SJUK speaks exclusively with ex-military leader Sir Richard Shirreff, Co-Founder of risk and advisory business, Strategia Worldwide and Chair of the Healix Risk and Security Advisory Board.

Sir Richard Shirreff was born in Kenya in 1955 where he lived until the age of eight.

Educated in England, he graduated from Exeter College, Oxford with a degree in Modern History before being commissioned into the British Army from Sandhurst.   

“Those early years in Kenya really shaped me,” he says. “It was a very different world from the UK at that time and I think those who grew up there looked at things differently.

“My father fought in the Second World War. I was born 10 years after the Second World War. Our lives were coloured by it.

“We were entirely driven by what our parents had been through and ultimately, it was one of the reasons that I became a soldier.”  

In a 37-year career in the British Army, Sir Richard commanded soldiers on operations at every level from platoon to division.

This included combat in the Gulf War of 1991 as a tank squadron leader and again in Iraq as a divisional commander to operations in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Bosnia. 

He also had extensive staff experience at brigade, Army HQ and in the Ministry of Defence.

He commanded NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps and in a final military assignment was NATO’s 4 Star Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe (DSACEUR).  

In 2016 his novel ‘2017: War with Russia’ was published in the UK, USA and Poland.  A best seller, it was written, he says “because I could forsee what was going to happen”. It has since been translated into eight languages.  

To say Sir Richard’s resume is impressive would be a gross understatement, but when asked about his greatest achievements, he is not so forthcoming. “I think I will let other people decide that” he says, with a humility, warmth and wisdom that makes the conversation move easily into several areas, including and for the purposes of this article, challenges. During his time in the military, Sir Richard “saw and experienced many of the British Army’s operations” and now applies the lessons he learned to help organisations and businesses.

In 2016 he co-founded Strategia Worldwide, a global risk advisory company, which has since built up a sizeable portfolio of clients across different sectors. He joined Healix’s Risk and Security Advisory Board in March 2024. He is also an honorary fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 

Thinking ahead 

To be successful, you must have a clear strategy, and this is as true business as it is in combat.

Sir Richard explains, “Strategy is being quite clear about the goal, the desired set of circumstances. You can’t really call it an end state, because that implies a firm stop, it’s not, it’s a set of circumstances which is better than the circumstances you find yourself in.

“That requires strategic leadership, and it requires strategic vision, and it requires the close integration of ends; ends, where you want to get to and what you want to achieve, with the ways, how are you’re going to get there and of course, the means, the resources.”

You must have all of those in balance, if you don’t, your strategy is going to fail he says – you must be able to think strategically and get above the tactical. 

“Failure is a great teacher. What I learned from the first two decades of this century in Iraq and from a strategic level in Afghanistan and in the Balkans is that security is not achieved from the barrel of a gun, security is achieved through a combination of things.

“Ultimately, it’s about winning hearts and minds, it’s about subjecting your operations to a critical criterion: what impact is what I’m about to do going to have on the minds of the people I’m operating amongst, because if I alienate them by what I do, I’m only going to gift the advantage to the opposition.” It’s a very basic principle, but it’s easily forgotten, says Sir Richard. 

“To achieve buy in from the people, you must be aware of who else is out there. It’s not just about “the military” and the ability to do to deploy violence and force, when necessary, it’s also about taking account of multiple other stakeholders – those who are there for reconstruction, development and others.

“It’s all about integrating plans and integrating capabilities with them to achieve a sort of synergistic effect.

“That point about what we do alone is not as important as what we can do together is as important to security managers as it is to soldiers and others operating in a complex environment.” 

Geo-politics and UK security 

Sir Richard warns, “we are living in about as dangerous an environment as we have seen in this country and globally since about 1938.

“The wolf nearest the sledge is Russia’s assault on Ukraine which is in danger of being forgotten about because of the saga in the Middle East.

“It is of paramount importance for the UK and the west to give Ukraine not only the means to defend itself, but the means to achieve victory over Russia in Ukraine.

“The goal must be a Europe whole and free with Ukraine part of NATO. The reality is that democracies are under threat, under attack even, from a coalition of authoritarian states.

“The “so what?” in all of this for businesses and for security managers, is understanding what is going on and if you haven’t got an intelligence capability, you’ve got to train one or you’ve got to buy one in from, for example, a company such as Healix.”   

International healthcare and risk management services business Healix has brought together a panel of five leading security voices to form the Healix Risk and Security Advisory Board, led by Sir Richard.

Drawing on experience in hostage negotiation, international diplomacy, intelligence, policy and research from the likes of NATO, the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the US Government, Board members will bring a new dimension to crisis management and decision-making in complex and volatile environments, says the company. 

“Healix is a first-rate organisation,” says Sir Richard. “The Risk and Security Advisory Board is made up of several very experienced, very committed heavy hitters in a range of different disciplines, whether its military, intelligence, diplomatic, political, an understanding of populism and social movement or indeed a more hands on vast experience of hostage release and negotiations, as well policing, we cover a pretty wide base. The Healix Academy is a brilliant initiative too and that’s another area in which we can offer our experience and provide a sort of mentoring role.” 

What is wargaming? 

“What I learned and observed from my experience as a campaign commander in southeast Iraq and at strategic level in Afghanistan – and before that in the Balkans – is the importance of understanding risk, linking risk and strategy and understanding the relationships between risk.” 

That’s why in 2016, Sir Richard linked up with his business partner to take Strategia Worldwide forward. “We are all about strategy execution and above all, building resilience.

“You say what your strategic goal is, and we can help you get there,” he says, adding that if you don’t understand what that is or haven’t really worked it out, they will help.  

Sir Richard explains, “It starts with understanding the risks you face and then designing a strategy to mitigate those risks and move forward along that pathway to your goal.

“The third area of real importance, as well as risk management and strategy execution, is resilience.

“However good you think your strategy is, you must test it and the tried and tested way of doing that. is to apply the military technique of wargaming.” 

“Wargaming is where you run a two-sided exercise with a red team who oppose you, the Blue Force, the friendly force, the company whose plan has been tested, with a red team role playing anybody who can screw up your plan or strategy – NGOs, other companies, regulators, other governments, terrorist groups, an aggressive country like Russia.

“You think it all through and go through it systematically. Wargaming can really help you test your plans and work out where your plans are weak and where they need mitigation and adjust them accordingly.

“What’s really important as well, is not so much the plan, but the thinking, thinking iteratively about what might happen. So, as circumstances change – as they always do at the worst possible time – you will have generated the sort of intellectual muscle memory to cope with change and rapid problems being flung at you. 

“These are all the sorts of things we do at Strategia and frankly, they are relevant for every organisation.

“Every organisation has to have a strategy and your organisation must be be able to link risk and strategy.

“It’s about understanding that security is part of it and as I said earlier, security is dependent on a whole host of other factors which need to be considered as well.” 

As our conversation ends, Sir Richard says that if he had to boil down all he had learned into one piece of advice it would be “nobody can foretell the future, several people get pretty close to it, but nobody can be precise about what’s around the corner.

“So, build resilience and the way to build resilience is, number one, by ensuring your crisis management policies and plans are easily understood, well known and regularly practised and number two, by wargaming your plans and wargaming your strategy.” 

This article was originally published in the June Edition of Security Journal United Kingdom. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.