Best Possible Outcome: A Field Guide to Business Decision-Making and Crisis Planning

By Garth Callender

Learn how to make hard decisions in difficult situations — and ensure a successful outcome

In boardrooms and workplaces, as in war zones, there is a simple truth: leaders must make hard decisions. It’s only through timely decision-making and clear, considered strategy that leaders can cut through ambiguity and chaos — and protect their people and their organisation. With Best Possible Outcome, you’ll learn how the military cultivates the mindset, the people, and the processes that ensure success even in tough times. What’s more, you’ll discover how to systematically implement those lessons within your business.

With over 25 years’ experience in the Australian Army, from on-the-ground combat to intelligence, Lieutenant Colonel Garth Callender has learned what it takes. In Best Possible Outcome, he shares remarkable stories from his time in service and delivers insightful lessons about risk, resilience, and agility. You’ll discover a pragmatic, three-pillar leadership framework that allows leaders in any field to embrace challenges, drive innovation, and maximise results. Ultimately, you’ll establish a system that ensures the best possible outcome in any situation.

Develop the mindset and leadership skills essential for:

• Understanding and managing real risk
• Building organisational resilience
• Making difficult ethical decisions
• Staying ahead of the competition
• Achieving success under pressure and despite uncertainty

From managing risk on the streets of Afghanistan to unpacking what insurgents know about organisational agility, Garth shows how the skills used to lead teams in military conflict can improve organisational responsiveness. Best Possible Outcome will show you how to lead strategically, assess outcomes clearly, and establish a pathway out of vulnerability and crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Jul 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781394203338

Garth Callender

Garth Callender left the regular Australian Army in 2013 after a distinguished seventeen-year career, during which he served in Iraq and Afghanistan and rose to the rank of major. He left an enduring legacy in weapons technical intelligence, and trained many hundreds of soldiers from raw recruits through to deployment. He now works for an Australian technology company that is developing new ways to detect concealed explosives.

Book preview

Title: Best Possible Outcome by Lieutenant Colonel Garth Callender

First published in 2023 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

Level 4, 600 Bourke St, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia

© Trebuchet Pivot Pty Ltd 2023

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

ISBN: 978-1-394-20332-1

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover design by Wiley

P101: Humvee photo: © Stocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo Figure 2.1: © Oleksandr Pokusai/Adobe Stock

Figure 14.2 and BPO model icons: © iiierlok_xolms/Adobe Stock

This book contains journal excerpts from From After the Blast: An Australian Officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, by Garth Callender (Black Inc. 2015)

Disclaimer

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Garth has helped manage some of the most extreme crises across the globe and has experienced first-hand how risks can be minimised by well-prepared teams, effective decision-making and strong leadership. After more than 25 years in military leadership roles, he now works with boards and executive teams, preparing them to manage risk and plan for uncertainty. He is much in demand as a writer, speaker and consultant.

Garth holds a Master of Business Administration, is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is an accomplished non-executive director and chair. He is a regular on business podcasts, and is often invited to business forums to provide insights on leadership, risk and business resilience. He remains a part-time member of the Australian Army, where he lectures on command, leadership and ethics to emerging senior military leaders.

Since leaving full-time military service he has held several prominent civilian roles, including spearheading government veterans' employment campaigns, sitting on high-profile boards and providing leadership to the veteran community.

Garth's first book, After the Blast, chronicled his operational deployments, including his recovery from wounds caused by an insurgent bomb attack in Baghdad in 2004. The book received widespread critical acclaim and won the 2016 Nib Military History Award.

Over his career he has trained and mentored hundreds of leaders, from middle managers to senior executives, military leaders and company directors. He is unrivalled in the Australian business community for his breadth of military experience and ability to transfer the universally applicable lessons learned to the corporate world.

PROLOGUE

Two decades of war in the Middle East have left an indelible scar on western nations, but if we are to draw any good from this protracted conflict, it can come from learning about ourselves, and our enemy. Taking the hard-won and -lost lessons of warfare and overlaying them onto the corporate landscape — risk, resilience, agility and decision-making in times of crisis — for me, this is where the learning started.

The sunlight cut through the morning haze. The melancholy melody of the day's first call to prayer had reverberated through the city streets hours earlier. As the morning emerged, so too did the streams of traffic snaking noisily through the city streets.

Under a veil of normality, the city was pulled by murderous tension.

The two men, hunters, sat waiting. Watching for their prey to cross into their trap.

…

The night before, just on dusk, the men had parked the car on the city street. The vehicle creaked and groaned as it settled on its sagging suspension while they ran their final checks. In the half-light of the floodlit city, they lifted the blankets that covered their payload. Following the wires, they looked for anything that might have been dislodged during the short drive from the north-eastern outskirts of the city. The checks complete, they looked at each other one last time before a quick nod and a slow click of the switch. They both exhaled.

Down a laneway, the shadows overlaid with spirals of concertina barbed wire. They walked quickly. A right turn, more high walls crowned with coiled wire. A left turn, and they faced the outline of the dark doorway. Up the stairs, seven floors, past the fire-blackened wall and bullet holes from the last time the building was ‘cleansed’. They had lost three brothers. One to a spray of automatic fire. The others to the large cold-eyed men in uniform who zipped their arms together behind their backs and folded them through the rear doors of large military trucks.

A brief fumbling with keys and they entered the eighth-floor apartment. The room exhaled as they opened the door. Ammonia and cold masonry.

As they had expected, it was empty, except for three plastic chairs stacked in the corner and a dull sink with missing taps. A bare light fitting dangled from the centre of the ceiling.

One threw an old blanket on the floor, his only luggage. The other lifted the sash window. Squinting, he could make out their weapon, the white sedan parked against the curb 200 metres away.

He opened the small satchel case he had received only hours earlier. Taking a moment to reflect on the instructions he had been given, he slowly withdrew the small rectangular plastic box from the case.

His mind shuddered for the briefest instant. Then, with a blink, he calmed as he found what he was looking for — a small Ziploc bag with the familiar shape of the square-sided battery.

With methodical, cautious movements he took the back off the plastic box and lined up the battery with the terminals. He inhaled. Click. Nothing, exhale.

The buzz of the city calmed quickly as curfew took effect.

They spent the night in a twilight of consciousness, taking turns sitting by the window, looking down on their killing ground. Shaken from their dozing vigil by the occasional cry of a siren, a distant thud or the rumble of a convoy of trucks with a permit to break the curfew.

They knew they would not find their prey until after the morning prayer.

…

Long after the dawn's silence had been broken the first target came into view. The distinctive whirr and guttural cough of exhaust were the first signs that the hunt was on. They watched as the heavy steel vehicles jerked and pulsed to navigate the chicane out of their compound some 800 metres away.

But the shoulders of the two men sagged as the vehicles, bristling with weapons and antennae, turned away from them, pushed through the traffic to the other side of the busy highway and disappeared into a side street.

The peak-hour traffic built quickly, and they knew they would have another chance. And almost at once, in the blink of an eye and with a sharp draw of breath, the game was back on. The nose of the heavy vehicle pushed out back into the traffic. Followed by another. Two targets … which one would they choose?

‘The first. It carries more men and we will kill more,’ said one.

‘No, the second, with its big cannon. Its destruction will photograph better.’

Device in hand, with a finger over the button, he hesitated. The decision paralysed them, and they glared at each other as the prey slipped by.

And the opportunity was gone. The vehicles thundered north to the checkpoint where the majestic Tigris River cut through the city.

Mid curse, a sound rose above the hum of the traffic. Two other heavy armoured vehicles jockeyed and bumped their way out of the compound chicane.

‘The second!’ A nod. Shoulders tensed. The remote gripped tight, a thumb hovering over the button as the heavy vehicles swung around the intersection towards them.

‘Now!’

Sometimes events in life, no matter how harrowing, provide opportunities to learn and grow. This was one of mine.

We came out of the roundabout and accelerated hard on the road leading north to the checkpoint into the International Zone. I was in the second of the two armoured vehicles, standing up in the turret. The buildings to our right had been noted several times by our intelligence team as a trouble spot.

This morning nothing seemed out of the ordinary. We had no indication that sometime earlier an insurgent had parked a car with a cargo of artillery rounds wired to a remote control. There was no sign that, as my vehicle passed it, the device would be triggered.

Of the explosion I remember nothing. I have no recollection of the blast that tore off my helmet and goggles, nothing of how my vehicle lost control and careered into and uprooted a tree on the median strip.

I must have been unconscious for only a few seconds. I came to at the bottom of the turret … I was confused and pissed off, and everything hurt.

Instinctively reaching for my head I was alarmed to find no helmet, and I knew I was in trouble, as I couldn't breathe or see and had a terrible pain in my legs. I couldn't get any air into my lungs. I tried to yell, but nothing came out.

On the second attempt, I managed to let out a whimper and draw some painful breaths. I felt the bloody mess that was my eyebrows and the bridge of my nose, and for a second managed to prise open my eyes and look down at the dusty floor of the turret …

This event took lives — of soldiers, civilians, children — and left me scarred. For many, it was the worst possible outcome, leaving them with a sense of guilt, doubt and regret as they dwelt on the question: could I have done more?

This book offers anecdotes, snapshots of fighting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, experiences from a military career that may provide valuable insights and lessons on broader leadership strategies. Now, years later, much of this is viewed through the lens of a business leader and presented as a framework to navigate the corporate landscape. It will give leaders an alternative and sometimes unconventional view on leading teams, managing risk and planning for the unexpected. By demonstrating the culture, people and processes needed to turn the dial, shifting a chaotic situation into one where prospective outcomes can be understood and a clear path out of crisis can be established.

As a military officer and now a risk executive, I have lived and managed some of the most extreme crises around the globe.

After returning from combat in the deserts of Afghanistan and the streets of Baghdad, I came to realise that the corporate world can feel like a battlefield too, especially when unprecedented crises arise to challenge your organisation's people, operations and value.

I have also experienced first-hand how risks can be minimised by well-prepared teams, effective decision-making and strong leadership. I now work with boards and executive teams in many countries preparing leaders to manage risk and plan for uncertainty.

In this book I have drawn on lessons learned during an active 25-year military career, overlaid with my subsequent experience as a business leader and adviser, to motivate and inspire today's leaders to equip their businesses with effective solutions to managing uncertainty and chaos.

Unashamedly, I have chosen as a hinge or inflection point of the content and perspective of this book a single event — the aforementioned insurgent bomb attack in Baghdad in 2004 and my recovery from life-threatening wounds inflicted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was an experience that shaped my thinking and has given me a perspective and insights that I feel privileged to have earned. I also feel an obligation to pass on these lessons to assist other leaders with real examples and, at times, alternative perspectives on organisational processes and concepts.

The book will delve further into the details of the 2004 attack, but here is a simple account for context.

I was commanding an armoured vehicle travelling through the streets of Baghdad when it was targeted in an insurgent attack. Explosives concealed in a parked car detonated approximately five metres from us as we passed. An instantaneous wave of heat, percussion and debris consumed us. We were travelling at about 60 kilometres an hour and careered onto the median strip, hitting and uprooting a large tree.

With my head and neck exposed to the blast, I sustained the worst injuries of my crew, including holes in my face and neck, scorched skin and singed hair, but civilians were killed, families and livelihoods destroyed; the soldiers, who saved my life that day, also came face-to-face with humanity at its worst. Several of them continue to pay for that.

In the short term, my most dangerous injury was from a small piece of metal from the bomb that had nicked my carotid artery on the right side of my neck. The emergency surgery to stabilise the blood supply to my brain left me with a scar running from my ear to my shirt collar.

Longer term, the puncture holes into my sinuses were most dangerous. Specifically, one on the bridge of my nose had shattered the bone into my sinus but also fractured the bone protecting my brain.

I underwent three operations, in Baghdad, in Germany then back in Australia.

I recovered relatively quickly. Not only that, but I survived without significant ongoing issues and was able to keep my job in the Army.

Eighteen months later, when the opportunity arose, I volunteered again and returned to Baghdad in 2006. It was a turbulent deployment marked by deaths, shootings, rocket attacks, mistakes, camaraderie, lies and lives changed forever. While the bomb attack in 2004 had left me physically scarred, the later deployment left me mentally raw. And I was lucky: plenty