From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
In 2013, the International Rescue Committee were looking for a new CEO, and at the interview panel I said that I was applying for the job firstly because I thought some of the questions at the intersection of foreign policy and humanitarian aid were some of the most difficult questions in global public policy. How do you get aid into Syria? How do you educate kids in Afghanistan? How do you tackle sexual violence in the Congo? Those are difficult questions, and I like difficult questions.
Without truthfulness I would never have been able to grow anything of any significance, I would have been 'found out.' Having truthfulness and ethics within a business creates trust among employees at all levels and is critical. I led the company with an approach of complete honesty.
Our approach is this: diversity is an invitation to the party, inclusion means being asked to dance, and belonging implies having the chance to choose a song on the playlist. This metaphor speaks to making a difference and feeling truly part of something.
Culture is much bigger than that. Culture goes beyond values. I define culture is three primary parts. The first part is behaviour. It's the behaviours of your employees that get embedded into all the processes we are already doing. The second part is processes. The third piece is practices.
You need to work like someone's trying to take it all away from you, because they are.
For me, success is about harmony, and it has several dimensions. The classic three; intellectual, physical, and spiritual – when those three are in harmony, I feel my life is a success. Money isn't really a part of that.
When you're identifying talent in music or other industries- one of the most important things to identify is which of those individuals is able to marry talent with extraordinary drive.
Nature has evolved the human race for individuals to be very different from each other. Half of us are thinkers, and we proceed according to the facts. The other half of us are feelers. Nature says you need both kinds of people to push humanity forward.
A lot of that feeling of alienation that you see in The Office, Dilbert, and so-forth is driven by people feeling that they don't understand context, and ultimately decisions don't make sense.
The festival and the perception of it are very hard to pin down, they mean so much, in so many ways, to so many people. If you ask one person what Glastonbury means to them, it will be a very different answer to another. One of the most precious aspects of Glastonbury is specifically that we can't put our finger on it.
The most successful organisations I've met over the years have a very-strong senses of culture (even from start-up stage). This isn't the soft process of drafting a mission statement for your website, but genuinely understanding the type of personality you want your company to have.
The American general felt that if we confronted the Russians with a determined show of force, they would probably back down. And you know what? He was probably right; but what does probably mean? If it's 90% then there was a 10% chance he was wrong.