Latest / Project Podcast / Rocket Man: Bloodhound's Richard Noble on Taking Risk

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Rocket Man: Bloodhound's Richard Noble on Taking Risk · Project Podcast

0:09
Welcome to the iPad podcast. OPM has chartered body for the
0:12
project profession. My name is Emma DaVita, I'm the
0:15
editor of projects, apm's, quarterly journal and your host
0:19
today. I'm speaking to Richard Noble
0:21
the leader of some truly or inspiring British extreme speed
0:24
projects on land at Sea. And in the air, these include a
0:27
bringing the land speed record back to In in 1983 when he drove
0:31
his thrust to car to 633 mph and 14 years later, he led the
0:36
thrust SEC team to achieve the first supersonic record at 763
0:41
miles per hour. He's also the man behind the
0:44
Bloodhound project with the mission to reach 1,000 miles per
0:47
hour on land and to inspire generations of you, engineers
0:50
and scientists who are pioneering educational program,
0:53
he's joining us today to tell us a bit about what it takes to
0:56
leave projects. Like this.
0:58
Why embracing risk makes for And how to motivate teams if you
1:02
want to find out more lookout for his contribution to the
1:04
forthcoming, summer issue of apm's, project journal, and get
1:08
a copy of his book. Take risk published by ever.
1:11
Oh Richard, I just wanted to welcome you to our podcast.
1:16
Thanks again, for your time. It's lovely to meet you, Emma.
1:19
This is going to be great fun. I'm looking forward to this, we
1:22
take, well, I think a good place to start would be for you to
1:26
just give us a brief overview of A couple of projects for
1:31
listeners who might not be okay with all your work.
1:34
And just a bit of background on you, I'd always wanted to do the
1:40
world land speed record. That was something that started
1:43
with me from the age of six when I saw John Cobb going for the
1:47
water, speed record on Loch Ness and and I wanted to, I could do
1:53
this. And I was lucky enough to be
1:55
able to put together an organization.
1:56
We had no money at all and I built a very Jet car which noted
2:00
bloody kill me. And then after that, I met a
2:04
brilliant engineer. John Aykroyd, and John, and I,
2:06
and put together an organization to build this land speed record
2:10
car, and it was a very, very difficult thing to do.
2:14
The general sort of higher of the establishment was dead
2:17
against it and we're fighting every sort of battle.
2:21
But the wonderful thing was sponsorship.
2:23
Sponsor sponsors will put up money, providing you, develop
2:27
good, quality of publicity for them at that.
2:29
Is great. So that means that you're
2:31
actually Outside The Establishment system.
2:35
In other words, you're not taking, you're not getting your
2:37
money from the city who tried to control everything and, and that
2:41
way that gives us great freedom. And eventually, of course, we
2:45
got the world land speed record, 633 miles an hour on our
2:49
actually achieved its design speed, which was terrific, which
2:52
was 630 miles an hour. So, that was that was in 1983
2:56
was thrust, 93, trust you? Yeah.
3:00
Then I suddenly realized my word, think what you could do
3:03
basically if you can organize these little flat companies you
3:07
could take on anybody and anything.
3:11
It's a bit like if you like the SAS in the military, you know,
3:15
very small organization but very, very, highly motivated.
3:19
And of course, if you go back to Maslow in one of Mazda is box.
3:23
Right at the back, it says, the crucial point was that he found
3:27
from his experiences, and this, of course, is 18:40 that only
3:32
15% of people in a large organization, ever get near to
3:37
self-actualization levels and self-actualization levels means
3:41
that you're finding out who you actually are and what you can
3:45
really do. And so you have to join an
3:48
organization, which will give you that freedom and latitude.
3:51
And that is the big motivator and I suddenly realize this
3:54
man's. Absolutely bloody brilliant.
3:56
Wow. And so the next thing we To do
4:00
is to set up an aircraft company to create a new light training
4:05
airplane. This was a fascinating
4:07
experience because of course we were head right up against
4:10
Sahara. Cool.
4:12
Organizations of the CAA keep saying here dcaa is fo civil
4:16
aviation Authority. This is the effects of with the
4:19
aviation police force. Yeah, they're there to make sure
4:22
that you that you're safe and you're not going to drop out of
4:25
the sky and kill people. Yeah.
4:27
And it was absolutely fascinating because they Could
4:30
not cope with this. We also working with door,
4:34
trying to work with the Department of trade and
4:36
Industry, who are absolutely hopeless, because they couldn't
4:40
conceive of actually creating a new all-metal airplane, with a
4:44
new Aero engine and flying it within 13 months, which is what
4:48
we did. Hmm, they couldn't cope with
4:50
this. So they really couldn't, they
4:52
just thought it was some law or fraud or something, and I'd all
4:57
the way through these various projects we've done, which would
5:00
Largely airplanes and land speed record cars.
5:03
Basically. We've had big, big problems with
5:06
the establishment, which is a terrible terrible.
5:08
Shame. What can project professionals
5:11
learn from the way you approach projects, right?
5:15
Well, the first thing of really is to forget everything you've
5:20
learnt. Okay, let's start off with a
5:23
clenched clean sheet of paper. And when you're doing a big
5:26
project like for instance, like farmer aircraft, what you got to
5:29
do is Effectively is to consider that you're going to walk
5:33
through a large wood or porch. Let's go to the forest.
5:37
We're going to go into this forest in your hopefully get to
5:39
come out the other side but there are no paths.
5:42
And so all that every moment you've got to have your fingers
5:45
on the Gantt chart pulse so you know exactly where you are.
5:49
You realize that you will make wrong turns from time to time
5:52
and you've got to be able to be very quick, but the crucial
5:56
thing about the whole thing is speed, you've got to move very
5:59
very quickly. Quickly make your decisions very
6:01
very quickly. Now we all know that you know
6:04
most executive decisions are if you're lucky 50% to write.
6:09
But the important thing is making the decisions and keeping
6:11
the organization pointed in the in what you believe is the right
6:15
direction. And from time to time, of course
6:17
you can talk against are a blank wall, one something simply can't
6:21
be done and you've got to find another way of getting around
6:24
it. Now the wonderful thing about
6:26
this is that these organizations providing Running a flat
6:30
organization, you're empowering people properly, not just giving
6:34
them responsibility, but giving them responsibility with the
6:37
appropriate Authority. So they can fail the company.
6:40
If they wanted to this becomes really interesting because
6:44
basically, they will probably find the way out that you
6:47
haven't gotten it in your book, take risk.
6:51
You are very critical of organizations saying that we've,
6:54
and as a country, we've come far to risk of us, but without the
6:58
process and Making things essentially a safe and secure.
7:04
How do you how do you pull off a project that Embraces risk
7:09
because that brings innovative solutions, but actually tie that
7:14
to a process that keeps everyone safe or things on track or
7:18
reassures the financial backers that things won't all go wrong
7:23
in the end but let's start with the problem.
7:26
That's the problem. The problem is the financial
7:27
backers. These guys don't Take risk not
7:31
on our summer levels and you know, and they should not be in
7:35
the equation. So, what actually happens is
7:38
that you come up against a particular problem and the
7:42
important thing is the culture, you see, we've been taking risks
7:46
on a daily basis for the last 40 years, and you quickly
7:50
understand what risks can be taken and what risks should be
7:55
avoided. And sometimes you find yourself
7:57
in a situation where you simply have to take, And you got a belt
8:01
to live with the consequences of it.
8:03
So with the Supersonic Car, for instance, we had to have a car,
8:06
which was steered by its rear wheels, to enormous afterburning
8:11
turbofan engines, nobody ever built, anything like this.
8:15
And if we've gone to the city for funds for this, I mean,
8:17
we've been sharing the doors, almost immediately.
8:21
So the risk-taking actually funny enough is that a Mystic
8:24
thing and what is always say to people is start taking risk now
8:28
at home gun, And by some extraordinary car is gone by buy
8:34
a house, which you can't afford go and do this gonna do that.
8:38
And after a bit every time you take risk, it opens up a
8:42
completely new culture. And, and it completely new world
8:46
that you, of course, would have been avoiding because he were
8:48
playing the safe game. So you've got to start at home
8:51
and the wonderful thing about failure.
8:53
And that's very important is that you learn much more from
8:56
failure than you ever would do From Success.
8:58
So, few failures in your V, a very important.
9:01
So you've got to put failure behind you.
9:03
So you imagine driving the land speed record car back in 1980s.
9:07
Basically, you know what do I do?
9:09
Well this thing is probably got a chance of killing me.
9:12
So you put that behind you, you say, fine, what we've got here
9:16
is a very, very good team of people.
9:18
It's that is basically a safety thing and and basically you push
9:24
on and eventually you get that if you're taking high risk and
9:27
you're giving people responsibility true,
9:30
Responsibility and autonomy. What do you have to have within
9:34
those teams to ensure that that things do go?
9:38
Okay, two things the right people and and good
9:42
communication. Yes, that's a crucial to tell me
9:45
a bit more about the right people.
9:48
Well, what generally happens with these projects is that we
9:50
don't recruit people just come and if you're if that happens
9:58
then basically, you know, that that person is probably very
10:01
upset or very disaffected with the, with his or her current job
10:06
and secondly, that they want to innovate and they want to create
10:11
and they want an opportunity. So you've got to provide them
10:14
with the opportunity, which gets them quickly from where they
10:17
are, which is basically submerged in a hierarchical
10:21
culture into a flat company. Ultra and to get them up right
10:26
to the top of my says, pyramid, self-actualization and generally
10:30
takes about three months. So somebody somewhere along the
10:33
lines, a new person is recruited in arrives and so on.
10:36
And I take a look at them and I think, oh my God, hang on a
10:39
moment. One because one of our rules in
10:42
the organization is you must always recruit people who are
10:45
better than you are. Yeah.
10:46
Okay. So the organization gets
10:48
stronger and then what happens is over a period of three months
10:51
or so that person will change Enjoy out of all recognition and
10:56
suddenly you think. Wow, I got that rarely wrong.
10:58
This this person is absolutely bloody amazing and this is how
11:03
it works. So it's very much, a cultural
11:06
thing. Do you have any advice around
11:08
how to create a sense of purpose, a sense of mission.
11:11
And how do you go about selling a vision for these projects
11:15
basically are effectively, single Focus, like breaking the
11:20
world land speed record or creating a new type of error
11:22
plane. And basically that keeps life
11:27
very simple because that's just what you are doing.
11:30
Yeah, selling the concept is of course, talking about Innovation
11:35
and change and people want innovation in this world big
11:38
time. We got enormous problems because
11:41
of the risk of us Society, we live in.
11:45
Can I ask you what kind of leader you are?
11:48
Well, I'm, I'm not a controlling legal leader, this is the
11:51
important thing about it. You've got to actually You're
11:54
working with people not, they're not working for you, they're
11:57
working. We're all working together.
11:59
We're all in the same in the same bowl of soup if you like.
12:03
Yeah, but basically I happen to be a director of the company and
12:08
I've got to take responsibility for the entire show and that is
12:11
that makes me a bit different and occasionally just
12:14
occasionally I step in and say, hey guys, we can't do that.
12:17
That's where we're going away away from what we're trying to
12:20
achieve, but very, very flexible.
12:26
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to book your place. Today, we look forward to seeing
12:51
you there. I mean, I'd like to talk a bit
12:55
about Bloodhound and yeah, the ability to just keep persevering
13:00
in the face of. Well I love these things, I mean
13:03
it's so exciting to see the world has changed and it's
13:07
changed because of two things. One is because basically people
13:10
are now beginning to accept the fact that they have to change,
13:13
they really have to change. Can't go on doing the same
13:17
thing. I mean the country is in a
13:18
terrible mess financially at the moment as we know and what
13:21
you've got to do is you've got to innovate and by innovation of
13:24
course. You're going to produce new
13:25
products and services which has which generate much much higher
13:30
margins which is you know the life to keep on doing the same
13:34
old thing that you're marching. Just get Decline and decline
13:37
that Kleiner and eventually you will lose the company.
13:40
So we've got that. And then on the other side
13:42
you've got the the new technology things like
13:44
computational fluid, dynamics are and and all the rest of it.
13:48
And it's absolutely fascinating because you can start to apply
13:52
this stuff to things that have never been done.
13:54
Before, and you can really innovate and provide you what a
13:58
team that's that is prepared to join in and take risk.
14:03
And they are taking an element of risk, because, you know,
14:06
they're putting some of their, their life aside to actually do
14:10
this. They understand the risk, they
14:12
understand that it could fail but they're going to learn so
14:15
much from it. And for instance, for a while,
14:17
we were doing the Bloodhound project, we worked extensively
14:20
with the with the Army. Well, the Royal Engineers now
14:24
this Was fantastic. Because basically, what they
14:27
are, you have a dyed-in-the-wool hierarchical organization and
14:33
they're giving us some of their people groups of six to come and
14:36
work with us and they can't believe what's actually
14:39
happening there. Being trusted but not being told
14:43
what to do. Yeah and the the engineers the
14:46
the Army comes back after us it's absolutely amazing.
14:49
You've changed our people out of all recognition that suddenly
14:52
taking responsibility and Leadership because Basically,
14:55
people are fundamentally very clever and fundamentally very
14:58
honest and with Bloodhound. What were the biggest lessons
15:02
you learned from that? Because you are, oh my God, keep
15:05
away from the government. Oh no.
15:08
Um, I'm very very proud of Bloodhound.
15:10
It's a terrific treatment by tremendous team of people.
15:16
Basically, what happened was, the Americans have decided they
15:19
were going to take what, take our supersonic record.
15:22
And obviously, we've got to defend this.
15:24
Our spy position. So we set out to produce this
15:27
far as Monarch are and of course, everybody said we can't
15:31
be done and or what do you think you're doing and all that sort
15:34
of thing? But one or two people thought?
15:36
Well, this is amazing. I mean, after all this team did
15:38
break, the sound barrier, nobody has done that and we got going
15:43
and with the ministry of Defence, one director, came up
15:47
with an absolutely brilliant idea which was to use the
15:51
project as a stimulus. Stimulant For Education.
15:55
Yes, I'm curious to find out more, yeah, because we could we
15:59
could make the whole project, all the data on a project live,
16:04
we could make it available to them.
16:05
We're not concerned about IP issues or anything like that.
16:09
We can just do this thing and share it and it became enormous.
16:13
I mean we were doing 120 thousand kids a year.
16:16
The scale of this thing was that we were the biggest stem program
16:18
in Britain. It was suicide, huge success.
16:22
So certainly if that gives the Gave the project real
16:25
credibility. Unfortunately our American
16:28
Revival was killed in an air crash which was just rotten.
16:31
Luck is just very very bad luck and we decided we keep the
16:36
project going because it was such a creative project and we
16:40
had some sort of 300 companies working on it and we got the car
16:44
built but as there were all sorts of enormous problems.
16:48
Like for instance, these cars have to run on a special sort of
16:52
surface yes desert surface. And the special surface that
16:56
we've been using in America, had been wrecked on by a Leisure
17:01
activity called Burning Man. Oh, the festival year 70,000.
17:05
Americans, turn up and run paint themselves.
17:07
Different colors and online. Stalker sounds like fun.
17:12
I'm sure it's great fun. Rex our desert.
17:15
Yeah, so we had to find another one.
17:17
We find it in South Africa and the South African people put in
17:20
1,000 man years of work. Creating this track for us.
17:24
How's man years. So that they were literally on
17:26
their hands and knees, picking clearing stones and rocks.
17:29
Yep. They claim cleared 16,000 tons
17:32
of stones, we had 300 companies working on it.
17:36
Our sponsorship that we'd raised was the total of 31 million and
17:40
on that excluded all the companies who gave us bits and
17:43
pieces and made bits and pieces for us.
17:46
So this is a huge thing and as coarse as a project gets nearer
17:50
and nearer to Ginger point where it runs, it gets bigger and
17:54
bigger and bigger. Cash.
17:55
Requirements course, gets bigger and bigger these projects
17:57
actually very, very difficult to plan because the levels of
18:00
innovation. And so, you've got to get bigger
18:02
and bigger deals, and this means that your sponsors have to take
18:05
greater and greater risk. Not because the project risk.
18:09
But because you're asking for more and more money to actually
18:11
do this and we were running to real difficulties and then
18:17
suddenly a brilliant manly xufu, who's the chairman of the Julie
18:23
car company. Took a real interest in us and
18:26
he decided he was, he was going to sponsor us.
18:29
So I was commuting back supports of China, putting this terrific
18:33
deal together and he was so he's a great great man and also at
18:37
the same time that wasn't enough for us to run the car in 2017
18:41
and we needed a bit more and we taken the project to the city
18:45
and we put the car on show and 8,000 people came in two days to
18:50
see it. We actually had to sort of put
18:52
them in groups to get them through because otherwise Some
18:55
the whole thing was getting too congested and they bought 60,000
18:59
quids worth of merchandise or terrific.
19:01
Great fine, you know, but was gonna be any sponsorship from
19:05
that. No.
19:06
Because you're dealing actually with the city.
19:07
The city doesn't take these sort of rest.
19:10
It's runs itself, as I select organization, and it doesn't do
19:14
this sort of thing, but so I went to the chancellor.
19:18
George Osborne and said, I'm terribly.
19:19
Sorry, George, we're going to lose this.
19:21
I can't keep up the cash flow. We've done that.
19:24
See what we've done all this money so far.
19:26
But the fundamental thing is I've got to keep this project
19:28
moving fast and moving, and I think it's got real values for
19:32
the country, particularly the education side.
19:34
And I wondered if you tell so the chancellor set up a program
19:38
with Bay's to review this whole thing and find out whether this
19:42
was a value to Britain. Fine.
19:45
Great. Well, I really welcome this
19:47
because what they were doing was going through every single
19:50
aspect of the project, all the accounts, all our planning
19:53
everything, and it was great. It came out with very much the
19:56
same sort of figures as we did, which is great, and they then
19:59
made us an offer, which was terrific.
20:01
Oh, fantastic. Now if we've got this offer and
20:04
we've also got the Chinese deal, which is now signed, and they've
20:08
made their first payment. This is terrific.
20:10
Now we're going to get this one. And I looked at all the
20:14
requirements And they offer, and it's quite clear.
20:17
We could meet them all. Hold a meeting with the civil
20:20
servants had, a very odd meeting with them and I just didn't
20:24
know, none of us. Could understand what the hell's
20:27
going on. Yeah.
20:29
And they just didn't talk to us again.
20:31
It was simple as that. That was.
20:33
It wasn't it for the so that was it.
20:35
I then had to go back to China and say, look, I'm terribly.
20:37
Sorry, the British government has defaulted on on this offer,
20:40
we've met all the conditions and I shared all the conditions with
20:43
the Chinese and in you. Exactly the situation.
20:45
Yeah, they decided they couldn't continue because they were going
20:48
to have to carry the whole thing.
20:51
And yeah it was absolutely bloody terrible and all this was
20:55
lost all this time. People's money, everything was
21:00
just lost because of failure to to sign off on a deal which
21:06
they'd offered. It was just extraordinary.
21:09
I kept going, I kept going and 18 months later, the Secretary
21:13
of State of initially signed off on it.
21:15
But it was too late by then we went to brexit, there was no
21:17
money and you know it was over. What a waste, what an awful
21:21
waste, what's happened to Bloodhound out of what did you
21:25
do with it? Well, Bloodhound I had to put
21:27
blood hard Administration. Otherwise we were going to go
21:29
insolvent and and it was bought by a third party.
21:33
He put up his phone, private money and got the car to South
21:37
Africa. So did run on the desert which
21:39
was good and they've got up to six hundred and twenty eight
21:42
miles an hour. The Next Step was to bring in
21:45
the the rocket motor which is being developed by our friends
21:48
in in Norway. And they just didn't make the
21:53
next step. So the car is now sitting rather
21:56
full only in a museum and talking to the Bloodhound
22:00
people. They all think it's probably
22:02
over which is just an awful waste and terrible shame.
22:06
But it just shows how vulnerable these organizations are.
22:09
Well what's it like driving one of these incredible machines
22:13
because you have A couple of nasty accident.
22:16
Oh yes. I mean this is this is the name
22:19
of the game. I'm afraid things do go wrong
22:22
but your safety depends on the team.
22:25
It's about the team doing everything they're supposed to
22:28
do and getting it right? And communicating, The crucial
22:32
thing is communicating, I mean something's wrong but God said,
22:36
don't hide it say so and so we can try and sort it out.
22:39
What's it like being in the cockpit, you know, what's
22:42
actually like, I'd love to find out.
22:44
Well, You're part of a team and you're setting out to do
22:48
something, which is your share of the project if you like.
22:53
And so therefore you've got to develop as fast as you can and
22:57
you've got to be as professional and as sufficient and and
23:02
communicative as you possibly can.
23:05
And the thing about it is that you put your fear behind you.
23:09
So when you start off you say well that's not the project off.
23:13
You say well okay we're going to This fun, I've got to deliver
23:17
for the rest of the team. So that's, that's what it's
23:19
about. And I mean, we got to a point
23:22
where we could drive through us to every day, at over 600 miles
23:25
an hour. I mean, it's incredibly
23:26
reliable, there's a fantastic team of people make it sound so
23:31
angry, you know? Well, I mean, you know, if
23:35
you're driving at 600 miles an hour every day, it's just, it's
23:39
just good Venture. It's just gonna be very
23:41
graphically. What's it like being doing that?
23:44
Do it. It's another run and your War
23:47
always totally absolutely focused on the numbers where
23:51
you've got to be the speeds. You've got to be and the
23:55
importance of not ever letting up.
23:57
As if you let your front foot off the accelerator a little
24:00
demon, a little bit, it'll affect the top speed big time.
24:03
So you're flat out right? From the moment it goes, do you
24:07
feel quite calm when you're doing it?
24:08
I guess you're my God. I love it.
24:09
I love it because I love to think that I could go and drive
24:12
it again today. Yeah.
24:14
Brilliant. Well so tell me what are you
24:17
working on right now? Well working on another project
24:20
which we have launched yet which is I'm finding very attractive
24:25
because it's very very difficult.
24:28
The physics are absolutely extraordinary and the
24:32
interesting thing about it is it can be done in Britain which
24:34
would be really great because that'll work really well with
24:36
the education side. So what are very early days at
24:39
the moment? Now the project is very ill,
24:42
informed that we've got a fantastic team of people working
24:44
Working on it and just hope that we're going to deliberate and
24:48
make it public very soon. When do you hope to launch it?
24:52
We hope to launch it sometime this year.
24:54
Yeah. Have you got any last pieces of
24:56
advice to project professionals about around the idea of risk
25:01
taking risk, please? Please take risk.
25:05
Try to create something, which is different, you're going to
25:09
bigger margin for it and also, change your life, good do Some
25:15
do risky things but it's only jumping out of airplanes with a
25:19
parachute do change your life, and, you know, and then you will
25:23
then realize that there is an awful lot of excitement to be
25:27
had from taking risk. Fantastic would have brilliant
25:29
white Hyundai poker. So I just want to say, again,
25:31
thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much.
25:34
Keep we keep us posted about your project when it launches.
25:37
Yeah, I will go. Of course I will.
25:39
Yeah, Thanks again to Richard for joining us and to you for
25:45
listening to this episode of the APM podcast.
25:48
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