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E197 Fiona Milden: Scaling Conservation - The People Making It Possible · Second Nature

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: We are here for a very special episode of Second Nature.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: We are joined by the incredible Fee Milden, Managing Director of Oxygen Conservation.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Fee.
• 0:14
  unknown: Hey Rich.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Six months in role now.
• 0:18
  unknown: Sorry.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Started in March.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: What's it like being the managing director of the engine behind the impact that is OCD?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do I describe it?
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: It still is as it was when I spoke to the team about it the first day, a huge privilege.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have been lucky enough now to work for OC for three years.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen what's been built.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen the team grow.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now to be able to lead the ops part of that.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's just incredible to me, you know, to see the amount of change being delivered on the ground by the ops team and all of the plans that have been made, you know, the approvals achieved, and now we're seeing boots on the ground delivering those.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's super special.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say which, but you literally got another approval in the car on the way over here, which is quite exciting.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're taking an opportunity to record a series of specials with you and our two new amazing MDs.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um you were the first, the first ever MD and OC.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um why do you think you were chosen?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, and I think you saw it before, before I did.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think you knew that I was interested in all of the bits of the business, and that my passion for the estates extended beyond the property footprint.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that I care deeply about the mission.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I'm not the best technical person in the room, and I think sometimes that's good because you can, you know, leave your preconceptions at the door and you're looking across the hole at what's the right thing in the right time.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that the skills that I've learned over my career like put me in a good position to do that for the team.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you are incredibly humble and massively undersell the elegance, the class, the humor, the kindness, the charisma, and the leadership you bring to the role.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um how um see three years in OC full stop.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um how are the how has the company changed over the three years?
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: How would you sort of define the big differences over that time period?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's so interesting because I think the OC that I thought I was joining is still the OC today.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it the company is unrecognizable, you know, you were maybe 10 or 12 people or something.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think I was early mid-teens in, and we're what 50, 50 plus now.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think, you know, we've spoken before about culture, and we spoke a long time ago about how like you protect culture in a growing business.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we've done a remarkably good job of that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people come to OC for impact, uh, but they come for adventure.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment they get here, they suddenly find that they're in amongst this incredible peer group who just want to do incredible things.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you often say, well, we've done the impossible.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of addictive, you know, people love that.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't matter whether it's 20 of us doing that or 50.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment it's 50, you're like, well, this is incredible because we're doing more things faster in more areas.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that that I think the essence of that is exactly the same.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Make it specific for people.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: What are the ways that we do embrace and protect culture?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because everyone talks about culture, but it's kind of ethereal, isn't it?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: What are the real bits and the things that make it stick together?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so two things jump out.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, first one is being together even though we're a remote team.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I've never worked in a team where we are scattered so geographically, but people are so willing to um, you know, pick up the phone and to speak.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, yesterday I did not stop speaking to people about such an incredible ray of array of things.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we are remote and some of us are more geographically focused than others, but everybody is um, you know, going are absolutely after them, um, the same things.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And although we're remote, we make a point of coming together.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we've spoken before about um, you know, the quarterly um get-togethers, and we do those on the estates so that the whole team, whether they're involved in a project or not, can go and they can experience the change that's happened in that landscape under our ownership.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to Winfig Geldy.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know when this episode is going out, but in um three weeks' time, um, and we are right at the beginning of a huge tree planting project there.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And all of the team are going to go out and plant the tree and understand like the huge logistics that have, you know, taken place in order for that to happen.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so, you know, although, you know, on a job in job um advert, you'd say, well, it's a remote team, how does that work?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've never worked in a team who was so collectively motivated, I think.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: So this year we've focused a lot on defining the three pillars of the oxygen company.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've got the capital side, the conservation, and the intelligence.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, since March, you've been the managing director of the conservation side.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: For those people not particularly close to the business, how would you define your part of OC?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think um in simple terms, oxygen conservation is everything that happens on the ground.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um oxygen capital um gives us the ability to uh acquire the estates.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and um our brilliant natural capital team um work to uh imagine what the future of those estates are, you know, what what natural capital um products can we uh create?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: What else can we add into the landscape?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: How can we add all these layers of additionality so that it's a really vibrant, but you know, really diverse space, you know?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And our job is really about improve on the ground.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we are um delivering everything that we have set that we will do as part of the business.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in practical terms, that looks different on every estate.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is woodland creation, heatland restoration, river restoration, delivering community homes, ecotourism, potential for renewables.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that happens on the ground, it's about us delivering that in an operational way that is additive to the estate as a whole.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Three years in the business, six months in post.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Are there still things that surprise you about conservation?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think there are.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we tend to take them for granted.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I love it when someone points one out to me.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Dave and I were discussing yesterday's sort of woodland creation plans in Scotland.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, you know, we're gonna plant five million trees.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: As, you know, as if that's just a normal chase works.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, normal.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: This, you know, the stuff we have approval for, the stuff that's going in the ground and the stuff that we um plan to plant is it is huge.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just uh, you know, we take it for granted that like, right, okay, we'll look phase one, we'll crack on.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then when you step back and you look at that picture um, you know, cumulatively, it's um it's incredible to think that that's gonna be the impact.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: How has conservation changed in the six months under your leadership, do you think?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I mean, there is so much in motion that I'm not I'm not gonna take credit for how it's changed per se, but I think we've gone through this um incredibly hard in lots of ways period of pushing things towards approval, whether that's, you know, NATCAP schemes or um, you know, working on development schemes and planning approvals.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I am in this incredible position now where lots of those things are happening on the ground, they're coming off the piece of paper, um, and we're seeing them on the ground, which is um a step change in how the business has to operate.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's different factors involved, there's huge health and safety, obviously.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it is also now incredibly tangible, you know, because people can see it and the sense of momentum is is real.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I've been really impressed with your connection to the estate managers and sort of the way you value their contribution, which has always been something we've talked about, because in in other businesses we've both seen there's been a big divide between the delivery teams on the ground and the central team, in a way that that there's been two separate businesses, two cultures that didn't necessarily like each other.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: And whilst I always tried to be a strong advocate for them, I just couldn't get there in terms of bandwidth when you spread across the whole thing.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So now that they firmly sit with your directorate, I think you're beautifully balanced, giving them the attention and appreciation without undercutting the roles of the heads of.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: How much was that a conscious choice for you as a or something that just presented itself as you move towards delivery?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was lucky in that I'd worked with all of them on property projects on their estates.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a good understanding of their estates in the round, had a reasonable understanding of them as people and you know what made them tick and what they liked and didn't like.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew that they had, you know, line managers that had, you know, already got their backs and you know, got their ties on.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think for me, um, it was about knowing that we have got such a huge list of to-dos.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, as a person in a central team, I can't I can't do those things.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: They've got to they've got to be motivated to do them.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um totally lost the can you give me the question again?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had got a good point.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I just had lost it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: It was whether you decided as MDU going to be more focused on the estate managers than I was able to be, as you began moving towards delivery, you realised I need to put an arm around.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the estate managers, we've spoken before about what an incredibly varied bunch they are in terms of elite athletes, legitimate rock stars, PhD academics, some of those are the same people.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Another PhD academic, like just in former commercial pilot.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's all normal.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's all normal.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's all fine.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, they don't need the same things, but they are motivated a lot of them by the same things, and by that is impact.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that they are going to love and excel their jobs is by seeing the transformation they are creating.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like we can't do that centrally.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: We can help with contracts, we can make sure that contracts are paid, we can make sure that there's good health and safety project um programs in place, but they've got to want to do it and have the appetite to do it a lot really fast every day.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so no one wants to be micromanaged.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like these are brilliant, passionate people, they know their landscapes, you know.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: You take um, you know, I'm gonna talk about Infigalty a lot today, but you take Bennett Infigality.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: He he loves the bones of Infigality, you know.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And to speak to someone who is, who says, I've got up early this morning because I wanted to go and spot a whatever it is.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's just had some iron age pigs, you know, like just the the care and attention they give to the estates, you know, we we have to respect and give them as much space as they need to to do what they've got to do, but also to be there to catch anything that that they need help with.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: When you think about talent and recruitment, do you have a principle you work to, Fee?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have a principle I don't work to anymore.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: My principle definitely used to be I need someone in who can hit the ground running.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I had a little back and forth back and forth on this in terms of that's fine, but you probably know what you're getting, and you should be more ambitious about can do.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, love to get that one in.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: The other principle that distills nicely is um no dickheads.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a uh an all blacks uh principle that you know everybody in the team like needs to be there for the team and for each other, like no one's ego is is bigger than bigger than one.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Although you did make me open the door for you to go into the building.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I just not great with the technology.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're doing.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: You could argue I should have done that anyway.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why wasn't I already there?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, it's not dead, is it?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned about the contract side of things.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of segues into how closely conservation works with the capital side of the business and um intelligence side.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we've just announced, well, you've been in post six months, the first ever MDFC.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've just announced new managing directors for capital in George Pauley and intelligence for Chris Winter.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um what do you think about those colleagues of yours?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think it's a brilliant, brilliant move for the business.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think functionally we've been moving that way, and they're absolutely the right people to lead it.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um Chris was one of the first people I met when I first uh Was he on the first layoff?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um so Chris was, you know, first first day, my first interaction with OC, Chris was there.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he's been consistently brilliant.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we joke that everybody knows he's your favourite.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But like, you know, he is uh he is an intellectual powerhouse.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I've said before, like the vision that he's had in this space to just say, well, this is what's needed and we're gonna make it happen.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he's anticipated just such an incredible level of detail.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that you've got to be able to do that.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: We've got to bring a lot of this sector into existence.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we can't forced it to be.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: When we get excited about the multitude of things we could do, he just says, Is that the right thing to be doing right now?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we were in the room on Monday and he was like prioritization, prioritization, prioritization, which we all think we're good at as leaders, but he's just as just brilliantly commercially focused and George?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: George.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, George is I've never I've never come off a call with George where I haven't learned something.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he's been superb around legal advice, obviously, but also, you know, governance.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's like kept us on on the straight and narrow, hasn't he, for the last three years?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um having seen his team growing this year, um, and them absolutely thrive underneath him as well, it's it's the perfect move, I think.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: So congratulations to them both.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, round of applause then, please.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: How um how have you seen them change?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think like all of us, I think I've probably just seen them become more and more capable.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like the sort of um their personalities are unchanged, but they've just absolutely zoned into, you know, whatever has been needed at the time within the business, and they've been so ambitious for what we're going to do next.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: They've just like really it's weird to say like they've studied the boat because they haven't, they've been so ambitious for it, but they've just made sure we're doing the right thing at the right time.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a pleasure to work alongside that because you, you know, you're you're not turning up in the morning thinking, well, what what version of of this are we gonna get?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're just absolutely committed.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think the difference between your leadership style and theirs is previously they were very much like, I don't need anyone else.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've got this, I'll just work faster, I'll just work harder, I can keep doing it.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they both hit a capacity of And because they're both astonishing, finding people that could work in those orbits and cope with the pace and the challenge and things and be additive as opposed to slowing them down.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's right, do you remember Chris coming in and going, I'm not having any reports, there's nothing an intern can do that'll impress me.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now he's got one of the biggest, like all his talent has come through intern routes, other than sort of the the intelligence side of the business.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: The same with George, actively, I don't want to manage people.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: How about Hannah?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd really love to work with Hannah.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: How about Matt?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, I'd really and then Andrew, and I I think that's where they've both transformed.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it is about the calibre of the people around you, isn't it?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think probably all three of us, if we were honest, are slight control freaks.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we like to know love.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: We like, you know, we like to know what's going on, we like to know, you know, where it's at, where it's going next, what the risks are, what somebody isn't telling us.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, when you've got good people around you, you don't have to worry about that.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, any problems shared are problems halved rather than you thinking, well, what's going on over there?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I think they've just, you know, our recruitment has been they've they've got incredible um teams around them that they've all just been additive to the business.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have the talent, you're fucked.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's the more often than not, the best players on the field will win the game.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um we've talked about how they've changed over the period.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: How have you changed over the last six months in terms of your leadership stuff?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have had to delegate so much.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do not know how I got to this point in my career without better delegation skills than I've got.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: You worked a lot.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did work a lot.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I uh uh probably just out of myself in that last comment, but you know, I am someone who's always had their arms around things.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in my last role, I got really good at spinning a lot of plates, which I think has set me up really well for this one.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it is definitely a skill to then say, we've got a couple of cracking examples, but to recognise that you are now the bottleneck.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yes, you think you can do it, but you actually can't get to it till next week.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's a week wasted.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I've had to just go um, you know, on the property side, for example.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: We brought Hannah Bennett into the business last autumn.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: She has been incredible.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: She's picked up so many things that I was working on, and she's also spotted so many more that needed doing.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I sort of look at Hannah and I'm like, well, you've got it, that's brilliant, and hand over um, you know, the line management of Hannah to Charles because it sits squarely within his skill set.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's got it, it's brilliant.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you can just suddenly see all the things that were stacked up just coming to fruition because, you know, they're not on your plate anymore.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's people like really progressing them in brilliant ways.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been such a good lesson to me because I'm like, if I can now do more and more of that across the business and help um, you know, all the departments I work with to recognise that we can just do so much more cumulatively.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I I've loved seeing you be more you, having the confidence that uh playful side of your personality come out.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um what's allowed you to do that?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: I still think that's quite a hard thing to do virtually.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: So um I think I've sort of given myself permission to do it more on calls.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not to say I don't still sometimes get it wrong.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think I occasionally turn up and people know if I'm stressed because it's written all over my face.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've got a great poker face.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think just spending more time with the team, having a better understanding of like what's on their plates professionally and and personally, probably, just lets you sort of understand and empathize a bit more and realise that I hate the term bring your whole self to work.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: I it just gives me the ick.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I think probably like we're a bunch of people that do that and also can do that because we respect each other and like each other and you know there's a lot of grace in that, isn't there?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: We are quite a lot, aren't we?
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: When we were sat there at the table with Tom, the new head of technology this morning, I was like, we're quite a lot in terms of characters and people to come into the beach.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: But equally, like there is nobody that if I if I was in a pickle, there's nobody in the team that I wouldn't pick up the phones and be like, can you help me with it?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's there's you know politics that you know doesn't play out in the same way because everybody wants everybody to succeed.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um is there anything that keeps you up at night?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, interestingly, much less than it used to earlier in my career.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can vividly remember lying in bed at night, you know, wide awake in the small house in the morning worrying about the detail of land deals or correspondence with landowners or whatever it might be.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know now whether that's because I am in a team where I know the responsibility is spread or where we've got each other's backs, but rarely know.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It tends to now be something like, oh, I haven't thought of that, right?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, must jot that down or make a note of it and we'll go on with it tomorrow, rather than really anxious about this, or it's it feels bad.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had an incredibly challenging period over the summer that we had a significant wildfire next door to our estate, Ken Gomes.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Can you talk to us about that process?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can do.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's such a funny thing because it's only what six weeks ago, sort of uh middle, middle of July.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Feels like so long ago already.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like it feels like it it you know it happened a long time ago, but you know, absolutely the estate and the community up there are still are still dealing with the aftermath.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um, middle of July, um, a wildfire starts on uh on the Abernathy estate, which is next door to our doorback estate.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, usual comms channels, this is happening, it's off site, you know, it's uh it's under control, effectively, was the message the first week.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we're we're talking lots, but it's not, it's not a huge risk.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh end of the second week, there's a change in conditions.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the wind uh sort of just whips up the fire in a way that that nobody had foreseen.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And before very long, it's a very, very wide front, you know, it's kilometres across.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it is clear that it is in no way, it's in no way under control.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: So at that point, we're sort of looking at the weather forecast, we're looking at um any data we've got, and we're saying the likelihood is it's going to cross the boundary onto Dorback within the next 48 hours.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then we sort of uh talk to the estate teams about what that means.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Our brilliant rangers are out um supporting other estates with their firefighting efforts.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're very much focused on, you know, how can how can we help the neighbours?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then and then we start to say, actually, no, we think it's gonna hit door back in 12 hours, materially different position.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: What what do we need to do both for um our team that live and work on the estate?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: But we've also got ecotourism guests in the properties.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: What what's the right thing to do for them?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: What does the guidance say?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And physically, what can we do to make a dent in this?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Are there things that we can do?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um On the other side of the boundary, on our side, to try and put in some semblance of firebreak so that if the worst happens, there's some defenses.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's sort of, it's sort of mad when I, when I think about it now, because I don't really remember the incoming comms sort of externally at all.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just remember the conversations that we're having with Ed, who was our estate manager, and his communication was exemplary.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like at no point did I feel that despite being 400 miles away, we didn't have a handle on what was going on.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: He knew where the team were, he knew when they were going to be back, he knew who was coming on and off the estate, he knew which neighbors were helping.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was such a blessing, can't think of a different word than that, to just feel that although we couldn't be there and do anything, we had a really good picture of how it was unfolding.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that let us then do the mundane things of saying, okay, well, if it's going to cross the border, what's it going to, what's it going to meet?
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are the implications for peatland restoration we're doing?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: What are the implications for the property um portfolio?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at what point are we going to tell guests to leave?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and for the rest of us then, you know, it just became an exercise in keeping the right people in the loop about the decisions that were happening and um and the status of it.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I spent, you know, um quite a bit of time thinking how do we articulate this succinctly to the board?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because there was so much information that was really, you know, um important operationally, but but wasn't important to them.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a good exercise for me in sort of having to distill the core messages and the key risks so that everybody had a right amount of information on the right cadence as well, because it could be information overload, couldn't it?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think the most impressive thing you did was stand up the sort of cellular structure with the right people and the right calls, the right cadence.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that allowed Ed to communicate with the capital team who could speak to the insurers, could help establish what was at risk, help with the communication to the board, and then stand up the intelligence team who literally built software applications live time to help us monitor things that we then made available to third parties to help visualize things because there was nothing there.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that cellular structure of running calls just meant it was flawless for you.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I know the rest of the board were in the room, they would just say thank you because they thought the leadership was exempt.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I it was such a team effort.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I was on these calls looking around thinking, God, thank God these people are in our corner.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're ever in a in a tight sport, like these, this is the mix of skills you want on a call.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: But that that point, I think, about the visualization of it was so key.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, I think it was, you know, um the second weekend, uh, Ed just said, right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna annotate a map.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we um we got around it and we understood the logistics of it so much better in terms of the different fronts and who was where and you know what the priorities were.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, we just moved to that as a model.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so obvious, of course, we should have been doing it over a map over a satellite, and we hadn't, we'd just been doing it verbally.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then we all just had this common understanding because my awareness, I think, was that when you're taking a lot of information and a lot of different strands and you try and boil it down, some of that gets lost or there's room for for misinterpretation.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I think once we started doing it more visually, it was sort of undeniable that, right, this is the peg we're talking about, this is how it's moving, these are the things at risk.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, you know, next next time we have an event of any sort like that, that needs to be the starting point.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we're um we're about to accelerate to the award after our busiest period.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um what are you most excited about and what are you most worried about?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, those are good ones.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm most excited probably about getting the team together in three weeks at Invergeldie.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it feels like a long time since we've been together.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: We were at we were at Corn in Cornwall in the summer, but the team has moved on again since then, and we've got some really brilliant things to do.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um we've got so much to see in the landscape, and then we've also got the sort of grand unveiling of um of some key property projects, um, the renovation of the farmhouse, which has been a long time coming and an incredible labour of love.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's gonna enable us to you know open up another estate now to to visitors um to come and see what we're doing.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's gonna be gorgeous.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait to see everyone's reactions to that.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I know how hard the whole team have had to work on that as well.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: They've been working on so many things in parallel.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, you know, I it's been a long time in the planning.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's been lots of approval processes around it.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's gonna be incredible to go.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've done it, guys.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and inevitably then what's next.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm really looking forward to that.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: What am I worried about?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: We've got also at Invergalty, 1.5 million trees going in tool.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, small matter of that.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: We need to do more while we're up there.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: They need me to heal a few in.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's just there's just so much change in the Invigueldy landscape.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's super exciting.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that Ben will love hosting us all.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure he will, but everyone I think is going to be blown away by what what he and the team are doing up there.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the worries?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think the worries are.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it I guess, you know, in my new position, the worries are always just about the team, like this principally the safety of the team and then the happiness of the team.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the safety thing I think is becoming more and more real to me the more big stuff we do on site, you know.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's always there, isn't it?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: It never when you are um responsible for an operational part of a business, it never goes away.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's always what's the weather doing?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: What things like that was always and I think I think 10 years in house building was like so important, like culturally, say the safety point was always top of the list.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really helped me because I've just I've always got it there.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so um, you know, and I only say I'm worried about it in the context of, you know, weather, weather events and snow stopping play, and you know, it's not, it's not easy work on the ground, that's the thing.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, um, it's fine for me to be behind my keyboard, but there are people out there doing hard stuff in front of camera.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, it's it's fundamentally like how do we keep these big projects where we're mobilising external teams?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: How do we keep them, you know, on track in budget, but how do we keep everyone safe as well?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: What are your thoughts about the super El Nino we've been might make?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh goodness.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: So um for context, we've got um uh well, our commercial pilot in the team, uh Charlie gave the gave the team a brilliant presentation on Monday.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: His role is not commercial pilot.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's really a brand for us now.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: It just tickles us that Charlie wants to.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: Until we get to Monica from we don't do that.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: A former reformed commercial pilot, now amazing estate manager at BA and amateur weather forecaster, evidently.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Gave us all a brilliant wake-up call uh on a call this week to say uh this is a really extreme event, you know, in a in a world where we're all saying temperatures are are becoming more extreme.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, look at the science behind this.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and really a call for everybody to really think about planning.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like we've had a really hot summer, you know, things in the main have been pretty easy, but we know that after a hot summer often comes a lot of rain on some very hard ground.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, just is gonna test test things that haven't been tested in a while.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just about preparation and the team are brilliant at that.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're great at ops, we do a lot of it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the the test now is the volume of stuff we're doing, and we're trying to move so much along in parallel.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't got the benefit of saying, right, I'm focused on this.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like you you're balancing things all day long.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when people are, you know, tired or in something, like you've got to give them the ability to to look around and say, have I got that right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Am I doing the right things in the right order?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked a lot recently about how we encourage people to prioritize and you've got to prioritize commercially, but you've also got to prioritise like sensibly as well.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that'll be the lookout for you know, our bit of the senior leadership team this winter, just everyone able to do what they want to do because they've got the ambition to do it and they've got the systems set up to do it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's keep pulling on that ambition thread.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are your ambitions for the conservation part of the business in the next period of time?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: X period of time.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's uh it's such an interesting thing, isn't it?
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because there are so many different stages that things are at.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: So my ambition for all of the stuff that's in in planning is for smooth approval.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know that approvals are difficult, but we've done enough of them now to sort of be able to anticipate well and to like put mitigation in place to say, you know, these things we should be able to do.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then to just to mobilize really well and to deliver, because at the top of the year, when we were here at Mornacot, kind of charting what we want to do this year, we said that the ops team have got to be the proof.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to say, you know, we've we've bought the land, we've baselined it, we've got the approvals, but then we've got to we've got to deliver the schemes and prove that this is commercially um achievable and that it's gonna have all the impact that we say it will, not just the environmental impact, but the social and the economic stuff as well.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I want us to prove that.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you have often talked about um, you know, making the market, you know, we're not kind of competitive with other people.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: We want to say that this is a sustainable um, you know, way of managing that land and look what you can achieve if you sort of don't just take this singular view at it and say, let's let's reimagine it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: What can we achieve?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: If we push it beyond the immediate next role, but yeah.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: But what is an amazing MD role in actually three years' time or five years?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose in a way it means stepping away from the estates we've got now because they are brilliantly managed, and it's looking to the future portfolio, isn't it, wherever that may be.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's such a lot of exciting pipeline stuff coming through at the moment.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's how do we take all the learnings from the portfolio that we've got and get ourselves um, you know, portfolio two or whatever we want to call it, that is um that takes all of those and just allows us to accelerate even bigger.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um is there one question I haven't asked you you wish I had?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um well, no, I think I think we've probably covered it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was probably gonna try and do a do a plug for you know what's what's the most exciting uh estate at the moment, and I was gonna say people need to get themselves to to win for Gallde.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um you're so good.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Absolute class.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: The business is so much better for having you in, and I'm super, super proud to have you lead conservation.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um thank you.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: You think you've happy meeting.