From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
27 years ago, when I started in UFC, I knew it was going to be one of the biggest things in sports- honestly. It was always a spectacle, but needed refining to become a mainstream, extreme sport. All the excitement we used to get from watching those movies we can now watch in reality. The men and women who come into the octagon are also really fascinating, have incredible stories, incredible personalities- UFC really captures you… it captures hearts and minds.
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.
Let's stay true to Jaguar's philosophy: let's be a copy of nothing, let's lead and not follow, let's be the first. At the time, we were the first brand to fully commit to Formula E.
There simply isn't enough creativity and bandwidth at the top to deal with the level of complexity and change in today's world. In bureaucratic structures, a small group of leaders can hold the organization's capacity to change hostage to their own personal willingness to adapt.
Warren Buffet has only bought one business outside the USA and that's in Israel... During the due-diligence process, Hezbollah landed rockets in the car park of the main factory he was buying! The factory owners said to Buffet that they would totally understand if he wanted to postpone the due-diligence if he perceives a risk and he said, '...as far as I'm concerned any business that's up and running within an hour of having mortars land in their car park is a pretty resilient company...'
I know when this is coming because people at the club stop talking about the future. That is a big sign. When I see that the Arc is on the decline I start looking for a new Club!
Just because a decision doesn't work out doesn't mean it was the wrong decision. If it was based on the best available information at the time, it was still a sound choice.
There's definitely a sense that regulators don't understand how firms operate and the practicalities of what they do- and hence that regulations won't help resolve the issues, such as governance issues, that are there.
Every person is different, but every sale is the same.
We adopted in Portugal a National Strategy for Entrepreneurship: Startup Portugal. A strategy that aims to make Portugal the ideal space to create, test, fail and try again.
Building a business is about perseverance. When Jeff and I set off in late 1958, the sport of the world was football. Adidas had claimed that – and sports stores didn't need another brand in that category. We had to make customers and stores need our brand.
BE CONSISTENT across your communication – what your values are, what you're trying to do – it's super obvious but without a single clear proposition that you communicate consistently at every contact point, you can't expect to grow an audience that believes in you.