Joint & Collaborative Working: Nick Davies Head of C2SI Raytheon UK – inspiring leadership interview with Jonathan Bowmen-Perks

Brigadier Nick Davies – Head of Command and Control, Space and Intelligence (CSI) at Raytheon UK 

Nick, who is currently leads the Command and Control, Space and Intelligence business at Raytheon UK spent 34 years in the Army before completing Regular service as a Brigadier 4½ years ago. Nick has carried his strong belief in joint and collaborative working from his military career into his current IT systems, applications and security business. He believes a key role of a senior leader is to set strategy and tone, to grow and empower the organisation itself to deliver it and develop a culture of trust where people feel confident to speak the truth. A key attribute of leader is judgement – to make good decisions when information is inadequate or contradictory. And to know when and how to intervene when things go wrong. At such times leaders need to be patient – to find the facts, then act to help and empower those who are dealing with the problem, not to do their job for them. When good leaders intervene, they bring confidence and help make the situation better – poor leaders bring fear, blame and make it worse. 

An experienced senior leader, Nick has expertise in cyber security, specialist intelligence and IT programme delivery and support solutions to meet complex business needs, management of risk and the delivery of associated change programmes. He has led the design and implementation of new business areas, implemented process improvement programmes and the driven the adoption of ITIL, Agile and collaborative delivery models.

Nick is adept at operational, business and wider strategic planning, senior operational leadership, mentoring and driving change through to delivery, and is confident at leading large (3,000 + people) and smaller organisations across multiple locations and differing missions. He has planned and implemented effective large scale change and remediation programmes, and is experienced in managing collaboration: internally and between organisations, with government and between international partners. He is also practiced at managing sensitive relationships and issues, and taking difficult decisions, whilst engaging with staff at all levels with empathy and honesty. Nick had a very impressive military career especially his service with special forces and attendance at the higher command and staff course.