“Because I Can… is about: ‘How do I find a way to make something work?’ ‘How do I be a part of the solution?'”
Do you make a difference? Or do you make excuses?
Tim Bradshaw has done many remarkable things in his life, from military training to endurance events, and when I spoke to him he had just returned from a relief mission to Ukraine.
He’s simply living out his mantra: #BecauseICan. And it turns out that writing a book was the adventure that took him further out of his comfort zone than any that had gone before…
Ready to be challenged?
Tim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-bradshaw/
Tim on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TimBecauseICan
Alison on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bookstothesky
WriteBrained: A 28-day exploratory writing adventure: https://pi-q.learnworlds.com/course?courseid=writebrainedcourse
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge April 2022: https://alisonjones.leadpages.co/proposal-challenge/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
The Extraordinary Business Book Club bookshop: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/extraordinarybusinessbooks
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Tim Bradshaw, who attended the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst aged just 19 – his first job was to lead 37 soldiers. Since then he’s served as a surveillance and target acquisition patrol soldier and covert human intelligence officer. In 2015 he attempted to climb Mount Everest to persuade mental health suffers to ask for help. And he has since completed many physical endurance challenges.
He’s now a Director of Sandstone Communications, an international leadership and team building consultancy, and the author of a new book, Because I Can: The robust guide to being effective.
So first of all, welcome to the show, Tim. It’s great to have you here.
Tim Bradshaw: Thanks Alison, nice to see you.
Alison Jones: Really good to see you. And we’re going to start with that title because it’s just so great. And it’s more than just a title, isn’t it? It’s a way of life. Tell us about it.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes. Yes I mean, I think arguably the title came last to be completely honest with you. For me, it’s about being part of your own solution. And I think even before the recent events, both obviously Ukraine right now, but also in the et cetera, for me it was always about finding a way to make something happen. the fact that you don’t always, although I’d seem to fall for them, you don’t always need an amazing cause to make it happen. But sometimes you just need to do the right thing and you need to focus on being a part of your own solution. And the Because I Can thing is :Okay, what can I do? How can I be a part of this? What can I do? And I think certainly over the last few years, we’ve had lots of rhetoric around ‘this won’t work’ and ‘that won’t work’. And ‘we shouldn’t have done that’ and ‘we shouldn’t have done this’, and that Because I Can thing is the opposite to that. It’s about: ‘how do I find a way to make something work?’ ‘How do I be a part of the solution?’
Alison Jones: It’s about agency, isn’t it, which is one of the actual, the biggest contributors to positive mental health. Just that sense that you can make a difference in your own life.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, absolutely. I think it’s just about, it’s amazing what you can achieve. So as you well know, the reason I’m looking tired is because I’ve just literally got back from Ukraine.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Tim Bradshaw: And you know, it’s our second mission out there and it’s amazing what you can achieve when everybody’s focused on what we can do. Our little team of people, was never any sort of doubt as to what we were going to do. We were going to take aid and we were going to deliver it to the right place.
When everybody’s focused on the outcome like that, is then amazing what you can actually achieve. Rather than focusing on, well, that won’t work because, and this won’t work because as you say, a total shift, and we have this sort of thing about reassurance and direction. So you don’t need to be a Spartan leader. Reassure people, let people know, ‘Hey, we’ve got this and I’m a bit nervous too, and I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, but we’re going to sort it out together. But here’s some direction, go and do this, make this happen, make that happen. Be a part of this.’ So then we all sort of start to think, feel like we’re part of the solution.
So it’s super powerful if you can that.
Alison Jones: Well, let’s talk about your trip to Ukraine because it is such a great kind of object lesson in exactly what you’re talking about here. So just give us a little bit of background and context, and also some of the things that you were up against as you did it, and yes let’s just hear the story.
Tim Bradshaw: Well, yes, I mean, for a start, I’ve had an enormous amount of mickey taken because we’ve got our first batch of books arrived so that the guys for three days in either direction have been referring to various chapters and reading the book out loud, which is, I’m over it now to be completely honest.
But none the less, no, it was exactly that. I think we were, I was sitting watching the news, like everybody else was, and I just thought to myself, you know, this is kind of not OK. And there’s relatively little politics involved, actually, these people have had this situation forced upon themselves.
And I just thought, you know what? I know a group of people, I’ve got access to another group of people, of whom are super capable and willing. we can do some good and therefore we should do some good. And that’s kind of where it started. I think within a few hours there was eight of us around our kitchen table, literally focusing on what we could do. But as you well know, my other kind of mantra is intelligence not information, and particularly around these whole situations are flooded with background intelligence, and you’ve got to filter that out and work out what’s real.
So, we knew we wanted to deliver aid, the first question is what aid? What do people need? And actually there’s two, almost two separate situations, going on in Ukraine at the moment. I say this as somebody, as you’re aware, I just got back from there. And on the one hand, you’ve got the kind of refugee situation going on, which is obviously desperate and it’s awful, but those people are moving towards.. You know, they’ve come across the Polish border. Poland is actually, it’s a pretty cool country actually. I’ve been super, super impressed in the time we’ve spent out there.
It’s a horrible situation for them to be in and I can’t imagine what it must feel like to think I don’t know I’m going to stay tonight as you go forward, but they are actually moving towards safety.
Then there’s a whole situation going on inside Ukraine itself and that’s a whole other story. There’s obviously the constant shelling and attacks from Russia the further east you go, and then as you come west, Poland’s been amazing, I’ve lost track a little bit so forgive me the geeks amongst you, but I think they’re up to three or four million refugees, but even that is not close to the number that are still in Ukraine but have come west obviously. And they’re in towns like Lviv which is where we were last week. And now those people have nothing or very little because they’re losing power, losing water, et cetera. So we figured that if we’ve got the ability to do that, then that’s what we need to do. So next thing is, who do you talk to?
Well, as you alluded to there, my background’s an Intelligence Officer. So what we did is we set up a series of contacts inside Ukraine, then we did our very best to confirm those contacts. It can’t always be perfect, but you focus on what you can do and do the best job that you can. And we set up those links kind of intelligence out as to what was really needed, what was going to make a difference to those people there and then.
And in fact, it turns out that kind of sleeping bags and we were using this kind of boil in the bag rations you know, any old soldiers listening or certainly any camping fanatics, the kind of Wayfayrer rations et cetera, because there’s four or..
Alison Jones: The dehydrated stuff?
Tim Bradshaw: Yes and the wet stuff because there’s 400 or 500 calories in it, you can eat it cold.
Alison Jones: Okay.
Tim Bradshaw: It’s not brilliant cold. But you can eat it cold, warm it all up and away you go. So we thought that’s… and I think also on what we could do, what we could get hold of. So our racing team and the other bits and pieces, we’ve got some amazing contacts with Vango and various other sponsors. So we link that together.
And then two of our other clients, Chevron and Gardner have offices across Germany and even into Poland. Again, we were able to build this network to get the right amount of stuff to the right place. Which ironically is pretty much what the book is all about. It’s working it out and then and get it…
I promise I haven’t actually had nothing to do the invasion of Ukraine.
Alison Jones: That’d be a heck of a publicity stunt, wouldn’t it.
Tim Bradshaw: So that’s literally what we did. And we made that happen the first time. And you know, in the book we talk about OODA loop and constantly evaluating what’s going on. having then been on the ground, we thought okay we can do better next time. We can make this a bit slicker. We can make that a bit more efficient. We thought this was going to be good, but actually wasn’t brilliant. And we can definitely do this, we keep evolving. We’ve just gone again and my garage is now full of the ready to go for the third run.
Alison Jones: Amazing. It’s a real, as I say, object lesson in how you take a principle, a mindset and apply it to real life. And suddenly the robust guide to being effective makes all kinds of sense, because this is not theory. This is how it works.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, my pet hate is process. I know people, you know, all the accountants and lawyers that are listening and probably publishing companies as well, they all love a process, you know? My favourite example of this is you go for your coffee in the morning and you say, Hey, can I have a regular black coffee please?
And the first thing somebody says, is what’s your name. And if it’s before eight o’clock, that’s brave, I just want a coffee. I don’t want to be your friend, right. And then what I’ve said, a black coffee. The next question you’re asked is: is there milk in that as well? Then it’s not black, is it, you lunatic! But they’re following this process because there’s a tick box customer process guide.
And for me with people that doesn’t work. So if you can build a toolkit you can take all these skills and experiences from all over the place and you can put all of that together, you know, like a box and go right, this is the outcome we’re trying to achieve. Now this is the performance we want to achieve now, to the best of our ability, then actually, which tools are going to help me do that most.
And then kind of look for the skills and the intelligence rather than the, you know, the seven P’s or the five W’s or the four S’s or wherever else it is you want to talk about.
Alison Jones: Yes, brilliant. Because it’s a book podcast I do feel, I kind of want to talk to you just more about the expedition and everything, but I do feel an obligation to the listener to talk to you about writing the book as well, because what you just said, we’ve got the mindset, we’ve got how it looks in practice.
It’s really hard turning that experiential, in the moment, kind of response piece into a book.
I mean it’s always hard, but particularly with this kind of stuff, how did you do it?
Tim Bradshaw: Well, I think you’re absolutely right, then the massive irony of this whole thing is when you read the book and we talk about Mount Everest and we talk about selection for special duties and stuff, and people kind of go, wow, that’s really tough, isn’t it. I’m like: No, the furthest I’ve been outside of my comfort zone was putting this book together. Which people don’t believe me when I say that, it probably sounds like some sort of glib marketing line, but obviously you’ve lived that process with me. You know, I speak to the truth.
And I think what you’ve got to do is just have a go. To be frank, I did your little competition thing because I thought I’ve got nothing to lose and all I really…
Alison Jones: Just to be really clear here, the little competition thing is the 10 Day Business Book Proposal Challenge. Just wanted to get that in there, carry on
Tim Bradshaw: What I actually thought was, you know, it wasn’t, for me, it wasn’t a question of am I going to win this or anything stupid like that necessarily. It was more about, I’ll find out whether this kind of idea I’ve got, this thing I’ve got, would make any sense and anybody would sort of care. And I figured that if that was even vaguely positive and I was terrified actually, that people were just going to laugh at me, that was even vaguely positive then there was something in it. And that kind of ratified my ability to have a go. The funny thing is we talked about this before, Alison, but I spent most of my life kind of keynote speaking on stage and talking and weirdly that’s okay, because if you get it wrong, I can kind of come back at it. We can have a discussion about it. You have some banter around it if you need to.
Alison Jones: And you can see how it’s landing, can’t you, it’s in real time. You’re getting feedback.
Tim Bradshaw: Yeah, and face to face, and obviously the more speaking you do, the more you get to read the audience and understand what people are doing.
And suddenly I was writing this stuff down and reading it back to myself and going: this is awful. What am I doing? Or, that’s not what I mean, or that’s not… But, again, just had to have a go,
Alison Jones: Yeah.
Tim Bradshaw: You’ve got to have a go and then take it from there.
And then obviously we went through the process with you and I think it was probably the most terrifying when I got it back from the editor, or the proofread and there’s like red pen all over it. Like essentially just wanted to die, frankly. Just cause I felt like I was 14 years old again. I wasn’t very academic then let alone now.
But I think all of that, you understand that all of that is designed to help you get to the end of it. And then to say, when it was finally finished, that’s probably one of the biggest senses of achievement I’ve ever had. So, but you’ve just got to have a go, I think that’s the point.
You’ve just got to have a go.
Alison Jones: But, you know, for somebody who’s achieved so much, that’s quite something. That’s nice to hear. And I think for anybody listening, who’s thinking, well, I’m not a writer, I’m not a writer. I don’t…
Tim Bradshaw: I am definitely not a writer
Alison Jones: …exactly, just be really clear in case you weren’t. In a sense, it’s the having something to say, because that’s why we have development editors and copy editors and people like me, book coaches and so on. It’s so that you take the thing that you have, that people need to know about, and we can help you put it into a book.
And it’s, I mean, it’s like any thing that’s worth doing in life, isn’t it? You bring the skillsets together that you need.
Tim Bradshaw: Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well, when you start to get into it a bit more, and obviously working with you guys, you start to realize that you can have your own sort of thing, you know, and I think that there’s almost this impression sometimes got to be some sort of literary masterpiece, you know, and I sort of said, I don’t want this to be a literary masterpiece. That’s not me actually.
What I do want, I’d really like something that somebody could kind of pick up and if they just take one or two things out of it that they then do differently off the back of that, then as far as I’m concerned, that was doing. And we’ve had a few nice things said, so we’ve had one of your own editors said to me that she had rewritten her daughter’s UCAS university application form, having read one of our chapters. I was like, that’s brilliant.
That was exactly the sort of feedback I wanted, which was, this is not a literary masterpiece. It’s not my life story. It’s none of that. Here’s some stuff that I’ve learned and then kind of tested it in some fairly extreme circumstances. So therefore, I’m reasonably confident that it’s worked for me, maybe it could work for you and that’s what we wanted to do.
And I guess the takeaway from that is if you’re thinking about writing a book, because I kind of wasn’t, it can be whatever you want it to be, and it doesn’t need to be either a novel, a literary masterpiece or some academic sort of tome.
So yes.
Alison Jones: And as the author, Tim, isn’t that nice? Tim the author. What do you think it did for you as a person? Because obviously you have done so much experientially, you speak all over the place. It’s the first time you’ve written a book. What do you think you took out of it personally and professionally?
Tim Bradshaw: I think there’s this weird thing. I think personally it probably exorcised a few demons for me because I’ve always kind of stepped off… when I say anything academic, I kind of avoided, you know, I’m a big believer in doing the bits that you’re good at. And I knew that I could create the content for a book, but also knew that producing it, writing it, was going to be a massive challenge for me.
So I thought, let’s see if we can exorcise those demons, and I think the thing professionally, it’s really funny, it always makes me laugh and it’s kind of like LinkedIn, right? all of a sudden it kind of emphasizes or somehow legitimizes what you’ve done, which is weird because I get people sometimes say to me, I’ve been on your LinkedIn profile Tim and you really did do this, or you really did do that. I sort of go, well, I wrote that as well.
So if I was going to stand on stage and tell you something, it would probably say that in my LinkedIn profile as well wouldn’t it, written by me. But I think there’s this weird thing goes on where suddenly you put it into a book and somehow it’s kind of real, it’s kind of legitimate which is an odd…
…it’s an odd experience. It’s an odd feeling, I guess. I mean, I’ve a massive sigh of relief. Obviously those listening the book comes out next week, I think Monday.
Alison Jones: It does we’re speaking the week before it’s published yes.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, yes. Yes And I just got the first review back, which obviously one of your ,team Shell sent through to me. And actually they were able to take some sort of points out of it.
And I think, I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m well aware, not everybody’s going to like it. But to get that, again, it further legitimizes writing it down, if that makes sense.
Alison Jones: Yes, there’s something about writing it down that enables you to see it better as the author, I think, which is interesting, especially if it’s something that you talk about a lot. But writing it down forces you to a new level of clarity, doesn’t it? And it’s interesting as well, I think you alluded to this with the LinkedIn thing, just how interested people are when you’re writing a book. There’s something about it that still catches people’s imagination, isn’t there?
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, yes, and even, I mean, I was joking about the guys, one of the guys, Rabbie. Rabbie and I were on Everest together and we’ve just been out to Ukraine together and spent three days in the van. obviously he’s kind of in quite a lot of the stuff that we’ve written about in that book. But even he was like, that’s really interesting, I’ve never looked at it that way before. And that was even though he was actually there in a lot of those experiences, he was there with me.
And that was actually, that was quite, it was quite a fun experience and it produced some quite heartfelt conversations between him, all very positive, which is good.
Alison Jones: And I think almost that’s part of it. Remember that Kolb sort of learning cycle, you know, you do the thing and then you reflect on the thing and then you sort of do the thing again differently. I think so much of our life is doing and writing is almost kind of a way of carving out a bit of time for reflection, isn’t it? And it’s, it’s a really important part of making the experience next time better.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, yes, a hundred percent. And it kind of clarifies it as well because you you sort of bounce about, and suddenly you’re forced to write it and actually read it back. And it’s definitely cleaned up probably the way I think and speak as well in so much as… you know, nothing pornographic.
Well, what I mean by that is, you sort of think you’re being clear, you write it down and go: that makes no sense at all. It’s clear to me because I do this every day, but actually take that completely out of context, ask somebody to read a page and then watch their feedback and they go, I don’t get this and I don’t get that. And you suddenly think, don’t you get this, I do this every day and everybody gets it when I talk about it on stage. So that’s really interesting.
And that really focused me on stripping out the kind of waffle and what I didn’t know and make it make sense. So that was challenging, but also quite a satisfying thing to do.
Alison Jones: Yes, really interesting. And if there’s somebody listening who kind of this really resonates with, and they’re like, you know, I’m not one of life’s natural novelists, I’m not a natural writer, what would be your one best tip for them if they’re thinking about writing a book?
Tim Bradshaw: Firstly just have a go, you’ve got nothing to lose. You definitely haven’t written it yet. So therefore you lose nothing by having a go. So you’ve definitely got to have a go, but then I think the other thing is understand what your outcome is and work backwards.
Alison Jones: Now, this is a really key principle of the book. So just talk us through that a little bit. What do you mean by that?
Tim Bradshaw: So I knew as an example, that my life story on its own is not necessarily that interesting. And some of the stuff that I’ve of done and learned is interesting, but what makes it interesting is the fact that I’ve sort of put in different locations and different places.
I knew that I wasn’t academic. And as you know, I’ve got few friends that have written books and they’re significantly cleverer than I am. So they’re able to kind of back it up with, academic learning and all the rest of it that goes with that. So I knew that that wasn’t going to be sort of me either.
So I came up with this idea of like a user manual and anybody of a certain age will remember the Haynes Manual for cars. And my Mum actually, lives quite close to the Haynes museum and was this, for those of you that don’t know, essentially you could buy any bike or on the planet, and you could buy this book that went for that car and whatever you wanted to do on that car, this book somewhere some pictures and it told you how to change the brake pads or do whatever.
Alison Jones: I understand there’s a Haynes manual for babies, which I really like the sound of as well. I wish I’d known about that at the time, but anyway, there we go.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes so, right. So I kind of thought, could I produce something that was a bit of a Haynes manual, but also years ago I read a book on marketing and I can’t remember who wrote it, which is bad of me, but it’s called Sticky Learning. And it was about making stuff. And I thought, could I create a Haynes manual that was then illustrated with some of the places I’ve been in.
So it’s kind of: here’s a concept for you. And that concept worked for me here. So I guess to answer your question, it was: understand what you want to create. I wanted to create a user manual people would take out of it and they probably read it front to back. So would it be interesting enough to read front to back the first time, but then actually, as we were laughing with your colleague with her thing for a daughter with her UCAS, could you then sort of turn around, take it off the shelf and go, hang on a minute, that bloke wrote something about how to put this together. And that’s what I kind of wanted, almost a user manual or a reference guide rather than a… so to go back to your question, understand what you’re trying to achieve first.
Alison Jones: Yes
Tim Bradshaw: And then work it backwards and play to your strengths, I guess.
Alison Jones: And I think it’s really interesting because we talk a lot about focusing on the process, not the outcome in other contexts. And so it’s really interesting to hear that thing about actually, sometimes it’s not about the process, it’s about the outcome and particularly in unfamiliar, uncertain environments, the process might have to change. Your process might be all over the place and it’s going to be different time.
Tim Bradshaw: I think, you know, because I know we will talk about later, but I think, Cath Bishop is a friend of mine and sometimes people think that Cath and I talk at cross purposes and that’s actually not true. We’re in complete alignment because just a definition of outcome. when Cath talks about an outcome, she’ll say don’t focus on the gold medal, focus on your performance.
Alison Jones: Yes.
Tim Bradshaw: That is still focusing on the outcome. It’s just,
Alison Jones: It’s the best performance is the outcome. Yes.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes. And I think that’s sometimes where think we cross over yet ironically, Cath and I are in alignment. And for me it’s the same thing. So what we’re not saying, and if you would put this into rowing context, the boat race was the other weekend, wasn’t it, you know, what we’re not saying is follow the 10 step process to be the world’s best rower.
What we’re saying is increase the best performance that you can achieve,
Alison Jones: Yes.
Tim Bradshaw: Focus on that. How you or I get to that is up to us. So I think sometimes we sort of throw these definitions about and that’s it, isn’t it.
So for me, the outcome was create a user guide and a user manual. Do it that way around. So that’s what I mean by outcome. It’s what you are going to achieve.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. And I think having that vision of what you want to achieve is, it’s great because obviously that’s what you are focused on is what you’re going to achieve, but it’s also very motivating, isn’t it, knowing that this is what you are aiming for. It gives you a kind of vision, gives you energy in the long, slow stretches of writing the damn thing.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, and I think also you have to know it’s going to end. I know that sounds really weird. you know, I remember when you do selection for various military organizations, of the things they do is they take away all of the timings. So you’ll go for a run, but you will not know how far or how fast you’re going to run. You’ll get to bed at night and you don’t know if you’ll be in bed for one hour or 10 hours. I’ve got to tell you it’s very rarely 10 hours.
But that’s the point and the reason they do that actually, it’s not just to mess you about, but it’s because one of the fastest ways to put somebody under very real stress and pressure is to remove our rhythms and our systems. So actually when you go out with a rucksack on, off into the hills and you don’t know how long you’re going to go for, not for everybody, but for a lot of people that is incredibly stressful.
So when we worked with you, one of the best things I think me was we came up with the kind of content first, didn’t we? And I think I almost wrote the conclusion first, actually in some respects, but that was quite good because then when I through it, I had this sense of direction. I had this sense of purpose and it’s like, okay, I can’t, this is really bad I can’t remember how many chapters in my own book, but let’s say it was 10 chapters, whatever it was, I’ve done three of them I’ve started, right now I’ve done five of them. I’m nearly there. And that sense of direction…
Alison Jones: Yes
Tim Bradshaw: …definitely helped me.
Alison Jones: I think that the Table of Contents, I know I keep banging on about this, but having that Table of Contents, even if you change it along the way, it’s just everything because you’re right and also, you know, how long each chapter has got to be so you know, when you’re done.
If you’re still writing and you’re 4,000 words over, there’s a problem. And it’s good to know that sooner rather than later.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes because actually strangely, I then quite enjoy tweaking it. Having got it done I then quite enjoyed sort of, Oh, I could do that better. I could tweak this, tweak that or adding bits to it. Weirdly that was nothing like as stressful for me at all. So getting that Table of Contents, getting it down, getting it done.
And it was kind of right, tick VG, I’ve got a book, now it’s a question of kind of making it…
Alison Jones: …making it better. Brilliant, well you got about eight tips there people for your one, so that’s pretty good. And I’m going to ask you to recommend a business book. I’ve got, I think I may have a clue now, which one is going to be, but tell us, Tim, what book would you recommend people should read?
Tim Bradshaw: Well Cath’s a massive inspiration for me anyway, but I think The Long Win as a business book for me is really interesting. And I think there’s a lot of people at the moment guided by everybody else’s perception of what winning looks like.
Alison Jones: Yeah.
Tim Bradshaw: One of my big clients Gateley, a big law firm. And we did a session the other day called Making It Work. You know it’s about actually, what does being successful look like to you? What does a win look like to you? And that’s not to say you shouldn’t want to be an Olympian or you just want to jog along. It doesn’t matter.
But for me, that ability to help you redefine and therefore judge yourself by what you want to achieve, I think is quite important, whether that’s professionally, personally, or whatever.
I think that’s brilliant. So I mean, I love Cath for that. I mean, she’s spectacularly too clever and massively overachieving, and what’s more annoying is she’s really nice.
Alison Jones: I know. Mind you, I don’t think you’ve really got any scope for whinging about anybody over achieving Tim but anyway, carry on.
Tim Bradshaw: But no. So I think for me, I took a lot out of that. And then the other one actually is by a guy called David Marquet and it’s called Turn The Ship Around. And quickly for you, the guy was Commander of a nuclear submarine and he took a completely different approach the kind of standard hierarchical, military leadership, that is the US Navy.
One of the things I love about that is in my world where people want change, but they don’t really,
You know, people want to talk about business development, talk about leadership. But what they do is they go and find someone that used to do the same job they used to do, in the same way they used to do it and then expect something to change. And it doesn’t, and the relationships don’t change.
And I just kind of loved his idea that if you could take this much more holistic approach to leadership and you can give people ownership of leadership, make the whole thing much more kind of affiliative. But if you could do that on a nuclear submarine, then surely you can do that anywhere.
Alison Jones: It’s a brilliant, brilliant book. His Language is Leadership is absolutely brilliant as well. And the fact as you say that it’s born out of experience in those really extreme situations you know, it gives it real credibility. But it’s also, it’s incredibly readable.
Tim Bradshaw: Well, I spend all day in law firms, accountancy firms, retail with people saying, I like what you’re saying, Tim, but that won’t work here. And I’m just kind of if it works, on board a nuclear submarine, probably…
Alison Jones: You might find you’re not so different as you think. Yes.
Yes brilliant. And Tim, if people want to find out more about you, more about the aid missions, more about the book, where should they go?
Tim Bradshaw: I mean, depending on what context you want to go… if you’re kind of visual and a kind of light-hearted touch to what we’re all about, then obviously we’re on as me, as Tim Bradshaw. The same on Facebook. I communicate quite a lot on LinkedIn. I think I’m Timothy Bradshaw which is terribly formal.
Alison Jones: Yes. That’s very LinkedIn, isn’t it?
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, on LinkedIn, but I’m always really, really happy for people to get in touch. Our business is people and networks, that’s what we do. So anybody listening to this, I was going to say, if you want advice writing books, probably phone Alison but, you know super happy for you to get in touch. We’re always available on LinkedIn. In fact, everything we’re doing with Ukraine and work-wise and team building is all on there.
Alison Jones: Fantastic. Brilliant. Well, just great to talk to you, Tim. Blown away by what you’ve achieved over the last few weeks. Just, you know, genuinely really, I feel very proud of you, which I’ve nothing to do with this, of course, but I, you know, I still, I’m going to take it. I feel very proud of you. It’s you know, part of the Practical Inspiration family and that’s flipping marvellous for us.
So thank you very, very much. And I can say it now because it’s just about to happen, but good luck with the book launch next week.
Tim Bradshaw: Yes, thanks Alison, such a weird thing to say, but yes, brilliant.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. Great to see you. Thanks for your time.
Tim Bradshaw: Thanks Alison.