Preparing fearproof leaders for whatever the future holds

Mission: Possible

As a leader trying to navigate the disruption, chaos and change that are the hallmarks of today’s business environment, success is ultimately measured by the actions, and results, of your team.

No matter how much time, money and energy you invested in leadership team off-sites and strategic planning workshops, when it comes to results - execution is everything.

Adam blends the latest in academic thinking with years of experience leading high-performing teams in Special Forces and in the corporate world to help intrepid leaders create outstanding teams that they can rely on; teams that take ownership of problems, find ways to overcome them and deliver results, not excuses.

Some organisations Adam has worked with

Elite Teamwork

Discover what it takes to build, maintain and lead a team that dares to take on the biggest challenges and achieve outstanding results

Leadership

Help your people make good decisions under pressure, communicate their plan effectively and inspire those around them to perform

Resilience

Whether it's a corporate restructure, a crisis or a difficult day at the office, prepare your people and your organisation to push through adversity

A Corporate Commando

Adam’s career is, to the casual observer, a typical story of a young man climbing the corporate ladder in the IT sector.

What's not so typical, however, is that alongside his successful corporate career he served for 18 years as a highly-trained Special Forces soldier, first in the British Army's elite SAS Reserve and then as a Commando in the Australian Army deploying and leading teams on combat operations and training exercises around the world including Bosnia, Afghanistan and Tibet where he managed the logistics of the British Army's successful ascent in 2000.

Reflecting on his training as a parachutist, paramedic, demolitionist, climber, linguist and close combat specialist, he doesn't believe that these really did that much for his corporate career. The leadership training and development that he experienced, on the other hand, was some of the best available in the world and the lessons he learnt whilst leading teams in some of the most arduous and volatile conditions on earth enabled him to build teams in the corporate world that gathered a reputation for taking on the biggest challenges of the day - and coming out on top.

Adam credits much of his success in the disruption and complexity of today's corporate environment to what he learnt in the military about making sound decisions, providing clear direction and inspiring peak performance.

Services

Keynotes

If you're looking for an antidote to cliched motivational speeches then this may be what you're looking for. Adam interweaves his lessons on leadership, resilience and teamwork with stories that put you right in the heart of the action.

Training

Professional development sessions for every level of management in an organisation - from the most recently appointed team leaders to the most experienced executives looking for ways to generate seismic shifts in growth.

Facilitation

When you want to bring people together to unite them, explore ideas and find a solution to the biggest problems you're facing then it helps to have someone neutral in the room who makes sure that everyone's ideas get heard.

“Adam walks the talk, providing companies and their people with an injection of that elusive “can do, will do, want to” attitude. If you are seeking to change things up, inspire your people to go always a little further, your search is truly over”

— Keith W

“If you are serious about leadership and you really want the best out of you and the people around you, I would highly recommend Adam to your organisation”

— Marc P, IBM

Recent thoughts

Blog

Prepare leaders to be lonely - or to fail

My experience tells me that the corporate world is catching up, in some regards, on how it develops its leadership talent if the billions of dollars we spend annually on leadership development training is any yardstick. But, it has to be said, I think there’s at least one area where the corporate world is falling short. There’s one truth about leading others that doesn’t ever seem to get a mention.

Leading is lonely.

Culture and challenge

When I was deployed to Bosnia as part of a NATO peacekeeping mission, minefields were something we came across fairly regularly. They were marked in a range of ways - some had the fairly obvious skull and crossbones on a red triangle and even if you couldn’t read the Cyrillic underneath, it didn’t take much imagination to work out that if you were on the side of the sign without writing then your day had taken a turn very much for the worse.

Do you serve to lead?

The biggest difference I’ve observed consistently between the corporate world and the military is how we view leadership.

From the moment an Officer Cadet arrives at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS), an institution that has in one form or another trained the British Army’s Officers for over 200 years, it’s drummed into them that their role is simple - it’s to serve those they lead.

In defence of Command and Control

I’m told that at one point in time Every breath you take by The Police was one of the most popular choices by couples for their wedding dance. When I heard that, I found myself wondering if any of them deliberately chose it because it’s a song about an obsessive stalker that Sting, the band’s frontman, wrote after separating from his wife and who regards its messages of sadistic jealousy and controlling possession as (in his own words) nasty and evil. Or maybe they chose it just because they liked the tune…

So while we’re on the topic of misunderstandings, the term “Command and Control” seems to be copping a bit these days.

Hope is NOT a method statement

Whether it's on combat operations in Afghanistan or managing multi-million dollar projects there's one word that my team have learned not to use when they're briefing me on their planned course of action.

The most important thing I learned in the military

A question from an audience member at a recent speaking engagement really got me thinking. He simply asked me "what's the most important thing you learnt in the Army that transfers to your corporate life?"

Sure, we got to do lots of cool stuff like jump out of airplanes and abseil out of helicopters but as transferrable skills goes, they’ve got to be fairly low on the list of things I’d ever put on my resume.