From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
If you look at the balance sheets of Fortune 500 companies 50 years ago and today, you can see that 50 years ago, 80% of the value was physical stuff. Today, more than 85% of the value consists of intangibles. Companies must become so much more now that their value comes from their ability to inspire, drive and organise human beings.
You're not going to be a warrior in battle unless you are a warrior in preparation. You have to be single-minded, you can't just show-up on the night.
True grit is that rare strength and resilience to dust yourself off, look at what went wrong, refine your proposition and plough on. Always be prepared to adapt: an open mind is everything – but stay focused on your end game.
What failure really means is that you are trying to live life, and the fact that you fail means that you are trying. As soon as you try to avoid failure, you are facing the wrong direction.
Trust is the golden thread that runs through not just a kidnap negotiation or a business deal, but life in general. It takes a long time to build, but it's lost in an instant. Trust is about following through—doing what you say you're going to do.
The number one thing is misread intentions. You assume someone has ill intent toward you and you don't check in on those intentions. Then a narrative forms in your head, and that's when you start spiralling.
Innovation is a skill, a teachable skill, just like management. If you focus on a handful of key principles, you can effectively drive innovation in any type of business.
Endurance stays with you across everything, if you do it one place, you can do it anywhere. You're able to sustain because you've already trained your brain to do that.
In this industry, whether you're learning to act or write, you often develop skills in isolation. It's easy to see your own discipline as encompassing the whole creative universe. However, once you're on set, the reality of the collaboration involved becomes apparent very quickly.
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.
Before I felt leadership was something you earned. Mount Everest, I think changed my opinion quite dramatically. When I came back from that expedition, I realised that all leadership really is, is empowering people to find their purpose, because the only way people are fully engaged and productive and happy is when they are working towards a higher purpose.
Your corporate's social responsibility is to win. You cannot be generous from an empty wagon! This nonsense about giving when you're broke is ridiculous. Corporate responsibility, first and foremost, is to win. You can then take those resources from winning and allocate them as you see fit.