Psychology

Social synchrony is a big feature of human behaviour—it's a weird thing if you think about it, but we do things like marching in time and parading and singing in choirs in ways that are highly coordinated and synchronised.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms

I'm particularly interested in the human propensity to copy behaviours that lack any kind of knowable causal structure. This is how we learn arbitrary conventions—and I think it originates in a distinctively human way of building group identities.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms

We engage in this kind of behaviour even more enthusiastically when we're anxious about being excluded or left out.

Cognitive scientist studying ritual, religion, and social bonding mechanisms

Let me be clear: 90% of what people like I do is about failure. I embrace failure every single day. It's not bad. In the pursuit of excellence, clearly every day is going to involve failure.

Founder of Pret A Manger, British fast-food entrepreneur and businessman

Unless you learn and grow continuously, you're probably going to end up as one of the 90% who don't make it.

When these people are under stress, they make bad decisions. They get reactive. One of the key findings in our conclusions is that the unsuccessful founders were more reactive. They weren't measured. They weren't deliberate. They didn't make decisions based on facts — their emotions carried them away.

Rich, sometimes you treat a wisp of intuition as though it were a four-lane highway. It's not that you shouldn't trust intuition — it's that you need to validate it.

I mean, people ask me, 'Should I do a startup?' And I say, 'Well, how important is work-life balance to you?' And if they say anything other than 'It's not important,' I say, 'You shouldn't do it.' Because it's a killing field.

That confidence and perseverance can sometimes lead you to keep charging ahead headfirst, when what's really needed is a pause and a course adjustment. I think that's the challenge when strengths get overused.

As an entrepreneur, you're often doing things that haven't been done before, or doing them in ways that break the mould. All sorts of people are telling you, 'No, that's not how it's done,' and you're constantly running into obstacles. Without a lot of self-confidence, you can't even get started.

What really matters is how well you know yourself — because every aspect of your leadership is expressed through your personality. I think that single trait — self-awareness — or rather, that skillset, outweighs all the others put together.

When you're in the present, looking forward, your brain sees change as scary. But from the far side, looking back, the fear fades.

Former Navy submarine captain and author of "Turn the Ship Around!

Your brain has an agenda: to make you feel good about you. So if you're the CEO, and you decided to launch a product two weeks ago, your brain assumes, 'Well, that must have been the right decision.' It starts scanning the environment for proof — cherry-picking anything that confirms you were right.

Former Navy submarine captain and author of "Turn the Ship Around!

I particularly like the six-month shift for operational decisions. But for life choices, look at Jeff Bezos. When deciding to start Amazon, he projected himself into the far future. He asked: 'When I'm 80, what will I regret more — starting the company and failing, or never starting it at all?'

Former Navy submarine captain and author of "Turn the Ship Around!

If I ask better questions, they come up with better answers.

Former Navy submarine captain and author of "Turn the Ship Around!

Status hierarchies help us navigate choices which would otherwise be impossibly complex. It dramatically reduces the cognitive load we face in making decisions.