From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
the most important thing is to commit your resources, whether it's money or time, to a cause that you're passionate about, whether that is a local school, supporting an environmental project, or helping poor kids in Africa
The job of an entrepreneur or a competitive leader is to create the conditions that make your organisation the better competitive alternative. All your efforts should be directed towards marshalling and channelling resources—human and intellectual capital—towards being the best competitive alternative.
There is a specific type of person you'll often find in these long-lasting organisations: thoughtful, future-oriented, introspective, and often self-critical. These individuals are focused on making a positive impact in the world and serving the organisation rather than seeking personal gain.
Amazon is the archetype of a great brainy and brawny business because they do both so well but since every company is going to have to do those things, the skill set required of leaders will be different over the next couple of decades. In the old days, you could stay within a function, rise through that function, adding teammates to complement your skills…Today I talk about systems of leadership – and you need the ability to see the entire system.
If you think of a candle- it's bright, but the light goes out in all directions, like a sphere. If you think of a laser beam- the light is concentrated in one direction, and it can be much more powerful than a candle. Goals focus our energy in the same way.
As far as I'm concerned any business that's up and running within an hour of having mortar [attacks shows remarkable resilience].
When you have good people, the culture naturally thrives on its own. Everyone in our team is remarkable, with strong moral values, which ensures everything runs smoothly.
I nearly died several times. I shared everything openly with everyone. I shared how my whole thought process and character had completely changed in that expedition, but also how my own purpose had completely changed.
If you don't have some failures continually, it is a signal that you have retreated into the conservative past. Most people still interpret failure as an unfortunate thing to get to success, but this isn't actually what it means.
Silence is, by definition, an absence—an absence of voice, opinion, and life. It begins so subtly that it often goes unnoticed. We start by withdrawing or withholding our genuine thoughts from conversations, replacing them with what we presume others want to hear. As it continues, silence essentially means we cannot fully be ourselves. We find ourselves editing parts of who we are, censoring our thoughts and feelings—and we do this to each other, often without realizing it.
If you offer no vision for the future, someone else will. Our geopolitics cannot tolerate a vacuum, and if you retreat- whether physically or ideologically- someone else will come up with a plan which may not be complementary for democracy.
Scaling up is incredibly challenging; it's definitely been the hardest part of my own entrepreneurship journey. You might be familiar with The Peter Principle, which states that people are promoted to the level of their incompetence. It's exactly the same in the real world: if you're good at your job, it leads to advancement in your career, and then you don't get to do those things anymore that made you deserve that advancement.