Simon Bond is quick to dismantle assumptions. He’s ex-Royal Australian Navy, has no social media presence and still holds a defense clearance. But his work has never been about conflict. “…the times that I enjoyed the most when I was in the Navy were when we were up in East Timor, building hospitals and schools…” he says. “That’s what the military can do when it’s at its best – highly trained people, fully resourced, sent to do good.”

After leaving the military for geospatial engineering and software development, as a board member of a health service in Victoria, he soon saw the opportunity to bring these worlds together. Mission command theory states that leaders don’t micromanage. You define the mission intent: what good looks like, and you give your teams the space and trust to figure out how to get there. That framework shaped his leadership style in business and the Navy and now underpins the way Eureka Idea Co operates as a global, high-performing consulting collective applying Mission command theory to global health challenges.

“You want a framework that allows people to know what the guardrails are and know what they’re supposed to achieve, but you don’t necessarily tell everyone how to achieve it.” In Eureka’s case, it is to address the systemic challenges we see around the world, by providing skilled services and support to organizations that are doing the most good.

This structured yet fluid way of approaching data-based landscapes is something brand new – and also why Simon was first attracted to Eureka when they were looking for board members. After the Navy, Simon rose through corporate and tech industry heights, using the geospatial information systems. As a board member of a large Health Service, he had seen the challenges that existed around him and the way that his thinking could assist solutions.

In the military, the higher up you go, the more it is about logistics and the further down you get, the more it is about making decisions in the field. The idea with Eureka was to minimize the logistics so that more brain power is spent on making and informing good, evidence-based decisions with the reassurance of powerful support behind you. 

The analogy to military operations ends in Eureka when it comes to the unique structuring and governance that allows individuals closer to the ground to report and control upwards, vote and start taking control of operations and the organisation. This is outside of the military way of doing things as is another key tenet of Simon’s personal manifesto – curious empathy.

So instead of going into a situation thinking a person has done this thing and it’s wrong, Simon goes in thinking “Why did you do this?” Nine times out of 10, a problem that seems big ends in being little more than a difference of opinion. And in diffusing the conflict, you find easy ground for a better way forward. Simon believes that this perspective can be applied widely to crafting health care services and beyond.

And Simon is excited for what is to come: “I think the potential, we’re only just scratching the surface of what I think the potential inside Eureka is like.” As an engineer of rigorous software and geospatial systems, it sure feels like you can trust him on this. 

If a maverick approach to consulting interests you, follow Eureka or chat with us about joining our team and discover an opportunity to apply diverse thinking and innovation to global development challenges.