Talent Centric
decide how – much as senior teams in
business aim to provide autonomy
within a framework – he points out that,
in the military, risk is optimised and
leadership shared.
“I’m intrigued in many commercial
organisations that leadership tends
to mean ‘the top people’; others are
described as ‘managers’. In the RAF,
we treat everyone as leaders. If I have a
heart attack, I don’t want the most senior
person to come to my assistance, I want
the one who’s best qualified!”
Another benefit of military life is
career-long access to relevant training.
“The armed forces are rigorous
in their training and development
of people and that rigour can make
a tremendous contribution to
commercial organisations,” Walker
stresses. And as the former Air Officer
Commanding the RAF Training Group,
he is well-placed to know.
“Training has a very high status in
the armed forces,” he explains. “I’m
not sure learning and development
(L&D) has the same status in many
commercial organisations because
it’s seen as a diversion from ‘whatever
people are meant to be doing’.”
While he accepts that former
servicemen and women will need
bridging training to meet the needs
of new positions in civilian
organisations, he argues that this is
the case for most people.
“In my view, everybody needs
training and I think there has been
a disinvestment in the commercial
sector in L&D; hygiene-type
training is being done, but there has
been disinvestment in leadership
development. Organisations could add
value with a more rigorous approach
to understanding competencies,
particularly as people move higher up
organisations, or come in laterally.”
The point he is keen to make clearly
is that recruiting ex-military is not
about fulfilling a duty of corporate
responsibility but about recruiting
valuable talent into the business. Far
from trying to persuade employers to
do a good deed, he is urging them to
make a commercial decision.
“Most servicemen and women bring
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Signing up to
the Armed Forces
Covenant in 2016 was
just an initial step
“There are positive
steps in most of the
banks to recruit
ex-servicemen
actively, because they
know how much value
they can bring”
with them high levels of transferable skills,
and can make tremendous contributions
to organisations,” he says. “Certainly, in
financial services, which I’m well attuned
to, there are positive steps in most of the
banks to recruit ex-servicemen actively,
because they know how much value they
can bring. Immediately, people think risk
and compliance are good areas, but they
soon realise the breadth of skills people
bring, and the diversity of personality.”
Though perhaps not a typical veteran,
Walker is, himself, proof of the variety of
opportunities a military career can offer.
“My RAF career was mostly in the
realms of training, but I ran the Air Force’s
capital works programme for three years
and was director of corporate comms for
three,” he says. “It was tremendously
varied. But if there was a single thread
running through it, other than training,
it was working for The Queen.”
Walker’s first appointment, from
1989-’92, was as Equerry to Her Majesty,
which he describes as “a very personal
appointment to The Queen where you
look after people coming to the palace to
see her. I went with her on engagements
and assisted Her Majesty when she went
into private residence at Sandringham
or Balmoral,” he explains. “You meet an
extraordinary spectrum of people.”
Walker returned to palace in the mid-
1990s to assist with the transfer of funds