Synergy IQ: 0:01

Welcome to Creating synergy where we explore what it takes to transform. We are powered by Synergy IQ. Our mission is to help leaders create world class businesses where people are safe, valued, inspired and fulfilled. We can only do this with our amazing community. So thank you for listening.

Daniel Franco: 0:20

Hey there synergisers and welcome back to another episode of the creative synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco and today on the show, we have a man who needs no introduction, and not because he has his own Wikipedia page, but because he's done some great things in his life. Jim McDowell, CEO of Nova Systems, Jim has 30 years of experience in both the private and public sectors and before he joined Nova Systems, he was South Australia's top public servant in the role of chief executive for Department of Premier and Cabinet. Prior to this, he was the CEO of BA Systems for 10 plus years, where he oversaw the purchase of teknicks defense. Under his leadership, the company expanded to become Australia's largest defense prime, with more than six and a half 1000 employees and annual sales of approximately $1.7 billion Australian. He then moved to BAE in Saudi Arabia, where he took up the role of in country CEO for the $6 billion business. Jim has also served as chancellor for University of South Australia, and he worked in legal commercial and marketing roles with aerospace company, Bombardier short for 18 years after graduating from the University of Warwick in England. On top of all this, he's been in non Executive Director roles for codon raa, Austral and micro X. On today's show, I really got to geek out on what has been and continues to be a stellar career. The wisdom and experience oozes from Jim's veins. And you can hear all this as we deep dive into his journey over the years. One thing that really amazed me was that Jim reads copious amounts of books looking away a minimum of one hour each morning and night for reading, but has never read a management book in his life. Throughout the chat, Jim shares many stories and learning experiences from his time in Northern Ireland, where he grew up to lobbying for Capitol Hill, and why the US has 50% of the world's defense spends. We then talked about strategy and how to stick to it and how to plan for it. We then talked about building trusting relationships with all key stakeholders. We also touched on what the future looks like for Nova systems and their new beautiful rebranding that they've just gone through. And we wrapped up with Jim's thoughts on what's happening in the world right now with Ukraine, Russia, China, and how Australia sits within the geopolitical nature. I'm sure you're absolutely going to agree. But this was an amazing chat. And it was an absolute pleasure to sit down with Jim. If you'd like to check out his profile. You can find that at Jim McDowell on LinkedIn, and check out the Nova Systems website where you'll see their amazing new branding videos and all the great work that they're doing. Feel free to connect with me too where you can find me at Daniel Franco on LinkedIn. If you'd like to learn more about some of the other amazing leaders that we've had on the creating synergy podcast, then be sure to jump on our website at Synergy. iq.com. There you are, check us out at Creative synergy podcast on all the podcasts out. So welcome back to the creative synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco, your host and today we have the great man Jim McDowell, CEO of nervous systems. Thanks for coming on, Jim.

Jim McDowell: 3:40

My pleasure, Daniel. My pleasure.

Daniel Franco: 3:42

I want to I want to kick off the podcast with asking a really generic question, who is Jim McDowell and why do you have your own Wikipedia page?

Jim McDowell: 3:53

I actually where I am that I am to quote debatable. But I someone else posted that Wikipedia page. And the initial content was about the controversy about the bay fees. For the I haven't read about that. Yeah, for it for the expert advisory panel, the submarine, which which Mr. Xenophon took exception to the did yeah. So I sort of got whoever I was working for at the time to hijack and just fill it out a bit more balanced material. Yeah. So that's why there is not actually my you know, you've made it when you've got your own wiki page. Yeah, yeah, actually, there's kind of given that my my brother who's much, much higher achiever than I am my twin brother. He doesn't have his own. Oh, really? I do. I do. Post him up.

Daniel Franco: 4:49

Send him the link. So your brother is the is an Archbishop, an identical twin? It's almost it's like splitting hairs. You can't even notice the difference. Yeah,

Jim McDowell: 4:59

so we'll never We were children. Any photographs of myself and John, my mother and father weren't very inventive with names James and John. He, he, I don't know who's me in the photographs. Really? Yeah. I used to have to ask my mother before she passed away that which one's me, which is dressed in the same clothes? Yes, of course, of course it was de rigueur to be dressed in the same clothes.

Daniel Franco: 5:24

Very good. So, more on the question. So who is Jim McDowell and I'm gonna just rattle off a few, you know, your resume over, particularly the past 10 to 15 years or so. So currently the Group CEO of nervous systems, two plus years as chief executive of the Department of Premier cabinet, almost three years as Chancellor of University of South Australia, two and a half years of CX as the CEO of bhge, Saudi Arabia 10 plus years as CEO of BA Systems Australia, three years as Managing Director of BA Systems Asia, non executive director of Code In, Ria, Austral micro X governor of St. Peter's College, and somewhere in that you retired as well and started your own consulting consulting firms. So that's an amazing resume. Tell us a little bit more.

Jim McDowell: 6:15

Well, I mean, it's all it's it's all pretty accidental. You know, there's no grid, there's no grand plan involved, because no one in the right mind would have dreamt of it. If I had dreamt that up and told someone about it, they would have said, You're telling me fibs? Yeah. So, you know, I used to look at what's next. And what's interesting, and what and there's a couple of big things, you know, the big chunky things have been the defense aerospace shipbuilding industry, which you have been in for 40 odd years versus with with a small, a small gap. But even during that gap when I was consulting, a lot of my consulting was with the Department of Defense. So that's the big, big kind of chunky career if you like is if I'm an unreconstructed defense industrialist. Really. Yeah. And the other things were just stuff that happened. But you know, you get opportunities. Yeah. And life's about as they're taking opportunities or not taking opportunities, and sometimes your best not to take them as well, by the way, and some I haven't taken, which I'm glad I haven't taken on some I haven't taken them I should have taken but yeah, there you go.

Daniel Franco: 7:26

There's a there's a slight anomaly in that resume being the government job completely sticks out as a different part of your world. And what was the decision to leave the private world and go into that governance? Well,

Jim McDowell: 7:41

I was in my, let's call it quasi a retirement fears then. So I was doing the non executive directorships and the consulting stuff. And whenever Steven Marshall became Premier, he decided he wanted somebody not from the public service to run the public services. Strictly speaking, the chief executive of DPC is the head of the public service, which is a bit of a K mer, by the way. And I thought, Well, we haven't done that. And they haven't been in government for 16 years. And, you know, a better adult supervision probably wouldn't, wouldn't go astray. And wounded to be terribly interesting. Some of which was true. But you know, I'm I had the bushfires, and I had COVID. And we had the setup of the national cabinet, which, you know, I got to sit in the first 31 National cabinet meetings with the premier. So it was just something that I hadn't thought about, that popped up as an opportunity. I thought, well, this, this, this will be worth doing. Yeah, this will be worth doing. But it is like riding a bicycle off a sandune. You know, you work very, very hard, but you don't necessarily get very far.

Daniel Franco: 8:57

And things move very slowly. Did you? I'm interested in that first part of COVID when the world was turning upside down, and I didn't actually have this question about COVID I didn't want to talk about that at all. But now that you've brought it up, I'm really interested in your thought process early on in that yes, pandemic and, and how you thought we were going to

Jim McDowell: 9:24

nobody knew there was no playbook. Yeah, you know, because we hadn't seen anything like that before it would seem you know, SARS and so on. But that was so limited in its in its effect, and then suddenly had this thing that that was clearly gonna go go wild. Yeah. And, you know, the close the, the federal government closed the borders in January 2020. But we didn't do anything really inside Australia until April. So in March 2020, we had the last COAG meeting. So the cool relation to the Australian Government's all the states and territories and the Feds all together in a big room and Parramatta Stadium, the Prime Minister all of his stuff, all the First Ministers and premiers. And there's I mean, that could have been disaster. Turned out it wasn't because the disease hadn't got a grip on our country yet.

Daniel Franco: 10:18

I was in Sydney for what is the Australian Institute of company directors Summit? Yeah. And you think about there's 2000 directors from all around Australia and is in this room early March. It was, it was well, I

Jim McDowell: 10:31

Well I often say to Jim Wallace, we are flying in the same airplane. So the owner and Deputy Chairman Yes, I understand. Yeah. And the chief executive, if we if the airplane crashes, the stock price will go up.

Daniel Franco: 10:44

Very good. So it's a pretty, it's a very impressive resume. I, you we caught up a few weeks back had coffee, there's something that you said to me, which blew my mind. I actually did a Instagram post on it. And, and all the above. You have gone through all these years without reading a management book. Is that correct?

Jim McDowell: 11:06

That is correct. I've tried started a couple. And but you know, my my hinterland is art and literature. Yeah. And I've yet to find a single management book. That's well written.

Daniel Franco: 11:19

Yeah. Okay. So you're the reason being because of the way it's written?

Jim McDowell: 11:25

Yes. And also, I just think that the leadership, which is really what I do, because I'm not technically competent in anything, other than the law, I'm not very competent, that is really about life and life's experiences, I can find that much easier. And in a way, in a way that's written that appeals to me in literature, right? And novels and players. Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Franco: 11:57

It's a it's a pretty amazing statistic, though. I think like, I'm a big reader, and I have this thirst for knowledge. And I always look to those who have succeeded in business and read their story, right and read their the way they went about it. So I can, you know, almost shortcut or fast track my growth? And, and so how did you learn from a strategic point of view or from a from a leadership point of view? In that regard?

Jim McDowell: 12:27

I think there's two things. One, I spent a lot of time dealing with the military. And before there were large industrial organizations, which was sort of after the Industrial Revolution, before that all industrial enterprises were quite small. There were large military organizations, who had to be had to be led, had to get the cert had to have logistics, had to have communications had to have leadership had to have purpose. All those things that modern companies talk about, a lot of that comes from, from military philosophy and military history, most of my readings, literature, but I still do read, you know, one or two or three nonfiction books a month as well, and a lot of them around that. So I just find that, that, you know, if I read hard times, I learned more about the human spirit. And actually more about industrialism, because the hard times was Dickens book about Yeah, but you know, the dark satanic mills and so on, that was the easier way. So it's, you do what's easy, what suits you. And we're all different. Yeah. And that's, and that's what suits and that's what suits me.

Daniel Franco: 13:36

Well, they're the tried and tested methods, right? Those those books, how they really, were, we've all we've all learned from those books.

Jim McDowell: 13:43

Yeah. And I find that that's the I could draw lessons from those books about leadership, and so on, and communications and purpose and incentivization and human relationships, and so

Daniel Franco: 13:54

on. So you said you three nonfiction books a month, how many fiction books a month, then on top of because I know you read about an hour or so every morning, and every evening and every evening, so

Jim McDowell: 14:04

about a month, probably 10 to 12 books. But that's my hinterland, that, to me is pure pleasure. I completely switch off. It's really, really important.

Daniel Franco: 14:18

It's almost a meditation.

Jim McDowell: 14:21

And I quite often read a book, and then buy the same book two years later, because I forgotten, I've read it. So it's not about you know, memorizing everything and so on. It's about the way you feel when you're reading it.

Daniel Franco: 14:34

So you said you had three to 4000 books at home. Are you suggesting that you've only got 1500 And there's a lot of double ups in there yeah, yeah, that's, that's brilliant. What, what is what's the old time I will ask this at the end, but what is your your all time favorite book that you turn to quite often?

Jim McDowell: 14:59

Probably since a trilogy, it's three books. It's called the sword of honor trilogy by even war, which was written almost autobiographically about his experience in being in the in the Royal Marines at the end of the Second World War. So the three and he is one of the he's one of the 20th century's greatest English writers. Terrible old curmudgeon a horrible person. But a fantastic author

Daniel Franco: 15:26

and you're a bit of an art collector, as well, I hear

Jim McDowell: 15:29

yes, yes. Art and Literature those two and particularly visual art, and I'm not terribly exciting in that, you know, mostly figurative, yeah, some some Aboriginal some indigenous art, some Irish stuff, sort of kind of, I remember growing up in Belfast and a little good old housing estate little council house and yes, Belfast and my mum had some prints of a guy called collar. George collar I remember thing if I ever could ever afford it like to buy. I've got the four of them. Now I'm on a Manisa fair at the motor vine auctions and Belfast and bring them over here.

Daniel Franco: 16:03

So brilliant. Family kids.

Jim McDowell: 16:06

I've got two kids from a first marriage who are in bit who both back in Ireland. It was their mother both married. And, and I've got a son from Soma. The current Mrs. McDowell, as we'd like to call her, is is a Korean. I lived in Korea for a long time. And I've got one son with it. Hence the connection was some Peters colleagues. He goes to San Cs in year 11 At St. Peter's, which is a remarkable institution. You know, remarkable institution,

Daniel Franco: 16:40

back humble, strategic chief of strategy at Novus says this, she offers a clear text last night I said, Have you gotten either or anything tell him that on gym on gym? And she said, No, I don't but ask him about Northern Ireland. So and that's all she she said to me. And he said he will know exactly what I'm talking about.

Jim McDowell: 17:03

I grew up in Belfast in you know, in the in the late 60s, early 70s. I went to University in England, but that was to get away from the twin brother who was overachieving even then, and that was a in a really interesting time. A really interesting time to grow up because you know, 1972, and I was 16 was the most bloody period of the troubles you know, there were there were 300 person being killed every day. No unnecessary. This is a country of only one and a half million people. So not only were quite a lot of people get getting killed, but everybody knew who was shouldn't hurt, who was bombing who it was, but like sorta Kentucky sorry, family feud between one side which happened to be categorized in a religious sense, but that's really not the issue. And I, you know, Mama Kim Mahler had a very large family, those know, their father was an only child, you know, my father who served his time in the shipyard and then worked in short brothers where I started work as a milling machinist. And my mom was at silver service, we address and used to be a housekeeper for the local clergyman, and so on. And, you know, we, we, as a great loving home. And nearly everybody I knew in school had some connection with a paramilitary organizations and RSA that would have been the UVF, or the ultra volunteer force Ultra Defense Association, except for me and the archbishop. Yeah. And that was because we were just much more frightened of my mother. And I'm aware of anybody with a gun. And, you know, if it hadn't been for her, the story might have been, you know, completely complete, and I got a lot of friends who killed people, number of friends who were killed. And that's at the time, it seemed, you know, a relatively normal thing, because that's what was going on all around you. But on reflection, it was probably an extraordinary time, we'll have this very strong woman to keep us out of all of that. And again, in retrospect on reflection is remarkable. Yeah, I still go back and meet my first wife, God bless her and who I get along with much better now than married. She second Why do you still go back to those old kinds of bars and places they knew when you were a kid because you're the chief executive of whatever? Yes. So at least people agree. The only reason these people like me I know this for a fact is because we all grew up together not because you're a chief executive, or whatever.

Daniel Franco: 19:43

So they know that you know, your roots and where you came from. So

Jim McDowell: 19:47

really comfort and you know, money but nobody had any money so didn't really matter. You know, shoplifting was was a sort of everyone was still you know, it was Fantastic. So it was a great, great, great time I gave you a great resilience as well,

Daniel Franco: 20:05

it would have would have a beer taste the same wherever you go.

Jim McDowell: 20:10

And actually, wherever you go, I know that's yes. Now this may well be a mental trick but but give us an Ireland and he was seems to be better than Guinness anywhere else. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 20:21

really? Yeah. Is it? Why is it something here or I don't

Jim McDowell: 20:25

know, I was possibly not even true. But we've all convinced ourselves.

Daniel Franco: 20:31

The other thing she asked me to bring up was lobbying for Capitol Hill.

Jim McDowell: 20:35

Yeah, so when I went to the United States in 93, whenever Clinton was, was president, and we had sold some airplanes to the United States Air Force, very unusual for the US Air Force to buy foreign airplanes, pretty ones built in Belfast. And these were little square things. But if there were so slowly used to take bird bird strikes and the rear these things, and but it was the right size to put one big shipping container in. And the US Air Force used them to move spares around their their European bases. And there a lot of European American bases in Europe at that time, and it's called a European distribution supply aircraft. And then it was transferred from from the Air Force to the National Guard. And then we had to keep it sold as they say you had to keep getting money authorized and appropriated for it. So keep in service. And at the same time, we've made this really fancy little, very, very fast, Mr. Lead with three darts on it guide, laser guided, which for its time was way ahead of its time. And this thing, you fired it from your support the fire from your shoulder, and I've got the back 3.5 And less than a second notice. So we'll try it. We've got some money, well had to go to Congress, and lobby Congress and the user community to get funds for that. So I spent three years effectively doing the lobby, between that between Capitol Hill and, and the building the Pentagon. And it was a real eye opener. Yeah. What was the amount of money just at that time, 50% of the world's defense budget was in one country, and it was the United States of America. It's not much different now, by the way. And, you know, the Jordan old story of the judge asking the bank robber, why do you rob banks? Yeah. And he said, because that's where the money is. Yeah. You know, why? Why else would you Rob? And it's the same as Why would you be in the defense industry and not be in the United States, which is a lesson Australia needs to learn by the way, and and the way in which any in the UK and in Australia, and most places, Parliament votes money, and in the ministry of defense gets the money and figures out how to spend it, almost sort of uninhabited in the United States, the president who is the executive, whereas it's the cabinet here. The President hands down his budget in February, to the Congress. He's lucky he should get it back in November. So that's February to November, and quite often he doesn't because they haven't finished with it, they'd have half a continuing resolution. And in that period of time, it goes through the committees of Congress. And for the defense budget, for example, it's the authorizing committees or this, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, on the appropriating side, the House Appropriations and the Senate Appropriations, and they are peopled by what we call backbench Members of Parliament of the Congress. And they start to stuff that thing full of off pork. Yeah, this is the pork barrel. Right? They stuffed this thing filler pork, for the whatever their district is. Now they're all obviously very aware of national security and defense. Yeah, but it is a it's an an eye watering process to see, you know, these days $700 billion, you know, being being being spent.

Daniel Franco: 24:05

Why? And for the excuse the naivety of the question, but for the layman people listening in Why does US spend so much in defense? I mean, yes, they want to be the number one powerhouse, but, but why 50% of the world's?

Jim McDowell: 24:23

Well, you know, it depends. So, you know, for the last since since the fall of the Soviet Union, and notwithstanding what's happening in the Ukraine, and the United States was the single superpower. No, I guess that's characterized in a number of ways but one of them is a military superpower and therefore the the that's, that's money that kept spending, but really since the Second World War, yeah, so the United States built up a huge defense industrial base during the Second World War. And that by and large and stared into is much smaller now but still but still pretty big compared to everybody else. And you have a concern of conspiracy theory and one side, which was sort of particularly prevalent during Eisenhower's Presidency of the military industrial complex, which, which is, you know, either either a passive or an active conspiracy to keep alive and thriving. The defense industry in here, yep, yep. And the creators do create a lot of jobs and a lot of technology. You know, Silicon Valley was founded on defense technology, right, spin offs from defense. So there are aspects to it as well. And then on the other side, us, the United States is the world superpower. And even when there's been two, which was the Soviet Union, it was all it's always been one of them. Now, we're heading into this other world, where we're going to have a superpower and the east and China and the US remaining. So it kind of feels as though it needs to, it needs to continue to fund its military, which also means its defense industrial base.

Daniel Franco: 26:05

So why would the China's of the world want to almost catch up? It seems like,

Jim McDowell: 26:13

Yeah, well, you know, again, I'm, you know, I'm not, I don't know what Xi Jinping thinks. I don't know what the Chinese leadership thinks. But certainly having spent a lot of time in Asia and having read fairly deeply, both in public policy and in history, there's no no China, whenever it became, in its view, unnecessarily humbled by particularly the United Kingdom, in the Opium Wars, and the and the exploitation of China believed. So the Chinese symbol for China, right, so the word for China, if you like, the histogram is a rectangle with a line through it through the middle. And that's the Middle Kingdom. And that doesn't mean it's the means it's the center of the world. Okay, so through China, up until that point of time, believed it was the center of the world. And there's an argument that says all I meant by that was people should pay tribute to, to be tributary nations. Now, I think that is the current China has translated that domain. We particularly in our region, should be this should be the center should be the superpower. And in order to do that, we have to challenge the United States politically, economically. So the started certainly started economically. And now they're gona spend some of that quite a bit of that wealth and building military capability is the sort of historical view of that,

Daniel Franco: 27:47

we'll jump a little bit more into that after I want to keep going through, see your career. And you now in the you have found yourself in many CEO roles. There's, you can just go on Google and type in Jim McDowell, and see all the great stuff that you've done in an hour, I want to deep dive into that. But when we caught up a few weeks ago for coffee, I asked you what is success look like from a CEOs point of view? And you said to me, that, and it's something that really seems true to me is that you see your role, first and foremost in building trust, and building trusting relationships within your leadership team and the company that you work for represent. Can you elaborate?

Jim McDowell: 28:32

Yes. So you've got you know, you've got to you've got to build more than a contractual really, you know, you have a contract of employment with your, to your employees, you've got a contract of sale and purchase with your customers, you've got a you've got a share certificate with your shareholders. But that's isn't the totality of the relationship as a symbol of the relationship, you've got to build a very high degree of trust with each of those stakeholders. Now, and the analogy I like to use as a three legged stool. So if you're, if you're building if you're tilting too much toward your shareholders, as opposed to your employees, or your shareholders or your customers, then it's really hard to sit on a two legged stool. It's even harder to sit on a one legged stool. So if you're focusing too much on the shareholder or too much in the employees, then it gets all heard about so you've gotten this equal, but not all will be equal every day or every year have a bit of a wobble here and there. But you will need to build that level of trust so that they will give you a license, the social license, the business license, the entrepreneurial license, to invest, monitor and attune and more importantly, to invest people's time in the projects that you're that you're embarking upon And I see. So how this thing that CIF executives should only do four things. One is they should set, the should certainly be the lead setter of strategy which gets approved by the board. So what's your strategic direction, right? And at the same time, that need to underpin that with a plan, because the strategy is not a plan, anyone who says the word strategic plan to me gets shot, because strategy is one thing and the plans is another things, strategies. strategies in the plan is how you execute a strategy. So you need to do those two things and communicate, you then need to, to set up a system of review, that tells you if you you know, if you are doing what you said, you were gonna if you're reaching your strategic goals, and that's you do that quarterly or whatever it happens to be, and you can course correct strategy plan, review that plan for progress and make course corrections, employee and attract and retain talent, no hardest thing and a lot manager stakeholders. If you have a CEO who's doing anything other than that, tell him to go away. Because that's what he should be doing. He or she should have a there is, that's what they should be doing. Correct. And that's, that's my it's always been, it's really good to have be some sometimes it's good to be simple. Because you can always anchor yourself back to those things, you know, am I doing this? Is this strategic? Because it was not I shouldn't be doing it? Or if they aren't, why am I doing that. And I see more businesses, particularly small businesses fail because of passion projects, because they get themselves waylaid from your strategic,

Daniel Franco: 31:32

yeah, we've gone through that, you know, managing director of her own business. And as you grow, there's the the cash flow problem. So you kind of have to pull yourself in the arrows doing a bit of everything and you lose sight of it. Sometimes you get your work, some days or some weeks, you find yourself working in the business more than you're working on the business. But eventually, as you grow, you know, if you're working for companies like big and nervous systems, then no doubt, yes, those four things are the things that you should be concentrating on. Just on the trusting relationships, is there a process that you go through? Like, because you walk in you I mean, the first thing you look at is your stakeholders, your strategy, how we're, you know, how we're, you know, moving it and achieving to the strategy. As a new CEO, you would have ideas on what you don't like and what you don't think it's working and where it can move? How do you go in and make change whilst trying to build

Jim McDowell: 32:31

I mean, that's the thing about about business, of relationships? course, that that you're always having to keep doing the business while you're doing the chair. Yeah. And I think, for a couple of things, one, because I've been here for a long time. And I've been dealing in predominantly the same pool, which is the defense industry. And the one thing about the defense industry is that it is peculiar, is that it's a monopsonistic industry. So there's a single buyer, as opposed to a monopoly whiclh is a single supplier. And over time, you build up strong, deep, deep and strong relationships with those people. And the person who you met when he was a lieutenant 20 years ago, is now a major general, yeah, okay. And you better have built or sell good relationships with these people. And there's a whole number of ways you can do it, you can start by not always, not just going to see people when you want something, but just going to talk and I'm going to build an Asia particularly, you, you don't build relationships by doing business, you build relationships, that you do business, with your employees. Actually, with all of those groups, there tends to be about a bet about the what Yep, so you're saying I'm going to do this and then you do it or at least they know you're giving it your best shot and the how. So how you do things is just as important as what you do. People will always remember how you made them feel they may not remember words that you said about X subject or y subject, but they'll remember how you made them feel. So my old mom, God bless her, had three you said to me, I only want you to do three things in life. So be polite, help others, do your best. And I saw it it was just all folksy But actually she should have been working for McKinsey's because those are you know, so you know, be polite means how you do things is as important as water. Yeah, help others as leadership. Yeah, right. And do your best is simply about purpose and trust and all of those things. So I could translate that into a very long management like

Daniel Franco: 34:41

the there was one thing that was told to me early on in my career, and I'm not so sure that I nail it every single time but it's definitely something in the back of my mind is that as a as a leader, when you walk into the room, people can instantly feel how you may be presenting yourself, right? They instantly feel the energy that you would bring in. And then as you leave the room, you should always make sure that that energy is in the positive, in a positive. So

Jim McDowell: 35:14

people do it differently. But there is no doubt that it's good to create presents. Yeah. And, you know, it also, leaders, good leaders are almost always optimistic people as opposed to you know, so it's better as you said, a lead that sort of impression. Yeah, than not, you know, so you're never going to write every night? I'm absolutely not. We're none of us. And I've got normal people. $800 Do your best wrong and a whole put still a guiding principle. Yeah. Tried to do.

Daniel Franco: 35:45

Yeah. No, one's perfect. So you are a big believer in strategy, right? And you said, so first, you told me trusting relationships. But then second, you still about strategy. And you've you've obviously mentioned, and you you have been quoted, and I'll quote here, if you have a strategy, stick to it. Don't be distracted by the side issues that make and make sure that you're constantly calibrating your progress against that strategy, similar to what you've just said, Now,

Jim McDowell: 36:12

as well. That's exactly. Rule number one.

Daniel Franco: 36:15

Rule number one. So I'm a lover of big shiny objects. I like and this is a new in my career as a leader in managing director, CEO. And set a strategy but this beautiful, shiny object over here of a new way of doing things that you there's this fear of missing out, if you don't grab it, and hold on to it? How do you say disciplined? How do you know that your strategy is the right strategy?

Jim McDowell: 36:45

Well, you don't know. But you, you've hopefully gone through a rigorous process to arrive at what that strategic position is. So what you must keep doing is calibrating the assumptions. So the assumptions that underpin strategy. So with a one year cooldown, for example, you know, you've got this graph and tastic goal detection business. But that will be based upon a number of assumptions, one of which is the price of gold, alright. And that may change, you may have to change direction because of that. So make sure you you're really clear on what your what your assumptions are, and keep checking your assumptions. Ba and has a lot of falls. But it has absolutely world class strategic process, how you arrive at the end of it doesn't guarantee you're going to be re but it puts a lot of rigor around it. And back humble who you've mentioned, was absolutely brought up and that. So I knew whenever I arrived at NOVA, and she was already there for your I knew that the process by which the strategy had been driven, was extremely rigorous doesn't guarantee it, right. But it was extremely rigorous. And strategy should be aspirational. Right? And strategy, Begley hit me saying that strategy is relatively easy. And execution is relatively hard. Yeah. So you can always fail in the execution as well. That's why you've got to keep reviewing your progress and says, you know, if I got the capability, how do I fill that capability gap to buy something to recruit somebody? Do you know how to do web software?

Daniel Franco: 38:21

Well, look, you know, I'm going through this at the moment and looking at our next three year strategy during the budgeting for the next three years as well, coming up to the financial year or the above. One thing that I find really difficult, and especially we are a young business, so you know, only three to four years old. You know, just for those listening consulting firm in the change space, working with businesses through large scale change, we I find it really difficult and I know this is something across the board that many new leaders and new CEOs potentially find is when you setting the strategy and you set it aspirational. There's an element of me, I don't know whether it's my logical brain or practical blur and how it goes is I go all Yeah, well, that's what I want to achieve, you know, whether it's $1 value, or whatever it might be. But based on these statistics, I'm not based on these numbers that I've got, like, that's what how are we going to do that as well? How

Jim McDowell: 39:23

are we going to do it? Yeah, that's the plan.

Daniel Franco: 39:25

That's the plan. And that's when you then

Jim McDowell: 39:27

Yeah, and if you can, if you can't, you can have faith and all of that, but faith is not a great plan. The faith is believing what you know, and so yeah, and so you've got to you got to say how am I going to get from here to there? I'm gonna have to do this and this and this and that and then just keep checking if you're able to knock those knock those things. And that could be anything from I need somebody to in the company they don't have at the moment who can do that or a need our relationship with another business that brings that or a need in order to win this big thing and need to win these three or four small things.

Daniel Franco: 40:02

Yeah. And the constant recalibration

Jim McDowell: 40:05

because Rico says like, I haven't won that, and I haven't won that, and I haven't won that. So I'm not gonna do that. Now what I do, yeah, let's go through the process again.

Daniel Franco: 40:13

And we're talking, you know, my world at the moment wouldn't have anywhere near the rigor. And not to mention data that you would have at Nova and what you previously would have had to be. So for those who are working in the small business space, or in the medium business space, where that rigor is not there, what's the one thing that you should, you would recommend to focus on,

Jim McDowell: 40:33

just test your assumptions, keep testing your assumptions, because you'll have made some assumptions as to why you think you're going to be able to do that. And if you think if those assumptions are right, you're going to do it and keep trying. But if one of those or more of those assumptions proved to be fundamentally wrong, or you can't fill the gap, then you better start thinking about something else.

Daniel Franco: 40:54

How do you know when you've landed on the strategy?

Jim McDowell: 40:58

Well, because you've gone through the process regularly, if it's smart people applying it, you know, smart, smart, expect, experience is really important. You know, because in a particularly in comp and complex areas, so rigorous experience. Now, it may well be if he was completely blue sky, you don't have to have that experience is nobody else has that either. You know, if you're Zuckerberg sat in wherever it is, and you're creating Facebook, and nobody else has been experienced and smart people. You using a rigorous process will will normally get you there. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 41:36

Brilliant. So on Nova systems, and Nova strategy, there's talk that you're on track to become a billion dollar company is that yeah, well,

Jim McDowell: 41:49

it'll be really nice. Billions are really nice, round number. And if you look at the defense industrial architecture in Australia, you've got six big, big, big guys at the top, who are all foreign multinationals with an Australian base here primarily from merrily to sail and sustain their own products and solutions, do other things as well. But that's the primary reason for being then you've got gazillion SMEs, and virtually nothing in between. So we're about 350 million. Given the money that's being spent on defense, the area of endeavor that we're in, now, you can see pretty clear route to 500 in a few years, and not now how that so my task is how then you make 500, much, much more than that. Because, you know, quite a lot of people could do get to that site and may view could get to that 500 million. And the reason why I'm here is to do something just a bit better than that. And a billion seems like I have never said a billion but people attributed to me, and that's fine, because there's a nice aspiration. Yeah, I can I can see a way to get there. Yeah, I can see a way to get there.

Daniel Franco: 43:08

How do you? How does your head your brain actually justify those numbers like it? When you say we're 300 million, 350 million? The extra 650 million? Yeah, that'll

Jim McDowell: 43:23

chunk. So you say right, we'll definitely get the 500 year plan absolutely concrete, here's the defense budget, here's, here's what I got to spend it on. Here's the positions that we have, we keep doing that don't stuff up, you know, then we'll get there. So I can see that concrete clear. One of the nice things about dealing with government is that it's quite transparent, to publish their budgets to publish the thing called investment defense investment plan. So you get to see more or less where they're spending their money notwithstanding you could have a big discontinuity like a war on Ukraine, or is it hydrate? What else? What else can we do? That looks like it's a near adjacency. That it's that's very, very feasible, we can get a better position than we currently have. So let's look at something like essential services, which is state tends to be state government base, but you're still selling the government tends to be complex customer, same sort of things defense tends to be paramilitary and it's in its, you know, communications and so on helicopters, stuff like that. Do that bill, the key is, in my mind, it says that budget, and are part of that budget is that I can get this amount of it with this amount of investment and these people or partnerships or whatever. So that'll get me to 700. Right? Then I can say, what, where else are we with our current customer, that we can start to do something different? And at the moment, there's a couple of things that have come along, one of which is getting weapons enterprise. So can we get a position? Yes, we can get a position in that. I've actually already got a position and how much can we turn that into over the next few years? That's when we grow? Yeah. And now let's look at our core business test evaluation, certification and systems assurance. That's a very, very fragmented, very highly federated marketplace. What if we tried to make it highly degraded space? And in order to do that, we need to convince the customer who has either deliberately or recklessly or negligently or whatever, be very federated. So how can I convince that which is the government and the Defense Force? How can I convince them, it would be better to be in the good and we should lead the integration. And I can actually seem away to doing that, because I know a bit about the levers, and you've got to pull both in the department and in the poll, the political sphere that makes those, those finally big, big decisions can make, you know, we would be spending well, in excess of a billion dollars a year and that failure, and it's all very, very fatal. We get quite a lot of it. So no, I'm not complaining, yeah. But I'm thinking it would be much more how can i. What would make him make me his partner in doing this? I know what I know, it's going to be savings, we're going to if we do this more efficiently, we're going to see a see of (inaudible audio), right? And we're going to use the workforce better. And that's a big issue as workforce. So you just think your way through those things.

Daniel Franco: 46:40

You chunk it down, like you said, Well, that was going to be my follow up question with a workforce thing we like as part of the strategy with change work that we work with businesses on is the is the workforce plan is specifically strategic? And how that how the companies can go about that. If you're if you're going from say that 350 million to that 1 billion number, obviously, new products and everything goes up. But the people aspect of growth of that growth is going to be the most appealing factor to slowing that down, isn't it?

Jim McDowell: 47:13

at the moment, it is absolutely at them. And you Yeah, don't have all that many levers you can pull in that. But at least you have some and you know, also, you can't create more people. Yeah. But you can use them more efficiently and the customer can contract or efficiently. You can work on all of those things in the meantime. And then if you're not really really comes, push comes to shove, you can always acquire Yeah, you can always go buy another business.

Daniel Franco: 47:40

buy by borrowing.

Jim McDowell: 47:42

Yes, no, I am not a fan a good fan of mergers and acquisitions. Because you're the buyer, you're started as advanced as a seller always knows more than you do both the business always knows more than you do. And that you will be expected to pay a premium for that business, because it's worth more to you than it's worth to him is the theory. Yeah. What is that premium? And can you to kind of deliver on that. But it is nonetheless. And with the capital markets, a lot of capital around at the moment? No, it was a change of exchange rates and so on. That that capital market might not be quite as liquid as as, as it is at the moment. But there's a lot of capital running around chasing deals. Yeah, there is. And we have Jim paid, you know, the two founders of the business on their management team in the past have built a business from two people to 1000 people from zero revenue to 350 without doing a single capital raise. Oh, well, right. Because it's professional services because capital aid Yeah, employ somebody give them a laptop, put them on a customer say start billings, exactly what I'm doing. You've got about a three month working capital sort of gap that you have. But that's about it. Correct? No, we're starting to run out of people. Yeah. So I think we'll have to start thinking differently about that. And we'll probably have to raise some capital. Yeah. I say their debt or equity, you know, certainly to wedging. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 49:05

Well, if you ever need if you ever require anyone I need people to bring those two businesses together, give us a call. We can help you.

Jim McDowell: 49:13

Five or six businesses on the journey, some of which are to New Business Bank and others have been quite good acquisitions.

Daniel Franco: 49:21

Part of the part of the growth plan for for Nova has included the rebranding lately. Can you talk to us about that looks looks amazing what you guys have done there? Yes.

Jim McDowell: 49:32

It just seemed a good time. You know what, we had a significant strategic review before I got there. We had developed No, it's a bit like building a house. And you build it for two people, which is German paid when it started. Yeah. And 20 years later, you've got 1000 people trying to live in the house yet, so it's likely the plumbing isn't gonna be quite good enough for that and you've built it by putting a bet on here and a they're on there and a bit on here and a bit on there. So let's have a look at this and make sure we're as efficient as we can be in terms of organization, although that's kind of the last thing you do sort of form always follows function. So we've gone through all that exercise would would look really complicated to the outside world, you know, and four of it would for companies, five chief executives, yeah, believe it or not. And for companies, at least, I see more than four companies. So let's simplify that. And we'll, let's let's make a Nova Systems, let's dry, you know, so Geoparks, for to 10 degrees with GVH. Aerospace, and let's make it let the why wouldn't you do a rebrand at the same time? Yeah, pull it all in together all in together, give it a visible, visible sign that people can see. So I looked around that for leaves are the four companies, the orange, orange is a color that's much under used but in branding, so sort of thought, and so it's also the color of flight test. So it's a bit of a nod to the past legacy of the founding fathers of the company or flight test. Now, that's why black boxes or orange are really Yeah, because Orange is the color of flight tests. So anything to do with flight tests and data is, again to the orange.

Daniel Franco: 51:23

Why is it called a black box?

Jim McDowell: 51:25

Because we're like, sort of black boxes are where stuff gets held and a secret stuff gets held? Blacks in the black box? Yes, have a black box, but it is in fact that

Daniel Franco: 51:33

orange box. So with the with the growth? And have you ever seen the benefits of bringing all those businesses together? We

Jim McDowell: 51:43

have we have particularly had a couple of relatively small things so far. But the only thing about the defense industry if you're gonna go below the line and play with the big primes and start is this relatively slow burn, you know, he's these big projects. 234 years, yeah. But we have we have seen a number of beds we've been able to make we wouldn't have done if we hadn't tried while interview that the business is better. So that's what's really, really at the start gets to that. And it's always by and large, integrated. Things work better than federated things. You know, you don't want your your gearbox loosely collaborating with your with your torch, you probably want them integrated. The single and that's what we're trying to do, I want to see and our UK business, for example, we just won the biggest project that's not very big by Australian term. Yeah, this is a medium sized business in the UK. We've won the biggest project that we've ever done, we wouldn't have been able to do that without integrating the business. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 52:42

well done. How was the the integration process was smooth sailing? You talking about five CEOs now with one?

Jim McDowell: 52:50

well got that out of the way pretty quickly, Yeah, actually. And people were pretty good about it. I saw that 10% of people hear that. Yeah. 10% of people love it to bits. Yeah. And 80% of people are willing together to give it a go. Yeah. So if you keep that if you can keep those 80, you know, and maybe convert a couple of that real naysayers then you've got 90 odd percent. And that other suspect that's that's where we are people are prepared to give it a go.

Daniel Franco: 53:17

Yeah. No, I love it. Love the new branding, smart people solving complex challenges making the world safe. I think we should all be on that. Yeah. On that. on that path.

Jim McDowell: 53:26

Yeah. And if you're in our industry, you know, making purpose is really important.

Daniel Franco: 53:33

The this employee value proposition of, you know, making the world safe. The defense industry is, you know, a pretty decisive industry in the sense whether or not I want to go and contribute to the potential destruction, or or do I want to make the world safe and talk about the innovation that you know, yeah.

Jim McDowell: 53:56

You know, so United Nations, you know, that, right? Every nation has the right to defend itself. And if it's only the bad guys are defending themselves to maybe a simple analogy, the good guy, and I'm really, really glad somebody invented the Spitfire. And, of course, it's a perfectly valid position to have to be a pacifist, and not to want anything to do with that. But it's also an extremely minority position. So I come from, and the people who decide on the rules with regard to the use of lethal force, our parliament, yeah, and the executive authority, not me. Now, and I perfectly understand if people don't want to take part in that enterprise because of some higher sense of sensibility. But I believe that to be a normal cause as well, you know, we absolutely love our diggers. And so we shoot, he's a guy who are putting themselves in harm's way. But it'd be really good if they were well equipped and likely to survive going in harm's way and that The job of the of the defense industry, and I would much rather call it the national secure part of the national security apparatus as opposed to the defense industry. And people get very vague and it's amazing. Just the change of, of of a word. Whenever I was chairman advanced to the Australian nuclear science and technology organization, who runs the only reactor in the country open, Lucas hates, whenever we're looking for somewhere to, to because you have to get rid of your waste at some point in time. The difference between a nuclear dump and nuclear repository is very different. Yeah, yeah, it's different. And it's only one word. Yeah, it's a different emphasis. So you can use all sorts of ad motional language to describe the defense industry, as you know, as arms dealers, and weapons of war, and mass killers, and all of that, or you can use another ally said, allowing us it says, protecting those that protect us, giving our diggers and all of our service people with the best equipment that they can take to protect us to protect. So I haven't come down on one particular sort of side of that, which most people do, come, come come down on, but accept absolutely, that it's valid to have another point of view. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 56:17

So Nova systems, what's the Indo Pacific? At the moment? It's the shows on at the moment or the the conference, and that you Nova Systems had at the inaugural SME. Summit, I guess it was called, where you when you mentioned that the opportunity for SMEs to be involved in defense industry right now would likely never be repeated again. Can you explain your thoughts?

Jim McDowell: 56:48

Yeah, look, I think I think it's a big industry. So there are lots of SME Yeah, no doubt. But if you look at what's happening at the moment, in both geopolitically with with the growing the growing Siena's threat of China, the war in the Ukraine, and what happens if you're not properly equipped, the increase in the defense budget, the commitment to orcas so what will become a treaty eventually, as soon between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and the access to capital, though that confluence of events, I suspect, I haven't seen it in the 40 years that I've been in the industry, so I suspect it will repeat itself. So let's seize the moment. It's an opportunity. It's a Carpe Diem time. And we have 350 suppliers, most of whom are SMEs. So apart from the fact you disliked, it's good to talk to them about what we think's going on, and how we're going to do things and so on. Also, if you're, you know, if you're in your business, and you're a small or medium sized enterprise, you're your head down, bottom up working like a one armed paper hanger, you know, and maybe don't have time to think about. So, you know, and we're not huge, but we do have people like Rebecca Hall, you know, who have been in the industry for 25 years. Yeah. And have just thought about this really deeply for a long time, just to come along and do a 15 or 20 minute or half an hour, but takes back half an hour to do you know, there are lots of great, I think it's just a great thing, just for people to lift their head for a half an hour and listen to that. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 58:31

it is. It's exciting. It's scary, though. Right, in the same in the same process. And I think like if we took what up token scare from the layman's perspective, yeah, sitting out on the outside, you obviously have much more of a clearance to understand really what's going on. But you're you're big on sovereignty, right, which is the ability to defend yourself, isn't sovereignty means control control. So he's a control to defend yourself or should have

Jim McDowell: 58:59

control to if you start from the basis of the word, do forget, I'm a lawyer. So words mean quite a lot. Yeah. So So sovereign, to be have sovereignty over something is to have control over. It would be extremely naive for us to think that we could have sovereign control of all elements of our defense. We we rely, obviously, on our allies, particularly the United States, and the answers treaty has been a core of our defense posture for since the Second World War. Will we ever, ever, ever be able to design a nuclear submarine? Highly unlikely, in fact, my view at a cost, you know that that we could bear? No. So what's the best position we can get in that endeavor? The best decision we can get is probably privileged access. So let's settle for that and make that as best we can with with the United States in the kingdom in this case, and you work your way through what's important to you military aircraft? Are we ever going to build fighter may no fighter jets again, design and right? Just the cost. So again, privileged access, and you work your way through these things. And you come to a position that runs through each of them, called Test and Evaluation, certification and systems assurance. Can we be industrially sovereign? Yes, we can have 100% control of that. That's the business that we're in. So the analogy I like to draw is the motorcar industry, where we could design and manufacture, sell, sustain, and export, high end motor vehicles. Now, why did we decide not to do that? No, we didn't decide not to do that. Some people in Detroit and some people in Tokyo decided that we're not going to do that. Yeah. Okay. So that decision was taken in their interests that might be in our interests as well. But their interests are not necessarily our interests. So it's this really said, we have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests. And that may well not. So for me, sovereignty, if you can get under many positions you can't get it is only an Australian can turn it off. Okay. All right. That's my definition of real sovereignty. We will have to accept less than that and many occasions, but we shouldn't if we don't have to. And that example, I've given of test evaluation, certification and systems assurance is one of

Daniel Franco: 1:01:40

I want to I want to ask you a question on again, asking from

Jim McDowell: 1:01:44

toilet rules, you should never give up sovereignty.

Daniel Franco: 1:01:50

We will try not to bring up the pandemic. And if we are in a world where we are building these new nuclear submarines, and you know, there is a certain amount of time that it's going to take to build these, these beautiful things. But right now, the threats now, right, can we? And I'm really going to ask this from from a point of having no idea. Can we protect ourselves now?

Jim McDowell: 1:02:16

Well, you can protect yourself, because because you've got allies. Yeah. And, you know, I won't go into the whole nuclear submarine individual, I worked for a company that built nuclear, both nuclear powered submarines and nuclear armed submarines, we're talking about nuclear powered submarines and whether or not that can be done in here and the right time is gonna open question that's being looked at by Admiral Madan, this task force and so on. But we have a set of allies, particularly the United States, and now increasingly, the United Kingdom and the ATO that that we talk about the coalition of the willing, it's really the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Are the key players. Yeah. So yes, we can Is that is that? Could we get to it better? Yes. Yes. And the benefit of nuclear submarines? The major benefit, Cuz usually, it's quite a complex question is range and endurance. Now, if you're defending Australia, against an attacker range, and endurance is not so important. So the scenario we were thinking about before is not necessarily the scenario the war planners are thinking about. Because actually, these low electric boats are quite often quieter than nuclear boats. And what's the other strategic advantage is you don't know where a submarine is. That's one of its major strategic advantages. And therefore the quieter it can be. The better a nuclear boat, engine, it's generators, nuclear generator runs all the time. That's a little bit noisy. Whereas a diesel electric boat, comes to the surface, takes in a bunch of air recharges its generators, right? goes back down again and uses the batteries. It's just it's just, it's just power and it's very, very quiet. Now it has to keep coming up for air. What is sort of called snorting in there, and then goes back down again. So that that's a weakness obviously, but when it's actually running, on, its on, its on its battery power. It's very, very quiet.

Daniel Franco: 1:04:40

So excuse the naivety here we can we build both?

Jim McDowell: 1:04:45

Well, that would be that would take the whole defense budget more possibly, and we aren't we will have both because Collins will be going quite a long time yet. So we've already built half a dozen electric submarines, which we knew they haven't had. A great deal of you should have one careful owner and ever raised or rally. Yeah. So I think there's quite a lot in life and those things certainly in, in a, in a physical sense and a sense of fatigue sense. And it's the systems that you have the systems that you have to upgrade.

Daniel Franco: 1:05:19

This, again, from a point of view of having limited defense and military experience, but in Australia seems to me like it would be pretty safe place to be regardless, just given the fact that we're surrounded by the ocean, right? Is that not true?

Jim McDowell: 1:05:34

Yeah. Well, we were surrounded by the ocean whenever Japan attacked as well. Yeah. And that was a long time ago. And they're much, much you know, the aggressors today, if there were there would have much more capacity to do it. So, you know, it's not a not a bad place to be. But we're by no means impregnable.

Daniel Franco: 1:05:52

Yeah. Okay. So hence the reason why we need to learn how to defend ourselves. So moving into another aspect of of the world that you play, which is leadership, and something that, you know, I'm pretty passionate about, and our listeners are pretty passionate about it. I want to learn a little bit more about your leadership growth as you as you sort of rose through the ranks, specifically, early in your years of being CEO, what were some of the, what were some of the lessons that you learned from leading a defense company? early in your career? And what did you learn specifically about your own personal leadership style?

Jim McDowell: 1:06:37

Again, I said, a view that still hold the your first leadership job, but your first line leader, when you've probably got a small team of half a dozen or whatever, that's where you develop your leadership style, and it doesn't change very much, yeah, you may be a bit more training, a few more tools a bit better at communicating, and you go and do your training and all that sort of stuff. But that's where you'll learn. First line, first line leadership is the other than, so that the very kind of top of the tree and accompany is really, really important for strategy setting, and so on, and tone. But the underlying ability to deliver is driven by your first line leadership, and you should pay a lot of attention to first line leadership. Because of that, because they touch everybody in the company. Yeah. And because that is the style others develop, there will be the style stairs with those people all the way through their career.

Daniel Franco: 1:07:36

So do you invest money into your frontline leadership in growing their capability? Yeah,

Jim McDowell: 1:07:41

well, certainly any other any businesses that I have worked in, in the past, we absolutely have. And it is the tool that we use for cultural integration. So when you buy another company, the first thing we used to do was get all the first line leaders trained in the same way as the existing first line leaders in the company that will say

Daniel Franco: 1:08:05

when ba ba you're speaking the same language, right? That's what you want. You get them

Jim McDowell: 1:08:09

in the former cohort to speak the same language, got the same values, got the same curves, all of that stuff that brings cohesion, and culture, which is just how we do things right here. Yeah, yeah. And you need to, you need to pay attention span.

Daniel Franco: 1:08:26

Again, with the with the change work, we do culture is a big part of that. So it's essentially the human part of the businesses where we look at and then leadership, as you can imagine, any change program needs really great leadership. That frontline management team. And I say the word management is typically promoted because of their technical skills, or they've been in the role the longest and not necessarily set up for success when they do move into it. So is it something do you as a leader of a large organization, whether it be BPA or Nova systems or University of South Australia, do you invest and look at that, from at that frontline leadership into what is the category? Yeah,

Jim McDowell: 1:09:10

yeah, you got to select for that attribute. Yeah. Not that attribute only because they have to have credibility. And their you know, whatever it is, they're dead. Yeah. But the best electrician isn't going to be the best for him or isn't necessarily going to be the best for him. Yeah. So you've also got some losses

Daniel Franco: 1:09:27

necessarily even want to be

Jim McDowell: 1:09:28

a man I want to be. I'm probably made want to be here. She may want to be soon. You got to give them the tools. If that's the case, you kind of expect people you don't, you can manage. You can't lead a balance sheet. Yeah, but you can manage one. Yeah, and leadership management are two different things for me. So, so you've got to select for that. But you've also got to create a way of advancement in a company, particularly a large one. That means that you can fulfill your ambition without being a people leader and there needs to be a set Technical streams that you can pay to become the world's expert and lefthand, doubles, lines, grommets? No, that's what you want to do. There's a stream that will get you there. Whenever I was running and star was chairman of an sto, the retreat was very interesting company, it was got owned by the government for the federal government first. And you too, you too to lots of people, really. And you had a bunch of research scientists who wanted access to the reactor on the synchrotron to conduct experiments to advance knowledge and wisdom and learning. And then you had a bunch of guys make a nuclear medicine. Right. So nuclear isotopes for the diagnosis and treatment mostly of cancer, right? It's really important. These guys, these guys were effectively business people who wanted the most efficient way of making nuclear medicine, and logistically getting it to wherever it had to get to, and so on because of the halflife, and all of that it's not, it's quite difficult stuff to move around as well. And these guys were scientists, and these guys were incentivized predominantly by traditional business incentives, like bonuses, December payments, these guys didn't really care that much about that what they wanted was access to discretionary research money. So you had to treat them slightly differently. They're both very valuable and doing different things. So sometimes you've got to create this path that lets them without being people leaders know most of these guys were highly introverted research scientists, you know, who are much happier sitting in a room with half a dozen other research scientists pursuing an academic goal, which you might be able to commercialize at some point as well. But that wasn't their major goal. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:11:40

The different types of personalities and people isn't really, as you're growing through and learning a little bit more about your own personal leadership styles, you obviously become more experienced, and in dealing with conflict, dealing with problems dealing with people dealing with strategy all the above. Was there ever a point in your career where impostor syndrome really stood out? The belief that maybe was the belief that, wow, I'm, I'm leading this company? I actually really don't know. No,

Jim McDowell: 1:12:15

I'm gonna say no to that. Not an arrogant sense. But the fact that my career was not either meteoric or, and there were never big discontinuities, you know, you went from being the cleaner to the chief executive. So

Daniel Franco: 1:12:33

there's nothing wrong, he didn't jump, jump. And you know, so

Jim McDowell: 1:12:35

it was, it was a pretty progressive thing. So you've got the confidence of, you know, Donna better than I can do that. I know, I can do that. Yeah, it's not a really, really suspicious for people who come in at the first interview and say, I want to be the chief executive. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:12:55

How did you learn about, you know, the, the four pillars that you spoke with before the three legs

Jim McDowell: 1:13:02

experience and thinking about experience and thinking about it? Experience is a great thing. Because most problems that confront me today, I've seen at some other point, forever, what's been a long career, do you think? Well, we had a bit of a massive doing it the last time, but I think I can maybe should do it this way, or that way, or I like that work the last time it's likely to work this time with some they're never quite exactly the same. So experience really, really, really, really helps

Daniel Franco: 1:13:31

me manage the, with it with that experience. And I'd say now, you're obviously the experience is at a point where you just know the answer to this question, but at the time, where you're early in your career, and you're making decisions, there's this sense of urgency on now, I want this done now, or I want this to be made quickly, I want this to be changed. We can't be seen this way, whatever it might be. The the year of doing things quickly. How do you manage that process?

Jim McDowell: 1:14:04

You've got to figure out what's what's important and what's urgent and what's important and and urgent, what's urgent but not important. Those and that's that's the hardest thing that I suppose the hearts that I have a very very strong Hurry up driver. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, which is why I like to have a CFO who's a very, very high be perfect driver before kind of different Yeah. And that's how you do it. You get people around you who are different than you are who think differently and again, get bounced, bounced to the question

Daniel Franco: 1:14:34

of the importance of the team around you. How often do you rely on that team to

Jim McDowell: 1:14:39

well, you know, we meet every week. Yeah, and I interact with them every day. And I have one on ones with them every week and as much as I like sort of set piece performance reviews. You should be giving people feedback every every interaction you have whether they should be some of that should be about

Daniel Franco: 1:14:58

what about accountability thrown into have that capability, accountability, accountability?

Jim McDowell: 1:15:03

Well, you know, that's about for me is about clarity is about us both on both sides of the agreement, understanding what it is, expect a view you expect of me. And I can't hold someone accountable for having given them the tools in order in order to exercise that. But accountability is really, really, really important. Because I, you know, what, once you become the chief executive, our leader doesn't have to be to have big things. There's so little you can do on your own. You're, you're all you're being judged on is the ability of the team and teams to produce what it is you said, you're gonna do. And I quite often have people who report to me, at the enterprise level have no individual goals of no individual measures, right? They only have, they only have team measures. Because one fail and all fail, will all succeed if we all succeed and the individual things that we're no need to do. Yeah. So I tend to wait protected the enterprise level agenda with performance measures towards the team, as opposed to towards the individual, other than behavioral. And I've always had 50% of your discretionary, whatever discretionary in terms of your compensation, it's about what you do, and 50 percents about how you do beatings will continue until morale improves, there's not a long term, you know, philosophy, my leadership philosophy. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:16:35

Did you did you have someone who sort of mentored you through this along your way or was

Jim McDowell: 1:16:39

never actually had a mentor, but I've had people I've worked for some really great people. Yeah, I've worked for some really different and probably the biggest influence on me was the last chief executive of BA as Group chief global chief executive of of BA Systems was guy called Ian King, who's a Scottish accountant you don't get don't get a worst type of account. But and he was very different for me, but by he showed me a whole load of stuff about how to run a successful business.

Daniel Franco: 1:17:14

If you're looking to learn off people like that, without the obviously the the, you know, inverted commas mentor. Do you look for people who are different to you? Yes, yeah,

Jim McDowell: 1:17:29

yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because you can you know, yourself and you know, what you can get you can get good at, you've got to find the other things that you need help to get good at. And, and particularly around financial discipline, planning, the rigor and setting, you know, setting targets that had that. You can vote, you can do it, you can visualize, you're doing it, but it's not easy, but it's not impossible. There's nothing worse than setting impossible goals, because people just walk on the planet, and yeah, never gonna do that. And that grid grid balance of never, never, never disappointing. On the downside, and occasionally surprising on the upside. And that was that effectively was Ian's, in sort of Magic Pudding.

Daniel Franco: 1:18:22

You mentioned earlier, actually, no, you didn't mention earlier you mentioned on our before the podcast today that you normally like to park half an hour away and walk into the office every morning, I know that you read an hour in the morning, an hour at night, or whatever it might be whatever that time looks like. A lot of that practice is about self care. Right? And it helps you come and find yourself in the moment do you place a lot of emphasis on self care?

Jim McDowell: 1:18:53

me a lot of it. I think, at various times I've been better at it than you know, I used to used to run a lot used to run every morning and most evenings as well. You played soccer for a long time I played field hockey for a long time, you know, I have of recent years done much more meditation than I would have done. Because it's that balance between energy and car that gets you in that gets you in the best and in the best place. But more and more self care well being. And when we talk about culture, and you talk to people about culture, they tend to talk about how they feel, you know, hi things make make them feel as well being as much as much as anything. So I think there's more emphasis on that.

Daniel Franco: 1:19:44

If you were if I was a young, first time CEO, and said to you, Jim, what advice do you have for me going into my first role

Jim McDowell: 1:19:57

so for guess first of all, try to be authentic. And I know that's a bit trite thesis, but but it's really hard being somebody that you're not, you can do it for short periods of time, it's really hard to sustain. So try to be authentic, get people around you who are different. Try and make sure you haven't got anyone on the team who could be mistaken for you. Yeah. And that's from being very different to being slightly different, both in terms of how they think and what their exploiter experience, I hate the term lived experience. Because experience means live, you can't and can't be on lived experience. So, so diversity of thought and diversity of experience is really rare. And actually, they mean the same thing. Because how you think is, is built up through your, through your experiences, would be the two pieces of advice to try and be optimistic, trying to, like optimistic and stay optimistic. And don't promise to do something you know, you can't do? Yeah, you might say, I'm going to do this, and you know, it's gonna be a big stretch, and you might not quite get there. And so you got to do something, you know, you can't. Yeah. So two or three small people that help others do your best. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 1:21:13

yeah, it was back. I enjoyed wisdom, from the moment from your mom. I'm gonna wrap up in a few moments we'll get we'll get to the quickfire questions. But before I do that, is there anything Kenya on your mind right now that you have been thinking about that, about the future of Australia and South Australia? Is there anything in a positive way in a negative way, something that comes to your mind that you you're pretty passionate about? And you've been putting time and effort into thinking? Yeah,

Jim McDowell: 1:21:46

I think Australia in the area of endeavor that I work in, in defense and defense policy has got as a real real turning point, we have spent the last 20 years fighting terrorists effectively an asymmetric war in the Middle East. That's no longer the threat. And we're going to have to really, really quickly change our thinking and how we respond to what we know see as the threat whether it's real or not, as you know, another matter which is the growth on our superpower in the region, who is our biggest trading partner? How do we have never been in that situation before? Hide? How do we deal with that, and it's not a black and white either, or it's quite a nuanced, sophisticated set of principles that we're gonna have here. We're gonna have to come up with, but you know, I also think, here we are, we've just changed government in South Australia, we're likely to change them. And perhaps there's quite a high possibility that we'll change the federal government, that will be as smooth as anything you've seen, right? And we'll look at the United States, the law, you know, the greatest democracy in the world, and all that nonsense about a stolen election, and, you know, the law legal cases all over the place and riots in the Capitol building, you know, by, you know, aren't we lucky? But that would that maturity of democracy still present in Australia, despite our different views?

Daniel Franco: 1:23:14

Very, very lucky. What does the future look like for Jim?

Jim McDowell: 1:23:18

I did an overnight cracking on a bit. So I think I think another few years, you know, doing this. I've just started a PhD. And that will take me forever. First posthumous PhD

Daniel Franco: 1:23:32

where did you find the time.

Jim McDowell: 1:23:33

was, haven't not spending that much time on at the moment, I'm sure easing myself into it. As I say. I've got it, you know, from blog of my ear to got a relatively young son. So I want to see him through uni and get him on the right path and more about being a good person than anything else. And I hope that I hope that's the case. I'd like to help and part of the bit in between leaving BA and coming back to work for Premier and Cabinet was doing stuff for government and do another we're paying me for it as Senator Xenophon at the time, I said, paying me quite well. But part of that was about giving back because I wasn't getting paid anything like I was getting into private sector, by the way, it's under still half the people they had on the table.

Daniel Franco: 1:24:16

Yeah. And well, you it's pretty public what you were getting paid. And you think there's no way that's anywhere near where you would have been.

Jim McDowell: 1:24:23

Yeah, so so. So there's a bit about that. Like, I'm very committed to Australia. The reason why I came, the reason why I left BAE in a dead was, I didn't see another job role illustrated for 11 years, you know, taking them from 300 million to just under $2 billion revenue for the company had gone and on the side, each job, just wanted to come back to Australia and do something and there's a few opportunities that presented themselves and I that's one so I'm not thinking much further than that. I obviously want to keep reading and I'd like to like to do better writing as well. So,

Daniel Franco: 1:24:57

very good. podcast if you'd like to Yeah. Excellent. All right, we'll jump into the quickfire questions as we wrap up. First question, what are you reading right now? Obviously, that could be multiple books.

Jim McDowell: 1:25:11

Yeah. Well, I'm reading a set of books by a guy called Abdulaziz Girnar. Who won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year. Yeah. And to my eternal shame. I had never heard of him before. So he's from Zanzibar. And he had he had lived quite a lot of his life and can teach us at the University of Canada Canterbury. Books about loss and belonging, of hope of one's homeland. So he's written half a dozen books that I'm working my way through them.

Daniel Franco: 1:25:36

Yeah, well, very relevant. Ukraine. What? Now you don't read management books. We say you read the odd fiction or nonfiction books. Is there a development book that you believe stands out from

Jim McDowell: 1:25:51

the crowd? Oh, well, again, it's not a development book, but if you want to, you know, so he said two Saturdays, which, who wrote, you know, whatever it was 2000 years ago, his History of the Peloponnesian War, Peloponnesian War around for around a century BC ran for 70 years. All of life is in that

Daniel Franco: 1:26:12

way. So what was the name? Again,

Jim McDowell: 1:26:13

his name is Thucydides. He's a good philosophy. Yeah, he wrote A History of the Peloponnesian War.

Daniel Franco: 1:26:18

So check that out. That's why That's why he was in love with that sort of literature. What is one lesson that's taking you the longest to learn?

Jim McDowell: 1:26:28

I don't know. I haven't learned yet.

Daniel Franco: 1:26:32

Very good like that. Don't go back to the old pubs, right, is that if you could invite three people for dinner, who would they be?

Jim McDowell: 1:26:45

Abraham? So they that effectively the, the progenitor the godfather of the three great revealed religions in the world of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Sort of like asked him what he was up to how did he manage to do that.

Daniel Franco: 1:27:01

To communicate one

Jim McDowell: 1:27:02

even wore her mentioned before, he's an English author. He's a male and Louise Eveland. Who wrote that sort of honor trilogy and Brideshead Revisited most people would know him for but I can read all of his all of his stuff. Because he's a genius in my view, and he's such a curmudgeon. It'd be really grumpy blog to keep which, which which amuses, yeah,

Daniel Franco: 1:27:26

I'd certainly give him a few wines and maybe loosen up.

Jim McDowell: 1:27:28

And the third so might, you know, the themes of my life are faith, literature, art and literature. So literature, so faith is Abraham, literature's even war on art would be Caravaggio. So Caravaggio was you know, that one of the greatest of the Renaissance painters on such a badass, yeah, you know, he was being we had to flee Venice for murder and all that sort of thing, and painted these most beautifully detailed pictures of Venice, I know, of Christ and John the Baptist, and I just would like to talk to Caravaggio, about those two sides of his character and the sort of Beauty and the violence.

Daniel Franco: 1:28:04

Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. What's some of the best advice that you've ever received?

Jim McDowell: 1:28:11

I'll be polite. Help others do your best.

Daniel Franco: 1:28:12

Yeah. Can't go wrong with that. Be polite, help others do your best. If you had access to a time machine, where would you go?

Jim McDowell: 1:28:23

It would be a whole year it'd be Warwick University. 1977 the year I graduated. Yeah, it was fantastic year, you know, theory, you know, 21 years old. You didn't give a barber yet. You're smart. lovely girlfriend. Yeah. You know, the best summer ever of England. It was, you know, bless was in that dawn to be alive. Yeah. This was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven, which is Wordsworth talking about the French Revolution, but that's what it felt like.

Daniel Franco: 1:28:50

Yes. So would you go back to relive that? Or would you go back to Oh,

Jim McDowell: 1:28:55

no. wouldn't change a thing? Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:28:57

Yeah, yeah. Amazing. If your house was on fire, and you had your family and pets that was safe. What would be the one item that you would?

Jim McDowell: 1:29:06

Well, it would probably be three editors who could carry the three Yeah. And that's again, it's faith, art and literature, literature and art. So go I've got a second edition King James Bible. Yep. Which which is beautiful. So we'll get that I've got a first edition sort of honor trilogy might easily get that I've got a really cheap little picture of a George Connor in pastel called the potato girl and she does love those three things, which is fifth. literature and art. Yeah, we go and get

Daniel Franco: 1:29:38

amazing. Fit one superhero power. What would it

Jim McDowell: 1:29:41

be? Or not? There's no superheroes? Imagination.

Daniel Franco: 1:29:45

Yeah. Wouldn't want. Yeah, no, no, no, don't entertain that idea. an Irishman in a suit the accused?

Jim McDowell: 1:30:08

And I can say you can

Daniel Franco: 1:30:09

say that there was another podcast we had we weren't saying names but there was another podcast he said where this person said they got that joke from you know, really stupid

Jim McDowell: 1:30:19

stupid one that my first wife used to tell us that she stopped half hearted every time herself to be honest, terrible. So it's really a mom joke. And it's again, walks into a bar and he stands beside there's a giraffe and the drawstring and paints like nobody's business. Giraffe falls on the floor unconscious and another guy comes in. Steps are Ludger often said to the farmer is not allowed.

Daniel Franco: 1:30:45

I have heard that one. I love that one. Yeah. What's that line? There is a draft beautiful. Thank you so much for your time. Today, Jim. And thank you for I think everything that you have done for Australia, obviously in the defense sector and the the businesses that you've led, and obviously all, all that you've achieved. Definitely, definitely privileged to be sitting here speaking to you. So thank you very much.

Jim McDowell: 1:31:11

Thanks. Really, thanks for asking me, you know, it must be people must have very little to do so gonna listen to this.

Daniel Franco: 1:31:18

To dig up more on podcast.

Jim McDowell: 1:31:22

But I know last year, and actually if you send me a link on Saturday, yeah,

Daniel Franco: 1:31:27

yes, absolutely. I think it's it's definitely podcasting needs to be shared and listened to widely. So if people wanted to get in contact with you, where could they find you or follow you?

Jim McDowell: 1:31:39

Or certainly, you know, on either Facebook or LinkedIn wouldn't be LinkedIn would probably be the best way and it sounds like an

Daniel Franco: 1:31:46

excellent, beautiful. Thanks again for your time, and we'll catch you next time everyone.

Synergy IQ: 1:32:19

Thank you once again for joining us here at creating synergy. It's been great spending this time with you. Please jump on to the synergy IQ Facebook and LinkedIn page where the discussion continues after the show. Join our mailing list so you'll know what's happening next at Synergy iq.com.au. And of course don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, please share it with your friends.