“I’m a great believer in late developers, and I’m a great believer in giving people a second chance," shares Major General (Ret’d) David Shouesmith BEd, MBA, FCILT. “I’ve been a huge beneficiary of second chances.”
In an exclusive feature with "Military in Business Magazine", David Shouesmith, UDSS Director, takes us on a riveting journey. From his early days as a university dropout, through his transformation into a senior military leader, to his current influential role as a Business Consultant, Shouesmith offers a captivating look into his unique trajectory.
In his early days, David went from a comprehensive school in Gosport to the University of Exeter and promptly dropped out. He returned to uni in his twenties for a second time- earning a teaching degree, stumbling into a great passion for rock climbing, and undergoing Army Officer Selection in the hopes of spending plenty of time outdoors.
David ultimately climbed to great heights within the military and the MOD before reaching new peaks as a corporate consultant and businessman. He’s currently a Director at Universal Defence and Security Solutions, a leading defence consultancy providing specialist defence and wider security support to governments and businesses across the world.
Here’s how David got to where he is today, plus his insights for new service-leavers pursuing second careers in business.
A Life-Changing 15 Minutes
David was tempted to leave the military not long after joining up. Elements of army life that appealed to him (“the variety, the outdoor dimension, the intellectual challenge”) lost their shine after a few years in, countered by the unexpected extent of ‘regimental tribalism,’ the slow pace of institutional change, and the constraints that existed for late joiners like himself.
“Once I graduated and got out into the serving units, I found it kind of suffocating and formulaic to be honest,” David admits. “I suppose I was disappointed in the quality of some of my superior officers as well.”
He ended up “bumbling around” for a while, opting to sign off and teach at Chepstow until a chance encounter put his future back in focus.
While out climbing with the Army Mountaineering Association David met Colonel Ivar Hellberg, OBE.
“He was sort of a hero of mine from a distance, because he commanded the Commando Logistic Regiment in the Falklands, which was just three or four years previous,” David explains. “He was also an Everest climber. I just spent 15 minutes chatting with him over breakfast and he was a very different senior officer to anyone I'd ever met before. He totally changed my view of the whole thing.”
The following week, David got a call from the postings branch asking if he’d like to go work for Col Hellberg. He says he could’ve been knocked down by a feather.
“It was thanks to him that my military career properly took off.”
28 Years of Climbing the Ranks
In what David calls a ‘masterful management move,’ Hellberg gave him a tight deadline for choosing whether to re-commission and pursue staff college. He was up for the challenge.
"It was pretty rapid and pretty daunting, but good fun," David says with a grin. "Paid off in the end...and it was a great opportunity to go climbing every Wednesday afternoon."
From there the work became increasingly dynamic, involving multiple tours in Bosnia and Afghanistan where he specialised in logistics support and coordination, with particular skills in enabling industry to assist with the provision of military capability.
In 2002, he'd been tasked with setting up military operations in Afghanistan as a Joint Force Logistic Component Commander: “It was massively challenging, flitting between Kabul, places in Pakistan and Oman, just trying to pull together enough fuel and all the other things to support what was then a NATO operation.”
He later rose to become a Major General in the MOD as the Assistant Chief Defence Staff for Logistics, a prestigious and difficult role involving sustaining operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. (As the senior logistician in the UK Ministry of Defence 2007-2009 he was also closely involved in the development of RAF Brize Norton, the hub of the Strategic Air Mobility Force.)
By 2009, family considerations led him to wrap up his nearly three-decade-long military career and spend more time with his wife and daughters. He became a Colonel Commandant with the Royal Logistic Corps and stepped into the corporate world armed with the kind of invaluable professional development you can only get from military service.
“I haven't seen a commercial company or companies that invest even a fraction of what the taxpayer invests in developing military people, because if they did, then they'd never make any money,” he says with gratitude.
14 Years of Corporate Success
Since signing off for the final time, David has worked as a management consultant in corporate strategy, strategic supply chain and critical project management across a range of industry sectors, eventually founding a consultancy of his own. He also founded the RLC Foundation, an organisation designed to connect loggies with innovative resources that exist beyond the barbed wire.
"I had to work incredibly hard. I thought I worked hard in the MOD, but I had to work even harder once I'd left."
In 2016 he joined a US tech company to lead its UK and Europe market entry, and in March 2020 he joined Universal Defence and Security Solutions (UDSS) to co-lead its forward-thinking business development.
”We’re helping companies and governments understand the defence landscape and what it might look like in 2, 3, 4, 5 years time as opposed to just looking at opportunities coming to the market now, helping them to shape their products, their thinking, and their services.”
For example, he points to digital transformation as a key area of interest: “We lag a little in the defence environment, we always do, but digital technology has great potential for building entire synthetic training environments, monitoring livestock, deforestation, dodgy shipping...UDSS can knit them together, looking at how industry operates, production models and so forth and transform the way that [clients’] logistics are done.”
3 Pieces of Advice for New Veterans in Business
Want honest tips about following in his footsteps (or climbing shoes, as it were)? David’s got some words of wisdom for any service-leavers starting out on second career journeys of their own.
The first: “Life isn't handed to anybody on a plate. Just because you've been in the military doesn't mean you're entitled to anything, so the last thing you can do is sit back and rely on your rank or your position.You’ll get on in the civilian world with the characteristics that ought to have got you on in the military world, ie: commitment, energy, efficiency and an ability to get on with people.”
He believes the business world is usually different from what soldiers expect, so also advises they keep an open mind to coworkers who don’t initially impress them.
“There's nothing quite like being part of a big thing like the military...But actually the world is full of really, really capable people. They're not all in the military. There are loads of really, really capable people outside.”
The best part: many of these people want to help you succeed! Don’t be afraid to ask for support.
“Talk to everyone that you know, people will fall over themselves to talk to you. They always do,” David recommends. Veterans in business are especially good shouts."
You can find LinkedIn details for reaching David and his colleagues at UDSS here, and read more of their insights by visiting universal-defence.com/blog.
This article originally appeared in the Ex Forces in Business Magazine.
