Justin Hughes

Justin Hughes is an expert on building high-performance cultures

Speaker fees:

In-person: £5k-£10k

Virtual: £5k-£10k

Topics:

High-Performance Cultures/Teams

2

Leadership

2

Risk

2

Decision-Making

2

Resilience

Justin Hughes is a former fighter pilot, Executive Officer of the Red Arrows, seasoned corporate leader, and current biotech entrepreneur.

Justin Hughes is the CEO of NetZeroNitrogen, a biotech and climate start-up. With significant turnaround experience as a senior corporate executive, alongside a distinguished career as a former fighter pilot and Executive Officer of the Red Arrows, Justin has deep expertise in cultivating high-performance cultures. He is a sought-after speaker on leadership, building high-performance teams (including virtual ones), decision-making under uncertainty, and thriving in high-risk environments. His presentations range from keynotes to workshops, and he has engaged diverse audiences across the UK, Europe, the US, the Middle and Far East, and China.

Justin’s delivery style is both engaging and insightful, drawing on first-hand experience in some of the most demanding operating environments. His passion for high performance, developed through over 250 air displays with the Red Arrows, underpins his BETTUR (Better Understanding of Reality) model, which focuses on planning, execution, and adaptation in situations characterised by ambiguity, imperfect information, rapid change, and intense pressure.

Since leaving the RAF, Justin Hughes has advised clients such as Microsoft, the United Nations, and Mercedes Formula 1 on organisational effectiveness. He is also a regular contributor to BP’s global Leading in Operations programme. As the author of The Business of Excellence (Bloomsbury, 2016), Justin has been featured in major publications including the London Evening Standard, Director Magazine, The Daily Telegraph, and The Independent, and has been interviewed on BBC World’s Talking Business, BBC Breakfast, and GB News.

In the midst of what he describes as an intellectual mid-life crisis, Justin earned an MBA from London Business School and an MSt in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, both with Distinction. While his original thesis plan on pandemics in 2017 seemed less relevant at the time, he shifted his focus to analysing the threat posed by cryptocurrency to the financial system—an insight that has since yielded a 1000% return on his modest £30 investment.

Book Justin Hughes

Featured topics include

Highly engaging introduction to the key drivers of high-performance cultures based on 20 year+ entrepreneurial and corporate experience, preceded by 12 years as a fighter pilot and Executive Officer of the Red Arrows (250 displays).

Take-aways:
• Hire on attitude AND skill, but if you had to choose…
• Communicate not just what, but why
• Know what ball you can’t aDord to drop
• Build an environment where people have the REAL conversations

At its heart, leadership is about exhibiting a set of behaviours such that others choose to follow you of their own free will. If they follow for a different reason, it’s probably seniority (ie they have to – that’s not leadership). It’s bringing people on the journey with you and is distinct from working out the journey and the ability to execute.

Takeaways
• Leadership is primarily a moral and emotional activity
• Managers are inevitably placed in the middle of wanting to be good people leaders but getting measured solely on task delivery
• You will be judged on what you stand for in difficult situations

Managing risk at a strategic level is about dealing with ambiguity. To do so, we need to gain a ‘better understanding of reality’ by mitigating cognitive and motivational biases. The most powerful tool to do this is to leverage the cognitive diversity of the team more effectively.

Takeaways
• We’re not as good as applying judgement as we like to think
• However, awareness of subconscious biases and tools to address can help significantly
• The ‘crowd’ is generally wise but only when there is an eDective process to extract that collective wisdom

Good decision-making under pressure is not genius; it’s largely due to thought and preparation. We need to equip people with the decision-making tools and then empower them (ie not blame them for adverse outcomes) to use them.

Takeaways
• Pre-plan responses to predictable situations
• Use dynamic rehearsal to prepare for semi-predictable situations
• For the completely unpredictable, know what ball you can’t afford to drop

Resilience is not magic or just in some people’s DNA. For sure, some will be more naturally resilient, just like some are more natural leaders. However, everybody’s ability to ride out hard times and perform under pressure can be enhanced through the right mindset and the use of mental models and tools.

Takeaways
• Believe that you will prevail in the long-term, but deal objectively with your short-term reality
• Stress test the assumptions behind your thinking
• Reframe the situation based on more realistic assessment

What people say

Feedback was massively positive and some of the best we’ve had

Fujitsu Services

A year on and we still use the language and some of the principles

Maersk Deutschland

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