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