148. Applying Aviation Principles to Business Leadership with Christian 'Boo' Boucousis

💭 Are you ready to gather a flight log of strategic insights from a former fighter pilot?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis is a former fighter pilot who now commands the boardroom as CEO of Afterburner, helping organisations to take an approach of a fighter pilot in developing leaders.

Our conversation takes flight as Boo shares his journey from an aspiring aviator to a seasoned jet jockey, revealing how the very skills that kept him sharp in the skies now fortify the foundations of corporations. He marries the adrenaline of aerial combat with the acumen of executive strategy, all while dismantling the myth that ADHD is a barrier to success—in fact, it might just be the jet fuel for excellence.

Unlike the solo flights of fame that define professional sports, Boo outlines a world where collective success trumps individual accolades, where every mission's outcome hinges on seamless collaboration. We navigate through life-or-death decision-making, distilling the essence of fighter pilot wisdom into lessons on agility, resilience, and the art of sustainable high performance without burnout—a blueprint for any professional aiming to reach new heights.

🌐 Connect with Christian 'Boo':
• Website: https://afterburner.com.au/ and https://callmeboo.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-boo-boucousis/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/christianbooboucousis
• Instagram page: https://instagram.com/afterburner_inc

📚 You can purchase Boo's book at Amazon:
• On Time On Target: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1760293849/

Book Mentioned:
Art of Clear Thinking book by Hasard Lee

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:26

Hey everyone and welcome back to the leadership project.

Mick Spiers: 0:29

I'm greatly honoured today to be joined by Christian Bucousus, but most people call him Boo, and that's what I'm going to call him in today's show as well. Boo is a former fighter pilot and the CEO of an organisation called Afterburner, who helps organisations to take an approach of thinking like a fighter pilot when it looks at human development and the development of leaders. I'm really interested to get into all of this and what it means from a mindset point of view, a human behaviour point of view, a cognitive point of view. I'd love to understand what all of this means from a thinking 2.0 point of view, as Boo would put it, or a getting into the mind of a fighter pilot, and what it means in terms of the way that you think, the way that you learn, the way that you do things. So, without any further ado, boo, I'd love to know a little bit more of that rich background of yours around your whole experience around being a fighter pilot and how it shaped the way you see the world and shaped the way that you do things today.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 1:28

I like how you phrase that to be a fighter pilot which insinuates being, rather than are, a fighter pilot, because for most fighter pilots it is a sense of identity. It is something that is all encompassing and for the majority it's a life dream, the same as the dream to be an NFL player or an NRL player or play for a national team or be in the Olympics. It's something that gets under your skin very early on. No one can really explain it. So for me, I started flying Hornets when I was 21, cusping 22, which was the end of a 16-year journey, of when I first connected with the idea of being a fighter pilot, at the age of five at an air show. So when you have that level of purpose about something, you never really doubt that it's going to be who you are and what you do. I don't ever, really ever remember thinking I wasn't going to be a fighter pilot. I was honest enough with myself to say, hey, there might be something that happens in life or I might not be able to be one, but I'm going to do my best. So when I joined the Air Force, I was only 17, I was still at school when I applied. I applied Army, navy, air Force, all to be a pilot. I just love flying things. I was already a commercial pilot.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 2:34

I started flying when I was 14. And I got accepted into all three and I really had a bit of a helicopter thing going on at the time. Oh man, helicopter is great and I thought, to be honest, I thought it's a bit easier, shorter course, you know, it's less stress. But I thought, no, you know what? I've got to have a go, I've got to be this. Fighter pilot is what I was. And I think one of the reasons why I did think I'd be a fighter pilot was my old man sort of thought I wouldn't be either. You know, he's like I take the cream of the crop and I repeated my final year of high school. So I guess I had this conditioned belief behind me that maybe I couldn't do it but I'll give it a go. And fortunately, because I was so purpose driven and I was gifted with ADHD, which means as long as I've got something to focus on, I'm pretty pretty good at getting it done. But if it's something boring, you've got no hope. But what?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 3:15

was really fascinating was now, in hindsight, how many fighter pilots have ADHD Guys and girls who don't do so well at the ground school but do really well when they fly, not in. I was average of both, to be honest. So you know, and bizarrely, here I am, at 48, having acquired a business that teaches fighter pilot ways of working and fighter pilot thinking to be for individuals, for people just to get their shit together, and for organizations to really accelerate their goals. You know, I mean, yeah, I first stepped back into the afterburner world eight years ago, completely by accident. I was just finished a building, a hotel actually, and I was a bit bored. Property development is very slow and I needed to do something and I heard about this thing, afterburner, and a friend of mine was running it in Australia and I went to a program, was like I watched this keynote. It was to an insurance company, it's like 200 people in the room and it was just, hey, here's how fighter pilots think and do what we do. And I was like, oh my gosh, you've just codified the way I've been doing my businesses for the last 10 years and that was brilliant. It was such a beautiful, succinct story and at that point I went up to a friend of mine and just said that the guy that was running it was a very, very, very capable, very gosh incredible fighter pilot in Australia is actually the commanding officer of our F-35 training school. Now I said, oh look, you know I've been doing business for a while, maybe I can just help you out. He goes boo. You know what I've been thinking about? Going back and flying jets. I've had enough of it. Do you want to take it over? So I bought the license from America. You know just this weird circumstance. And then last year I was talking to the founder, jim Murphy, you know about it and put to him that maybe after 26 years he might be churned selling it. He's like you know what? I've never really thought about it before. Let's do it. I'm like, wow, and here I am in Miami running a global human performance and organizational performance business that has used, you know, some pretty incredible intellectual property that's sort of maturing, nearly 20 years old for this execution it's called. That's probably more relevant today than it ever has been. So, yeah, very lucky. I still, you know, get to hang out with all the guys I hang out in the squadron.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 5:01

I was medically discharged from the Air Force without a choice. I was kicked out due to being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and that forced me into business, where you know the training regarding the way we think not really the way we fly did nothing to do with aviation for 15 years, but being taught how to think a certain way. You know, we just changed the problem set to flying an airplane going into combat, dropping bombs, leading complex 70 airplane missions into finding clients, identifying their problem, delivering the objectives that they need, and it's just the thought model and process just segue into business. Very well, and that first business grew to a huge, multi-million dollar business in very, very quickly. So yeah, overall, you know I'm a big believer in the way fighter pilots think.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 5:40

There's not many of us out there. It's a pretty small bunch of people, but we probably really only speak to the top 5 and 10% of organizations that get that. There must be something I'm missing. There must be a way that I can just get a bit more out of the team. Why am I working so hard and not getting the results that I want? And I think that fighter pilot mindset, way of thinking, way of working, is the tonic for that. Just something to hang your head on. That's really simple. That always works, whether you're running a multi-billion dollar organization or you're trying to figure out how to run a half marathon because you haven't been exercising for the last three years and you're nudging 50.

Mick Spiers: 6:10

Yes. So thanks, bo. I mean, first of all, congratulations on your success, and I'm hearing two really key things in that description, bo, if I can play it back to you. The first one is about being very purpose driven and how, when you are that focused and I want to come back to the ADHD in a moment when you are that focused that other things can fall away and you can have that manifestation. So, from the age of five, knowing that you're going to be a fighter pilot, that's pretty kind of focused, right.

Mick Spiers: 6:39

So, and the manifestation becomes true, then I'm hearing then, as it shifts along, you sitting in this room and you're seeing someone else on stage, that I'm going to call it a gift that has your gift as well. And to your point before about your father saying they only take the cream of the crop, I heard a stat at one point that it's something like 95% of all people that walk into Air Force recruiting say I want to be a fighter pilot and less than 0.1% ever actually do become that right. So it is unique the training that you've been through, what you've experienced in your life, and then you're sitting in this auditorium watching someone else that has that shared gift of yours and then you're having that penny drop moment of oh yeah, it is unique and it is something special and it is something that I can translate into the business world. So I'm hearing purpose, but I'm also hearing the recognition of one's gift and then realizing that you can translate that gift into real life. And sorry to say that fighter pilot is not real life for most of us. I know it is for you, but for most of us we don't. It's this thing that we don't understand You're able to take this gift and translate it into another world.

Mick Spiers: 7:47

I want to come to the ADHD. I was really curious about that. Why do you think that is? Why do you think there's, let's say, a population of fighter pilots that at least a pocket of them has got ADHD?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 7:59

Yeah, I wonder whether the singular focus creates it or whether it's just a brain mapping, just a byproduct. You know, some of the commonalities or common traits of ADHD types is you don't really have a concept of not risk, but you don't fear the consequence of things so much. You're a little bit more likely to push outside your comfort zone. My fiber focus ADHD, I mean there's two. There's attention deficit disorder, which is the one where you can't concentrate on anything. So to be a father pilot is such an intense process, like the training program, the culture, you know you can't do anything else really. I mean there's a lot of young guys that become, I mean, straight through father pilots, straight from school into the Air Force to train. I'm not talking about guys that have flown other airplanes and they've got a bit of experience flying jets. I mean you know newbies like me that just direct into the cockpit and you don't have girlfriends, you don't have any other distraction in life and I was lucky because I was only 19, so it wasn't an issue when I started. But it's that intensity. It's like, you know, professional athletes or anything else. I mean you know we just don't get paid $400 million like Messi does if Saudi Arabia get paid reasonably well. Quite a part of us that go to Saudi Arabia, don't get me wrong, but not that sort of money.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 9:05

And I think the difference is, without stereotyping an entire group of humans and you know, ex-military people tend to have a service mindset, whereas outside the military and athletes have a me mindset a little bit more. And that's the nature of the beast, that's the nature of professional sport, that's the nature of the doggy dog environment that you're in. I think you have to be conditioned that way, Whereas the culture of the fighter pilot is very nurturing, it's very we being successful, it's committing to the lowest commons and nominator and bringing them up. So we're not about having the best of the worst, we're about having the above average as a whole. And part of that is really redefining a performance model where high performance is very expensive, research intensive and prone to fail. You know, like a high performance team, Formula One, you know Red Bull wins all the time, NFL Patriots win all the time or Kansas City win all the time, you know, whereas as fighter pilots, no one squadron and no one team can win all the time. We all have to win all the time. We have a 98% success rate. So, to use an analogy, it's the moneyball approach to things. So what we understand is the group average is better than individual high performers supported by those that don't quite have it like, who sit under the salary cap. In our salary cap, everyone's paid the same, and I think that's what businesses want. I mean, high performers require a lot of work, a lot of resources, a lot of work in terms of emotional work that pretty hard to deal with and I would probably put myself in this basket before I grew up and in terms of their ability to run like a business has to run 365 days a year, it's just not possible. So businesses, and let's just say normal life we strive for this unsustainable model high performance teams, high performance cultures but we don't create the off time, we don't create the rest in recuperation, so we just get frustrated with it right, Whereas a deep performing mindset and a deep performing organization is different. It's where we understand that. Well, we just need to consistently deliver results that are above average without exhausting ourselves. It's the Kalahari Bushman loping through the desert, hunting, rather than sprinting and being exhausted, just chasing the first thing that comes in front of your face.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 11:06

And I think you know fighter pilots created this cognitive model and way of working because of the number of pilots that were killed.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 11:14

I mean Hazard Lee just wrote this book, the Art of Clear Thinking is a fighter pilot in the States he talks about. You know that aviation is not a net zero game Like if you make a mistake you die. It's not like other events or sports where if you make a mistake you live another day. If you're not on the or the airplane stops moving forward, it pulls out of the sky. So when the net effect of bad performance is death, it does sharpen the mind a little bit and it does give you this way of thinking that was created and forged out of necessity. And you know there's a lot of research. I try and prove the fighter pilot way of thinking. I try and find as much as I can to understand why we ended up where we are, but today I haven't found a research study where people who didn't perform were killed and therefore were able to deduce the lessons that we were able to deduce as fighter pilots.

Mick Spiers: 11:58

So really interesting boom. There's three key things that I'm hearing there. So if I play that back and some of it is a little surprising, I'm gonna say to some people, because I gotta say that the stereotype of a fighter pilot isn't 100% what you just said for most people, and let me describe that.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 12:13

I work on your nerds.

Mick Spiers: 12:14

Yeah, it's interesting, right? So the first of all is the thing it's around that single-minded focus. I think that's amazing and that that ability to focus, that's there for sure. The next one is this we versus I mentality, and this is where I think there might be a misnomer out there or a misperception, where people, if you think about a fighter pilot, they'll think it's a me myself, I world.

Mick Spiers: 12:38

But I'm not hearing that from you. I'm hearing it's a we world and you Recognizing that the success of your mission is not just on your shoulders, it's the whole team effort, everyone on the flight line, mission control, whoever plan the mission. All of those things come together for a result that's much greater than the individual who happens to be sitting in the cockpit, and I think that's an amazing way of thinking of that. And then there's this necessity around high performance and when you're thinking about it, when you were talking about it and we kept on using these sports Metaphors when you're talking, you know you hear things in the sports world that you got to lose a grand final before you win a grand final. Well, yeah, losing a grand final in fighter pilot world is well, that's it, that's the end of the road.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 13:22

Yeah that's it, yeah, and that's hard for people to get their mind around, that's hard for them to believe that that. That is a world that you live in and when you look at an organization Through those eyes, within 10 to 20 seconds of the organization, you immediately pick up all the simple habits that are leading to them not believing. And they get. Sports teams get in their own head, everyone gets in their own head. If you come into a team that's fifth on the ladder, it's hard for you to believe that you're anything other than fifth on the ladder. I mean, it's the halo and horns effect. Whatever happened yesterday, you believe is going to happen today. So to create championship mindsets and to create a belief not just talking about it, but a belief is incredibly hard and that's why I love afterburner, because what we do and how we do it creates a belief that hey, maybe I can think about things differently. And left up, because those men and women up there who are talking to a strip stage or down here in a workshop or in our office coaching us, they did it. They did it. So it must be real. And once people believe, then it's been easier for them to start to do things that create new habits and all the stuff we know leads to a better life and more throughput in life. And you know we have the capacity to fit four lifetimes into one. We cannot control the ticking of a clock. It is always moving forward second by second. We can only control what we feel each of those seconds with and the byproduct of deep performance as you fill those seconds with a hell of a lot more than if you don't think about performance. I like the word performance because performance is just a way of articulating a gap between what I want and where I am and the speed at which you close. That is how well you perform. And, again, that's how fighter pilots think. We don't actually think of where am I today and where do I need to get to. It's actually, why am I not there yet?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 15:03

In Simon Sinek you know he talks about your profound Ted talk. Start with why you know, as most fighter pilots would say. But the second bit is well, why not? Why you're not there yet? Because that's more important. Because when you have that honest conversation and we call it nameless and rankless at afterburner, ray Dalio at Bridgewater Associates calls it radical transparency. But either way, the only way you learn about yourself, your biases and the biases of the peer group around you is to have open, honest conversations.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 15:30

And to go back to what you said before about people perceive fighter pilots as a mean, not a we. There's only two professions in life that every single mission, every single time you do it with someone, there's always two of you. We call it a wingman, and in diving deep sea, diving like, or in diving they call it a buddy. So those two professions or recreational activities Show you how much we value the fact that we cannot get in our out of our own head, that every time we try and do something by ourselves we're way more Ineffective than if I did it with someone else. And that comes to what I've learned over time and looking at emerging Neuroscience is you know, some people call it the triune brain. You've got the primal brain, the limbic system, in the cognitive brain, the prefrontal cortex, or your consciousness, or unconscious, subconscious, conscious, whatever. Everyone's got the same rough idea right there's things that you're not aware of, that your body does, there's things you can't ever wear up and there's things You're fully aware of. So let's call it three levels and you can only do one level at a time, you know so, when you're thinking and you're rational, the part of the brain that overrides you to sub conscious on all the summer Doesn't feel right, something feel uncomfortable. Walking down a dark alley, the windows, I'm out having a nice picnic and all of a sudden something just doesn't feel. It doesn't feel like sunshine anymore. I can't explain it. And you know, five minutes later a big southerly comes in and blows it, blows it into a. So was the pilot pilots.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 16:47

I think what we discovered was every time a fighter pilot tries to think and do at the same time, they crash the airplane or they get shot down. So we decided we'll tell you what. Why don't we? First of all, we got a wingman who's looking after us, is looking watching our back. But secondly, you know, when a fighter pilot is really busy doing their job, they're not thinking that they've lose sight of the bigger picture.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 17:05

So wingman can kind of sit back and keep an eye on that and we have this fluid leadership role where we can change depending on who Understands the bigger picture. But also, number two, the wingman is empowered to step in and say hey, lead, where are you going? I think over here is where we're going to get to. That's where the bad guys are. So we call whoever has the most situational awareness has the lead, and that's important because whoever can see the other airplane as well. If you're a wingman, you turn this way and all of a sudden you know the leads behind you. We would swap, so the lead now has the bigger picture and the wingman can just get on with doing the job.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 17:34

So we always hand over up to the leader who has the best idea of what the hell is going on, not your rank and who you are. Having said, that that's also important.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 17:41

So we create these windows in time. We understand that the slow, meandering river that is humanity in our organization is highly Politicized, its bureaucracy and it's inefficient and that's never going to go away. That's being human. So let's create times and spaces where we step out of that for a bit, and that is in our planning sessions, where we just park all the politics and go right, let's just agree what we're trying to achieve here and we have six steps you follow to get there. And then, importantly so we just start your day and at the end of the day we park all that again and we debrief and we say, alright, what was the objective there, what do we set out to achieve and what actually happened and why is there a gap in our performance and what can I do about it tomorrow?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 18:18

And the difference between a debrief culture is it's almost like feed-forward, not feedback. It's not what we did wrong on the mistakes that we make, it's what I can do about it tomorrow. And it's action based, because the way our memories work and the way that we preserve data is More through action than it is through thought. And think about this if you wanted to be a world-class tennis player. There's no point reading all the books and thinking about it to become a world-class tennis player. Your brain remembers doing things actions and that's why, in a debrief, we allow ourselves to unlock that contextualized learning and allow ourselves to actually do things that are important and that are linked to our performance directly. So and we do that as a peer group so we do it without.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 18:58

If we go flying with our wingman, the two of us do it together. If there's four of us, the two of us do it together and the four of us do it together. So we always have these conversations around Collective outcomes, and that doesn't happen anywhere in the world, doesn't happen in any other organization. I've never seen it in nine years, not once. But some of the world's biggest companies have been doing after burner for over 17 years Proctor and Gamble, visor metronics, and if you look at the latest HBR Fall edition, which is about decision-making in chaos, you'll see a lot of these organizations that use fighter pilot thinking you read it jumps off the page to drive Innovation and billion-dollar growth.

Mick Spiers: 19:35

Really interesting, but I'm hearing three distinct themes here that I think you can very easily translate into the business world, but I want to hear your thoughts at the end of this. So the first one was that word, belief, and about the stories that we tell ourselves in the head, and that's one of the most powerful things in the world is the story that you tell yourself in your own head about yourself or about your team, etc. That can either be a limiting belief or it can be a very empowering belief, and what I'm hearing you talk about when you spoke about why not, why not? Is addressing things like well, what's holding us back, what needs to be challenged here, what limiting beliefs are stopping us from being successful, and trying to reframe that limiting belief into an empowering belief.

Mick Spiers: 20:15

The second chapter of all of that I'm, then, hearing a very conscious self-awareness and situational awareness of what brain is active right now and being more intentional about that. So to use McLean's triune brain theory and think about okay, is it my root brain, is it my limbic brain or is it my neocortex that's engaged right now? And what am I doing? Am I thinking, am I feeling or am I doing right now? And then there was this adaptive leadership even with your wingman story, that and who is best place to lead us right now? Who is in the best situation to actually call the shot right now? So this intentional act of are we thinking? Are we feeling, are we doing, but being aware of it, not just letting it happen. And then in your learning culture I loved what you said about feed forward, not feedback so when you're learning, you're not just looking backwards and go well, what went well, what didn't go well. You're thinking about what are we going to do differently next time.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 21:12

And that's a much more exciting and fun conversation to have. Right, you know, when I come in and work with particularly extremely large enterprises, it's all about blame, portionment or avoiding blame or avoiding the conversation. Because if you debrief every day, you're only debriefing small things. If you debrief the loss of every multi-million dollar contract, it's big, scary things and that's a debrief, is in the moment. A feedback or an order is more strategic. So if you're constantly course correcting, day to day, five days a week, you know, 20 days a month, 60 days a quarter, you're not going to have big, hairy things to talk about because you're already on top of it. And that's why people fear debriefing. They fear debriefing because they think it's these big things where, to be honest, they did make a mistake, where they didn't pay attention and where they were confused. Because that is life and rather than resolve the confusion and resolve the ambiguity and make different decisions and agree that maybe what we thought the first time round didn't work. You know, the Gartner height curve is really good on this, where it talks about every new idea. That's what we have. You know, we don't have innovation problems. We have execution of innovation processes.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 22:14

The easiest thing in the world is to have ideas and all these organizations that start innovation labs, and you may as well just create a space that introduces chaos into your organization, because most innovation is evolution. There's not too many. Green field. Ai is the evolution of something that was created in 1956. You know. So it's not. Nothing is new. It's just that awareness is new and people get confused there and they say, well, to innovate, I have to come up with something that's so left field and so impactful, but what you're really doing is scaring the shit out of everyone because you're asking for big sums of money to go and do stuff. That's why risk and on really understands it. So if you just evolve a little bit, you know all the time.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 22:50

You know the world's oldest company is 6000 years old, a temple building and restoration company in Japan. Right, 6000 years. The average age of a business today is 15 and they are just a poster child of just constantly refining and evolving. I mean I can't even imagine what it was like building a temple 6000 years ago. And look, I might be overregging the age there. It's millennia anyway. But the point being is that's their culture. Fighter, pilot culture has been the same for over 100 years. Hasn't changed the turnover in a fighter squadrons. Every two years, two and a half years, the whole squadron changes out, yet the performance standards remain the same. It doesn't drop, it still sits up there at 98%. The one I find the most fascinating is an entire aircraft carrier. A five and a half thousand person organization has 100% turnover of that team, close to 100% every three years, yet still goes out there and gets the job done.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 23:40

When you take the average business and replace everyone in it, within three years it wouldn't exist anymore. And this is because everyone you know, we have relationship management and execution models, not systematic relationship systematic management models. So what happens is, at the end of the day, it's all so confused in all of our heads. There's so much to do and so many ideas that this cognitive model just starts to put an automatic filter in it. When you start using a flawless execution method, you don't have to worry about having strategic priorities. You discover them as you go through your debriefing process. You prioritize what's important now and get it done Like literally just get it off the plate, just get it off the table. The reason why we end up with strategic priorities is there's so much backlog and so much work that just hasn't been executed. But we now need to prioritize, and this is the function of us always saying yes to everything, always taking on more, bringing another new idea and another new idea. We haven't finished the old idea yet and then we just disengage, become passive because no one knows what the hell to do next. So this is you know. And the good thing about new ideas again according to Gartner, is they keep people motivated but they never get executed. So you can't have that. As fighter pilots, you can't have six different ways to fly the jet, because it's so damn complicated that if you've got to have one way and when you know how to do it one way, then you can expand and get creative with it. So, when it comes to these businesses, it's just baselining something.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 25:00

I'm working with a bank soon, right, one of the top 20 banks in the world. It's like, okay, what strategic management methodologies do you use? It's like none. I'm like, okay, how, that's impressive that you've got this far with that. Right, and I use the driving a car analogy, right? If you look when you rent a car, you're like, oh, I'm going to rent something different, I want to get a nice, I'm going to try an EV. I've never had an EV. And you get there and it's a Volvo and it's an EV and you spend the first 15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn the damn thing on.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 25:24

And that's how most companies approach their planning to execution. We just come together, we cobble together, we have all these left field ideas. We had six strategic objectives last quarter, but let's get out a blank piece of paper and get six more, but we didn't even do the last six. We're constantly coming into the room as if it were a rental car, rather than have structured conversations. It's just like how do I turn this thing on? I don't know. I'm going to ring my boss, I'm going to escalate it. So you, as opposed to having one car that everyone knows how to use one strategic planning methodology, one meeting and briefing methodology, one execution methodology and one debrief methodology, which means all the information and conversations we have are simple, they're aligned and we can just get on with doing the work. And when you get work done, as many people would, we are human. We get a sense of fulfillment when we achieve something and when we don't, we just shop to work each day and we just shuffle paperwork around. That's not a fun, purposeful way to live each and every day.

Mick Spiers: 26:19

No, definitely not. It's quite erratic, and you use the word chaos before. So the three things that are popping into my mind as I hear you talk I'm loving this word evolution and evolutionary innovation. I'm thinking around this whole concept of action Orientation and then the word discipline is jumping into my mind. So let me explain all of that. So this evolutionary innovation You're right, a lot of companies are out there.

Mick Spiers: 26:43

When they're having their strategy workshops, they're talking about where is our step change? Where is our step change in innovation, where is our disruption, etc. Instead of focusing on what could we do better today, what could we do better today than what we did yesterday and what could we do better tomorrow than what we did today. So these incremental and evolutionary Innovations is really interesting.

Mick Spiers: 27:04

Then, this element around this we had Patrick Tian on the show recently and his concept is a rhythm system of think, plan, do, think, plan, do. But to have the discipline to make sure it's action Oriented. That when you are developing these strategies, that you see them through to their conclusion before you start the next one. And his one, easy, isn't a very agile world, he does it on a quarterly basis. That when they're doing these quarterly action oriented Executions, that if someone races into the office one day, I've got. I've got the best new idea. Everyone goes great, let's capture it, but we're going to put that in the parking lot until next quarter, right, and his cycles are quite short, but in some businesses that might be. Yeah, this is a really good idea for next year and to have the discipline to focus on finishing what you've got in front of you.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 27:53

And that's the difference between what we used to call effect based planning versus Task based planning, and what I was always surprised by in large enterprise I'm kind of working with seven leaders who manage 60,000 people was they're like oh, we're always got left field things coming in? And we got, I'm like, okay, anytime a left field thing comes in, you guys have built a strategy that already runs its organization. I would be surprised if there wasn't a bucket somewhere where you're already doing it and then, all of a sudden, it used to be a new idea. It's like and the ball got, do this and be like oh, hang on, we're actually doing it already, we just call it something different. And it's about three months out.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 28:25

Oh, okay, rather than this knee jerk and, oh, let's start. Yeah, it's just, you're right, you know, think, plan, do, feel, think, do it's all create space to stop. But importantly, in the big missing link with everyone has is the looping, is the iterative bit, it's the revisit why this has come in, why what we trying to achieve with this, we're already trying to achieve that same thing using something else. Oh, I get it now, because all anyone thinks is what they're saying is, it's what we're wanting to be achieved isn't achieved. So just do this and that's just human knee jerk.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 28:58

But if innovation was really blank sheet of paper, right, why are we not living on the moon? Because we're iterating off. We know to get there. You know, if innovation was truly blank sheet of paper, why do we do money? There's money off. We've got all the resources in the world to do whatever the hell we want. But it's a governance system that we exist and humans without governance and rules based society. You know, lord of the flies, things are coming. So that's why, when you look at innovation, it fundamentally it has to be iterative.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 29:25

Yet even Dyson is still solving the same problem vacuuming a floor. Yes, he came up with cyclone. You know airflow and all the rest of it great, that's innovation. But you weren't innovating the effect, which is mo a lawn, better cars and horse, not more lawn better, vacuum, a floor better. Someone does need to innovate more. The next iteration, you know, horses to cars. You know we just got fitter and fitter horses, better breeding, better horseshoes. You know, because they were looking at transport through what they did, not how to move. And that's innovation. Innovation is what's the effect we're trying to achieve and then working backwards and we would say what's the objective.

Mick Spiers: 30:01

Yeah, I love this focus back to the why again and also the why not as you go, but focusing on that why and when those curveball comes in, you can actually ask the right questions about well, what is this about? Why is this and why this now, and what does it mean in terms of what we're already doing and then thinking about it?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 30:18

And why. You know, to put in contemporary terms, is Ted Lasso's. Just stay curious, right? That's all it is is just be open with your curiosity.

Mick Spiers: 30:26

Yeah, brilliant, all right. So what I'd love to know now is loving the way that you think, and I think a lot of businesses can benefit from that what does an engagement with afterburner look like for these companies?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 30:37

Yeah, we have. This is actually a work in progress. Traditionally we've done seminars, have done training, but we're moving into a. We create a belief and through that we you have an experience with fighter pilots in flying suits, where we immerse you in our world and we do some simulations, work, not in an airplane but in a planning world, like a strategic air combat planning mission. So we create a belief, then we help you create a system which is to get either flawless execution embedded if you're a systemless Organization, or we have an overarching your existing systems to accelerate. And then we have support, which is just coaching and just that long-term Mentorship that execution needs.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 31:10

You know again, if you're going to be a great tennis player, you need mentorship and coaching all the way to the end. And I think you said it before something about you're talking about having a Like a third party or something, someone that's not you looking in and that's most businesses don't invest in. That. It's like, oh, we don't have any budget, but it's that external output that actually creates a far more efficient and effective system.

Mick Spiers: 31:28

Yeah, yeah, really, really cool. All right, boo. So I'm really hearing a lot of great ideas here today about Rethinking our mindset and the way that we go about our business, about the power of belief, about Systemization, about thinking about disciplined execution instead of chaos, and I've got to say that a lot of people will be listening to this show Thinking, yeah, that they work in an organization that's more chaos led than it is Disciplined execution and deep performance, high performance world. So there's lots of great takeaways for people to really be a bit more intentional about their belief systems, about Addressing limiting beliefs and turning them into empowering beliefs, and about getting to more evolutionary Innovation and more disciplined execution.

Mick Spiers: 32:11

What would be one tip that you could give to someone that's listening to this on the tram, on the way to work or whatever they do? When they listen to the show, that might be at the gym doing their workout. Where can they start? So if they're listening to this and they're going, oh, this boo, this is really a good way for me to start rethinking the way I go about my leadership. What's one tip that you could give people to get them going down this path?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 32:33

Yeah, look, if you start life with the simplicity of there's something I want, there's where I am, and there's a gap in between. Right, that's the simplicity of life and that is the source of anxiety and depression, and happiness and elation. Happiness is an expectation met when those come together. Unhappiness is a failure to meet expectations, whether it's relationships or life. So your ability to bring these two together is what equals a happy and fulfilling life. So, when it comes to what am I doing when I'm sitting on the tram? I don't know. There's one thing I need to do to start this journey. Do that one thing. Just identify one thing that you are absolutely going to do today, and it doesn't matter if you're going to abstain from chocolate bars, it doesn't matter whether you're really just going to get that report done, it doesn't matter whatever it is. Give yourself the opportunity to get something done and off your plate today and set your time for lunchtime, but forgive yourself to about 2pm, okay, whatever else comes into your frame of mind, whatever anyone else, forget it. Just get this one thing done. Then, at the end of the day, ask yourself why did that happen? Why today did I manage to get something done and have a closed gap between what I want and where I'm at, and do that again tomorrow. And what you want to do is you want to create this iterative cycle. Think of your brain like a steam engine. So on that first day, you've just got the first charge. The next day even better, that night, when you've said what did I do? Make that the first thing you do the very next day. Then the next day you'll get whatever it is done, probably by about nine or 10. And over time, what you will start to do is condition yourself to do what I say get it done, not get things done, not get shit done, not get it done Individual things every day. And the more you start to debrief and reflect and ask yourself because you're going to have the days which are like, oh, I didn't bring them together, I've got a gap. Okay, why, and what are you going to do about it this afternoon or tomorrow to close it? And two things will happen. One, you'll start to have better expectations because you'll start to realize, actually, I'm trying to do too much each day. And two, your motivation will increase because you're getting more done and, by default, these things will slowly come together.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 34:47

That's not a perfect system. You're not always going to get everything done. That's impossible. That's why it's a flawless system. It's not perfect. So what we do is, when we bring these gaps closer together, we start to live a more intention-driven life. We have what we manifest up here and what we want, and our actions are more contextualized and magic starts to happen. And it's these two worlds that, if you look at the textbook high performance people, that's what they do really really well.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 35:12

Some of us do it naturally. Some of us, like me, we're trained to do it, and some of us have a life-changing experience that gets us off our bum. They get cancer, they have an accident, they lose a partner. There's normally some significant trigger. It doesn't have to be a trigger, it's just a way of thinking. So the challenge is, when you haven't had a trigger, is the initial motivation to do this? So that's what I would encourage someone. If you're on a train and you're thinking about this stuff, there is an expectation unmet in your life, rather than think about what's the expect. We don't want to be in 10 years. We don't want to be in three years. When am I going to get the next promotion? It's one thing that's in your control. That you can do today. That's all you need to do.

Mick Spiers: 35:48

Yeah, love it, boo. All right. So where am I today? Where do I want to be? Why aren't I already there? What's holding me back? What's the challenges? And then to think about one actionable thing that I can do that moves me down the path and, at the end of the day, having that learning cycle of okay, so what worked and what do I need to do tomorrow.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 36:07

I'll give you a case study, mate, of an experience where I had nothing to do with business. It was a radio station and I did it to live at a keynote and it was all the advertisers that advertise with this radio. It was the Australian radio network, carl and Jackie O, and I was in there. A lady came up to me and we spoke two years in a row. I spoke to you as a rope and she came up to me and she said I just want to thank you so much. She said your debrief methodology. She said I haven't been in contact. I had a relationship with my father for 28 years and she said that every day I just thought of one thing I could do, one thing that he where he hurt me and he and I have the most amazing relationship now, because the expectation was my dad is perfect. The reality was, I perceive he's not and incrementally together they brought those two worlds together. That's the power of it.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 36:52

Yeah really nice.

Mick Spiers: 36:53

Bo. All right, so I'm going to take us to our rapid round now. So these are the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. So, first of all, what's the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 37:03

It's not all about me.

Mick Spiers: 37:04

Yeah, very good, all right, very powerful. What's your favorite book?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 37:08

When I was a kid, I read thousands of books. I don't read books now, I'm very focused. I read what I need to read to solve the problem that I have. Okay, all right, fair enough. What's your favorite quote? I'm going to murder it, but the intent is never have plans that fail to stir a man's blood, because that is how you motivate people. And, as an entrepreneur, I always made sure when I built a strategy or a business that I would get people who are engaged with the heart and with the head, because I needed a lot of people to work with me and that I wasn't able to pay. So I had that quote. I've forgotten it now because I'm not that much of a hard charger anymore, but that to me, without realizing it said if you lead with purpose, you will inspire always.

Mick Spiers: 37:52

Yeah, nice, okay, very good. And finally, we touched a little bit before about what an engagement with Afterburner looks like, but how do people find you?

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 38:00

Afterburner is a pretty good place to start Google Afterburner. And yeah, the best conversation to have with us is to say I don't believe this fighter pilot stuff could work in my organization. Can you explain to me how? And in about half an hour we will have a true convert. We're very lucky. In our organization we have a close rate in the 80s 90s at percent, because once people sort of understand that our story is fighter pilots, yes, but we're all about being human and how to get the most out of a human being and the things that they are aware of and they aren't, because it's the things that we weren't aware about ourselves as pilots that inevitably got us killed.

Mick Spiers: 38:34

Yeah, powerful message there as well, and we'll put the links in the show notes so that people can find you. Booth, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for challenging our thinking and getting us to stop and think and reflect on our mindset and on the way that we approach action, orientation all of the things that you've shared with us today. It's been a great privilege to have you on the show today. Thank you for your time.

Christian 'Boo' Boucousis: 38:56

Thanks, Mick. Thanks for shepherding a very pleasant and enjoyable conversation. We appreciate it.