From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The old diplomatic model where only representatives of states have a formal role cannot work in today's world. We need open, democratic platforms that allow everyone to participate – it could be a young activist or a business leader, it could be a scientist or an indigenous leader.
The power of routinization is that it allows you to spread a shared set of identity markers to a large population—and to do so very quickly. All you need is a handful of proselytizing leaders willing to travel from village to village, spreading the same ideas and behaviours, and you can soon create a vast tradition encompassing hundreds of communities.
The only way for you to discover something new is to acknowledge the ocean of ignorance in which you are just an island. Experts have a problem with that – they want to get prizes, and get recognised by their colleagues and peers as being very smart. So, when something new comes along... an anomaly... it often gets dismissed for the sake of reputation management.
The true measure of success, as I see it, lies in the effort to effect positive change in the world. However, this perspective isn't universally embraced. The feeling of success, it's crucial to clarify, has little to do with financial gain or even fame. These are two entirely distinct concepts.
This is certainly something that is not without risk. We are pursuing an audacious goal, and we very well might fail. When NASA set the Moon landing challenge, it created a whole series of capabilities and technologies that we previously could not have imagined.
The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated yourself. You should treat your employees like the smart and capable adults they are. Give them the choice to make informed decisions and you will cultivate an environment in which everyone can flourish.
I grew up in survival mode. It was constant. I didn't know what to expect on any given day, what was coming, and I had to be strong enough to be ready for anything – to take it, hide from it, or dodge it. I had to have a strategy.
Our lives have a first and second curve. The first curve is your me curve. The second curve is your wisdom curve. Your teaching curve. It requires you to serve others. You need to find ways of shifting your life from me to we as you transition in age.
there are no good musicians who do not have a good ear, no artists without a great imagination, no writers without an excellent command of the language. The same goes for our trade. It is not enough to know how to use a calculator or build sound financial models. You need to have vision. You should look at a business process as if it were a living thing; you need to sense its music. You know, a good chess player does not need to spend a great deal of time calculating – sometimes one look at the chessboard is enough to know if a combination is good or bad…
We see ourselves as the long term creative and strategic partners to our clients and that word – partner – is really important to us. We will put intellectual, human, financial capital around the ideas of our clients and make them happen. A manager is about somebody that has an opinion, who has the ability to take your dream from inside your head to a reality.
One of the most effective flip-floppers in American history was Abraham Lincoln. How lucky are we that he was willing to change that particular opinion? He stayed true to his values and adjusted his policies to advance those values.
One of the defining experiences I had with CNET, a digital media company where I was the fourth employee back in the dawn of the internet, was recognizing the power of asking for help.