From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
When Putin invaded in February 2022, we made the mistake of thinking that Putin's of this conflict would be one made by a 'reasonable person'. There are some very worrying elements of intelligence suggesting he has been very seriously out of touch… isolated from reality… and that he's only listening to those telling him what he wants to hear.
Visionary leaders that build great companies have some personality attributes they share. They are self-confident enough to be humble. They have a reservoir, a personal drive, passion, belief in their capabilities, and they're willing to admit what they don't do well and to seek those people to join their team from the very beginning.
Power requires oppression. In order to be powerful, you have to stand upon something. Strength comes from within. We are seeing the emergence of new political organisms with strength not power at the core. From Moscow to Hong Kong and India to the United States, powerless organisations are creating strong governance without power.
We fear the unknown, but the less you know about something the more knowledge there is to gain, and hence the less afraid you will be. When you understand a situation and are fully prepared having analysed the risks and mitigated them- you may well still be apprehensive, and that's normal.
I don't think I ever would have had the confidence in myself to even pick up the pen. I would have continued to believe that this wasn't something that could ever be real for me. That one small bit of encouragement had such a huge impact on my life. It made me realize how sometimes it really is the little stuff that's most important, and we never know how significant our encouragement can be in someone else's life.
I think in the past, it was more of a zero sum game, and now I think we can play in a positive sum game, which really plays into the whole greenhouse concept, because we can all actually grow together and not feel like we are needing to take in order to achieve.
I think that single trait — self-awareness — or rather, that skillset, outweighs all the others put together. You're filtering every experience you have with others through your own perceptions, your own biases, your own reactions and instincts. So you have to know yourself first before you can truly know anyone else.
Other enterprises understand design for what it is, the backbone of their corporate culture as well as the summation of all experiences their clients will have with their services and products––and as such well worth the investment of time and resources.
Too often I feel there is also a search for 'the next' Steve Jobs or Joanna Shields. These are extraordinary people and yet I believe we should not treat entrepreneurialism as requiring a narrow checklist of certain characteristics. The key both in the US and the UK is to have hand-raisers – people who want to take a chance, and get involved.
Everything you do in life that's worthwhile entails some risk, that's the nature of exploration and the nature of adventure.
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.
There's an old adage that the boxer is the last one to know – it's not true, he's the first one to know, but the last to acknowledge it. You can learn from defeat – it's not the end of the world, but you have to learn from it and realise that there are times when you can come back, and times where you have to say, 'enough… enough…. You're getting too hurt… you're just not the guy you were…'