hi everyone I'm Nikolai tangan the COO of the Norwegian so wealth fund and today I'm really happy to welcome Peter Burling Peter Burling is uh well he's a legend in sailing and uh won three America's Cup victories including one recently uh loads of World Championships like like loads and loads and uh Olympic championships as well so you've been kind of dominating sailing lately so welcome P hey thanks for having me

hey thanks for having me So the plan is to tease out what we uh in the business world and in the finance world can learn from from the real professionals so first of all um when you win do you celebrate success yeah yeah I think you definitely have to celebrate the success um

I mean with every Victory there's there's so much hard work that that goes behind that building up to the competition I think you've also got to celebrate the the end of a milestone even if it it doesn't quite go as well as as you would have liked um but yeah it was definitely um yeah the last America's Cup was a a really enjoyable one to celebrate for sure when you say celebrate what do you mean um I mean is like like a cup of tea and that's it or it really depends normally after a competition you're pretty tired so normally you're just trying to enjoy the moment with uh you know everyone that that's got you there

for an America's Cup environment there's 200 people in the team there's all the friends and family um there's your own family yeah there's just so many people that have I suppos supported you along along that journey and you know it's really nice to be to share share a moment with everyone just because generally you end up so busy in the the actual competition phase that you don't get a lot of time to to really enjoy it with the people that have have supported you to be there how long are you happy for quite a while um happy is quite a hard thing to quantify right but yeah you really I suppose get that sense of accomplishment and pride of what you've managed to achieve I think the the losses always hurt a lot longer than the the wins are are happy make you happy for um but yeah either way I think it just fuels you forward into the next adventure

what do you think is a key to kind of keep yourself motivated for for such a long a time you've done it now for many years right well for me it's variety it's it's doing things slightly differently I think we're really lucky we're in a sport where there's an incredible amount of varieties and also the technolog is evolving very quickly so you have um you know different challenges you have to overcome on a regular basis

and you know sailing's a quite a unique sport where you know it's it's a very much a decision-making sport um you definitely do not get all the decisions correct it's all about you know making one or two more correct ones than someone else and leveraging yourself and taking a bit of risk when when you've got an opportunity to to make a potential gain but you're also knowing when to cut your loss which is why I like to compare investing with sailing

because you could be you could be ahead and then the win changes and you are lost right and so you lose it's not because of you and it's the same in finance you know you are you're doing really well Market totally turns and you look like a complete loser yeah oh I mean in our sport is is so much of what is is actually conservative and what what is actually aggressive you know in a traditional sense it's very obvious to to a sailor what conservative or aggressive is but you know when you actually play scenarios fully out to an end State it's quite hard sometimes to tell whether something is um I suppose traditionally would have looked very aggressive but is actually what you think is the last wor option at the time or you know whether engaging with another boat and just kind of taking the conservative option is is not actually a conservative option if you looked at it over a a longer period

so yeah there's a lot of you know whether you're trying to play against an opposition or whether you're just almost trying to time trol your race or are you an aggressive sailor yeah I think so um yeah my mindset is very much if there's an opportunity to to make sure you take an appropriate amount of of risk with it you know whether it's how you're sailing the boat but you know in saying that I think you know as a sailor you want to be technically good uh across the board you don't want to have any any weaknesses so you can use uh all the tools in the toolbox for a very cliche cliche way of saying it and take you know what options you think are the correct ones at the time

now Ben anley who you beat in the America's Cup said um your team now is the best team sailing has ever seen what do you think is your super strength I think within a sport or a business you don't have one super strength in sport now everyone's very good um everyone performs at a very high level

but it's making sure you do all the little things really well you come together as a group well you work um you're well with your engineers you know your equipment incredibly well and just the levels getting so high that that everyone's playing out at the moment that you're always trying to look for these little we gains that you know if you can find one or two little gains across a an area you very quickly get get quite a significant jump so you know that's what we try and do is think just trying to continue to out learn and out improve our opposition I don't think and I think the rate of improvement is is more where the the teams get defin

what was the one thing you did better than the UK team or was it just lots of things uh I think it's incredibly hard to tell and I say that because we don't really know the the ins and outs of of their program but it was a pretty big beat very well yeah yeah we we felt like we were really confident with with our piece of equipment you know and how we we sailed that and how we dealt with the decision-making process around the boat

the America scout boats have become very interesting because you have a huge blind spot now so you're kind of really relying on the people on the other side of the yacht to to help you make some of the decisions and to to utilize their View at at the time to to keep you in the correct part on the race course and you I think we did a really good job of that on our boat as is making sure we're always making good decisions around the race course and you know distributed the the load really well around the boat

it's become very technical theing now yeah it's tell us about some of the kind of technicalities of it some data I mean it's the boats are getting incredibly technical on the composite side there'be the most strained kind of composits out there in the world because we're pushing the boundaries very high um we have a incredible amount of monitoring on those so we can push right up against the limit and you know also that that monitoring while you're sailing and then also the monitoring you know when you get back to shore to see if there's been any start of degradation on the on the components

you know you can pretty much go back in the data and look at whatever camera angle of whatever incident and hear exactly what was said on the comms um so it makes for this really kind of open transparent conversations because you know all the data is there all the comms all the audio is there so you can really get to the bottom of of whatever is going on pretty quickly

what's kind of the coolest information stream you have as a when you at you know Drive well I think your um human interfaces is really interesting and and has evolved a really long way um you know the way you interact with the boat um you know whether it's through the steering wheel or the the control surfaces you use and then how that data gets projected back to you through the screens is a massive Loop that continues to evolve very very quickly

but you know also the way that you know now you can interface back with the shaw you know you can really cut down your your iteration cycle Time by you know having a lot of people watching live data and then actually going over the data and giving you more things to try um are you allowed to communicate with them during the race not during the race but that's more in the race building up or on a training day once the race comes at 3 minutes to go from the race you're you're shut off and you're on your your own little bubble

so you've got to I suppose monitor a lot of systems on the yacht at that time as well make sure that things are all working as as they should and that you um aren't overloading anything on the on the package because there's a lot of things in the boat that are sitting right up against the the peak loads a lot of the time so yeah I mean it's a really fun space I before I got fully into sailing um got halfway through an engineering degree in Oakland and and yeah I really love that Technology Innovation side

you like them more than the S do you like the tech more than the saing I wouldn't say more but I think trying to get the most out of a bit of equipment and being able to evolve and adapt that bit of equipment as you go is um something I really enjoy do you think the technology background has helped you and the America's Cup and and in sailing I think in general for sure it has a a really big benefit um

on the America's Cup it's uh very much being able to have a lot better conversation with the engineers and the the design is orbe it they're at a much higher level than than I ever would be in a specific field just being able to understand enough I suppose base principle around you know why something's doing what it should be doing or how the global structures kind of in the big picture items are coming together I think is really beneficial um you know and then but also then when you're trying to hedge one side or another of a problem um you know just having a little more base understanding of of what is actually going on within that that uh situation is is I think really really positive

do you training simulators yeah the simulators become a huge Tool uh in in the world of sailing like it has in in the world of Motorsport not only for I suppose designing the boat choosing kind of what compromises you want to make on the equipment because there's always positives and negatives to to any decision um you know there there's times where you can take a gain on on both sides of the coin but you there's a lot of times where you're trying to figure out where you're trying to position your package relative to where you're guessing your opposition might be or whether you're where you're guessing the forecast might be

which has become incredibly hard of late with the I suppose forecasts becoming so far off what they traditionally would have been if you looked at a 5year average but yeah the simulation just become a massive tool both in the the design space being able to make sure you're you're picking a good good concept um you know also getting all your muscle memory around how you're using your user input devices and then you know when it comes to the racing side as well being able to get enough Cadence

and how much time do you spend in that simulator it it varies massively on how much load we're doing on the water at the same time but we try and make the simulator as close to reality as possible because it's um I suppose really good for for the practice racing side but then also it means that um you know you can design a faster boat because your your simulator is actually as close to reality as you can get it

how do you prepare uh mentally before I race have you got a particular way of doing it do you do the same thing every time no probably relatively low on my Superstition Factor um if you looked at a traditional athlete um you know one thing I really like to do is make sure I come into a big event knowing that I've done all the the preparation to the the highest level I I could yeah um

knowing that you've done hard work and you've really maximized the the time before the the competition to to make sure you in the the space you need to be but also your equipment and you're really comfortable with a lot of the decision- making processes how things are going to unfold yeah it's I mean it's an interesting conversation when you talk to people about you know whether the when it comes to a competition they've been eagerly awaiting that competition for a few days or whether they feel like they're just ready for the competition when the competition arrives um

you I'd say I'm more on the you know side of feeling like I'm ready for a competition on the first day of of the competition normally try and continue to be um trying to progress right up to that and right through the competitions yeah we've also done a lot of work with uh a few psychologists just trying to make sure you mentally get in the the right head space and I think it's uh one thing in sport that has come a long way in the last 20 years is making sure and allowing people to be a lot more consistent with their players making sure you kind of have tools within your own quiver to to make sure you you're ready to go out there and compete

moving on to um uh Team Dynamics so you have a partner Blair juk you've been sing together for a long time right yeah yeah how long 2009 so yeah it's a we while ago now 15 years or something yeah um

yeah we started our relationship in the the 49er um and then have sailed together on you know s GP and and also the America's Cup so yeah we get go long with and you were in the 49er you were like a consistently world champion over a long period of time yep um we won three Olympic medals together uh two two ended up being silver

so the first one felt like uh yeah we were on this massive learning curve never really got to the Australians that that ended up beating us so we were really happy with that Silva and then went back the next time round and didn't lose for the the fouryear cycle can't remember how many events but quite a few on the TR and and one with a huge margin at the Olympics and then Rio in Rio and then obviously to how big was a Marin I think it was a record I can't I can't fully remember that's exactly right it was record what's it was comfortable

what's the secret behind a successful collaboration over such a long time oh I think playing to strengths a little bit um me and bl would be quite different people um but in saying that we've got a lot of similar passions we both love the outdoors we're both really competitive and we both often share the the same goal so you know just that understanding of you you know that you're never going to make um you know all the decisions right but you're both trying to head to the the same place

and it's not always uh you know full of happy families you've got to be able to have good discussions and some people might say this like minor conflict but you know you've got to be able to have those healthy conversations in terms of you know how to actually shift from where you are now to to to a better place and you know that's um something that you know I think really keeps keeps things fresh and and pushes you forward

now how what does a disagreement look like between the two of you it's relatively passive but yeah just it's more around discussion as to you know coming up with theories as to why something should work or not do you lose your temper um no I'm pretty pretty calm as a person I think in our sport if you lose your temper too easily you can really throw away a lot of points which or throw away opportunities to to close out events uh the margins are so small now that you just can't really allow that to happen

and what's the key to stay calm I don't know I think um you I've grown up in New Zealand where you know everything's relatively relaxed um do you think anger has a place in management at all I think you've got to show frustration at times you've definitely got to you know make sure you you let people know when you know where the boundaries are but you've also got to create an environment where people aren't afraid to to be Innovative to to try things to develop to take risk um

so I think with everything there's always a real balance you know you want people to not be afraid to to take risk you want people to put their hand up when they make mistakes and you want to really create that environment where people are really enjoying what they do because you know if you're enjoying what you do it's so much easier to put in the that extra bit of effort that you need to to perform at the highest level

so I think you know environment is such a a big part of of what we do and you know trying to give people the freedom to to learn and grow and improve and see a progression in themselves it's something that's incredibly important but you know then obviously trying to push it in a in a really healthy direction for the the teams really important as well so yeah I think that part of you know how the feedback loop works is really important how the debriefing works

so how do you how do you debrief I think we're really lucky that we have these moments where you get to compete and you get you know to put your cards on the table and see how things have performed and and then go back and learn from that so we generally would debrief we make sure we get feedback from the entire group you have a whole debrief straight away and then a bigger one or how do you how do you do it yeah we'd have a debrief after every day and then debrief either whether it's periodically or after events depending on how long it's been

when you're trying to make some good decisions about where where you should go forward having a little look back is always a an incredibly healthy thing to do at that stage and not be afraid to to make change it's also making sure you debrief the wins just as much as the the losses I think you can always learn a lot by you know what things have have worked really well um in a wi but even in a wi there's also a lot of things that you still want to improve and get better on

so you know most people I don't think are consistent enough on their their review processes and their you know feedback loops as to how people can can improve and get better because it strike me that um these uh feedback sessions in sport are much more honest and transparent than they are in business and in many other places in society yeah yeah I think in sport you have a a lot less um Avenue to hide

so you know if you're if you're not completely honest and transparent people can tell that's straight away but also everyone's there trying to to push for the same outcome so you've there what I was trying to talk about before with the environment you know you want to create an environment where people are you know honest about you know whether they think something's worked or not or and aren't afraid to put their hand up and and say something if they think it's not um

you know the amount of time you can waste going around in circles where someone's made a small mistake there and you haven't quite figured that out and they haven't put their hand up um you know the inefficiencies that can flow on from something like that are massive and you know time's always the the enemy you know in sport you've got a hard deadline of a competition normally that you're building up against so you know that time is the only thing you you can't slow down it kind of keeps marching

so you know how much efficiency you can gain through the debriefing process and people being honest but also willing to I suppose push the boundaries enough and and put their head out at times to to take something on I definitely feel like one of my main roles within the America's Cup is really managing a bit of that risk profile and kind of understanding a lot of the the big Global decisions and How likely that is to to result in us not being able to do a race or not being able to do a training session or what compromises we're going to have to make to to keep a bit of equipment in one piece

p a lot of its efficiency related as well so this focus on process rather than uh results have you always uh being process oriented yeah I think I've always been very process orientated but um one thing I would say is you need enough flexibility within a framework um to be able to create Innovation and to continue to improve

also if you get to process focused and just go through and D do do and that's you and off you go then you you end up quite stagnant and and it doesn't progress you need enough structure that people know where they should be what tasks they should be doing but you need enough space within that structure that they can grow and take risks and do different things and then to rebuild that that process on a regular enough basis that it's still relevant to what you're doing at the time

you go back to an efficiency thing like the process you're doing at the time to on an efficiency thing is is so important and you know even if you look at the the amount of meetings you're having how productive everyone in that meeting is being at the time they're in the meeting whether people are sitting in a meeting to say you know two words and they've kind of wasted an hour of their day or whether they're kind of fully engaged and it's a um a download of information to a wider group

it there's so many points in a in a campaign in a sporting environment where you can gain a lot of time in your day or you can lose a lot of time in your day and not just for one person for a wider Group which is I mean exactly the same business if you're having a meeting you you want people to feel like they can walk into the meeting and you know if they're not engaged in that meeting to be able to not feel obliged to be there and go ahead and do something else

the just the efficiencies you can derive from from that I suppose flexibility within a process is so key tell me about the communication so you sit on each side of of the sale right so you you you can only see half the course yep so you're pretty dependent on communicating with the other guy yeah so in the americ cup you I sat on the the starbard helmet the I supp Skipper of our boat and then I had another Helmsman on the the port side Nathan outage who sat on the other side and then we had um two trimmers essentially sitting in front of both me and Nathan so Blair set on the the port side and Guy Andy sat on the starbard side um

but yeah at certain times you can't see very much that way or you're concentrating very hard on keeping the boat going fast so what's the key what's the key to good communication well on the yacht we we all talk through a headset so it's very loud so you have your MFS on and you have your your microphone right in front of you face for us we try and talk it like we're talking here normal volume and you can say things so much quicker uh if you're talking at a normal volume rather than having to yell um

but yeah being very careful of I suppose your phrasing in our communication Loop's really important making sure you have ways of getting information across very quickly so you don't clog up the the coms Loop because essentially only one person can talk at a time on that that cons Loop and knowing kind of who should be feeding in what information at what time so you're expecting to hear something from a certain voice is very key as well

and you told me before that um you know even if you are 500 M ahead or 500 me behind you cannot discern the difference in your voice and your level yeah you shouldn't be able to really tell normally we'd have a few checks and balances within that if if say there's um a lot of action going on or it's a kind of very busy thing or there's kind of some indecision around what exactly we should be doing at a certain time and things are getting a little but heightened like having a good way of bringing things back down to the level they should be

generally for us you know heightened to not but quiet is uh the very small band compared to what most people would operate with him um but you get to know people well enough and you compete with them enough that you know that you know whether they're working in a good good window or they're you know feeling a bit of a bit of tension in a in a scenario or I mean that's the joy of sport you get to go and compete against the best people in the world and you know see how how good you really are

and you've got absolutely nowhere to hide because everything's on the broadcast is so many camera angles there's so much data out there that you've got to really go out there and put your best foot forward and and be judged from that you mentioned there were 200 people on your team what's the what's the key to be a good manager of 200 people well personally I quite like a relative so I'm sorry just get right so on board the boat you are how many on board the boat we're eight yeah four uh two two drivers two drivers two trimmers and four um power related roles yeah basically biking right

yeah so nor America's couple was um all biking and then you have obviously your reserves on both sides so the the power related guys end up rolling through I suppose people just because it's it's very intensive on the other level they've got a got a perform at and then we have in the Design Group um you have a lot of people there you can also communicate directly to them when you're training um you have people on the chase boat you have your safety people you have your boat Builders

you have a massive amount of of projects going on and I think having you know a really good structure within that where you have you know a lot of you know people taking a lot of responsibilities really important

now you began sailing when you were six right yeah it was a little while ago now um but yeah I grew up in New Zealand so grew up in and around the water and actually my dad had sailed when he was younger and kind of stopped sailing and got my brother into it so I was getting dragged along to start with and then decided to be more fun to go and give it a go than sit on the beach um

you I think we're very Lucky in New Zealand that so much of our our nation surrounded by water um and so many people live so close to the coast it's a generally pretty warm climate especially if you compared it to somewhere like Norway where you know a lot of the year you couldn't actually go on sale you know New Zealand you could sail all year round

yeah something as a young guy getting out there um and kind of making some decisions with what to do with your boat and um getting to race against some other people was I found really good fun and it's been been an amazing journey so when you grow up in New Zealand you have to kind of juice I'm either going to do sailing or rugby is uh yeah or um soccer football as um getting incredibly popular now as well

uh what do you think explains New Zealand's success in sailing I think if people knew it would be easy to emulate but yeah I think we've um you know as a nation we're relatively Innovative people um and we just have a really good AFF Affinity with the water most people have I mean so many fond memories with the water when they they grow up and just love being in and around the water

that you know I think that's just LED through to a really high level of um sailing in our country and for as long as I can remember it's just always been that way I think you know success breeds success in a lot of ways as well you know we've got a an amazing pool of people to be able to ask questions to get advice from do you um do you compare notes with um with the r team we spent a little bit of time with them actually

what do you learn from each other yeah I think the sports are incredibly different and incred be similar at the same time and the old blacks have done an incredible job getting such a high um winning percentage over such a long period of time and just continued to build those those systems and resilience and continue to evolve themselves as a as a rugby team and you know it's been pretty amazing to to see how they they have their their RS and their flows but they always seem to continue to perform at that that super high level

what are the similarities just seeing how the decision- making process works um you know making sure all the athletes are you know really empowered to to get the most out of them elv but then you also feed into the team at a a really high level you how they onboard people um you how they build resilience within their their group do you also do the hacker before sailing I'm not too good at the hacker to be honest

so I'm more try and relax into my day I'm pretty low-key person so I find that just with the adrenaline of an event and you know you've got to go up a little bit and find a good level for yourself but yeah it'll be a bit too intense for me

one place where you where you're not relaxed is your view on on the climate and and the state of the ocean so you started live ocean with Blair a little while back and so what tell us what what is live ocean yeah live ocean is a marine conservation charity that Blair and myself founded uh in New Zealand 5 years ago now

amazing looking back how much has happened during that time and New Zealand have the the fourth largest ocean space in the world and I mean the oceans the thing that connects Nations um you know it's really the the heat sink of the the world um you know it absorbs 90% of the Heat does so much of the heavy lifting with you know oxygen production you know if you start talking about biodiversity you know the ocean really where a lot of that is left on the planet we live on

I mean it's such an amazing thing that that we race on that we felt like we were really you know had to to do our pce to protect it and you know normally you'd wait till the end of your career when you weren't too busy to to take that on but you know when we went and started talking to the science community in the area it felt like the issues were were too urgent to to wait and now it's been a really cool Journey

what does the foundation do the foundation takes promising science uh and you know helps accelerate that um you know and continues to promote the Outreach so we we started off with a a project around Albatross actually um which you know sailed around the world in an ocean race in in 2017 and you know when we're sailing through the Southern Ocean you feel pretty out of your depth you know

you're on the small boat in the middle of absolutely nowhere with the the weather systems down there are so powerful and there these Albatross just cruising around almost checking you out wondering what on Earth you're doing doing down there but they just do it so easily yeah the albatross Mor tell a biodiversity and and how much the that they are Sentinal species so if they're struggling then then the ocean's struggling

and you know we we chose a species to to track that have been um being monitored by our department of conservation in New Zealand for for the last 20 years and in that last 20 years the the breeding population had de by by 70% to be honest they have no Predators on land the species were following so they're interpreting albatrosses an island um 250 Mi off the Southeastern corner of New Zealand that you have to get a permit to land to it's piss free um

it's a very isolated bit of bit of the world um but yeah still the species was absolutely freef falling so now it's um scary to see how how quickly things can be changing in a negative way unless you you really shine lot on the issues no there some really great work you do there um

any particular motto or slogan you live by these are tough questions um no I I don't think I have a particular I suppose motto that I live by but like to be relatively efficient with my time I like to never be afraid to to take on a challenge um never be afraid to to put myself out there just to continue to to learn and improve I feel like you've always got so much uh you can learn from people you can absorb and you can get better so yeah for me that's that's really the The Challenge and you know I'm really really enjoying it

and if you were to give advice to other young people my favorite bit of advice is to make sure people really enjoy what they do um you I feel like life isn't massively long and you've got to really you know be passionate about what you're doing and enjoy it especially if you're really trying to get ahead and Excel in that field

because you know everything's hard work to a certain extent and if you really enjoy what you do it's so much easier to put on those those extra hours or you know that extra little project or or bits and pieces to to really get ahead and and push that area forward uh well Peter uh life may not Bel long but you have achieved uh more things in so far than most people do during 10 lifetimes and it's very clear that you're enjoying it so big thanks for being here oh awesome thanks for having me thanks