Leadership

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights and our special guest this week, Hugo Marino. And this week, we're discussing leading thinkers. Nick, we've got this dashing young man in front of us. Could you introduce us to Hugo? Who is Hugo? Yeah, well, Hugo is actually the reason that Peter and I met Hugo last year, I think it was towards the end of summer last year, is he's the boyfriend of a former colleague from Defence Intelligence of both Peter and me. And we got chatting, obviously, as you do, and discovered that Hugo has actually had a really interesting job, but which shines quite a good sidelight on a definitely analytical related topic, which is, is there a difference in the way that you should lead people whose job is to think versus how you should lead people whose job is to do stuff broadly? So like, this is obviously sort of core stuff for us really is, you know, what does thinking involve? And how should you lead people who are doing it? And what things do you need to think about? What does good look like? So anyway, I think Hugo's got, you know, a lot of interesting experience and insights into that, as I'm sure we'll find out. Well, it's funny you should say that, because a few minutes ago, when myself and Hugo met for the first time, there was a glint in one another's eyes, there was that hint of recognition. And what I know that Hugo saw in me was clearly a man of action, and leadership, probably no small amount of physical bravery as well. But also thinking. But also a thinker. Like an intellectual, I hesitate to say it, an intellectual giant, or something like that. Hugo, tell us a bit more about yourself, maybe.

Speaker B: 00:02:08

Well, thanks so much for having me on. Yeah. I guess I'm technically in the army, but actually probably have done very little of what people would normally associate with the army. So all of my jobs have really been leading teams or being amongst teams, doing analytic outputs, kind of researchy type work, intelligence, that type of stuff. And so, you know, despite the way, despite us wearing kind of green pyjamas, the reality is we... I like my green pyjamas. Yeah, yeah. The reality is, I think probably my experience was a lot of what I was taught to do in the army as an army officer, you know, tally ballyho, follow me chaps, all that stuff. Initially, probably didn't work particularly well when I started doing the sort of jobs I was given. And so I think what I'm interested to talk about is how I learned to adapt that and how I learned to change that, and probably become a lot less army in the process, but hopefully, a lot more

Speaker A: 00:02:57

of an effective leader. And that's because the areas in the army where you were, you were leading

Speaker B: 00:03:01

less actiony type persons. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. What those in the military would call a echelon, motherfucker. Exactly.

Speaker A: 00:03:12

Couldn't get more rear than my echelon. I'll tell you that. No, couldn't get more...

Speaker B: 00:03:17

If we can see the rear echelon, we're doing something wrong. Interestingly, I've actually never been as far forward as an echelon. So actually, to call me a REMF is actually giving me too much credit.

Speaker A: 00:03:27

Yeah, it's a compliment. Yeah. Well, my first question is, tell us about the leadership training that you had. And let's start there. Like, what, what makes a good lead? What are they trying to churn out at leadership school?

Speaker B: 00:03:40

Yeah, so I think my experience with Sandhurst was that it, as a main effort, tries to take people down and not sure to. The tagline is kind of break you down and then build you up. And what they're trying to build back up is a sense of worrying more about other people and how you come across to them. And I think probably one of the taglines really is perception is reality. So if someone perceives you to have done something, it doesn't really matter whether you have or not. The reality is what people actually see of you. Fake it until you make it. Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. What that means, I think, in terms of the cognitive side of leadership is often is looking like you're confident in what you're doing, looking like you're sure. And I think probably a lot of military leaders are not super confident in appearing to be unsure about something because actually, what you're taught is if you want someone to charge with a bayonet, they've got to know that you're 100% sure that's the right thing to do.

Speaker A: 00:04:36

Yeah, it's interesting because it feels a bit like you're essentially tricking people into following you. And because that's actually the right thing to do, right? I mean, actually, uncertainty is going to undermine people's confidence in the mission they've got, right? So, I mean, if you're going to be doing something, presumably, it's correct. It's the right thing to do to pretend that that thing is absolutely, definitely the right thing to do. Like, you know, it wouldn't do to say, we think this will probably work. We're not sure. Yeah. We might all die. But come on, lads.

Speaker C: 00:05:13

There's also a sort of feature that doctrine boils down to a lot to basically any kind of action is better than inaction. Yeah. Because even incorrect action gives other commanders higher up more information about what's actually best to do so that they can throw more men at the problem later on. Or perhaps fewer. Or fewer. Yeah. So, rather than being in a state of paralysis and not doing anything about it because you're unsure, better to go, right, I'm 80% sure this is the right thing to do, follow me and go and do something.

Speaker A: 00:05:49

I got most of my military training. There's a brilliant military thinker out there. It's called Richard Sharpe of the Rifles. And he said, I'm glad you said that, Peter, because he said, you know, even a bad decision is better than no decision at all. Interesting. So, yeah. Well, I wanted to find out, how did you get on with it? Did it suit you?

Speaker B: 00:06:10

Well, I think I can do it. And I think I did it for a while. And I think what I realised is that when you're in a more analytical team where you've got a kind of cognitive output, let's say, if you do that performance, the impression you're giving is that there are two types of things. The first bracket is things that I know. And then the second bracket is things that can't be known.

Speaker A: 00:06:33

Right.

Speaker B: 00:06:34

The problem is, is that a research team should be more concerned about what's in the middle of those two, i.e. things that we don't currently know, but we could find out.

Speaker A: 00:06:42

So, have you ever done any of the kind of traditional leadership type roles? Or did you go straight into, you know, intelligence analysis and that kind of thing?

Speaker B: 00:06:51

I've performed them on exercises, but I've never done them for real. And I think it's something that you need in your back pocket, because often when you're doing more general army type business, that's expected of you, you know, and actually...

Speaker A: 00:07:08

You mean, like, even if it's just getting the photocopying done or something still?

Speaker B: 00:07:11

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe one example of this, I briefed a senior, sort of, a senior official from the foreign office out in, you know, in Africa, and was... I explained a piece of work that I'd done as, you know, kind of came up front with, and this is what we really don't know about what, in this case, the enemy we're doing. And the response came back of, well, I think we need to probably do a bit more work on that then. And I realised that what I was trying to convey was that middle ground of this is what we, this is what we don't know, but could find out. I think the reason why the kind of Sandhurst model of leadership is such an effective one is that it's kind of watertight. It's a very good way to never stumble over because you're presenting this totally firm barrier. And it's, people might not like you, but ultimately, they'll probably respect you. I think in order to deliver more analytical outputs, you need to think about, you know, that conveying uncertainty and really being honest about where uncertainty is and where it

Speaker A: 00:08:21

can or cannot be dealt with. Yeah, no, I think I get it. And I think, you know, this is very familiar to me from working in defence intelligence as well. I think, I mean, it actually probably is useful for listeners if we try and give a few examples suitably redacted of the kind of thing you do when you do, you know, military intelligence analysis. I mean, so the kind of thing you might be briefing someone on. Also, something I'm interested in is completely outside of this world is, if we imagine back in the day when you were back in the MOD and you're doing something similar, but within the military, your military intelligence, I think you were that sort of area and you were to the MOD in some sort of intelligence. How about your civilian, your military, how do those two interact? How does that work? Well, we might get onto that. Yeah. But I think it would be useful. Well, I guess it would be, I'd be quite interested to know what kinds of things, what were your team looking at? Yeah, the sorts of things you were,

Speaker B: 00:09:17

the information you were looking at and analysing? Yeah, I think the best way I can describe it is that, let's say you're working in an environment that maybe is uncertain, a bit shifting, you want to understand what's going on. Your business might call this risk analysis or... Yeah, but are you like on a military base somewhere? Yeah, yeah. Usually, yeah. Or, you know, in a kind of diplomatic district or somewhere like that. And I mean, basic day to day is kind of reading the news in terms of what's going on that we need to be aware of and why does it matter? And that's your kind of basic descriptive element. And then there's the predictive, which I think is the bit that really is more challenging, which is, right, what does that mean for the future? What might happen next? I think day to day, it very often feels like a kind of, it's almost episodic. Yeah, if you've ever got into a really good TV show, let's say you're a, you know, Game of Thrones fan or something like that, you know, it's the next episode or what's going to happen, you know, with the Starks or whatever, whatever it may be. That's very much the same. You know, I'm not long back from Somalia.

Speaker A: 00:10:21

Only your, you know, presumably daily life was much more violent than Game of Thrones on the

Speaker B: 00:10:27

average military deployment. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I suppose much of what you look at is, yeah. But yeah, it very much feels like you're going to the office in the morning. It's right,

Speaker A: 00:10:38

what's happening on the next episode of Al Shabaab? Yeah. And so presumably it's stuff like, you know, you might get the sort of information you might get would be stuff like reports from someone who had a chat with someone yesterday. You know, apart from what's in the news, you've got, you know, reports from people who know people who've told them things might be, you know, intercepted communications and those sorts of things. But you're and, you know, you're the things you're worried about, presumably the things that you care about, but don't know what they're sort of things like, you know, where they might be planning an operation or where there might be a terrorist attack, or, you know, I guess what the allegiance of a certain group are to someone, it's all of those sorts of things. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then that's all

Speaker B: 00:11:23

the way up to the political level, which is, you know, what, how will this affect the information environment? How will the media react? And how that might affect, you know, in Somalia, for instance, I was there during the federal election. So it drifts towards what you might consider more as your kind of Sky News political analysis type work as well. Yeah, so you walk in worried about how the UK will be embarrassed. How it will play. How's it gonna play? Yeah.

Speaker A: 00:11:47

So you talked a little bit how your, it sounds like how your leadership style had to change, right? Or not just style, but the substance of it as well, right? And so tell me about that. So let's say you have to, because in what we think of as a traditional military leadership, sort of, right, up, go lads, let's go at them and sort of bluff it out if necessarily in it, but it's necessary, actually, for the thing to be successful. But it sounds like what we're talking about, that doesn't work in when it's more, when it's a different kind of environment, right? Yeah. So how did you, I mean, is it just a question, you just have to be more, for want of a better word, truthful, let's say, or transparent about the unknowns? Is it as simple as that? And is it also connected to that the type of people that you're getting in that environment

Speaker B: 00:12:36

as well? Well, I think the basic lessons of leadership are the same, which is you're constantly evaluating in an almost kind of psychotic manner. You're always evaluating your effect on the environment and be it the project or be it the team members or whatever it is. That's all the same, you know, am I stood in the right place? Am I speaking in the right times, et cetera, et cetera. So those lessons absolutely persist. I think what's different is what is your capital? What do you have to, what variables are you trying to maximize? And I think in, you know, let's take an infantry regiment, the variables you're trying to maximize very often are the state of the troops, be it their physical state and their kit and equipment and fitness and all that stuff, or be it their mental state, i.e. their willingness to go over the top and charge and win the battle. I think in a cognitive space, the capital for me very often is people's willingness to really apply their brains and apply their analytical thought, because we all know your brains are hard to use. They use up a lot of calories and actually by the end of the day, you're generally knackered and actually you get to 430 and you've read 200 intelligence reports that day. What's going to make you read the 201st, especially as very often, let's be honest, the boss isn't going to know whether you have or not. You know, you'll brief, yeah, read the stack for today, here's what we found. They're not necessarily going to dig into that level of detail. So for me, motivating people to read that 201st report is a big part of it. I think it's one of the reasons I categorize the work as being very similar to liking a TV show or something, because there are a lot of people who will get obsessed about the lore of Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, whatever it is. That, I think, is the kind of motivation that you want in an intellectual project. That's really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Getting them to be

Speaker A: 00:14:23

excited about, you know, the subject matter. Yeah. I mean, the idea that someone would get really

Speaker B: 00:14:29

bored reading about Al-Shabaab, but then go home and spend the rest of the night being absolutely fascinated reading about, you know, Twilight or whatever it is. That to me, that to me is very strange. And it's like, right, let's harness that motivation. Yeah. So, you know, in many ways, you know, whoever it was that wrote the initial blog that started the theory that Jar Jar Binks was a, you know, Sith Lord, that's the guy or girl I want on my intelligence team. Because actually, you know, that's the out of the box thinking that's going to come up with solutions that you might not initially have thought of. And that sounds so silly, but countless examples in history of where wars have been won or lost by what seem initially like quite stupid ideas.

Speaker A: 00:15:11

But just out of revelation, I need to join the army. Because I'm this guy. That's me. I think you're too old, Bill. No, no, what you're talking about, I mean, peak physical condition and, yeah. Well, we've just heard that what you need is mental condition. Look, I just, so I'm just, well, it's about the task, right? So I'm intrigued. Well, I think we've covered what you need to do if you get people to do stuff, right? I think we are probably a little, we haven't yet decided what you need to do if you want people to think stuff. I really like Hugo's idea of get them to be as interested in it as they should be. But if you think about sort of the distinction between thinking and doing, I think just a few observations really without putting down a kind of big theory, but that thinking type tasks tend to be quite generalized. Whereas doing type tasks tend to be quite specialized. You think about, well, to take an analogy, a computer is pretty much all the same. They've got the same underlying architecture, right? You know, they all have the same bits. You've got a memory and you've got a working memory and you've got a processor. Whereas if you look inside a toolbox, it's all manner of different shapes and sizes of, you know, hilariously enormous spanners and tiny screwdrivers. And it's the same with like the human body. Like the brain is kind of a mass of connections that sort of look a bit like each other wherever you look. Whereas your hand is very different to your liver. And it seems like the bits that are devoted to information processing are not just, you know, different from the bits that are designed to do stuff. But they're also almost like all the same, that they're much more similar to one another. And so I just, I was wondering, I mean, yeah, that's it really is sort of, you know, that you do doing and activating and actuating doers. It actually is a really totally different thing to trying to do the same, but with thinkers. I think there's, but there's two questions I want to get onto. Like one is, one is the type that actually being a leader of thinkers is one thing, but also like how you turn a, you know, a soldier into a thinker, and what your role is as a leader, like what you have to enable them, what of their training do you have to undo, or work against, if anything? But also what can we bring from that to, you know, to civilian life? What can we learn from that process? So yeah, like, yeah, that's a good one, because I've definitely heard from other sort of officers, either intelligence officers or officers who are in intelligence roles, that they really struggle to get their people to, you know, do things like think outside the box, and to be creative about thinking of, you know, new hypotheses. And to feel that they have the, you know, the license to do that, the license to question.

Speaker C: 00:18:04

But make sure you do it doctrinally.

Speaker B: 00:18:07

Yeah. Yeah. For me, I think the, the sort of people we recruit in generally are, want to be really good at analysis. Right. And have the capability to be really good at analysis.

Speaker A: 00:18:18

I think we're recruited generally as sort of intelligence people.

Speaker B: 00:18:21

Yeah, it's, in terms of the exams they have to do, it is, it is the top cohort who are given the option to join. So, you know, the, the potential. It won't ask what happens to the bottom cohort. Yeah, the, you know, the potential is there. And I think... They join the Navy. Well, yeah, no, it's a great question. The, I think generally, the people we have, have absolutely have the ability, have the potential to get there. I think as an officer, very often, you almost need to get out of the way. Right. So by that, what I mean is, I think a lot of the, a lot of the problems we have in the Army are from this desire. Everyone's, everyone is taught as a leader that you must present credibility all the time. I think we see this, you know, we see there's so many militaries in the world that, you know, one comes to mind, obviously, over the last year of having this, this, this facade of huge credibility, and then maybe the reality underneath it is not as solid as you might expect. I think if you remove people's fear of losing credibility, the creativity will come out because actually they've been selected to have those brains. So that, that will emerge. I think a really key element of that for me is not, not, not embarrassing people in front of the rest of the cohort. So let's say I walk into a room and I say, right team, you know, what's been going on today? Read me the stack, like, essentially, what's the news? If someone briefs me something, and then I kind of put them in their place and go, well, no, that's rubbish, that's a silly assessment, or you're wrong, or you're wrong for this reason. That's, they're probably never going to put their neck on the line and actually give that type of assessment again.

Speaker C: 00:20:00

And yeah, so, and I think this is, this brings true with sort of other academic-y kind of fields, that often it's the most senior and the most secure in their role, because they have tenure or they have a sound job, whatever, who are most willing to ask what's, what might be perceived as stupid questions, because they don't, they don't feel under threat. So they're not likely to bluff it. So, so a kind of thing you could do as a military intelligence commander would be to ask those stupid questions that everybody else is dying to ask. Yeah, absolutely. Emperor's new clothes kind of thing, isn't it? Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:20:38

Yeah. I mean, that's definitely to ask the questions, but also in responses. Someone gives, reads a report, instead of just going, yes, well, of course, because that is invalidating of them having done that work. But actually, if your response is, really? Can you tell me more about that? That is not what I would have expected. Now, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, I'm coming across like an idiot here, because I'm revealing that my assessment would have been wrong.

Speaker C: 00:21:02

Yeah.

Speaker B: 00:21:02

But actually, I trust that they're not, they're not thinking that. What they're thinking is, right, I've, I've sort of surprised the boss that I've done something interesting. Yeah. I've changed the picture.

Speaker C: 00:21:11

But my interpretation of the junior military commander in most fields is that you're not there to be the expert, you're there to facilitate, you're, you're, you're, as a military commander, you're, you're, essentially, your trade is management and leadership. And you're there to facilitate the experts in their field. So as a Royal Engineer, you'd be like, I don't know anything about concrete. I'll learn it and pick it up as I go along. But I've got Staff Sergeant, he's the concrete guy. He can, he'll do the calculations.

Speaker A: 00:21:39

I don't know, concrete's hard.

Speaker C: 00:21:42

Sorry. Is that, is that correct? It's like, so you, there's a sort of, there is a sort of, there's a value in, in being the, being the useful idiot in the room when it comes to asking challenging questions. You may know the answer. But in asking the question, you put yourself on the right sort of footing that empowers the person that you're asking to, to enable them to feel more empowered.

Speaker B: 00:22:10

Yeah, no, I completely agree. And that's, I suppose, what I'm trying to get forward. I guess the flip side of it is, you can't only do that. If, if, if all you're ever responding is, is, oh, wow, oh, brilliant and everything else. It is undermining of the first principle we talked about, which is them reading that 201st report. Because if they're on number 200 and they think, well, everything will get past the boss anyway. Yeah. And this is where you kind of.

Speaker C: 00:22:35

The boss is going to be impressed whatever happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there needs to be some rigor as well.

Speaker B: 00:22:40

t's impossible for me to read: 2000

Speaker A: 00:24:36

Just as a slight aside, I noticed when Peter, it was a nice compliment you were giving me there, actually, when you were talking about the person who asked the stupid questions, but he said, but he's a useful idiot, I don't want to be anyone's useful idiot, but belies their underlying genius. We're about half of the way, so we're half an hour in already, more or less. I've got a few things, observations, questions. We found out a bunch of stuff from Hugo. We've got him for a bit. What more can we find out from him? Well, I mean, I suppose, actually, I can give you the, you touched on this earlier, but this was the thing about sort of interacting with civilians. Where I worked in the MOD in general, but also in Defence Intelligence, it was really interesting to watch that, the difference in approach. And, you know, and I, the sort of boss, if you're in Defence Intelligence, is military, the Chief of Defence Intelligence. There is a sort of civilian underboss, DCDI, but really the one everyone's scared of is CDI. And we had some really good ones and some really terrible ones. And I'd say like the terrible ones were the ones who did have what Hugo was talking about earlier, this kind of uncertainty is weakness. Like you mustn't. It's always the caricature of, sorry, go on. Yeah, but it's like really, I mean, in intelligence analysis, uncertainty is the stock in trade. The whole point is to work out precisely how ignorant you are. And if necessary, put numbers on it, you know, actually assign probabilities to things, however precisely you can. But that, you know, the aim is not to say, well, we're 80%, the information suggests this is 80% likely. You shouldn't therefore round that up to 100% and pretend you know the answer, right? That is going to make you make a wrong decision. You're going to think there's no risk when there is. Or that you're 80% right. Yeah, yeah. It's not the same. So the bad ones did have that attitude. The good ones, however, I think they wouldn't let you off with, I don't know, or it's 50-50, right? They would want you to have good reasons. They would sniff out bullshit and sniff out laziness. And it's like, well, you haven't actually checked. They'd always ask you the thing you hadn't thought of. And, you know, if you said, oh, we don't know at the moment, they'd be like, well, why not? You could just look here. You know, they sort of understood your job and would pick you up if you were doing it badly. But they wouldn't try and do your job for you. And they wouldn't assume you were getting it wrong because you didn't know something. And they wouldn't do which was the most annoying thing, which they sometimes did, which was, ah, now I know you're saying that, you know, this thing is happening in Iraq. But I had a conversation with the Iraqi foreign minister last week, and he assured me that wasn't the case. You know, you sort of think, oh, for God's sake. Yeah, yeah. It's like, have you heard of anecdotal evidence?

Speaker B: 00:27:27

You know, I worked with a guy, a senior non-commissioned officer who just had an absolutely fantastic ploy that he used to pull, especially on new people in the team. Which is where he'd wait till they were giving a brief on something or other. And then he would ask a question. And no matter what answer they gave, he'd ask another question. No matter what answer they gave. And so on and so on and so on. Somewhat like the four-year-old who is just bothering, but why, but why, but why? And his trick was to see how far they could go until they said, I don't know. And what's interesting is with an experienced and confident analyst, it'd be very quick. You go three, four down the line and they'd go, well, I don't think we can know that. And they'd have confidence in giving that answer. The new analysts would never get there. It'd be 18, 19, 20 questions. And they'd be sitting there thinking, what the hell is happening? My whole world's falling apart. And then afterwards, this guy would come clean and say, look, I was not going to stop until you said, I don't know.

Speaker A: 00:28:24

Did they ever sort of cotton on earlier? Or did they ever say, you're asking too many questions. I'm going to stop. I'm not going to answer any more questions.

Speaker B: 00:28:32

No, I think the power imbalance of rank would probably stop that from ever happening. But I think I'm a big believer in I don't know. But I think not all I don't knows are equal. You can give more detail. So just saying I don't know is a bit rubbish. And the classic phrase that people trot out is, I don't know, mom, but I'll look at it and I'll get back to you. And obviously they never do. It's a get out. But what you can say is, I don't know, because I don't know, because the collection of the information isn't there. Or I don't know, because we haven't had enough time to dig into it. Or I don't know, because it can't be known. That could be a really that could actually add a lot of value. And so I think that's a really good analyst.

Speaker A: 00:29:12

Yeah, well, I mean, it's a bit of a cliche now. But the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns, all that sort of business, we're getting to that. Yeah, we've got a bit more time. Sorry, actually, I'm going to because it makes it sound too urgent when I say that.

Speaker C: 00:29:26

Peter. This might throw a spanner into the works. But I got thinking about the manager maker schedule, which will link to a brilliant blog post that everyone should read. Yes, this might be more of the mechanics of the management side of things rather than leadership. But it occurred to me that the manager maker schedule has something to tell us here. And I want to introduce a second dimension. So I've got a two by two. We love a two by two. So I've got thinkiness, which more or less is what we're talking about. The sort of the whether it's a cerebral output or if it's a manual output. And then I've got structuredness or inscheduledness, right? So it's to do with what is what you're doing? Does it matter when you have to do it? Right. Or can you do it kind of anytime? Time sensitivity. Time sensitivity. But I like inscheduledness. Because let's call it urgency. Urgency. Okay. But so bottom left, you've got sort of manual labor, right? Pretty unstructured. It doesn't really matter too much when you're doing it. It's different if you're working on a site. But if you've got a bottom right, you'd have things like factory work. And I put infantry. So it's not very thinky. But it matters a great deal when you do it. You could do it at the right time. Yeah, right. And then top left, this is high thinky, low structure. You've got just being an artist or being a philosopher. Academics or something. Yeah. Academics probably somewhere in the middle. You have to meet schedules to publish and things. But you have to teach. So you have to be in class on time. But top right, so high thinky, high structuredness, you've got things like intelligence analysis. And you've got programming. And you've got lots of office jobs where there's a creativity dimension to it. Not just pulling a handle because that'd be the bottom right. So I think that this helped me classify different things. And I think the intelligence analysts, they're working to a schedule. They've got particular reports to publish daily, and they're responding to urgent RFIs. Very different from the philosophers or the painters who have got unstructured, unfettered time just to do the thinking whenever they want it. And I think that timeliness adds a different complexity to the management and the leadership. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker A: 00:32:09

That's the interesting thing about thinking to order. I guess it's not that dissimilar to, say, journalism or something as a task. You can't just teach someone this 47 step process to produce an article. There has got to be some creativity and thought and cognition goes into it. But at the same time, you do need it done by today. And yeah, I mean, so yeah, as a task, I think you're right. Intelligence analysis has a bit of both. Has a bit of that kind of pure cognition. Also has a bit of the, well, we've got to go and do this thing, lads, you know. So yeah, and I suppose that's why you can get these organisations where you get the, you know, the military and the civilians kind of are able to meet in that bit of the Venn diagram. I'd like to encourage us to ask just one more burning question of Hugo if we can. However, we don't quite have time for that. But what I do want to do. Well, first of all, I've got loads more. We should be covered. I mean, yeah, but I'm going to ask a question. Yeah, well, we can ask you the question. The question. But actually before we do, because it's just a fun thing we do. But anything else that we've missed? Anything you feel that anything you want to say? Oh, when is there been a time where it went horribly wrong? When was the worst bit of what was the worst bit of leadership you ever you ever exerted?

Speaker B: 00:33:27

I mean, there's so many examples. I think maybe I could slightly amend the question and say the worst the worst I've ever seen, which was a when I was out in West Africa. There was a conference being run amongst the international community on women, peace and security. Cutting edge new field that's moving into all these men speakers.

Speaker A: 00:33:47

Is that what?

Speaker B: 00:33:48

Well, well, the first speaker was male. And he came out and I think he was some senior official who'd organised the conference. And he clearly had he had he had two things in his mind for his opening speech, which were that he knew that women, peace and security was a field that was broadly positive. And he knew what the words women, peace and security meant. And I think that was the limit of his knowledge on the topic. And yet he dragged out what could only be described as a sort of 25 minute speech in which he said the words women, peace and security approximately once every four or five seconds for that time. And it was it was just a phenomenal bit of showmanship. All of the TED Talk blaster, you know, marching up and down the stage and just absolutely no substance. And I think what was really interesting to me was just the almost no reaction amongst the crowd. And by the end, you know, everyone just claps and moves on. And you wouldn't if you if you were a fly on the wall, you wouldn't have known that there was no substance to it. And so I think, yeah, maybe in terms of in terms of bravado, in terms of facade, that's probably the best example.

Speaker A: 00:34:48

Confidently delivered bullshit can get you a very long way. Absolutely. Yeah. So I've got a question I want to ask, which we always ask of our of our of our guests who come, but we do sort of slightly connected to that. I mean, just observing you, it's interesting because I can sort of see why you do what you do, I think, right? Because to me and my untrained eyes and all three of you here will have met way more military people than me in terms of the way you look and the way you sound. To me, you seem sort of archetypal British. Follow him anywhere, wouldn't you? Yeah, I would.

Speaker C: 00:35:22

He's a sausage from a sausage factory.

Speaker A: 00:35:25

But also the style in which you deliver what you say. However, when I'm listening to the content of what you're saying, it is this kind of thinky kind of stuff. OK, which I've not always seen or I don't associate with British Army officers. But that sounds like a criticism of the Army, but it's not. What's my point? Well, actually, my point is I think you're an interesting guy. Yeah, good. Thank you. Because that's why we that's why we got him on. And that's why we got him on. Yeah, but actually, we haven't got time to go into it. So I won't. But it is worth saying that what people think of as sort of a typical military officer, there isn't actually a lot of evidence. It's almost the opposite. Like there's quite a high percentage of introverts. You get a predominance of like thinking Myers-Briggs types. And I know like someone, our old boss, actually, who was the sort of head of the director of our section. He was a former Inc. Corps officer, and he had his Myers-Briggs type. And he was shocked to discover that he was a kind of an introverted people person. And he had to undergo some personal reassessment. But he emerged at the end, actually content with that, and discovered that quite a lot of his contemporaries were the same. That actually, it's about understanding people. It's not about, you know, telling people what to do. And actually, I think, as Nick was saying that, I think a lot of that is actually perhaps projection rather than actually what's going on. Anyway, if you didn't do what you do, if you hadn't done what you've done, what would you do in terms of what's your alternative career? Who's the Hugo Marino out there? Because when I parallel universe. Yeah, yeah. Parallel universe, the parallel Hugo Marino. I mean, just the words as an artist or a sculptor or a Ferrari driver. I don't know what. What would you do?

Speaker B: 00:37:14

Well, I think working in a rank structure. Burns grows in everyone a sense of kind of wanting to screw the man. And I think I think probably growing, growing, growing dreadlocks, listening to Rage Against the Machine and living on some probably, you know, foreign sandy beach would be a pretty good way forward. Yeah, getting up when you want. Great.

Speaker A: 00:37:37

Absolutely. We'll see how long that lasts. Yeah, he'll be ironing his pants within a couple of days. I wouldn't be able to take it. I'm the same. I've done it for so many years now. I leap out of bed at five o'clock and I just it's just in me now. But give me something more specific, because, yes, I like that sort of desert. I was just bumming around for a bit. But what's your second?

Speaker B: 00:38:00

What's your B tier calling? I think for me, what I've what I've really missed is the creativity, because I think as much as I as much as I view it as being a really important point of delivering cognitive type project projects in the way that we've talked about, it's not always received well. And you try and put a little bit of a little bit of personality or a little bit of flair or whatever it may be, artistic license into a brief in a military context. Not always going to go down super well. And I have I have got in trouble for that in the past. So I think, yeah, maybe maybe shifting towards the journalism or the kind of your content production in any other kind of way where you can put a bit more of your soul into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: 00:38:40

We I mean, I think it's fair to say that sticking it to the man was one of the reasons we left the eye to set our own company up. And now we are the man. So there you go. All right. We have to wrap it up there, unfortunately. That was fascinating. That was brilliant. It was really nice insight. So thank you very much, Hugo.

Speaker B: 00:38:58

I hope so. Thanks so much.

Speaker A: 00:38:59

Yes. So we'll stop there. Thank you, as always, to listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And thanks, of course, also to our guest, Hugo Marino. Thank you very much for coming here today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And goodbye.