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Today's guest is a journalist and an award winning author. He's written about the IRA's written about the Dutch card and his most recent book is called First Casualty, the untold story of the CIA secret mission to avenge nine hundred and eleven. I always believe that there's so many lessons to be learned from special forces and intelligence that can be applied within the business rold and even within our our daily lives. In this conversation, toby and I explore the some of those topics, both from the team itself, from the story itself, but also how he works as a journalist and how he works as an author and the lessons learned throughout these years. Please welcome toby harden. He's a friend we've many years ago we wrote our bicycles across Finland over to Sweden with a couple of other friends. He's a gentleman and a scholar. Please welcome toby. You're listening to see sweet blueprint, the show for sea sweet leaders. Here we discussed nobs, approaches to organizational readiness and digital transformation. Let's start the show. Hey Toby, thanks for joining me. Hey, gretes, me with you, George, so you've been in very dangerous situations. I'm curious, did you feel that you are in more danger and better in the Middle East or when we were bicycling across Finland and Sweden? Well, sometimes, in those sort of lonely moments when I was at the back of the bottom of a big hill and louise he's huge Scandinavian trucks heading schools me, it did feel a bit Harry. But you know, probably a rock and Afghanistan it's a yeah, I should say so, although we did ever bike stolen in Stockholm, if you're remember so, there was there was a bit hairy. So I wanted to talk a bit about your book. I think, I always think, that there's so many lessons at the business world can learn from special forces and, to be honest, just us as humans, and I want to learn a bit about your process. But I figured made me one interesting place to start would be in researching your book, first casualty and writing it. Did it change anything about you in the way that you approach relationships or life or problems? Is there anything that like fundamentally changed as you went through that process? I'm sure it did. I mean at the core of this story. There are sort of eight men from CIA team outfit who was paramilitaries but also case officers, linguists, and there was a medic and there was a green bret. And then alongside them at the beginning was ODA five, night five, who were twelve green berets led by captain of different specialisms, weapons, intelligence, medics, cons and so they were two teams of sort of incredible variety of very sort of high functioning people who were older than that's the average, certainly military person in Afghanistan. In the CIA some of them were in their late fort s. That sort of median was probably a late s. So there's hope for some of US old guys exactly. Yeah, but not quite for me now. But they would just sort of incredible people. And so you know the stereotypes about the military and even about the CIA. But what really struck me and I think really affected me was... |
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...how different people can be and and what different skill sets they can have, yet they can still all point in the direct same direction, they can compliment each other and work towards a common name. And in fact that variety of people means that these sorts of teams that are going into a very unfamiliar situations, can adapt and improvise. So I think I learned a lot about that. I was really impressed by the diversity of background. I think one of the guys he had like an archeology background, and there's just a such a mix and I feel like sometimes in business we can we're looking for this finally tuned, you know, has the exact right background that we think, but you get such pleasant surprises by these people with philosophy backgrounds and you know, it could be anything really it's a diversity of thought that they bring to the table that I think brings so much value. Yeah, absolutely. I mean I guess I expect some Mike Span who's the you know, the first casualty in combat after nine hundred and eleven, was former Marine Corps officer who was very much, I feel like, in a way, the sort of the personification of America after a one hundred and eleven. You know, with us or against us, black and white, let's, you know, go kill the bad guys, let's take care of business. You know, he was a much more sort of nuanced person than that. And I think if you know, if he leaves thirty two and he was killed, if he lived, he probably would have developed into a very fine, very senior CIF sort of languages, would have become a sort of case officer, a traditional spy. But you know, alongside Mike Span, you know David Tyson, who was with him when we with Ma Span, when he was killed on November twenty thousand and one and had to shoot himself out of an al Qaida uprising inside inside a dusty fort. I mean he spent four years living in Central Asia. He was a former academic, he was a Polyglot, new all these Central Asian languages. He was so close to going native at one point that he didn't own a pair of shoes. He had certain the military, but he was sort of the least militarily experienced of the aid of them. And yet, when it came down to it, he was the guy who was faced with this sort of kill or be killed situation and and he survived. He killed several dozen al Qaida guys getting out of there. So it also this also taught me a lot about you know, somebody you know. If you met David you know in the giant or food lion or whatever, you know, you wouldn't give them a second thought. You know, completely sort of unassuming guy and even if you even if you started talking to him, he doesn't he doesn't come across as you know, sort of navy seal, elite warrior type. Yet the core, his inner core was, when the moment presented itself, he stepped up and and and he did what he had to do. So it's also you see the picture of the team Alpha guys in in Kto and his Bakistan, before they were flying and standing outside a Black Hawk helicopter and lots of jokes which they all enjoy about, you know, the like Dad's on a fishing trip or you know, you know, middle aged guys going camping and they were I mean they didn't have any didn't have body armor, helmets anddn't have any military gear. So they got stuff from Uri, you know, are had some pretty good business in northern... |
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Virginia. Two Thousand and one or just sort of camping stuff that they had in their in their closets and, you know, so very up, very unlike sort of you know, what came to be later on in these walls with, you know, some sleeve tattoos and sunglasses and cool gear and you know, very sort of slick equipment. They didn't have any of that, but you know, they were successful and they got the job done. To mesing what's possible when you just put together the rate, the rape, collection and mixture of people into a team. You know, one thing I'm really curious about, Toby, is your first book banded country. You're with it, the IRA second bookers of the Welsh guard and now now this one with CIA and special forces a. You seem to have a knack to get folks to trust to you. That are probably if I made a top ten list of people who don't earn trust easily or don't don't grant trust easily, it would be those folks. Like I'm curious, you know, what is your prices is, how do you go about like getting into their world deeply so quickly and earning trust so quickly? Well, yeah, I mean I fooled about this a lot. It's not a trick, that's not a formula and I think what happens is over time, over your entire life, you and your sort of career, you know, you're at this point of you're the sum of all these different experiences. I think, having been in the military myself so it's in the Royal Navy in the UK for nearly ten years. So I joined in eighty five and left in ninety four and in the middle of that had a scholarship through college paid for by the Navy. I think the time I spent in Iraq and Afghanistan sort of in bed as an embedded reporter and as a sort of unilateral reporter, the time I spent in Northern Ireland. I think. You know, I'm not a you know I'm fifty six years old now. You know I've had quite a few experiences. I've had sex setbacks in my life that I've sort of overcome and I feel that, you know, when you're meeting somebody for the first time, you sort of bring all that to the table. And then also, I think what I've learned to do increasingly as I've got older, is I've learned to listen and yes, sort of asked questions, but to let it play out, let people talk about what they want to talk about often and a huge aid for me in this has been ai transcription. So I use I use otter and there are there are other APPs. But for the first two books of the first book band the country is ninety nine. The second book was Dead Memories and was two thousand and eleven, and then this one was two thousand and twenty one. And so for the first two I was working off while the first one I was working off physical c ninety tapes. So you have to rewinding it. And the second one was, you know, US big audio files, you know, via USB. But both times I had to get them transcribed, and so either do it myself, which is incredibly time consuming, or I'd subcontracted out. I pay people, I mean in with dead men. Risen had lots of sort of mostly you know, older ladies in Britain doing for me because they had to transcribe make mainly British accents and it was very time to see. It cost me a lot of money. |
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But now I can do with this. With first casualty. I can do, you know, for five hour interviews. It can we can go off on a tangent for an hour and it's fine because I just plug it in and aster all do eighteen ninety percent accurate transcription. And so what I've also found is that these tangents, they may seem irrelevant, and often they are, but that's fine. But they can they can lead to really interesting places and really interesting material that I didn't expect. And I also think that it's just kind of good manners and polite and puts people at ease if you if you're not seem to be just trying to get something from them, like a particular thing, like you're fixated. I just want to tell you about this. You're a sniper. I'm only interested in how many people you killed, for instance. And I've I've, you know, worked in sort of team situations with journalists. I'm generally have tried to avoid them, but sometimes I've been doing a joint interview and I find it unbelievable the way some Jos could just interrupt people, how route they can be, how sort of cut people off, how they can, you know, do the opposite of building a rapports, actually alienate people. Why is the bar said so low? It's such a bummer that the bus said so low. I love chasing the tangent. Say I find, and I should probably pass here for a second and say I'm drying many parallels between business world and in Special Forces and what these folks do, but I'm by no way saying that we're anywhere related. To what these heroes to putting their lives online. I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned. I feel same way as a journalist. I mean, yeah, I've been in some dangerous situations and stuff, but but nothing compared to, you know, special forces or special operators or CIA paramilitaries over the last twenty years. Yeah, and one thing I was really and because I do find myself in that situation, and when we're going in as consultants, you're a fresh shit. You in your talking these folks. You might get them to open up to you and sometimes, if you just give enough space, they find that they'll just they just start to to say more and more and more until you eventually get, you know, after a while, to the real, real, deep human stuff and all the maybe pain that they've experienced in their their job. And that's that only happens if you meander for a while and you're come comfortable meandering for a while. Yeah, I mean as a journalist, when you're out in a place there's a big you get a lot of sort of q doss I guess, or credit for shared experience. Like you're there, you know, you put yourself in harm's way, the same as the soldier. And when you're in situation. I mean I certainly found this when you when people are in a situation where they might die, then I mean anybody might die the next day, but you know it's a real possible, strong possibility they might dine in then in the next day or but all the next few weeks. You know, people talk about things they don't usually talk about. And also a bit like if you're sort of the chaplain or you're also, I don't know, some contractor. As a journalist you're an outsider, you're not in the chain of command, and so there is a sort of confessional aspect to it sometimes where people will just sort of open up to you because you're sort of you know, you'll slightly to one side. You've got a slightly different perspective the safe space. I... |
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...find that as well. The other trend that I saw, and in your booking in this story in general, was this constant kind of bucking of the slow moving machine or the bucking of the bureaucracy. At one of the story I like, I was really drawn to, is just that September thirteen presentation where, you know, the the more conventional generals were saying, you know that we're going to take several months to even come up with a plan, Blahbah, Blah. But then the you know, the WHO was it with the CTC was saying, Oh, K of luck, yeah, we have our plan, we're ready to go, we're ready to go right now, and that in itself just it seemed to give that confidence to say, okay, you guys, you guys are run with this. Yeah, I was just curious your observations of that, because there's there's a balance between, you know, flying off half cocked versus already being prepared and being nimble and being able to move, and it's so relevant to what's happening over the past couple years. I was curious here observations as you dug into those areas. Yeah, I mean I vividly remembered on eleven I was in Washington DC, and I know you do as well. I mean the was this sense of urgency that we can't just wait, you know, we have to get ahead of this because if we just white we'll be another attack and we you know, we didn't. There was a sense of I remember on the night of November, September, the eleven do a hobby's on the corner of Washington DC streets and it's like it's the next attacking me tomorrow? Is it going to be next week? So there was this sort of real urgency and the CIA's small organization with these small teams of people who just get things done, will work it out on the ground and Bush went for it and it was incredibly successful in those early months and we will be forget now that Taliban was toppled and most of our Kaider was expelled from Afghanistan in in a matter of, you know, a couple of months and the secredible authority delegated. So I mean these you know, Jr Seeger, who was the so gie, was a ges fifteen at the time, so kind of a kernel equivalent in military terms. He was team oil for chief, but I mean he was making sort of tactical decisions, but decisions with strategic consequences, just on his own. Now it changed. I mean it was very sort of flat, devolved structure at that time and that was not the story of the rest of the war. But yeah, I mean it was. It was fascinating to me how kind of liberated these guys felt because they were able to make their own decisions and obviously, you know, sometimes they weren't the right decisions with hindsight or you know, mistakes were made, but also there was an incredible amount done that couldn't have been done if they'd had to have had authority from sort of three levels higher than them. Yeah, you're at least moving in the general direction of doing something rather than just sitting around thinking about it. I also was as amused day wrote about how rums felt was kind of lambassing as generals for not having in any imagination or creativity as they were coming up with plans and and you know, I in my world I always get frustrated any time there's a new leap in technology I find that there's still few people. They... |
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...just keep taking the same thing that they had before and then applying it to the new technology rather than reimagining and kind of re envisioning what what can be done. And I know I was serious. You know, what did you see in this team that they gave them the ability to just constantly reimagine and think differently on their feet. I think a lot of experience from different realm so I mentioned at academia, who was a marine. The deputy chief. Alexandez was sergeant major who'd been twenty plus year career in special forces, ended up on as special mission unit. Jr seeger had worked with the Mujadine against the Russians in the S, and so they all brought different things to the table. There was no I mean jail was definitely the chief and Alex was definitely the number two, but it was very much a sort of consensus model. I mean there was some tension, not not very much, and almost entirely sort of creative. The other thing was these people were used to they were used to risk and they were comfortable with risk and they knew on some level that, you know, some or all of them might die, and indeed Mike Span did. They were also ready to sort of operate individually or in in smaller units and eight. In fact, they're very rarely operated as it they they usually tended to operate in threes or even twos sometimes, and so I think it was just that sort of flexibility. I mean they also they knew the two of them, David and Jay An, knew the languages and new the culture. But they will ready to not look at look for problems, but look for solutions and not so we can't do this. We have to do it. We're going to find a way to do it. It's interesting because in larage ory decitions, consensus driven decisions is almost become a bad word because it can set things to a hulp. But there one point that you said in that team is they all have a shared level of risk that they're willing to take on. You know, I think a lot of times when you're trying to get consensus within a group of you get varying levels, especially very large varying levels of risk tolerance. That's when it the consensus decision just grinds to a halt right because you just can't get any agreement right. And I found that as a journalist. So as a journalist, say you laterally, in a rack, for instance, I'm tend you tend to find one or two other people who you can sort of operate with and they so they generally speaking, the tense of you don't want them to be competitors. So you don't want to be working for the Telegraph along with The Times of London unless you really have to, because then you just you produce the same thing. But you want so you want people who who can sort of offset your tendency. So I have a tendency, or I certainly had a little bit, to be, I would say reckless, but to sometimes dismiss things that were signs of danger. Somebody call that reckless. Maybe, maybe,... |
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...but I'd have a tendency to be like, you know, it's probably going to be okay, and so I want somebody who was a little bit more cautious than me, but not significantly more, because if it's significantly more than in this you know you want to go do sot. I wanted to go do stuff and I but but it was useful to me to have somebody who maybe would just say, Hey, let's just take it. You know, I want to do it, but let's just take a step back in and let's work it out. And then there's also just you know, some people are good at technology, some people are good at map reading, and so I would sort of seek out people that I was in the same bracket ass but could maybe help me with some of the things that I knew were potential weaknesses. And presumably with some other people they might have thought, well, you know, he's prepared to go do stuff and he's not completely reckless and maybe he'll push me to the edge of my comfort zone and that and that will be good. So that was very important and I mean I thought about this a lot with when people were getting captured and beheaded by Isis, because I remember one particular sort of pairing and I thought that that's just terrible pairing. Like those two guys were both incredibly reckless and they were encourage they will probably in a recklessness arms race when they were operating together, and that's what you really really don't want. So yeah, but it's very important to sort of choose who you sort of operate within those environments. Yeah, there's a gap between just balancing you out versus I either dragging you down or throwing you into the depths of now, I suppose. Oh, I mean I remember occasions when I mean the huge teams, you know, group situations, which I generally didn't like, you know, and remember not draft in two thousand and four and you know, there were too many people. So there's too much of a range of sort of risk tolerance and so literally, you know, I remember one occasion when to just six people got into a vehicle and then one person in the middle suddenly just didn't feel comfortable with it and wasn't going to go and we all had to get out and they got they got out and stayed and it was just it was just crazy and I was just like, I just want to at this point. I just want to walk and go and do it. You know, it's funny. I like, I always like to bring those stories back to just normal day to day stuff. I think it anyone can relate if you've ever been maybe on vacation or hanging out with like more than eight people, maybe it's family or friends. You're in a ski house, Your your whatever, and you're just trying to decide where to go to dinner and you can't. So at some point you just have to say, I'm going. We're probably going to go to one of three places. If you guys want to come with me, that's great. If you don't, like we're gonna WE'RE gonna go get dinner somewhere. Otherwise it would never even happen. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, you know, just, yeah, very much day today. WHO's prepared to drive in the snow, you know, and who just wants to stay at home? You see, with covid and and risk tolerances and behaviors. So yeah, it's just it's just a part of life. And so team Outfa it seemed like such a great recipe of a team. Do you have any insight on like what was that? What was that formulation process of assembling that team? Well, so it's interesting. So I mean I think so. You know Kof for black, who is the chairman of the can terrorism center,... |
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...who's a very sort of you know, interview him for the book and he lives pretty near to me and so I see him occasionally. You know, kind of a storied career as a spy in Africa, you know, chasing Carlos the Jackal. He was targeted by bin Laden himself and very kind of theatrical and he was the one who said to Bush, you know, when this is over, there are going to be flies walking across their iballs. So Ko for black and then his deputy hand Crompton, who was the station chief in Canberra who just arrived in Australia and got turn around after eleven and and hand Crumpton sort of ran the wars of the day to day. They chose the teams and so the early teens, I think they look they look very carefully at the sort of balance of personality. So the first team to go in was jaw breaker, which went into the Pancheer Valley, I think September twenty six. That was sort of in friendly territory, Northern Alliance Control Territory, and they chose Gary Shrone, who was like a lieutenant general equivalent in the CIA, very senior guy, sixty years old, was in the process of retiring, and that they were sort of older, more experienced hands with team alpha. I think they knew they were the foot their first team behind enemy lines. So military experience was very important. But you know, I think they thought about it very carefully, and I mean the balance between Jr and ars Anandez, for instance. So jail was a few years younger. He'd been an officer in a second airborne ranger qualified. Alex was the classic NCO. So he you know, he's going to make he's going to force the rules, he's going to make sure he's going to his thing was like, let's not do stupid stuff, and then he modified to that let's not do very stupid stuff. But he was the one security, safety and but jr was the person with sort of the vision and the language and the knowledge of the tribes. But you know, as every as you will know in a sort of military context, the senior officer of the team leader will often defer or certainly listen, certainly listen to the greater experience and sort of military prowess of the senior NCO. I mean it's just a classic relationship and that's how the and that's how that was the sort of the heart of the team. And then you have sort of David Tyson, who's a little bit of an outlier because forty years older the time, relatively new into the CIA, the sort of academic background, less military, but this very deep sort of bond with the Afghans. And I mean I've heard, you know, this was a team that I focused on, but I've heard of sort of some tension and some teams where the dynamics just didn't work later on, that they were sort of more thrown together, but with this team it was sort of almost seamless and I don't think that was by accident. I'm always blown away. You know, there's a classic good base here. You know you want to make sure you put the right people in the rate seats and I'm always blown away at how simple that sounds but how incredibly difficult that is to actually make happen. Yeah, I mean if you if you'd have the I mean if one of those eight had been just just a bad fit the whole thing and would have been very different. That's interesting. Yeah, just like... |
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...one tiny little bit off right and it's effective, a better flying wing. You talked to how they had a shared kind of alignment on the risk level or risk tolerance. Talked about how you are kind of innately how some Mi may or may not call reckless or where when you were younger. One thing that's common within these folks and yourself, quite honestly, is being comfortable, or maybe not comfortable, of being able to live in a world of unexpectedness. And I'm curious, you know, with these folks and other folks that you've interviewed and just your observations of life, how much of that do you think is just in your you know, born into you as your ability to be comfortable and unexpectedness, versus being able to learn that skill or be able to adapt to it, because I feel in ever changing times it's a skill set that more and more people need to learn. Yeah, well, I think it's I think it's both. Certainly from my perspective, you know, I'm fourth generation military. I had a great grandfather that escaped from it, was captured in France in nine fourteen, escaped and Pod we camp in German in one thousand nine hundred and sixtteen. I grew up with my grandfather from, you know, World War to show these medals and talking about, you know, his experiences and talking about his regiments experiences, rocks drift, which was part of the movie Zulu. And I also grew up in Manchester in the northwest of England, sort of grim industrial city, sort of like the Detroit of England or something, and so I always wanted to get out and it just felt oppressive and insula and this is a very common kind of feeling, I think. When he talked to people who join the military, in fact of speaking to a guy yesterday who was in Vietnam, African American living in segregated South Carolina, and he just talked to me about, you know, in you know, one thousand nine hundred and fifty seven, sitting on his stoop just dreaming of getting out of South Carolina, getting out of the United States, going to Africa, going to Asia and and and that's what he spent his life doing and that's that was sort of something in him. I think it is also something you learn, and so I had twice when I was a kid. When I was nine we moved from the south of England to the north of England, so my accent was very different. I kept on getting caught Parti and had a lot lots of fights. Then then moved from into sort of central Manchester when I was fourteen, and so both times I had this experience of going into a new school and taking a deep breath and thinking like, okay, so it's going to be tough week or two, but I need to it's going to be fine, you know, and I need to identify, you know, who's gonna be an ally, who to avoid, and you just sort of work it out and you know, it was in some time. In some ways it was a sort of daunted both of those things were daunting experiences and I mv people who have lived in the same place throughout their life, throughout their childhood, and no, you know, no kids from when they were four to when they were eighteen. And I sort of I didn't have that but, you know, on another, another level, it definitely teach it. I think it definitely taught me a lot of skills adapting and also is kind of exhilarating as well. It's just like a completely new start, like so that image I had before or, you know, those kind of difficult relationships or whatever those are in... |
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...the person, now I can. I can just sort of start again and I found us an you know, as a naval officer, when you join a new ship, you know two hundred and fifty people. You maybe know two or three and you eventually get to know all of them and you have to sort of make your mark and and find your way. And you know, people often sort of say, oh, I must be really different going from the military to journalism, and in some ways yes, but in many ways not, you know, because as a journalist, you know you're always going into unfamiliar situations. You always got like a WHO's this guy? You know, do can we trust him? Is He an idiot? You know, is he going to get US killed? Is He's going to be arrogant? And and you have to have to find the people who are going to be helpful avoid the people who just don't want you to be there and it's just going to sort of stop you doing things. And so, you know, I think you know, my background and those childhood experiences sort of have helped me in going into one unfamiliar situations, you know, as an adult. The interesting common thread through all those is that that that that ability to embrace ever changing environments happens because of necessity. And you know, you know now we're at a time where technology is ever changing, society is quickly evolving or devolving who, depending on who you talk to, and there's a lot of folks, I think, that are you know, you know in business, in life, that are saying, Hey, I'm not used to things changing this quickly and I'm uncomfortable. And I guess part of me was hoping like Hey, can he can these people kind of get in the emotional gym and work out and prepare for that? Or is it just, you know, once they once they face it, it's just going to become necessary. It's some pointantly that you'll you'll find that it's not as hard as it is when you actually face the uncertainty. Yeah, I mean it's both of those things. I mean, I think you know, I've two kids who now both teenagers and you know, live in northern Virginia, and you want to push them. I want to sort of push them to take risks the tough streets of Northern Virginia. Yeah, exactly. You know, don't just go with the flow, don't just believe something because that's what everyone is saying and you know, it's the world we live in now. It's sort of harder to do that, but at the same time there's incredible opportunities to extend yourself. So, you know, I mean I think there such pressure now to sort of conform, to not say anything that maybe sort of different or a risk, to sort of keep within kind of ever narrowing sort of tracts of what sort of acceptable opinion. And so I think the people who, while obviously being sensitive to societal change and and and people's comfort levels and you know, you have to sort of navigate all that, but the people who can, who can do that, I can also say, you know, what I think everyone else is is maybe wrong on this. I'm going to try something different. Those people are going to be, you know, the leaders and success stories of the future, bravery in imagination. Trump's are, I all the time. So we did a little bit about vice brother as a... |
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...vase for your children. One thing I always like to end on is in your life, what's the best device you've ever received? Okay, so a couple of things. My father died just two years ago and there's a couple of things. And you know, we had a relationship that was ended up being very good, but it certainly had it it's ups and downs and I think we sort of in some ways. We sort of clash sometimes because we were quite similar. But he taught me, you know, a number of things when I was a kid. In two things sort of stand out. One was if the things were doing, it's worth doing properly, you know, and he is to really get on my nerves, as you know. I sort of bring the wood in or whatever and I hadn't quite brought in enough would or I hadn't stacked it properly, or you know, I just kind of I just kind of thought, well, that's that's good enough. And so for him, if things were doing is we're doing it properly, and that has that has stuck with me. So go the extra mile, you know, talk to the extra person just to check that that's correct. You know, don't think I will that. You know, I take the box by doing that interview. Know, what did you find out for it from it? Can you could you go back? Did you really get to what that person, that sort of essence that person or everything that person has to offer? So that and the other thing which has sort of been cited against me sometimes, but it's he said to me, rules for the guidance of Wise Men and the obedience of fools, and so that's been thrown back at me sometimes. I Oh, you just don't believe in rules, you know, you just, you know, you just the rebel and you just you know, you you don't care about rules. No, it didn't mean that and we my dad had a you know, explained it to me and he seen and I remember we were in this little sort of village in Wales, and he said that if there was a sit were top of a hill, he said, if there was a sign there that said no prams beyond this point, and then you saw a mother trip up and the Pram with a baby in it started rolling down the hill, would you look at the sign and say, Oh, no, prams be are beyond that point? You know they've broken a rule. I'm not going to. I'm not going to run a catch that Pram because then I'll be with a pram beyond the sign where prams aren't allowed. And he was like, now, of course you wouldn't, you'd run after the Pram. It doesn't mean you're dismissing the rule or you're ignoring it, but you can take it into account. But there are other circumstances that override it. And I you know, I think it was a pretty, pretty good lesson and I took it hard. You know, as a journalist often you're told no, you can't do this, no, and if every time you told no, you don't do it, then you're never going to do anything. Or you're not allowed this visa because you know you have to apply two weeks in advance. Well, I want the visa anyway, or I'm you know, I'm in a country where I can maybe give a gift of, you know, to Benjamin's, to the customs officer and he's going to let me across the board it. So I'm breaking and breaking a rule, you know, and you know I've obviously talking to CIA people who break rules all all the time, while also adhering to a kind of a an ethical code. So anyway. So that's that's something that really stuck stuck with me. Yes, be aware of rules and don't just recklessly ignore them, but adhands of them judiciously, because through there are... |
| 00:33:01 - 00:00:00 |
...times when you need to break the rules. Those are great, I know. I wish I could rewind time and not be annoyed with my parents when they gave me advice like that. Right me too. Well, tell me first. Casually is a fantastic read. I encourage all out there to buy and read it and recommend it. It's a great story for many reasons. Human reasons, history reasons, you know, strategy, you name it, it's it really covers all the bases. Thanks so much for being here, Toby. Well, thanks very much, by the way. I think your box are still known, but I still got my bike. Oh, you did from that two thousand and five trips in the garage. Should get out and use a little bit more. Nice. Great scene to toby. All right. backwise, technology should serve vision, not set it at intivity. We design clear blueprints for organizational readiness and digital transformation that allow companies to chart new past. Then we drive the implementation of those plans with our client partners in service of growth. Find out more at wwwe that INTEVITYCOM you've been listening to see sweet blueprint. If you like what you've heard, be sure to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcast to make sure you never miss a new episode. And why you're there. We'd love it if you could leave a rating. Just give us however many stars you think you deserve. Until next time. |
