the confidence that we were. And time and time again after that, I'd said I'd do the same thing, but my business partner used to get very nervous about it all.
Jaime: He's gone again. Come back John, come back.
John Peck: But it's very difficult with the money, with the return on investment. You're looking at stuff that's sometimes very hard to describe because you don't see the fruits of the labor right now. It's like they're talking now, the effects of the civil war in the Middle East is going to hit us in nine months time when all the food is much more expensive, not now. So when you're doing work with a team, takes a while to mature and when they whizz back. You'll see the results, definitely see the results in so many different ways. But you know, my job as job as consultants is to make ourselves redundant. I don't like these long relationships where you keep hopping and trying to sell more work. I mean, love it. If I get a phone call and someone says, can you come and help me fix something? That's fine. But you know, if I take my car to garage, I don't expect to keep taking it back every week, you know. Once they've serviced it, I want it to work. And if we do our job right, it should happen, you know. I love that. Good.
Jez: So John, I'm just thinking of somebody who might be listening into this conversation. Somebody who's probably, well, could be with a team at work struggling with something and considering embracing an adventure as a learning opportunity. I wonder what advice you would give to somebody like that.
John Peck: I think, you know, just be prepared to that. The easiest thing you can do is to get what we call a tiger team together. And that's, you know, that's how we start off our business. You know, in the very early, early days, but a tiger team is just like a group of maybe up to 12 people from across the business. And we don't give down with whether they're directors, whatever they are, as long as they know what the business is about and take them and we'll take them away for a few days and they'll come back and tell the business how to do it. Jerry, that's what we did with those youth workers. Remember the gun and knife crime stuff? And we said to the guys who were funding us, know, the police officers, senior police officers who funding us, because I wasn't in the police anymore, you know, they said, just give us, we'll get to all these people. They'll come back and they'll tell you what you should be doing about gun and knife crime. Do remember they came back and it was deeply emotional hearing them speak, you know, of kind of what they wanted to do. And then they went up to Chicago and... West is sort of history landed. They were just wonderful people. You know, so it's kind of, I think it just, yeah, but I'm, yeah, so the idea is, you you can't just, don't, if you try and, the difficulties, you try and get the board away, oh God, they can't all be together and you've got fiddling around forever trying to get dates, you know. Unless you get someone pretty tough at the top who says, come on, I don't care what you're doing, you're going to be at this thing. You know, so you don't have to do that. Take the high potential people away. And you know, I used to run a high potential. I've run loads of high potential, but in the police before I left, I was doing that. You know, one of my jobs, I was running a high potential scheme and those people went on to become chief constables and they did some amazing things. Why? Because they were bright young people who got fired up, knew what they were trying to do and they were just brilliant. know, but you can't do it without, if you stop training and you know, it's the easiest thing to stop. If you don't invest in your people. It's terribly sad if you don't do that.
Jaime: That's been absolutely amazing to chat to you today, John. I think we're probably running out of time. So, I know we could probably carry on chatting all day. We
Jez: You can happily carry on trying
Jaime: probably will.
Jez: to... This is the episode one of ten.
Jaime: you
John Peck: Lovely to talk to you Jamie. I'll come and do some work with you guys one day.
Jaime: That would be amazing. You're up in the latest show, aren't you John?
John Peck: Yeah, but I'm based in Essex, edge of London. But you know, go around, if you're short of someone to the sweep the floor or something, I'll come and join you. Zombie Jerry will have me.
Jez: Well, while we're rolling I'd like to book a big plug for John's books, which we will put a link in the show notes. the Seven Seas of Success. Jamie was listening to it on audiobook across the weekend. think you listened to it twice, Jamie.
Jaime: did listen to it twice. think it was, certainly the first time was interesting, but slightly interrupted by the kids. But I did want to listen to it again. It was really interesting. I think the first thing I said to Jez when I had a catch up with him this morning was like, listen to this thing in John's pick. I know I'm speaking to him, but we're to do this, this and this. And I think it was just for anyone who is, I guess, thinking about taking on any sort of adventure as a kind of a really clear approach to kind of just get your ducks in a row and really think through it systematically, but also with an amazing amount of energy behind it as well. So I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's thinking about any sort of adventure, whether it's outdoors, whether it's at work, a really, really good listen, good read.
John Peck: thank you Jamie, that was great.
Jez: And the second plug is the second edition of John's memoirs, Restless. I love it, Restless. Wasn't it only course you ever failed, John, was a meditation course, wasn't it?
Jaime: you
Jez: and sit still! Which is, it's a jam-packed book and I've been reading it also across the weekend, it's been brilliant to hear about your life of adventure and honestly I met John when he had just rode across the Atlantic and you were in, I only 60s, I can't remember now,
John Peck: See
Jez: and you'd just done the Marathon to Sable as well and I was like, my god, John, seriously, yes!
John Peck: Thank
Jez: So, I mean, if John can do that, you've just done, we did celebrate a significant birthday last summer, John, and it was great to be there. And you were straight off to Morocco to go and climb Tupca with some mates. So it is endless and it's restless. It's, it's super. And of course, if you do want to take on an adventure, John does adventure coaching as well. will give you his details and if you want to go and row the Atlantic or do anything else he is a great support for you.
John Peck: Oh mate, thank you so much. It's been such a joy talking to you both. So look forward to the next one and must hear the previous one that you've done as well, which sounds really good.
Jez: I that, Thank you so much.
Jaime: Thanks, Joe.
Jeremy: So that's it for this episode.
Jaime: If something in this conversation landed for you, the best thing you can do is pass it on to someone leading a team, navigating uncertainty, or just looking for a better way to think about it.
Jeremy: We're exploring this unfolding journey one conversation at a time, and we'd love you to join us for the next one.
Jaime: So subscribe if you haven't already. But more than that, share it with someone who'd value it.
Jeremy: And of course, thanks for listening.
Jaime: We'll see you on the next one. Go well.
Jaime: And I'm Jamie. Each episode we speak to expedition teams, mountain rescue professionals and people who've led in genuinely tough conditions. And bring those lessons back for anyone leading teams when the ground keeps shifting.
Jeremy: We're on a mission to raise our collective game, because the gap between average and excellent leadership has never mattered more.
Jaime: If you're exploring how to navigate uncertainty and build teams that thrive in it, come and join us on this journey. we're really excited this month in terms of our guests that's going to come on. And I know Jez, it's someone you know really well and you've got an amazing history and relationship going back with. And given how long we've known each other and that you know John, this is the first time that John and I would have met. So I'm really looking forward to spending a bit of time with today. So the person we've got on this month is John Peck. John is a former army officer and Metropolitan Police Commander who spent decades leading in some of the most demanding environments imaginable. From inner city London at its most volatile to unclimbed Himalayan peaks, the Sahara Desert, the North Pole and the Atlantic Ocean. In 2004, he became the oldest British person to row the Atlantic unsupported. He wasn't an elite athlete, he just refused to stop. And for the past 30 years, through his consultancy, Tiger Teams, John's worked with senior leaders and organizations to do what extreme environments taught him to do, build teams that perform when it matters most. He's the author of Restless and The Seven Seas to Success, and someone who knows from hard experience that human connection isn't just a soft skill, it's what keeps you moving when everything else say stop. And I thought it'd be lovely just to start this conversation. Jez or Jerry as he's known to John by I guess going back to when you two met.
Jez: 2007 John, I think it was.
John Peck: In the olden days.
Jez: some while back. And that was an Occupational Psychologist's convention around applied emotional intelligence, I believe it was. And can you remember that moment?
John Peck: Yeah, I can actually. We had to walk around the room. It was kind of like one of these classic warm up things, ice-breakers I call them. And so we had to walk around the room and try and find somebody with something in common. And anyway, this guy came up and said, hi, I'm Gerry. I said, what have you been up to? He said, I've just come back from Kyrgyzstan. I was going. No, you're not serious, are you? I've just come back from Kyrgyzstan. And we've both been out. We'd been doing some crazy mountain biking thing. And I'd been taking a team out there doing some climbing, on climb peaks or something. And we were just about to start doing some work within a city, young people, kind of youth workers who were working, trying to stop. the reduce the level of gun and knife crime. And I said to Jerry, look, you're a young guy. Why don't you give me a hand? Why don't you give me a hand doing this thing? He said, what do want to do? I said, we need to find these leaders in the inner city. Take them away to remote Scotch Island and do survival stuff. And let's hope if they all survive, we'll bring them back. And that will be kind of wonderful. And let's see what we can do it works. Now I'm joking, of course, it was fine. But then if it works, then we'll do more. Anyway, we did and we took the first group away and it was just probably one of the most mind blowing things I've ever experienced in my life of these great people from parts of London where they're not familiar with, they tend to be quite territorial, I think, the people we were dealing with. And suddenly whisk them up on a train to Scotland and then on a boat and then onto an island. was quite extraordinary, but it had profound impact on them and indeed on us. And they went on to do absolutely amazing things, way out, way beyond things that they would have normally done. They went out to Chicago, lived alongside the gangs, the gang leaders out there and learned a lot about violence, how to stop kind of getting away from violence. I would never have been up to it if Gerry wasn't so fearless because he set off into the heart of these inner city areas and I was absolutely terrified, Gerry kept saying, no, it'll be all right, it'll be all right. But there we go. So yeah, that was how we started and then we went on to do loads of stuff together.
Jez: It was a very special time, John, it really was. those youth workers, it's just so courageous, anybody working with gangs, guns and knives in inner city areas, and to go out and meet people who were, you know, lot of rough diamonds, and they'd all been there, credible messengers, and then to give them the opportunity to experience themselves on a stretch. activity way out of their own comfort zones. I mean, we were pretty out of our comfort zones going into where they lived. But to match that and then take them through a process with a team of people that they didn't know before, none of them knew each other, did they?
John Peck: even threw some neighborhood police officers in the mix.
Jez: There were yachts, yachts, yachts and probation, all sorts. Anybody who was on the kind of the cutting edge and it was just to experience that common humanity between them all and the care I think of all the, to help save one life. I think that was the whole idea behind it. we ran 19 of those programs didn't we John? At least over 200 people coming on those and...
John Peck: It's wonderful.
Jaime: We chatting about it, I guess, a bit before we started recording, John, we? And I think we all share the experience of working with teams, with groups in outdoor areas and in wild areas. There's just something, we're saying, obviously it's really hard to put our finger on, but there's just something remarkable about it's the ability to shift people, both, I guess, themselves and the way they work together and communicate together.
John Peck: And phenomenal changes can take place. mean, if you take it on a commercial level, I met a client, over 10 years ago, and I won't mention the organization, but it's a household name, this thing, and this particular guy who's leading it was trying to bring in some massive change program, which was unthinkable, the way that people were going to be operating, they would have to change the whole way of working. And he was tearing his hair out and somebody had introduced me to him and I said to him, how long will this take you to do? know, if you just say, forget about me, but how long will it? Will you be able to do this? said, I'm not sure, John, if I could do this, you know, well, how long will it take? He said seven months. I said, OK, I'll do it in four days. He said, what do mean four days? I said, I want the whole of your team. I want to take my way up to the Lake District. and we'd do some stuff with them in the outdoors. And at the end of it, they'll tell you what to do, how to make the changes you want. And he was like, I can't possibly take away five days, four days, whatever it was. He said, I'll do two. I said, I can't do it in two days. So we agreed on three days, I think three and half days. And it was transformational. mean, this business saved five million quid in the first three months. But it was another, and the guys were very capable. said, guys, obviously I'm using a generic term. They were highly capable individuals who knew exactly what, you know, in the heart, what they needed to be doing. And all they needed to do was just to coalesce in a, in a, in a straight line and head, head towards something. And, and over the last 30 years, that's all I've been doing, you know, in the work capacity is just bringing teams together. I just love it.
Jaime: Yeah, it's really special work, isn't it? And we're still going really nicely, I guess, on to the topic we were really hoping to talk to you a bit about today, John. And as you know, Jess and I have been kind of trying to, look at the way kind of expeditions are there, look at the way we work outdoors and think about what is it that's so special that we can really start to translate as you're doing into the way that teams operate. I guess one of the reflections that we've got is that if you are going to get teams to genuinely perform, not just writing values on a wall, not just kind of writing out procedures, but genuinely perform, particularly under pressure or when it's uncertain, it has to be about that connection. It has to be about those relationships and it has to be at the centre of it.
John Peck: Definitely. And it kind of veers on into, you know, a bottle of wine in the evening, know, where people really then start to open up. But the word I know it's a much-reviewed word, the people have to become authentic. And something about being in the mountains, you can't talk. Rubbish, well, you can talk rubbish, but you know, you're not a mean. I won't use the word I want to use, but you can't talk kind of unauthentically because it doesn't work. It sounds a bit stupid, you know. And so I think getting people into that kind of precious situation where they have to rely on each other to support and then seeing the honesty, you know, flow out, you know, and the kind of the truth. as people see them, is incredibly, incredibly powerful to be around. I love it, you know.
Jaime: and
John Peck: I just love doing that work and when you get to that level, anything can be achieved.
Jaime: Yeah. When you're taking groups out then, John, and is it a conscious thing, I guess, particularly when you're, and whether you're thinking about taking groups out or whether you're thinking about some of the expeditions that you've worked on? Have you consciously thought about the need to develop human connection and those relationships as a foundational practice?
John Peck: I think I learned very early. I mean, I was lucky. I was a young army officer. So, and leadership was incredibly important to us in the army. Well, it must be still now, but, you know, and you as an officer had a lot of responsibility for your men as it was, you know, and so I would take them up into the jungle for, you know, they'd be up. in the jungle for kind of 10 days at a time or whatever. And it was just me, you know, my platoon sergeant and these folk who I became a bit of a father figure to, although I was only young, I used to write their letters for them because some of them hadn't had the privilege of learning, you know, to write at that stage. And I kind of realized that if you get it right, people would do anything. in a really good way. They'll do it. They'll take on any challenge you want. But for me, it's critically important that you lay the groundwork for it. And I remember when I went to the Himalayas, were taking an unfashionably big group of 12 or more police officers at this point who had various levels of experience. So we took them to the north base of Ben Nevis and trained snow and ice stuff. We took them to the Dauphiné and we got them doing serious kind of eye level stuff. And so by the time we got to him and us, they were just a really, really tight team. There was only one guy who wasn't part of that process. I pulled him in at the last minute. He's the company I knew from work and he said, you know, could he come and... as a base camp manager and I brought him in at the last minute. And it proved really difficult for him because he had no connection with these guys. He couldn't, he hadn't trained with them. He wasn't taking the same risks as them. And, you know, they couldn't, he found it really difficult to connect. And when I came down off of Peak, which had been pretty traumatic, you where we got stuck up there for a few days, we came back down to the base camp and there just wasn't that feeling that was there before. It was, you know, people were just fed up and wanted to go back and, you know, and it was and it only ever happened to me a couple of times when I moved someone in at the last minute. Disaster.
Jaime: How much that do you think was personality and how much do you think if that was kind of preparation or almost as you say in terms of not having been part of that?
John Peck: I think it was personality but having said that, I mean, we work with all sorts of people on with all sorts of kind of, you know, at some level there may be mental health issues that are driving their behavior, which can be rather extraordinary at times and dysfunctional. But if you, you, if you know, if you've worked with them and you do it from position of love, you know, and people realize that you're kind of you that you're really want to be caring for them and try and make it the best for them as it can be. Everything flows. It all works. And so with this particular guy, I think it was just a square peg in a round hole. And I should have realized that before I went. But it's not nothing wrong with him, by the way. was just he was placed in an impossible situation. So that's why I'm just so particularly nowadays where with the health of COVID and all this, people working from home, which is a great thing. But you know, very often, if we're doing a team build, people won't have met each other face to face before. And so they'll only ever met on screen, you know, to talk to each other. So when they start getting into deeper, meaningful conversations, it brings a whole new experience to things.
Jez: And John, I know from being part of your teams that it's crucial in terms of getting to know each other in those early stages. What are the conditions that you create? you want to think out loud really, because I've experienced it, there's some magic that you bring to it. What would you say is a helpful approach to take? in those formational moments.
John Peck: Well, I think people can sense if you're safe. You know, they can sense, well, hopefully they can sense that, you you're not going to do something horrible to them or, you know, but for me, I think what's, what's quite, quite nice is that very often they won't know anything about me. I'm just another member of team. But, know, in this case I'll be years old. So I'm probably twice the age of... those people in my team, which they think is a bit funny. And I think when we were working with youth leaders, they thought it was an area of just who's this old dude coming along, you know. So, kind of, but then at some stage we do sort of talk, which is hopefully meant to be fairly inspirational. And I'll talk about various different adventures I've had, but. And in the talk and I think in the book Restless, what I try and do is not say how brilliant it all was, but how it nearly went pretty wrong. Most of these adventures, you know, were pretty, but they had a huge potential for chaos. And that for me is the bias, that's the elixir of that critical moment where it's all going wrong. And I mean, the classic was I was in the car recently and we were in a quiet country lane. We got a puncture. And I don't know if you're anything like me, but people don't change tires anymore. mean, most modern cars don't have a car that you can change. But this car, this old car of mine did. So I to hoof everything out of the boot, which is a huge pile of junk. Imagine this remote. And I couldn't, my wife was there, we couldn't find the little nut, you know, the little nut that goes, and I'm really starting to stress out thinking this is all going horribly wrong. And because we were in a boat, we couldn't get any contact on the phone. And eventually found the nut, got the wheel off, put it back on, drove off. You know, and things like that give me an enormous buzz. So, you know, if you get some crazy DIY project where I haven't got a clue what I'm doing, you know, I just love that whole challenge thing. I'm addicted to challenges, I think, really.
Jez: I do want to put in a word there, John. It does sound like you're completely reckless. I know it says restless in your book, the new book you've got out, and we will put a plug to it. And it's in the show notes. It's an absolute banger. It's brilliant. But John, you are actually incredibly methodical when it comes to bringing a team together. And I know that because I've seen that. it's been part of it. I'm thinking of a polar challenge that you took a team of rather high performing CEOs and we were up in the Lake District and remember doing that kind of team formation with them and running some diagnostics as well. Diagnostics but some profiling to anticipate those moments where you might have strong characters coming together and clashing horns I suppose.
John Peck: Jerry, it's interesting because I'm going to be having a drink with a couple of those guys in a week's time. And they still remember that experience. Probably isn't that experience the latest as much as they did the polar expedition. then they loved it. And that was another expedition where the only thing that went wrong is we had a member of our team shift at the last moment. In other words, the people, the guy who'd been training us all. who was going to be in a tent with me and another guy. Various operational reasons had to drop out. He wasn't one of my team. And they brought in this Royal Marine Sergeant, you know, who was quite hard nosed and was very, very difficult to deal with. You know, I found it very difficult to deal with him. And he was, you know, was everything that you'd expect from a tough Royal Marine. and didn't take didn't suffer fools gladly. And I think he thought I was a fool, you know, so and it made that a really, really tough experience for me. But you know, it was tough enough, really, because I was 60 years old and trying to pokes around at that age, you know, that we trained hard for it and stuff. But again, you know, we hadn't our team had trained, but then you switch some of the last minute and you're in trouble. And that's what's happening in business all the time now. You know, they're they're just moving out all the middle layers. And so the people at the top, don't have people that they can give them, pass it down, give someone something to do. There isn't anyone. So they're stuffed with it, you know, relying on AI. But they're lonely, you know, it's a lonely old world, business people. And therefore it's really important that we kind of have other things in our life. Which we can, which will stretch us, you know, and I was just talking before we came on air about this paper that a good friend of mine sent me, which was talking about high performing teams and we're talking about things being counter phobic, which was weird expression, you know, which is as far as I can make out is that you deliberately do something that's difficult in order that you can relieve your anxiety. because you're so intensely involved in that challenge that the other things don't matter. So when I was running Stoke-Newington police station as a divisional commander throughout the times of the troubles of mid 1980s of the riots, you know, there was some tricky situation every day I'd be called in, every night I'd be called in for some drama or other, you know, and we were living on a knife edge just after Tottenham riots, would we get hit next? And that has enormous implications of the kind of chaos that can ensue afterwards. But, you know, I had to have something else. I had to have this other event, which was to take a team of novices to climb unclimbed peaks in MLS. And it was...
Jaime: you think about those experiences, John, and you say you've got one part of what you're doing there, like on the front line in really challenging circumstances in your police work, and then you've got this experience of taking those colleagues out to the MLA line. When you look back across those two experiences around the team dynamics, the conditions that you were working in, what kind of parallels can you draw or what difference is, I guess, in terms of the way you prepare lead teams in those different scenarios.
John Peck: Well, I guess the most simplistic way of looking at it, if ever I'm struggling from thinking about what I should be doing in my role as a leader is that classic model by John Adair. a very famous army colonel, you know, who had this three circles, the task, the team and the individual. The task is huge and we've always got to be constantly focused on making sure we're doing what we're being paid to do and what, you know, what we want to do and to get the results that we want to get. But then you got to look, watch your team. And I was on a call with someone earlier on, he said, you know, Jon, can we need to give the team a bit of kind of airing, take them out, you know, get them away from work. They're working their socks off. You know, we need to kind of give them a bit of kind of time to get it. You know, and then the individual. The individual is the one who comes in your office in tears because there's some horrible thing that's happened in their life. And you have to drop everything, everything all around you just to give them time. Because, you know, that's what they need right now from you as a leader. But then in middle there's this little bit about self, which is how on earth are you going to keep yourself sane? And with me, I'd escape an adventure. And it's like a fell running in the in the mountains or I go climbing with a mate or I do something anything row from London to Paris, you know, in a rowing boat, anything. So I'd always have done when I was kind of in the tube, you know, hanging out and kind of all the sort of bodies and, know, thinking, oh, this is a bit grim. I'd be dreaming of my next adventure. So it's who you ask the question, Jamie, I've always had an adventure in my back of my mind. And there's always something I look forward to, don't think, wow, yeah, you know, a few months time I'm going to go out and do this and do that. And so I've only got to hear someone say, have you ever heard of this particular mouth? You know, and at end of this night, kind of my ears break up, I think, I wonder if I could do that. That sounds really good. So yeah, that tends to be the way for me. Keep saying.
Jaime: So John, it's really interesting. You mentioned John Adair's model and Jez and I have kicked around a lot, I guess, over the last year or so. And obviously it was created at a certain time in a particular context. Things may be a bit more stable, a bit more certain. I guess one of the questions that we had particularly around the word task is in really quickly changing environments like we have now, particularly in the world of business and we always have when we're out in the mountains is sometimes tasked a bit narrow in that almost by the time it's briefed, that the conditions have shifted and therefore actually is common purpose and a common kind of clarity around the journey as important or more important. Interesting thoughts.
John Peck: I think a lot of it is being able to kind of handle that uncertainty. I think if you read the rest of this book, I don't know if you read the bit when I was stuck in the jungle with a of kids, know, my kids and, you know, their mates and the guide had gone missing and we were in the middle of nowhere, had no idea how we were going to get back. And the fellow who was with me was a... was an ex SAS guy and he spent a lot of time in the jungle, a very confident guy. Look about my age and he was looking anxious. And I said I'd brought with me a book by a guy called Ernst Hofstetter who talks about he used to measure business culture and he'd look at different elements internationally. So you could say if you're dealing with the French or if you're dealing with the German, you know, you'll have a certain propensity for this, that, the other. And one of his measures was what he called uncertainty avoidance. So it was, you know, someone's kind of determination to avoid at all costs uncertainty, know, which is almost impossible to do in these days when things are moving so fast in such hectic ways. aside from that, model that he presented was his stuff around, you know, what he would say is that if you get anxiety, which is one thing, and then you get uncertainty, they have no object. And therefore what you've got to do is change uncertainty to risk, which then has an object. you know, hence the counter phobic stuff, but you can then do something with, you can attack it because you can do a risk analysis and you kind of work out. And anxiety is all pervading. It's terrible. It kind of, you know, it just keeps you awake at night. So you've got to work out what is it? What is it I'm frightened of? you've got to kind of, fear is very good. It's a really helpful thing to have. It keeps us safe and keeps us sane. Anxiety is terrible because it's just all pervaded. So I think whatever the situation is, you've got to try and think, OK, where are we right now? What's going on? You know, and I think there's that. You know, there's a triangle model that talks about three corners. One is around, you know, making up around planning and strategy. The other one is around skills and the top is around mindset and it's performing under pressure model. So, you know, if you've got to, you can work on your strategy. do as much as you can that you can control. You get your skills and everything I've always done, I always go with people much better than myself. Whatever it is, rowing across the Atlantic, whatever it is, I go with people who better than me. And then the big thing is to mindset thing at the top. And that's what we've got to spend our life working on. And that's the bit that's most fruitful. Because if you can keep your mind under control and stop it, you the old kind of chimp. paradox thing, stop the chimp from barking away and causing mayhem. You you stand a good chance of surviving in most situations, I think. But you know, if that one gets, the chimp gets out of control, you're in big trouble. If you look at people like Joe Simpson, Touching the Void, I mean, what an incredible book. That guy who, do remember, fell off, know, had to cut the rope and he fell down into this deep crevasse and crawled out for three or four days with a broken leg, know. Doug Scott's done the same thing. I mean, what did they, they didn't have much of a strategy, did they? That was a pretty uncertain situation they found themselves in. And then, you know, they didn't, what skills they have apart from dragging themselves along the ground. try and get back to some sense of, into somebody who'd help them. But it was their mindsets, anything. So I think in the work that we are doing, is to help strengthen people's mindset and help them develop their resilience in a way that allows them whatever the situation they encompass, you know, and then help them get an appetite for grit You know, it's... Just before he came online, Joe and I were talking about a guy who worked with us up in the Scottish islands, a guy called JR, who used to drive a big, fast, rigid inflatable boat. And he'd be there, you know, in all weathers to kind of get us in and out. And I was preparing a speech for his funeral. And I said the thing that I remember about him, he had grit running through him like a rod of steel right the way through him. And he was the guy that, Himalayas, when the guy dropped out because of altitude sickness, JR took his little team up to the summit to do a first British ascent. With no qualifications at all, very little experience, but he's got lots of grit. And I think that that's what we can try and develop. But we can only do that by standing a bit closer to the flame every now and then.
Jaime: That's really, I guess two of the themes I'm hearing through a lot of this conversation, John, particularly when you're thinking about your lessons from going on some those expeditions yourself and your extensive work working with teams. It kind of feels like kind of this slight duality between the fast and the slow. Like it feels like there's something that's really important to you in terms of like giving space to the slowness of of building connections and really doing that in a way that is heartfelt. almost the quickness and I know you're, but the five C's you talk about these kind of stretch exercises. And it feels like there's almost something interesting that happens between those two bits where if you're constantly building that, those relationships and stress testing them, it just builds it up and it builds people. Like you talk about the kind of capability to to be able to manage uncertainty to be able turn it into risk. Is that fair enough? It feels like there's quite an interesting combination of those factors in how you're working.
John Peck: Yes, I think in this because each time you know that circle, there's a kind of choice between you know the cloud the two circles about now you and your health is to extremity of the most difficult and hardest and toughest thing you can ever do and the comfort zone we live in you know, and each time we stretch that comfort zone out, you kind of know it gives us more capability. But you know, also, I think there's underlying all this stuff in the book, The Seven Seas that I wrote. The first word, the first word appears in the first chapter is the word care. And people thought, people said to me, a funny word to use, know, because it sounds like you're going to a care home, which in my case won't be that long. But the care thing is, whether you, how much you seriously do care about something. And if you get, know, and I coach people, I'm coaching people to row the Atlantic. I coach four women. Last year, one who was 70, one who was 50, one who was 30, one who was 20, to row across the Atlantic. Never done anything like it before. And they were just amazing. three airline pilots at the moment. You know, but for them, really, it's about how they're going to get on with each other, stuck in a rowing boat endlessly for a sort of, you know, for weeks on end with no escape. And so I think it's the same for work. know, work needs to be an exciting place. And if we work with clients, we say, look, you really must decide if you want to work with us, because what we want to do is to bring some spirits of adventure to your business. If it's not there already. or to light the flames that are there already and get them kind of burning a bit brighter. And just like anything, you know, if you get any rugby team, any other sports team, football team, you can't go on without a coach. And so, you know, I had a call earlier today from someone, can you take our team away for a couple of days because they're just, we need bit of a boost. You know, well, you would do with it with the sports team. You know, of course you wouldn't just expect to turn up. You know, on the rugby pitch, I've never done anything since the last match. You constantly need to be coaching each other. And that's what we should be doing. That's our job. And, know, whether we're coaching individuals to be leaders or whether we're coaching teams, you know, it's just great work, you know, and we can make huge differences for people.
Jez: So John, this is a bit of a provocation. Would you say human connection is a leadership nicety or the last competitive advantage that can't be automated?
John Peck: It's absolutely, it runs through like a stick of rock, cherry. And if we're not getting it, you can tell if a team is dysfunctional, you can tell the first time you meet them. And you can, just sense that whole atmosphere about them, it's just kind of discomfort. They don't really want to be with each other. They don't want to come on the team, Bill, because they're worried, who are these people? And do I really want to spend time with them? You know, so that's the darkest, you know, but then if you get a team who are up for it, they can do anything. And then beyond that, they're all on their WhatsApps, buzzing each other. You know, and it's just like, and like I was saying earlier on, Jerry, you know, it's a bit like my sons, and we've been to lots of weddings, I've got three sons, and they're all in their 40s, and lord, they're mates, and we occasionally get invited to their weddings. And you can always tell if it's a good wedding. if the stags have been on a stag do and the hens have been on a hen do. Because when you end up on the morning of the wedding, we're all sitting in our suits, you around these round tables with very smart silverware and everything, you know, and you kind of... You can tell that it's been a good stag too, because they're all buzzing around the table, just pointing around around each other. Oh mate, what a laugh. We had such a good time. Do you remember this? Oh, don't tell anybody about that. Don't tell everybody about that. know, the hens are kind of henning it and the stags are stagging it, you know, in the most lovely way. And it's a joy to be around them. There's a whole buzz in the room, you know, and then the speeches and everyone's cheering and you know, that's because they've had a team built. It's as simple as that. No, they've gone out and done crazy stuff.
Jaime: Thanks again. It's amazing to hear you talk about this, John. One of the things that guess came to me, always took me back to the start of this conversation. You're talking about the example of the team you worked with where it was going to take them seven months to build something and you were negotiating between kind of two and four days. I guess just the bit, I'd just like you'd love to get your reflection on. think Jess and I is kind of, I guess, our sense here is that as the world gets more complex, as things are changing, as we start to get more remote from each other.
John Peck: Yeah.
Jaime: The potential to learn from the sorts of conditions we need to create on teams and how we lead on expeditions and in wild places becomes more relevant than ever. As you said, when you get that right, it allows you to thrive in those situations. When you get it wrong, as you said from your experience, it's a real challenge. But it feels like one of the biggest, biggest challenges of our time for teams and organizations, and I experience it daily, people don't want time. They don't have the time to spend on these things or they don't think they do. And it just feels like the biggest risk in terms of we're just not equipping teams with the capacities, the capability, because we're not creating the time for them to develop them. And it just, feels like one of the biggest travesties and we're seeing it. We've all seen all the stats about disconnection and disengagement at work. And I think Your word care just comes right unless we really care about it just feels like we're hiding to nothing, especially if we're expecting people to perform in, in, I guess, external conditions that that much more uncertain.
John Peck: Yes, it's kind of this return on investment piece that's always so difficult because you know, it's, mean, years ago, did millions of years ago, when we first started out, I was invited to do some work with British Aerospace, sent to one of their places up north. And we went into pitch for the business against some far more bigger players than us. And the people said to us, okay, so, How do we know though that you're capable of doing what you say you're doing with these people? I said, look, give me 12 people from across your organization, okay? Just mix them up. I want to be high potential if possible, but from anywhere you can in the organization, give me 12 people. Give me them for four days, okay? And I'll send them back to you. And if you're not satisfied, this is a leadership program, if you're not satisfied, then pay me a penny. And my mate was going, God, between what you're doing, you know. And they went away and they said, they brought me up the next day said, we've spoken to our lawyers and they were saying, how do you define satisfied? You're
Jez: Yes.
Jaime: I said...
John Peck: the great British aerospace, you'll know whether you're satisfied or not. And the poor people came, they loved it and they never looked back and they, we'd had 12 courses and that's where our business got started. But we were, and that was, that was the confidence that we were. And time and time again after that, I'd said I'd do the same thing, but my business partner used to get very nervous about it all.
Jaime: He's gone again. Come back John, come back.
John Peck: But it's very difficult with the money, with the return on investment. You're looking at stuff that's sometimes very hard to describe because you don't see the fruits of the labor right now. It's like they're talking now, the effects of the civil war in the Middle East is going to hit us in nine months time when all the food is much more expensive, not now. So when you're doing work with a team, takes a while to mature and when they whizz back. You'll see the results, definitely see the results in so many different ways. But you know, my job as job as consultants is to make ourselves redundant. I don't like these long relationships where you keep hopping and trying to sell more work. I mean, love it. If I get a phone call and someone says, can you come and help me fix something? That's fine. But you know, if I take my car to garage, I don't expect to keep taking it back every week, you know. Once they've serviced it, I want it to work. And if we do our job right, it should happen, you know. I love that. Good.
Jez: So John, I'm just thinking of somebody who might be listening into this conversation. Somebody who's probably, well, could be with a team at work struggling with something and considering embracing an adventure as a learning opportunity. I wonder what advice you would give to somebody like that.
John Peck: I think, you know, just be prepared to that. The easiest thing you can do is to get what we call a tiger team together. And that's, you know, that's how we start off our business. You know, in the very early, early days, but a tiger team is just like a group of maybe up to 12 people from across the business. And we don't give down with whether they're directors, whatever they are, as long as they know what the business is about and take them and we'll take them away for a few days and they'll come back and tell the business how to do it. Jerry, that's what we did with those youth workers. Remember the gun and knife crime stuff? And we said to the guys who were funding us, know, the police officers, senior police officers who funding us, because I wasn't in the police anymore, you know, they said, just give us, we'll get to all these people. They'll come back and they'll tell you what you should be doing about gun and knife crime. Do remember they came back and it was deeply emotional hearing them speak, you know, of kind of what they wanted to do. And then they went up to Chicago and... West is sort of history landed. They were just wonderful people. You know, so it's kind of, I think it just, yeah, but I'm, yeah, so the idea is, you you can't just, don't, if you try and, the difficulties, you try and get the board away, oh God, they can't all be together and you've got fiddling around forever trying to get dates, you know. Unless you get someone pretty tough at the top who says, come on, I don't care what you're doing, you're going to be at this thing. You know, so you don't have to do that. Take the high potential people away. And you know, I used to run a high potential. I've run loads of high potential, but in the police before I left, I was doing that. You know, one of my jobs, I was running a high potential scheme and those people went on to become chief constables and they did some amazing things. Why? Because they were bright young people who got fired up, knew what they were trying to do and they were just brilliant. know, but you can't do it without, if you stop training and you know, it's the easiest thing to stop. If you don't invest in your people. It's terribly sad if you don't do that.
Jaime: That's been absolutely amazing to chat to you today, John. I think we're probably running out of time. So, I know we could probably carry on chatting all day. We
Jez: You can happily carry on trying
Jaime: probably will.
Jez: to... This is the episode one of ten.
Jaime: you
John Peck: Lovely to talk to you Jamie. I'll come and do some work with you guys one day.
Jaime: That would be amazing. You're up in the latest show, aren't you John?
John Peck: Yeah, but I'm based in Essex, edge of London. But you know, go around, if you're short of someone to the sweep the floor or something, I'll come and join you. Zombie Jerry will have me.
Jez: Well, while we're rolling I'd like to book a big plug for John's books, which we will put a link in the show notes. the Seven Seas of Success. Jamie was listening to it on audiobook across the weekend. think you listened to it twice, Jamie.
Jaime: did listen to it twice. think it was, certainly the first time was interesting, but slightly interrupted by the kids. But I did want to listen to it again. It was really interesting. I think the first thing I said to Jez when I had a catch up with him this morning was like, listen to this thing in John's pick. I know I'm speaking to him, but we're to do this, this and this. And I think it was just for anyone who is, I guess, thinking about taking on any sort of adventure as a kind of a really clear approach to kind of just get your ducks in a row and really think through it systematically, but also with an amazing amount of energy behind it as well. So I'd highly recommend it to anyone who's thinking about any sort of adventure, whether it's outdoors, whether it's at work, a really, really good listen, good read.
John Peck: thank you Jamie, that was great.
Jez: And the second plug is the second edition of John's memoirs, Restless. I love it, Restless. Wasn't it only course you ever failed, John, was a meditation course, wasn't it?
Jaime: you
Jez: and sit still! Which is, it's a jam-packed book and I've been reading it also across the weekend, it's been brilliant to hear about your life of adventure and honestly I met John when he had just rode across the Atlantic and you were in, I only 60s, I can't remember now,
John Peck: See
Jez: and you'd just done the Marathon to Sable as well and I was like, my god, John, seriously, yes!
John Peck: Thank
Jez: So, I mean, if John can do that, you've just done, we did celebrate a significant birthday last summer, John, and it was great to be there. And you were straight off to Morocco to go and climb Tupca with some mates. So it is endless and it's restless. It's, it's super. And of course, if you do want to take on an adventure, John does adventure coaching as well. will give you his details and if you want to go and row the Atlantic or do anything else he is a great support for you.
John Peck: Oh mate, thank you so much. It's been such a joy talking to you both. So look forward to the next one and must hear the previous one that you've done as well, which sounds really good.
Jez: I that, Thank you so much.
Jaime: Thanks, Joe.
Jeremy: So that's it for this episode.
Jaime: If something in this conversation landed for you, the best thing you can do is pass it on to someone leading a team, navigating uncertainty, or just looking for a better way to think about it.
Jeremy: We're exploring this unfolding journey one conversation at a time, and we'd love you to join us for the next one.
Jaime: So subscribe if you haven't already. But more than that, share it with someone who'd value it.
Jeremy: And of course, thanks for listening.
Jaime: We'll see you on the next one. Go well.
