Roke

The worst leaders always need an audience. Strong leaders don’t need theatre. I learned that in my mid-20s. First real leadership role. Starting to learn my professional craft. Before leadership, I’d spent years captaining sports teams. So two things were already wired into me: > protect the team publicly > deal with problems privately Then came a bad weekend in production. Breakdowns. Scrap parts. Calls all weekend. Emails late into the night. No rest. Monday morning. Gemba walk. 20 people stood around my KPI board. Leaders. Functions. Engineers. Peers. My team. Then it happened. The most senior leader decided to call me out publicly for a decision I’d made. In front of everyone. The problem wasn’t being challenged. Good leaders challenge decisions all the time. The problem was the theatre. The audience. The need to turn a learning moment into a status display. While I’d been firefighting all weekend, they were nowhere near the reality of it. Now here’s the important part. Did I stand there quietly and accept it? Absolutely not. Because leadership is not theatre. And making someone small in public is not leadership. If a leader needs an audience to make someone feel small, exposed, or unsafe, they’ve already revealed something. Not your weakness. Their leadership. That moment taught me something early: → Pressure reveals leadership character very quickly Doesn’t matter whether you’re a first-time leader, a CEO, or chairman of the board. → Strong leaders create clarity under pressure → Weak leaders create fear under pressure I never forgot that. I’ve carried it into every leadership role since. Because when people feel unsafe, truth slows down. And once truth slows down, performance follows it. The next time someone tries to call you out publicly to elevate themselves, don’t absorb it. See it clearly. Pressure doesn’t create leadership. It exposes it. ⬇️ What leadership moment shaped how you lead today?

Teams rarely hide problems immediately. They soften them first. The language changes before the reporting does. → “Minor delay.” → “Manageable risk.” → “Mostly on track.” → “Nothing critical yet.” Not because people are trying to mislead you. Usually because: > they want more time > they hope things recover > they don’t want to create noise > they’re protecting momentum But softened truth creates delayed visibility. And delayed visibility increases cost. So the organisation keeps operating with a version of reality that feels safer, but becomes less accurate over time. That’s why major problems often seem sudden. The signal was visible earlier. It just arrived to you softened. ⬇️ Where have you seen small softening turn into larger organisational risk?

This week sadly marks the end of my time with 4th Battalion The Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment. I’m leaving with lots of good memories and many friends for life. It is a battalion full of experience, professionals and above all, really good people. I look forward to seeing the unit continuing to build and strengthen. The week also marks the start of a new beginning with the Rifles. I’m keen to get stuck in with a new company and continue to develop personally, and help to develop the junior soldiers around me. Right… I better go and dig out the Sharpe box set… 🐅📯⚔️ #ArmyReserve

Most organisations don’t fail when truth is missing. They fail because truth arrives too late. By the time leaders hear: > the real concern > the full risk > the honest signal the cost has already grown. So teams compensate. → more urgency → more pressure → more control But pressure doesn’t fix delayed truth. It usually slows it further. Because when people feel pressure, they protect themselves. > they filter more > they soften more > they wait longer And the organisation loses time quietly, before anyone notices performance slipping. The timing of truth shapes the quality of execution. ⬇️ Where does truth slow down most in your organisation?

I used to think execution was the hard part. I don’t anymore. After leading operations through Brexit, COVID, global supply disruption, and 20 years of high-pressure environments, I kept seeing the same pattern. → Problems were usually known earlier Just not said clearly enough. Or early enough. → A concern softened in a meeting → An update that sounded confident but felt incomplete → A frontline risk that never reached leadership properly → Information that distorted through each layer That changed how I think about performance. Execution is often not where problems start. Not source. Not origin. → It’s where they become visible. The symptom. That operational failure starts quietly. → In delayed truth → Filtered information → Careful wording My former belief was pressure sharpened organisations. Now I think pressure reveals them. Especially the quality of information flow. That’s why most of my content this week focused on: → trust → silence → drift → decision quality → truth Not as culture ideas. As operational realities. Because in high-consequence environments, late truth becomes operational risk very quickly. I’ve seen that too many times to ignore. If we want better execution, we need to stop treating execution as the starting point. Better execution often starts with earlier truth. ⬇️ What’s one leadership belief that you changed your mind about completely?

Recently I've been putting in longer hours and spending time away from home. It comes with the territory and I'm not complaining, but it does make you think about where your time actually goes. Today I decided to use some of those extra hours differently. I picked my son up from school. Such a simple thing. Nothing groundbreaking. But the look on his face when he saw me standing there made it one of the best moments of my week. It's a reminder that the small stuff isn't really small at all. Work hard, but don't forget what you're working for.

Keep Fastino Labs on your radar! They've just launched Pioneer, and the ambition behind it is worth paying attention to: making tailored, high-performance AI accessible to every team, not just the best resourced labs. A real challenge to the "take what the big labs give you" status quo we've all faced to date. For teams building production AI, this shifts the economics meaningfully. Congratulations to George Hurn-Maloney , Ash Lewis , and the Fastino Labs team! 👏

It's been a bumpy ride for eLoran, but its time has come, with huge momentum and support both nationally and internationally. Where are we with eLoran in 2026? I'll be at European Navigation Conference (ENC) in Vienna, to discuss exactly that question. If you're curious about eLoran, then don't miss session S3.3 on Wednesday 29th April, with some excellent speakers! https://lnkd.in/eQAQ9h5V #ENC #Roke #eLoran #PNT #CRPA #NAVWAR

People think they need more. They need less. > More meetings. > More goals. > More noise dressed up as progress. Most people aren’t overwhelmed because they have too little, they’re overwhelmed because they have too much that doesn’t matter. So I chose a different approach: less. Less distraction. Less reacting. Less saying yes just to feel productive. The law of addition by subtraction is simple: when you remove what’s unnecessary, what’s left becomes powerful. Fewer priorities → better execution. Fewer inputs → clearer thinking. Fewer commitments → real momentum. More isn’t ambitious. It’s often just unfocused. Less is where the edge is. “Everyone wants more. I want less.” ⬇️ Be honest, what are you holding onto that’s holding you back?