From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
I have always believed in the principle that what comes easily can leave just as easily. Instead of merely 'buying' talent, which could later be 'bought' by another company, it is more impactful to create opportunities for potential talent. We need to see talent in more humanistic terms.
Many people say that if you're the brightest person in the room, you're in the wrong room – that's totally right. You need to bring in people with much more expertise than you to take the business forward. I started out making shoes by hand – I'm a shoemaker, not an intellectual.
Establishing a culture of truth and trust is absolutely critical to being a great leader, and that takes effort and energy every day. You have to ceaselessly reach for truth and trust every day, and you have to be relentless in your pursuit of trust, and show your people that you have their back.
Even if I had all the money in the world, no problem worth fixing can be solved in my lifetime. The best I can do is to be part of the process, and to help the world figure it out.
I had this burning passion in me to prove to myself, and on behalf of other women, that if my voice was being stifled... and if I was being treated a certain way... that I had to stand up. What type of example would I set to other women and girls? I had to show that if you get knocked off the horse, you get right back up.
I think this is something that would have been a lot less controversial just a few decades ago, when people still remembered that, yes, the material side of war is obviously important, but it's only ever one aspect of it. And so, I'd say the big difference here is that we have to recognise that if we ignore or downplay the human side, we could lose.
What investors want the most is a team committed to a cause for the right reasons (passion about solving a problem, not passion about financial game), who can go and get people to buy into the vision, and who can build and manage teams.
When you're involved in conflict, you're not sane. You may start out being sane, and in those early stages it's certainly possible to mediate and arbitrate.
By creating public scapegoats of an entire industry- politicians are doing more to harm the future growth of our nation than any other economic policy.
When you fail, you take ownership of the failure, and then you assess what mistakes were made, what could be done differently, what better instructions you could have given, what better support you could have given, then you fix those problems, move on and try again, simple.
The story is told sincerely, but the cumulative effect is misleading – a subconsciously organised trick.
Before you succeed, you must first learn to fail. If you keep repeating the same thing, you're always going to fail, you need to adjust. We have to look at failures and use them as an educational tool.