Podcast transcript: EY Change Happens Podcast – Garth Callender

Intro: Change happens. How we respond to change can make or break us and our careers. Join us for an intimate insight into how senior business leaders face change – the good, the bad and everything in between, because whether we like it or not, change happens.

Jenelle: Hi. I’m Jenelle McMaster and welcome to Season 2 of the Change Happens podcast, where we continue to have conversations with influential leaders on leading through change and the lessons that they’ve learned along the way. Now if you haven’t listened to the podcast before I encourage you to go back and have a listen to Season 1. I’m not going to lie we’ve had some cracker guests in last year’s line up so please do take the time to go back and have a listen, and today I’m joined by Garth Callender.

Now Garth has seen and done many things all of which we’ll get into, but you may recognise his name from his time in the army. Specifically Garth was Australia’s first serious casualty of the Iraq war. He recovered to complete more tours of duty back to Iraq and Afghanistan and he wrote an award winning book about his experience called ‘After the Blast – an Australian Officer in Iraq and Afghanistan’. Over the course of his career with the army he has received numerous commendations and service medals and since leaving the military in a full time capacity, Garth has headed onto carve out a highly successful civilian career gaining executive and board experience in a range of sectors, applying the lessons and training from his incredible background to his own business and helping other businesses. Garth is also the Chairman of the Bravery Trust an organisation offering financial support for injured veterans and their families. 

All in all Garth’s military and business background gives him credibility and insights that are not commonly found in corporate Australia. I’m looking forward to learning how Garth’s many experiences in leadership and managing risk and crisis in the military and on the battlefield translates to a non-military world. Hi Garth, welcome.

Garth: Thanks Jenelle. Thanks for the introduction!

Jenelle: It’s quite some intro! Tell me how are you?

Garth: I’m well. Doing really well.

Jenelle: I was really looking forward to opening this new year’s set of questions with a non-COVID related question but of course that’s not where we find ourselves unfortunately. So I’m going to start there perhaps just with a broad observational question. With you having spent so much time previously in physical war zones and having to react really quickly to surprise situations that can escalate out of control if they’re not handled well. How have you found yourself and others you’ve been dealing with, dealing with the pandemic right from that initial crisis through to the stage that we’re in today?

Garth: I think there is so much in that. I could probably answer it in 10 different ways. The one that really sticks in my head right now is the way the role of company directors has been redefined. Gone are the days of directorships being that golden handshake and a thank you for a long and lustrous executive career, here have a board role. Definitely that time has gone but I think the thinking definitely in the past has been decision making at board level has been a slower process. You’ve got the week/week and a half to review board papers. You’ve got 8 board meetings a year and you’re involved when you need to be. Whereas now decisions need to be made at the board level really quickly and board directors need to be really intimately involved with what’s happening in the organisation when it’s times like we are now. When there is multiple risks emerging at once often decisions are outside the CEO’s delegation, no longer do board directors have the luxury of saying “Yeah ok I’ll get back to you in a week once I’ve had a pause”, “Once I’ve assessed the situation”, “Once I’ve had time to reflect and educate”, that’s no longer the case. Decisions need to be made in a few hours.

Garth: It’s something I’ve definitely seen with clients and with some of the boards that I sit on. I’ve had to have a few hard talks with directors. You’ve got skin in the game again, you need to be involved.

Jenelle: Let’s start with your military life. You joined when you were 18 and after a few years you completed your leadership training to become an officer in the Australian Army at the RMC in Duntroon. I believe that was in 2001.

Garth: That’s right.

Jenelle: 9/11 happened at that point in time. Talk about an interesting time to emerge as a trained officer. To what extent did the timing of that impact the way you served in the military?

Garth: It was the defining point in modern generation but definitely a defining point of my career as well. I joined the army as a solider in the mid 90’s and we hadn’t done very much since the Vietnam War. Yeah we had a few smaller deployments to Somalia, Rwanda and East Timor. East Timor wasn’t that small but it wasn’t the other side of the world and it wasn’t such a extreme environment. It’s not something which I’d had considered and to be honest I wouldn’t say I didn’t take my career seriously but I was a pretty, happy go lucky person and perhaps didn’t understand the world I was entering into with the military. We were in our last 6 months, the last few months of the course at Duntroon. I distinctly remember that morning somebody came barrelling into my room at 5.30am saying “Hey America is under attack, quick have a look at the TV”. This is going to change and shape my career and it absolutely did. 

Jenelle: Everything got real in that moment I’m sure.

Garth: Absolutely yeah.

Jenelle: So in 2004 you deployed to Baghdad in Iraq. Can you paint a picture for me of what it was like there? And what your role was?

Garth: Yeah so the environment, firstly we arrived in the peak of summer, so extremely hot 40 degree days. It’s a city on the Tigris River. Quite a flat city and just stiflingly hot. In 2004 in particular – capital city, it functioned like a capital city. It was 7 million people all trying to get on with their lives. Kids were going to school. There was peak hour traffic in the mornings and afternoons. People would still dine out in restaurants in the a la carte restaurants of Baghdad but the backdrop to all that was a civil war really.

The Sunni minority who had been in power under Hussein were actively vying to destabilise the government to regain power. The vast Shia majority had been repressed under Hussein that was trying to do the opposite. There had been the de-Ba'athification process. So the removal of anyone from government or the military who had been associated with the Ba’ath party which had completely destabilised the country. All the heads of government departments. All the heads of military police, emergency services had been removed. It was people almost making it up as they went along, who had been forced into those roles. 

It also meant that all those people had been removed, often military people who had some serious experience from their Iran/Iraq war and even the invasion of Iraq or the first Gulf war, were now out of jobs and were actively working to destabilise the government often through violence. Of course what you also get when there is a breakdown in law and order is a rising of the criminal element. So there was a lot of crime and really grisly crime too. A lot of murders, kidnapping, ransom, all those sorts of things going on. We saw tens, if not hundreds of incidents a day in the city alone, let alone greater Baghdad.

Jenelle: Wow talk about things feeling real. Tell me what happened on the 25th October?

Garth: Yeah well I guess I probably needed to better answer your first question. Which was what was I doing there? Firstly I was part of a larger 110 person team that protected the Australian Embassy itself, protected them in their accommodation and my role was running the seven armoured vehicles which would transport them around the greater Baghdad area so they could carry out their diplomatic functions. I had seven of Australian light armoured vehicles which I broke up into 3 patrols and we’d have them out on the street all day, every day moving Embassy staff around. 

On the 25th October we’d been there a couple of months and that morning I took one of the patrols. I think it was the second task of the day. We were driving out of our compound up into the CBD. We were going to do a few tasks there then head out to the international airport which was about 15km out to the west. We got about 600m out of the front of our compound and there was car parked on the side of the road, which was obviously from sometime the night before an insurgent had parked it had been full of explosives and an improvised explosive device with a trigger mechanism (most likely remote control) and as my vehicle drove past they detonated that bomb. I was standing up in the turret on the righthand side and the car with the bomb in it was on the righthand side. We were probably about 5 metres away from it when it went off. To be honest I was quite badly injured from it. I had second degree burns to my face and neck and had fragmentation wounds and a pretty serious concussion as well.

Jenelle: Were you immediately taken out of the country?

Garth: It was a longer process. I had some awesome soldiers with me who did an incredible job. We’d done a lot of practice back in Australia before we got to Iraq. “We hadn’t practiced specifically, what would happen, you know, if the boss got blown up one morning, but we had practiced enough so they knew the drills”. They could make the decisions they needed to make quickly and effectively.

The end result was I was treated and in hospital within about 15 minutes. From one side it’s that decision making ability that they had which saved my life really.

Jenelle: And some muscle memory in what to do I guess through all that training.

Garth: oh completely. Yeah absolutely. Even to the point where we’d rehearsed that drive into the Coalition Hospital which was an awkward route and it was quite a difficult route to remember how to go. We’d done it a few times to the point where the guys knew how to get through the checkpoints that they needed to and get me to hospital on time. Then I had a bit of fragmentation nick my prodded artery and I had a quite a large hematomas inside of my neck and the doctors were, or my medic in particular was worried it was going to cut off the blood supply to my brain. I don’t think I’m downplaying it when I say it really could of ended up a lot worse for me.

Jenelle: I don’t think you are downplaying it all. What was life like for you for the next couple of years after that very serious injury?

Garth: Yeah I was extremely lucky in the fact that it didn’t cause any long term injuries. I’ve got a few quirks from it. You don’t get that close to a bomb going off and air moving it thousands of metres per second without getting a few quirks but I didn’t have anything which was going to prevent me continuing on with my military career which I was very grateful for. I was in my mid 20’s and saw a long military career ahead of me. 

Garth: I was really relieved about that and one of the great things I was able to do then was get involved in a lot of the training of guys who were going to man follow on teams to do the same job we’ve done. Give them briefs on what they could expect over there. Talk to them about the reality of the insurgent threat of the improvised explosive device threat and helped develop training scenarios so they could be tested and they could again streamline that decision making process, get their drills under control. So if the same thing or something similar happened to them they could react just as effectively.

Jenelle: I can understand maintaining your involvement in the military. Certainly running training programs back at the safety of your local barracks but you went back into war zones, several times and that was despite your near death experience, despite your mum making the Chief of Army promise that you wouldn’t go back into combat. You returned and like I said returned to war zones including Afghanistan again. What was that pull for you? Why?

Garth: Quite simply I saw myself being the right person for the job. About 18 months later I went back to the same organisation in Baghdad. I’d gone up a rank, so I was a Captain and I was second in command of the combat team. Second in command of the 110 people. My title was Officer. I guess it’s more Head of Operations maybe. I would do the day-to-day running of the organisation. That included organising all the training before they went. In my mind there was no better person to be in that role than me. I’d been in the environment. I knew intimately the insurgent threat. I knew the job they needed to do and I knew how they had to best prepare to make sure that they were ready for anything they’d face over there.

Jenelle: So interested in that comment about seeing yourself as the right person for the job. Particularly in an environment which is so deeply trained. You can train people in those processes and the systems etc. If you knew you could train others to do that what was it about you specifically then that made you the right person?

Garth: I guess at the end of the day there can be a disconnect between what’s happening thousands of kilometres away in the Middle East and what you’re training for in Australia. I guess that’s the lead up piece. I knew what they were going to be doing over there. I knew instantly. I’d been in there, I’d done it. Whereas somebody else coming into the role hadn’t done that.

Jenelle: A lived experience.

Garth: Yeah and I also brought with me a view of risk which I use this to this day, is understanding what real risk is. Yeah you categorise risk whatever it is. Operational risk, reputational risk, compliance risk, whatever it is but at the end of the day real risk they all come back to people. The result of any of those risks playing out might be is it’s going to impact on human beings. I knew that intimately from a flesh and blood sense. That level of thinking was somewhat unique in my cohort of officers that could have gone into that role. From a deployment perspective, I mean I’m quite a naturally relaxed person anyway, but I think because I’d seen the extremes I went with quite a level head over there as well. I think I was a bit of a calming influence for the team as well. For the guy being blown up and he is back there for one but also because I knew when it was time to take things seriously and I knew when it was time we could relax a bit.

Jenelle: They sound like such actualised words Garth. What did it feel like to go through that and then to head back in? Were you scared? Were you angry about the fact that the boss had been blown up? Was this something to level up and show people? Tell me about what your emotions were and how you kept those in check and in a very ordered operation that you were then leading?
 
Garth: I say I’m a pretty relaxed guy and all those sorts of things but there was one incident over there where I’d realised I’d taken it too far and I made a mistake. That was in the first maybe week I was there. We were doing a handover with the outgoing team and we’d done a combined patrol. Half of the vehicles were manned with the guys leaving, half of them with my guys coming in. They call them nursery patrol, breaking in the new team. I said “Well it’s been 18 months since I’ve seen the environment with me being involved in” so I actually crewed one of the vehicles in the same vehicle crew position that I was in when I was injured and as it turned out we travelled the exact same route that we travelled on that day. When we went past the place where the bomb went off I actually got really nervous and was probably not effective in my role and realised I’d taken it a step too far. I pushed myself to say “Nah I’m good to the point where I wasn’t good.” That was an interesting realisation for me to say “ok”. 

Jenelle: What did you do when you had that realisation?

Garth: The effect on me was I froze up. I had this thought going “What if – strange coincidences happen all the time, what if right now a bomb is about to go off next to my vehicle exactly the same way it went off in 2004?” So, I was no help to anyone. I guess at the end of the day what I did post that was I said, “I’m not over here in this role”, “I don’t need to group command vehicles”. I ended up doing it a couple more times during that trip but I made sure ... like I said I’d gone up in rank, I’d gone up a level of responsibility, I needed to embrace the role that I was doing not the role I’d done 18 months previously. Whilst the idea of getting back out on the streets of Baghdad is cool that wasn’t the job I was there to do. I rolled it back and embraced the role which is nowhere near as glamourous which is sitting in a command post coordinating the movement of my guys around greater Baghdad, which is what I did for about six months in that role.

Jenelle: You then went onto another deployment in 2009 back to Afghanistan. At that stage you were a father I think to the first of your 3 young daughters. You deployed leading a Weapons Intelligence Team where you were helicoptered to the blast zones in the aftermath of attacks. You were working to understand more about those IEDs, the improvised explosive devices and identifying the insurgent bomb makers that were responsible. Now when I read about that Garth I thought of the surfer, Mick Fanning, who you may recall had the shark attack. I think it was late last year that he released the documentary ‘Save the Shark’ cause he wanted to face into his fears, understand sharks more as part of his healing process. But I would say most people, many people if not most, who face traumatic situations typically work to ensure they’re not in those situations again. But there are people like Mick Fanning who chose to lean right into it and really understand the shark or, you who has chosen to really understand IEDs, understand the insurgent bomb makers, understand everything about how those come about. 

Garth: Definitely

Jenelle: So you choose to put yourself squarely back in that situation. I’m keen to understand what you put that down to? What’s the difference between those who lean into it, and those who go “Ok well I’ve learnt and I won’t be there again?”

Garth: I think a lot of is that mentality of they talk about first responders and when an incidence occurs there are those that run away from the gun shots and there are those that run towards it. There is a bit of that thinking in there. The Mick Fanning analogy I think “Yep absolutely”. I definitely didn’t start a program to say be ‘insurgent bomb makers’! In fact kind of the opposite. Not to get too grisly about it. It was definitely I had a drive to understand insurgent bomb makers and to minimise the threat of improvised explosive devices and being injured in 2004 and going back in 2006 and seeing the aftermath of some of these horrific bomb blasts where like any war zone the greatest impact was on civilians. The greatest casualties were civilians. 

Garth:  Yeah, I came back and made a nuisance of myself to all the right people until they posted me to what’s called the ‘Counter IED Taskforce’ which has just finished in the last few months. It’s just wound up after 14 years. They posted me there and I got really interested in how we could train our military to best protect themselves. What equipment we needed to best protect ourselves and also I got really interested in the intelligence piece. Understanding the supply chains, the bomb makers, even the mentality and often how and why they were being utilised and of course that then led into an opportunity to deploy into a tactical role – recovering the evidence from bomb sites, reverse engineering it, getting smart about – firstly where the bomb was set off, what it was targeting and then understanding and linking it back to insurgent cells and how they operated their supply chain. Again it seemed like a natural progression to me. I had this deep seeded interested and not to sound flippant but it was a fascination in bombs and insurgent bombmakers. Particularly Afghanistan – it was really interesting because these bombmakers whilst they were often illiterate grew up in a province but they were obviously highly intelligent.

Jenelle: Intelligent. Absolutely and resourceful.

Garth: Yeah would create these diabolical devices out of household items. So we needed to come up with some ways of firstly, educating our own forces about the weapons being used against them but then also to provide that broader intelligence. 

Jenelle: You know it’s interesting as I listen to your answer to that question what I hear in that is a whole heap of curiosity. I hear a desire for sense making - making sense of what’s happened. Empathy for civilians who are being impacted by actions by people on their own side and a continuous learning, continuous improvement loop. It’s an interesting set of attributes actually I think that does drive some of that behaviour to lean back into it.

Garth: Yeah and going back to 2004. One of the things that hit me the hardest was coming back to Australia and then a few months later when the boys finished their rotation they came back with images that they’d taken. There were images of the bloke sitting on his front doorstep with the bomb creator from that blast – almost at this feet and his house had basically been ruined. At the end of the day here’s a guy who had lived through the Iran/Iraq war, lived through a repressive dictator, had seen foreign militaries come into his city and then had a countryman let off a bomb at his doorstep. That blast had killed at least 3 people, 2 of which who were young children who would wave at us every time we go past. I’d be very surprised if that chap didn’t know those children. I don’t think you can help feeling empathy for the civilians caught up in these horrible attacks.

Jenelle: What made you write the book ‘After the Blast’? Tell me a bit about what that process was like for you? What you learnt about yourself in writing that book?

Garth: I had a lot of people say to me “Oh it must have been very disheartening” “Oh it was a process for you to download and all of that sort of stuff but actually it came about from me just writing journals. I didn’t write one in 2004. When I went back in 2006 the boss of the combat team said to me “Mate I write a journal you should think about it”. I started doing that just scribbling down notes every night, cause’ I was back we were only a few hundred metres from where I’d been in 2004 I was able to reflect on some of the things in 2004. I did that again in Afghanistan and over the next few years I had to turn that into something which was legible. I wanted my daughters to have something to see what I’d done in the military. A friend of mine, James Brown, who ended up being the President of NSW for a couple of years, he was writing a book on the current ideas around Anzac Day. He wanted some evidence of ID blasts and the immediacy at being lucky or unlucky and things like that and we were having a chat about it. I said, “Hey I’ve got these journals, there are a few bits in here which I think might fit for what you want”. “Feel free to quote me on any of these”.

Garth: Which he did. He wrote some lovely stuff in his acknowledgement from that and then I had his publisher call me up out of the blue and say, “Hey can I read your journal?” That’s where it came about. I don’t know if I ever had plans for that to turn into a book but I think it’s been a very positive experience for a lot of people actually.

Jenelle: You gave a great deal of recognition to your wife Crystal for all that she went through during your military days. Tell me about the impact of this kind of thing on partners and families and for you specifically and the role that she played in supporting you.

Garth: Yeah. I have so much to say about Crystal. She was so amazing. She wasn’t happy with my ... and I did things all the wrong way in going back both to Iraq and going to Afghanistan later. Once she had time to process it she was so supportive but it took such a toll on her as it does with so many military partners. They don’t sign up to be what is in essence a single parent which is the reality, they’re on their own. When I was in Afghanistan Crystal was there on her own for 9 months. 

I’ll just tell you a really quick story, which just happened recently, cause’ I still do a bit of work with the military. I was lucky enough to get a quick trip down to Sydney in December and I was dealing with an organisation down there. I was driving out to one of the training areas with one of the Regimental Sergeant Majors and we just stopped for a quick coffee and my phone had connected to Bluetooth and I ducked in to buy the coffee. I thought I’ll just give Crystal a quick call. I rang her and of course the Bluetooth kicked off in the car. She couldn’t hear me so this guy answered the phone. What Crystal saw was my phone number turn up on her phone with me calling. She said “hello” and this guy say “It’s the Regimental Sergeant Major here”. It hasn’t happened for years I should think (not that Crystal has let me know) but it just took her back to 2006 where she would just be dreading the phone ringing. 

Jenelle: It feels like PTSD stuff for spouse and partner.

Garth: I think I was naïve to that at the time. Absolutely there was part of that in there. Definitely during that deployment it just asked so much for her and don’t think I really acknowledged what she went through. “Whatever, I’m going to a war zone, you’ll be alright”. 

Jenelle: Yeah.

Garth: Whereas no she was at home just trying to live her life worried that phone was going to ring and there be another messaged that I’d been injured or worse.

Jenelle: Wow.

Garth: That’s the reality for a lot of military spouses that can never be downplayed. It’s pretty tough.

Jenelle: I think I told you when we first met or spoke, Garth, that I have a military background. Was a Reserve with the Australian Army and a psychologist and when soldiers and officers would come back from their deployments, one of the biggest challenges was the transition back into the family life and just knowing one’s place back in the family because really it’s the partner that stayed at home that has had to carry the share of raising the family, making all the decisions, making sense of the person being overseas. All of the small and the big decisions and huge impact to the family when that person returns. Huge impact to the military person trying to figure out their way and their role back in their family and to do that multiple times over has an enormous set of impacts for all parties.
 
Garth: It’s not just the deployments as well. The nature of military service is you’re away a lot. When I left the military one of the reasons that was hanging over my head was the fact that I had and my eldest Eva who was 5 years old, I moved her 5 times for one but also I’d been away for years of her life. Crystal was operating as a single parent basically for years in that 5 year period where I’d been either deployed overseas, off training somewhere around Australia. The last one I did was 4 months in Shoal Water Bay. It can be really tough.

Jenelle: Certainly my own experience I would say life does change pretty fundamentally when you become a parent. How did it change for you going back into a war zone as a parent?

Garth: I guess it changes your view from macro to micro. You’re in the military to do good stuff to save lives. Afghanistan plugged me into a province which had wide spread violence. We were there to try and reduce that violence. 

I’d say the difference between macro and micro level, suddenly when you have a family it goes from that broad picture about how you can help the world down to “hey I’ve got this little tiny human being and my focus is changing to more to looking after this little person” as opposed to “what I can do for a whole group of people”. Actually this is my priority right here in front of me. 

That first bomb site I went to in Afghanistan had been (and I had Eva) and was just about to understand that Crystal was pregnant again with our second child, Zoe. Yeah I was a father and the first bomb site we went to a family. A Hilux had hit a bomb on a dirt road. It had taken the front of the car but amazingly nobody was seriously injured. I think there was a few broken ribs but I remember doing the post blast at that site and after watching this father and mother take their 5 children, (who’d all been jammed in this Hilux and somehow survived injury) take them and start walking to a 2 or 3 hour to the North where their village was. Going through the bomb site and it’s full of children’s toys and lollies and things like that, my stomach was turning over and over again. It was because thinking “wow” putting myself in the perspective of that young father saying “What a horrible situation those people have themselves in”. They really struggle to protect their family just from the simple things like driving on a road back to their village. It just so happened they didn’t come from the local village. This bomb blast occurred just outside a village. All the locals in that village knew the bomb was there but because they were from a different village they didn’t. Actually once we got to and had a decent look at the bomb site there were all these car tracks going around the site. Everyone had been driving around it. 

So yeah absolutely so my excitement for deploying to overseas operations had definitely diminished at that stage. I wasn’t excited about the adventure of going overseas like I had been Iraq. Now it was just like “Well hey this is an incredible job where I have the opportunity to feedback”. The end result of that job was we had that privilege of knowing that we had saved multiple lives over that deployment and ongoing deployment. It was a unique and really privileged position to be in. My thinking had changed from that macro view of what I can do to protect large groups of population to “I really need to be focussed on my priorities which is my family and my children”. 

Jenelle: Was it that desire to be with family and the multiple disruptions to the family that ultimately made you decide to leave the army and make that career change?

Garth: There were a lot of things that came to a head once and to be honest I look at the statistics now of when people generally leave. For my rank and my age I’m sitting smack bang in the middle of the bell curve for when people leave. So it was about right. Nearly 20 years’ service up my sleeve. 

Garth: I guess for me absolutely family. I had a bit of pressure to go back over to Afghanistan which got Crystal and me talking about what I was going to do in the longer term. She said to me, something she had never said before which was “Oh I think it’s time you consider moving onto another job.”

That became really clear and made the decision very easy.

Jenelle: It’s not a small transition to make after almost 20 years of military life. It’s really all you’ve known as you started when you were 18. So huge change. How did you train yourself to reset to an entirely new ball game? How challenging was that transition period for you – move into a corporate world?

Garth: Look maybe it’s that I took the perspective that I am restarting professionally and I’ve got so much to learn. That’s one of those things I do. I don’t think I will ever stop learning and I’ll never become a Master of anything rather I’ll just be a student. That might be part of it. 

Jenelle: Right that gives yourself all sorts of permission really to explore, to ask the questions, to manage expectations and to go from know it all, to learn it all.

Garth: Yep.

Jenelle: So Garth this podcast as you know is all about change. How people respond to it. How they seek to drive it. What we’ve talked about where change has happened to you but now the capacity that you’re in, is there a change that you are seeking to drive? Whether it’s in your work or in your life generally? If you were to distil a change that you are seeking to drive, what would that be?

Garth: Yeah and I get quite passionate about this. What I’m really seeking to do is change the way Australian business leaders make decisions during times of ambiguity and friction. So in times of those multiple risks emerging, they hadn’t anticipated and hadn’t necessarily prepared for that exact eventuality and really I think a lot of that will in the process of doing it that will make them transformational leaders. Make them better leaders and most importantly, protect their organisation and their people.

Jenelle: It’s a huge and really worthwhile change ambition. I can’t think of a better time do be driving to that sort of thing then in the COVID crisis that we’ve been talking about. In fact, as you were saying earlier on the words when you were painting the picture of Baghdad in 2004, you used words like “This was a destabilised country where people were making it up as they went along” and as you were saying that I was thinking this is what we’re finding ourselves in now. We’re in a destabilised country. We’re in a destabilised world and so many of us are making it up as we go along. Feels like the exact environment!

Garth: Yeah look that’s exactly right and I used to have a commanding officer who used to tell us that as a calvary officer it was our role which has thrived in an environment of chaos and friction. I like that. I don’t think I’m naturally comfortable in chaos and friction but I’ve developed resilience and I’ve developed processes around how you can do that. That’s what gets me interested. 

Jenelle: With that sort of context in mind you then established your own consulting agency and it’s called Trebuchet Pivot. I can’t move on without asking you why you called it that? Then from there which I’m sure is the obvious question for everyone - what sort of work do you do within Trebuchet Pivot?
 
Garth: Trebuchet is an old medieval siege weapon. If you Google it you will see the images of it. It looks a bit like a catapult but on one side it uses a very heavy counterweight. On the other side there is a long arm with a sling and it’s designed to hurl boulders or diseased cow carcasses or whatever into the castle or over the wall. I like the analogy of using that downward pressure and force to create enough to create an upward positive trajectory. But there is another reason behind it as well and that was because in Afghanistan the insurgent bomb makers were all listed and rather than using their real names they got given objective names. Those objectives were all medieval weapons. So you’d have objective pike, objective sword, objective dagger and objective trebuchet. An objective trebuchet was a guy who moved out to the East of Tarin Kowt about 3 or 4 km. He couldn’t read and write but obviously was very intelligent and very cunning and would develop bombs with anti-handling switches in them. Designed to target people trying to disarm them. At the end of the day objective trebuchet was this really sneaky adversary over my time. 

Jenelle: He was your arch-rival?

Garth: Yeah well I actually felt that I knew him personally. Cause I’d seen all the other intelligence reporting about him. I knew how many brothers he had. I knew where he travelled. I knew who he’d been meeting. I’d even been to sites where he’d set up bombs and I met soldiers who had seen him face-to-face across the corn fields. Yeah absolutely. When you are starting a business so many people spend too much time worrying about a business name. I did exactly that! That was the result!

Jenelle: Well it’s going to keep you going if you think about the symbolism of the instrument but also the embodiment of it in this person that you’ve studied deeply whilst he was on the other side of it. Clearly you were deeply respectful of kinds of skills and attributes and sort to really understand it. Again, making sense of it.

Garth: Yeah, that’s exactly right. 

Jenelle: What sort of work is it that you do then at Trebuchet Pivot?

Garth: I’ll tell you the history of it which was I came back from Afghanistan and then spent a couple of years at the combat training centre. Running Commanders leadership teams through exercises. The final exercise before they deploy. Basically putting them through every conceivable scenario they might face before they went over to Iraq or Afghanistan. I had the privilege of seeing all these great Commanders come through and their Command teams, the equivalent of C suite executive team. I saw ones who were great at making decisions and I saw ones that needed work on how they were going to make decisions. I was able to help them with that. The end result for me was that the ones that were good at decision making were the ones that involved their whole team and the ones that had a process. 

It took me about 5 years since leaving that organisation, leaving the regular army to think about how I can take all that thinking and turn it into something useful for Australian Business Leadership as a whole. The process of being able to understand the environment you’re working in. Understand the facts that you have in front of you. Make assumptions about what they mean. Something we’ve used so much during COVID has been helping people through scenario planning. Understanding what is most likely going to occur but also understand what is the worst case. 

That’s a very military intelligence process. It’s most likely and most dangerous. Understanding both of those two things and to prepare for both it’s likely going to get you over the mark. Then setting strategic objectives. Understanding where you need to get to.
 
Garth: What the end state of what you need to occur and doing all that before you actually try and come up with any sort of action plan. Understanding where the insight is – where you need to get to and then going and thinking What do we need to do internally to start achieving that? What do we need to do externally? How do we tie in our stakeholders? What do we need to be saying to people? Who do we need to be talking to? Then I guess finally, how are going to continue to plan to solve the problem we’re facing? That’s really a very high level snapshot of what we do. I like to think of it as a dynamic risk management process rather than anything else. Just being able to make decisions quickly and effectively and comprehensively. 

Jenelle: I mean they are a fantastic set of pointers for us to remember involving the team. Having a process. Understanding the data and facts. Doing a scenario planning. Understanding the end state through your strategic objectives. Figuring out how you continuously build that in. If I’ve summarised that correctly. 

Garth: That sounds pretty good!

Jenelle: It does actually! Now just changing tact slightly. You’re the Chairman of the Bravery Trust and that’s a Trust that supports veterans and their families who’ve suffered as a result of their service and they’re facing financial hardship. What made you get involved with that?

Garth: Bravery Trust is just a great organisation. I was am Ambassador for the Trust for a capital of years before I came on as a Director. Really for me it comes down to the fact that going back again to 2004, there were about 25 Australian soldiers involved in that incident. Of those one of the blokes Matt Millhouse passed away a few years ago from an illness linked to the bomb blast. I’ve had a couple of guys who have been hospitalised off and on over the years and have never properly processed or moved on from that incident. A couple more guys that have good days and bad days but that incident is part of their life. But also looking at the other 20 guys who, yes it’s part of their lives but they’ve moved on from it. Often I think a lot of them have grown from it and continue to have amazing careers. There is range of public servants. There are some guys who have gone into the Federal Police doing some awesome counter terrorism type work. Some guys who have stayed in the army, have reached quite high ranks now. Just a great bunch of guys. 

Bravery Trust I really like cause not only do they show case and embrace those 20 guys that have gone onto do great things but they’re there to be the safety net for the other guys. Not only that we’re working to be, not a safety net, but more of a springboard so we can catch them when their world falls apart for them. We catch them so they’ve got a roof over their heads. They’ve got food on their tables. So there families are supported. We’re also working to make sure that they don’t get back into that situation as well. That’s really why I love Bravery Trust and the work that they do and we’re supporting about 650 veterans and their families annually.

Jenelle: Wow.

The last three: three fast questions on change to finish the podcast

Jenelle: What are you reading? Watching or listening to right now?

Garth: Reading – I have three on the go. One is Loonshots by Safi Bahcall. 

Jenelle: Yes.
 
Garth: Awesome view at commercialisation, innovation. How new inventions sometimes fall flat or take forever to get done. It’s a really interesting view on it. Awesome. The Sympathizer – Thanh Nguyen. It’s a fiction based from mid 70’s Vietnam and US. I’m just on the last few pages now and I’m probably going to finish it straight after this podcast!

Jenelle: Ok I’ll try not to hold you up!

Garth: Then the last pieces. I’ve been doing my own writing. I’ve been reading over that. Again I don’t know if it’s going to see the light of day but it’s from the past 12 months. Some of the stuff we’ve talked about today but also putting stories behind things which I think business leaders would find interesting. 

Jenelle: You know what just listening to you I will form at the end of this season a recommended reading list based on the recommendations of our guests. I’d love to be able to put whatever this is that you’re writing now as one of those books. Here it is, unfolding. No pressure! But I’d like that to make the list.

Garth: Ok yeah. Well the working title is ‘Insurgent Leadership’. So we’ll see how we go.

Jenelle: Ok. I can see Trebuchet making a little bit of an appearance here!

Garth: Yep!

Jenelle: Second question what is your super power? By that I mean it can be something that’s hugely additive to the world or it could be one of those useless party tricks. What’s your super power?

Garth: It’s a useless party trick! To be honest it’s fading over the years! I grew up being very flexible and I used to be able to leap into the splits.

Jenelle: Oh my gosh!

Garth: Yeah until a few years ago when I did it for the last time. Something went snap! 

Jenelle: I hope it was your clothes and not anything else! Ok that’s great! 

Garth: Yep.

Jenelle: And final question if you were going to put a quote up on a billboard, what would it be?

Garth I think it comes down to the fact that I’ve been involved in some really serious, really harrowing incidents where life couldn’t be more serious. When that’s not occurring I also feel like life should be enjoyed. My quote would be something like “There is a time and a place to be serious the rest of the time should be enjoyed.”

Jenelle: Very good. 

Garth: How does that sound?

Jenelle: That sounds pretty good to me. I’m good with that. Garth, listen, thank you so much for the conversation today. Really enjoyed it.
Garth My pleasure.

Jenelle: I need to thank you for 20 years of service and continuing. I know you’re a reservist now. You’re continuing advice to those of us that are in the non-military world and your support to the veterans and their families. I have taken away (as I always do from these calls) a lot of great insights. Few that really come to mind for me. You and your learning mindset being a constant student and the ability to turn experience into insight. I think you have a bold change ambition and one that we, the world over needs help with. When we think about business leaders making decisions during times of risk and crisis, finding comfort in chaos and friction, which is underwritten I guess by strong process.

Garth: Yeah.

Jenelle: I think it’s a great callout to remind us those at senior levels of organisations not to make decisions in isolation and certainly to tap into the cognitive diversity of their teams. I love that you have really shown us what a deep understanding of what risk looks like, an appreciation of its impact on people and using that to drive risk cultures, to understand risk tolerances, to understand risk thresholds. One I’ve really loved as well in listening to you is your willingness and drive to lean into adversity to call upon your curiosity, your empathy and your desire to make sense of the world and fuel that to drive a whole lot of new ways, new processes and new insights. So huge contribution for all of us and massive thank you for your time Garth.

Garth: Oh no. Thank you that’s a really lovely wrap up. Thank you.

The Change Happens podcast. From EY. A conversation on leading through change. Discover more where you get your podcasts.

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