Peter Fisk

Our potential is what lies ahead … how we can be more, do more, achieve more.

Yet we spend too much time looking backwards, not enough time looking forwards. And as a result our future defaults to an extrapolation of what we have done, not what we could do.  In a world of turbulent change, a future based on the past, can be quite limiting, and with diminishing returns.

Of course, we take comfort from looking backwards. It is much easier to define, to evaluate.

As an individual, when was the last time you went for a new job? You most likely tried to demonstrate your future potential by describing what you’ve done in the past. You proudly laid out your resume, eloquently describing your past experiences, impressive qualifications and previous achievements. It’s probably impressive, but it’s an old story.

As a business, you probably do the same. Daily schedules, meetings and reports, are spent pouring over the past. Performance is all about what we have done, last quarter, last year, and compared to previous years. Strategy is too often based on what we have done, our capabilities and assets, and how can we use them to go forwards.

Yet we all know that what got us here, is unlikely to be what gets us to where we want to go.

As individuals, and as organisations, we know it is not what we have done that matters, but what we can do, could do, next. Yet what we do next is most likely to be a repeat of what we’ve done, unless we change something. What is that change, that will unlock more  than was previously possible? What is the key to our future potential?

Think of some of the great people who have changed to realise their potential:

• JK Rowling was a secretary at a publishing firm. On her way to and from work, she used to dream of writing a novel, sketching out plots in her head. As a secretary, her potential was conventionally limited to roles in administrative support. But then she threw in her job,  took the bold step to write her first manuscript, and her potential was transformed.
• Eliud Kipchoge was a very good runner. He was one of the hundreds of African endurance athletes who competed around the world, picking up medals at major events. But then, realising that his career was drawing to a close, he wanted to leave more of a mark. He switched to the marathon. Olympic champion, world record holder. The first man under 2 hours.

“Future potential” is the desire and ability to be more.

Individually and organisationally, it is typically driven by three factors:

• Future courage … Do we dare to be more than we currently are? Future Potential demands personal ambition and drive to go beyond your current world, to let go of what you know, to go further, to enter the unknown.
• Future scope …  Do we know where we are heading, and is it the right direction? Future Potential demands more opportunity space, more fertile ground to support new growth, to stretch further and wider ahead.
• Future capacity … Do we have the talent, creativity and resources to get there? Future Potential demands that we become more, dig deeper into ourselves, to develop new mindsets and future-relevant capabilities.

I work with many organisations, and it is quickly apparent which have the greater “future potential”.

The organisations who do, typically see the future beyond the frames of today, they look to go beyond their sector, innovate new business models, disrupt the current game. Disney, for example, with the recent launch of Disney+ has redefined its future potential, by opening up an entirely new space in content distribution for innovative growth. Orsted, was a Danish coal-based electricity generator, but within 10 years has transformed entirely to renewables, with huge growth potential.

The ones who don’t, essentially compete within their existing space, seek improved products and operational efficiencies, but are essentially happy to play the old game.  Vodafone, for example, is obsessed with being a telecoms business, focused on handsets and tariff plans, whilst the rest of the world is more interested in convergent platforms and the content on them. Or Ford, battling to survive in an auto sector, that is quickly been redefined by new forms of mobility.

Similarly for individuals, it is quickly apparent who has the greater “future potential”.

People who seek to be more than they currently are – not just ambitions to climb corporate hierarchies and attain greater positions, more power – but the ones who are constantly learning, curious and creative, they want to improve themselves, searching for new ideas, new initiatives, new ways to move forwards. As leaders, their own future potential has a huge influence on their organisation’s future potential. Without the right leaders, organisations are stuck in today.

“Future potential” is closely aligned with change, and with growth.

An organisation is unlikely to achieve significant change, unless people are prepared to change too. Most significantly, its leaders. Change in mindset, in activities, in capabilities. And as a result of that, organisations are unlikely to achieve significant growth, beyond just working harder-type of growth, unless they see personal growth as a prerequisite.

How much “future potential” do you have?

• How farsighted are you, to dare to look beyond the horizons of today?
• What proportion of time do you spend looking forwards, compared to looking back?
• Is your business purpose a limiting or liberating definition of why you exist?
• Does most of your innovation exploit the core, or seek to explore the edges of your current world?
• Is your business largely defined by your current products, and your existing competitors?
• Do you typically think more in terms of probabilities, or possibilities?
• Are performance metrics driven by what you have done, rather than what you could do?
• Is your market value a true reflection of what you could do, or just an extension of what you have done?
• Do you have leaders with the potential to unlock your future potential?

Finding your future potential requires a shift in your business, a more forwards orientation, a growth mindset, a reframing of where you are going and what is possible. And it requires a stretch to make the mental and physical shift. It needs a catalyst to open minds, it needs energy to break out of today, and it needs courageous leadership to take it to a place you don’t yet know.

Without “future potential” you and your business are unlikely to find a better future.

© Peter Fisk 2020. Extract from my next book, Business Recoded, out in September.

More

• Forbes: To Unleash Your Full Potential, Do These 3 Things
• Wikihow: How to Realise Your True Potential
• Psychology Today: Eight Ways to Realise Your Full Potential

Business can be a platform for good. Probably the best way to solve many of the world’s environmental and social challenges – many which are becoming all too obvious, in a world shaken-up by the current shocks – is to harness the power of business, its assets and infrastructure, brands and customer bases, innovators and imagination.

Fast Company’s “World Changing Ideas” awards explore the products and concepts, companies and policies, that are pursuing innovation for the good of society and the planet. The 2020 awards looks at everything from large companies’ sustainability initiatives to clever consumer products to ground-breaking government policies. Here are some of the winners:

A digital identity for every product

Niall Murphy, the Swiss-based co-founder of EVRYTHNG, is on a mission to give every physical object a digital identity. Once products are IoT tagged – food, clothes, phones, cars – then you can “activate, authenticate, amplify” them – enabling companies to better manage supply chains, customers to learn about products, buy or reorder them, and get additional services.

Norwegian seafood company Mowi, the world’s largest salmon and trout farmer, enables consumers to see the sustainability certification of the exact fish they’re buying, when it came out of the water, and how it arrived at the supermarket.

Murphy is working with 30 top brand companies – from Coca Cola to Ralph Lauren and Unilever – to give each product they produce a “digital twin”, a digital identity, manged by its Product Cloud. He is also collaborating with GS1, the world’s standards organization for bar codes, to develop a system that allows for a standardised, open format for tagging.

3D-printed houses in Latin America

In southern Mexico, 50 homeless families have just moved into a 3D-printed housing community, their homes each built in 24 hours, and at a cost of around $4000, by a massive 3D-printer made by Icon. The 15m long printer squirts out layers of Lavacrete, a customised mix of resilient, fluid-like cement, guided by the architect’s digital design, and also includes plumbing and electrical wiring.

Jason Ballard, CEO of Icon, says that the fast construction is ideal for disaster recovery, after earthquakes or hurricanes, but also to improve the standard of housing across the world.

Icon is partnering with New Story, a non-profit seeking affordable housing in emerging countries. In Mexico, they are building homes for some of the poorest residents in a rural area near the city of Nacajuca. The homes will be donated to families who are currently living in makeshift shacks that flood every time there’s heavy rain.

Sustainable air conditioning in Asia

Singapore’s humidity averages 84% all year round, so keeping living and work spaces cool is vital, but comes at huge expense, in particular to the environment.  That’s why Phononic, a global innovator of thermoelectric solutions, has developed a new cooling platform which seeks to replace traditional compressor-based, HVAC cooling systems. Tony Atti, CEO, says Singapore is the ideal test, with its sweltering heat, and high sustainability awareness.

Phononic, part funded by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Temasek, is the only company currently developing outdoor thermoelectric cooling, so essentially creating a new market.

It is testing its new bladeless fans, in busy outdoor locations: restaurants, parking garages, and waterparks.  The OACIS platform is an iteration of Phononic’s semiconductor technology originally developed for medical fridges, and allows it to pull heat and humidity out of a particular area and transfer it to another – known as the Peltier effect. The thermoelectric cooling system can be accurately controlled and doesn’t require toxic liquid refrigerants.

Solar pay-as-you-go fridges in Africa

More than 500 million people don’t have access to electricity in Africa. No electricity makes life more difficult in any number of ways, one is the lack of a refrigerator, which means people

cannot store perishable food or medicines. To address this need Youmma, a brand of the Brazilian company Nidec Global Appliances, has developed small fridge that’s efficient enough to run on a single solar panel, and a pay-as-you-go business model that makes it affordable to families on the most limited budgets in Kenya and Uganda.

“Having access to a refrigerator has ripple effects”, says André Morriesen of Youmma. “Food lasts longer and less is wasted, and medication that needs refrigeration, such as insulin, can be safely stored. But a fridge also starts bringing some gender equality. Women, who typically still handle food shopping and preparation, may spend hours walking back and forth to markets and additional hours cooking; with a refrigerator, it’s suddenly possible to buy more food at once and save leftovers. It saves huge amounts of time and money.”

Youmma partnered with M-Kopa (Swahili for borrow), a Kenyan solar energy company, to offer the fridges as part of a solar home system that includes two LED light bulbs, two strip lights, and two phone chargingcables. After customers sign up, a solar panel is installed on their roof and begins charging the solar fridge’s battery; the battery manages power consumption and can keep the fridge running for a day and a half without sunlight. The refrigerator itself, with a unique compressor, uses little energy. Customers pay a small amount via their mobile phones each day, and each credit keeps the fridge running until the system is fully paid off.

A great new book by Alex Lazarow explores how the best ideas come from beyond America, and the best new start-ups come from beyond Silicon Valley. In the United States, many startups, such as Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, have become household names. The economic value of startups has doubled since 1992 and is projected to double again in the next fifteen years.

For decades, the melting pot of this phenomenon has been Silicon Valley. This is changing fast. Thanks to technology, startups are now taking root everywhere, from Delhi to Detroit to Nairobi to Sao Paulo.

Yet despite this globalization of startup activity, our knowledge of how to build successful startups is still drawn primarily from Silicon Valley. As venture capitalist Alexandre Lazarow shows this Silicon Valley “gospel” is due for a refresh – and it comes from what he calls the “frontier,” the growing constellation of startup ecosystems, outside of the Valley and other major economic centres, that now stretches across the globe.

Here to illustrate the global spread of start-ups, is WEF’s latest map of the world’s unicorn businesses, (393 at end of 2019, according to CB Insights):

The frontier is a truly different world where startups often must cope with political or economic instability and lack of infrastructure, and where there might be little or no access to angel investors, venture capitalists, or experienced employee pools.

Under such conditions, entrepreneurs must be creators who build industries rather than disruptors who change them because there are few existing businesses to disrupt. The companies they create must be global from birth because local markets are too small. They focus on resiliency and sustainability rather than unicorn-style growth at any cost. With rich and wide-ranging stories of “frontier innovators” from around the world, the book explores why and how they emerge.

Here’s a short extract:

One of the hardest decisions for any entrepreneur to make is when, and if, it is time to start their own company. The decision can cause so much anxiety that, for some, the time never comes.

Many would-be entrepreneurs dream of success but never start, because they have no idea how to succeed and are intimidated by the likelihood of failure. This critical decision rests on myriad factors, including individual sensitivities to risk, about which much has been written in the academic theater.

In many markets, failure can be a lifelong black mark on careers. As the New York Times once wrote about Europe’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, “Failure is regarded as a personal tragedy.”[2] Failure is much more financially and personally painful at the Frontier. Accordingly, it is not flaunted as a battle scar, but hidden as a blemish.

In some countries, founders even have to worry about success. The entrepreneurial culture needs in North Korea, for example, are completely different from those anywhere else on earth. One of the founders there, Geoffrey See, explained, “In many markets, the risks to starting a business overwhelm the dream of the potential of the business. In North Korea, paradoxically, success can also be a big risk. Entrepreneurs are worried that the business will get confiscated. Therefore, in the past, they were motivated to take cash out of it and not reinvest in growth.”[3]

However, times are changing, and those on the front lines of that change are entrepreneurs themselves, who are helping to shift the psychology and narrative of risk.

Geoffrey See is an extreme example. Over the last nine years, he has offered targeted workshops to teach business, economic policy, and law in North Korea. Of course, given the political situation in North Korea, Choson, the company he started, operates in narrow segments. It provides critical training for a burgeoning market-oriented system where households engage in trade activities and small business. Choson Exchange focuses on training young entrepreneurs and has already trained hundreds of men and women, and established the country’s first startup incubator. He partnered with North Korea’s State Academy of Sciences (SAS) and attracted over 20,000 researchers who are interested in commercializing their ideas.

Yet this movement to help ease the culture of fear of failure and teach the next generation of entrepreneurs how to stare down risk is on the rise. In Mexico, for example, where the startup culture has a distinct aversion to failure, a small group of founders led by Pepe Villatoro found themselves discussing past business mistakes and defeats over a few bottles of mescal. Each of them came to understand that, by communicating openly about failure, they left energized to imagine their next companies, and the group began to meet monthly for honest discussions about risk and failure.

The idea went viral, and so “F*ckup Nights” (FUN) was born. Pepe and his friends created a platform for others to replicate similar events in their own startup communities. The objective was for participants to share stories of their professional or personal failures, all while creating a culture that accepts risk taking and the failure that may ensue. Over the next few years, FUN organically and unpredictably turned into a global platform for entrepreneurs to share their stories of defeat and reflect on what they had learned, thereby helping others learn to avoid the same mistakes. FUN redeemed failed projects and startups by putting their stories to use.

Later, FUN launched the Failure Institute, which collects and analyzes data on entrepreneurial failures in cities, tracking rates of failure by location, industry, and startup type and calculating trends in the development of resilience in entrepreneurial communities. FUN recently launched academic chapters to de-stigmatize failure in the education system and is working with more than 200 corporate partners to help change their cultures and mindsets.[4] FUN has scaled rapidly around the world. Its events have been hosted in more than 330 cities in 90 countries. More than 10,000 people have told their stories to more than 1 million people.[5] It has become a leading distributed entrepreneurial social movement.

Like Pepe and his friends, these Frontier Innovators shape cultural perceptions of risk. They may also impact regulations (e.g., punitive bankruptcy laws), decreasing the real costs of failure. Over time, Frontier Innovators can foster a culture that accepts entrepreneurship as a viable profession, supports entrepreneurs in taking risks as they scale their businesses, and enables them to commit fully to one venture.

Acceptance and celebration of failure is a time-honored Silicon Valley tradition. However, entrepreneurship is on the rise outside of California. Startup ecosystems are popping up all over the world, with more than 480 hubs worldwide, from Detroit to Bangalore to Puerto Rico to Nairobi to Sao Paulo.[8]

Success will be amplified by entrepreneurs—usually scarred veteran founders—who help change the culture and mindset around risk and failure at the Frontier, to lower the mental hurdles and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Today I bought my 100th pair of Nike Pegasus running shoes. Now in its 37th design generation, the Pegasus model has come a long way, and endures at the heart of the Nike range. I’ve been running for over 40 years now,  incredibly (but of course I don’t feel that old because I’m a runner!), and I’ve stayed loyal to this shoe in all that time, though its many design interpretations.

I bought my first pair of Pegasus in 1983. I actually remember the day. Living in the north east of England, I was immersed in a region of great running heritage. As a 9 year old, I had started running with a pair of Nike Wally Waffles, a kids version of the early waffle trainer, and inspired by the recently retired Brendan Foster, who had brought the Nike brand to England.

By 1983, when I was 16 and winning north of England 1500m championships myself, the global force in athletics was another Tyneside athlete, Steve Cram. 1983 was a big year for Cram, winning the World Championships 1500m, and stepping up to superstardom. Nike had latched onto Cram, like they had years earlier with Michael Jordan, creating a Cram range of clothing and shoes in his distinctive black and yellow colour scheme. And Pegasus shoes too.

Every shoe brand creates a wide range of shoes, from cheaper to expensive, with a wide range of applications (indeed in the last 12 months I have bought a pair of Pegasus Turbo for fast workouts, and Pegasus Trail for the mountains). But Pegasus has always been a mid-range shoe – you can train in, and race in – not cheap, but it’s not expensive either (actually less that half the price of Nike’s most premium shoes, like the AlphaFlys, of Kipchoge marathon fame).

These days I live in Teddington, just outside London, a town full of runners who cross paths on their daily runs in the nearby royal parks, Bushy and Richmond, and along the River Thames. It’s home to four times Olympic champion Mo Farah too, another Nike sponsored athlete. Of course, he could have any running shoe he wanted, and even gets them customised with his name and logo. But look closely, and you will see that he also most often chooses the Pegasus to churn out the miles.

I’m never quite sure when brands update a trusted model. Will the next version be as good as this one, can it be, do they really need to change it? So when Nike said the Pegasus 37 was coming soon, I quickly bought up some remaining 36’s, just in case. And now the 37 is here. I needn’t have worried, the Pegasus has evolved, but always stayed true to itself, and each version has always been a step forwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMx-A37yKAo

Oh, and here is how Nike remembers it’s most enduring shoe too.

Examples of B4IG projects in companies

I love this book cover … as an author, I find most business book designs incredibly disappointing, uninspired … but Jacqueline Novogratz’ new book looks beautiful. Inside, it’s got some thoughtful, inspiring ideas too. Seth Godin calls it “An urgent manifesto about what it means to stand with the poor, to see through clear eyes, and most of all, to do work worth doing.”

Covid-19 has thrown into sharp relief the gaping wounds of our times, from a broken health system to climate change and skyrocketing inequality and growing divisiveness. Our inadequate systems and institutions are slumping beneath a host of modern crises. Most urgently, moral leaders are proving a scarce commodity. In America and across the world, an anxious public is hungry for clear, conscientious guidance. The stakes are higher than ever.

But it is not the occasion for despair. She has accompanied these leaders through the process of building the skills, determination and moral imagination to successfully challenge the status quo. Around the world, Acumen has facilitated the rollout of essential services to more than 308 million low-income people, often in politically fraught environments, sometimes changing systems all together. She navigates the sociopolitical obstacles and also encourages a generation of change-makers to do what’s right, not what’s easy. Her approach is to focus on solutions, and resist the urge of falling into the traps of ideology or trite assumption.

In 2001, when Novogratz founded Acumen, few had heard of impact investing or patient capital—an investment model that emphasizes long-term gains over quick returns, funding early-stage enterprises providing low-income consumers with access to healthcare, water, housing, alternative energy, or agricultural inputs. Nineteen years later, there’s been a seismic shift in how corporate boards and other stakeholders evaluate businesses, purpose, and sustainability; and a generation of employees is pushing for a more inclusive and sustainable model of capitalism. Our existing institutions have run their course, but we have yet to reimagine new ones to replace them in an interdependent world.

In the book, she draws on stories from change-makers around the world and her own experiences to divulge the most common leadership mistakes and the mindset needed to rise above them. She wrestles with complex ethical and moral quandaries. She tackles issues ranging from identity and measuring what matters to whether markets will support businesses that reject a profit-alone mentality in favour of one centred on the health and wellbeing of humans and the planet. In these pages, she shows how today’s leaders, who often kick off their enterprises with grand ambitions and tight timetables, might navigate the historically challenging obstacles, which have stymied prior generations of investors. And for all who feel fearful in the face of our unique, pressing issues right now, there is hope.

These are difficult times. For everyone. These are times when organisations need leaders. These are the moments that the best leaders have been waiting for. This is the time for leaders to step:

Endurance

Endurance is as much about mind as muscle power.

In sports – the runner, the cyclist, the rower – there are many physiological elements at play, from core body temperature to oxygen intake, as well as other psychological factors, such as perceived effort and pain tolerance. Each of these factors are significant in the level of athletic performance humans are capable of, especially when testing the perceived limits of performance, such as setting new world records.

However nearly every athlete will attest to faster recovery if they jump into an ice bath after a competition. Yet studies show that this practice doesn’t actually decrease inflammation levels, the thing the baths are intended to reduce. However most physiologists will still say that if there’s a method that helps you recover, even if it’s purely psychological, it’s valuable to use it because sometimes belief is just as influential as science.

In “Endure” Alex Hutchinson starts by retelling the race to break 4 minutes for one mile. For years, men across the globe had raced to within a second or two of the barrier, but never quite breaking the iconic time. When Britain’s Roger Bannister finally ran 3.59.4 in 1954, Australian John Landy who had been trying to run the time for years, went on to improve  Banister’s time by another second, only weeks later.

A number of important factors can help people, including business leaders, to endure more:

• We always have a little more to give. Watch how athletes pace themselves so that we can give that final push at the end of a long distance event. Somehow the Olympic champion, despite enduring a punishing race, can still rise to celebrate their victory
• We can endure more than we think. Athletes have a higher-than-normal pain tolerance, which leads to better performance. They learn to cope with this by training at a “threshold” pace, learning to sustain it whilst in oxygen debt, despite the pain.
• Fitness enables us to perform better. Athletic performance greatly relies on oxygen intake, which is enhanced through heightened fitness. Physical fitness equally matters to the business leader, who needs a resilient body for optimal performance.
• Fatigue reduces our performance. Having a tired brain can affect how much you can endure physically. A tired brain is one that doesn’t have a break, isn’t refuelled, doesn’t have variety, doesn’t keep renewing itself, or get enough sleep.
• Stress stops us performing. Of the many factors, stress can be the killer. However stress comes in two forms – stress put on us, for example timescales, and stress we put on ourselves. External stress can stimulate us, internal stress we can control.

Hutchinson’s research led him to South Africa to work with Tim Noakes, the controversial sports scientist who first proposed the “central governor theory,” which argues that the brain limits performance well before the body has reached its maximum output. He also explores the research of another pioneering scientist, Samuele Marcora, who has developed a series of brain-training exercises to push that governor.

He also recalls talking to Eliud Kipchoge before his Sub 2 hour marathon attempt, when the Kenyan said he hadn’t really changed anything in his training. What then, he asked, would make the difference? “My mind will be different” replied the runner.  People he says, have a curiously elastic limit to what they can achieve, driven mainly be their mental toughness.

Resilience

Resilience is our ability to bounce back from adversity. It’s what allows us to recover quickly from change or setbacks, or trauma or failure, whether at work or in life. It is the ability to maintain a sense if purpose, a positive attitude,  a belief in better, throughout times of challenge. Resilience sustains progress, whilst others might give up.

Angela Duckworth calls it grit. “Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term goals” she says. She compares it not to a marathon, but to a series of sprints combined with a boxing match. In business you are not just running but also getting hit along the way. As you seek to deliver on your strategy, to make new ideas happen, to transform the business, its not just about coping with the time and effort. It’s also about overcoming many challenges.

Grit keeps you moving forward through the sting of rejection, pain of failure, and struggle with adversity. “When things knock you down, you may want to stay down and give up, but grit won’t let you quit” says Duckworth.

Most entrepreneurs have tremendous resilience, because they’ve had to fight for the business through some of the most difficult times. The search for seed funding when every VC dismissed them with a laugh or smile, the long days in a bedroom or garage trying to make the first prototype or win the first contract, the growing pains of scale-up as they have to adapt to survive and thrive. Letting go of control as investors take over, making you wealthy but taking away your baby. Most entrepreneurs know about grit.

But then so do corporate leaders. If not from starting up, but from surviving the challenges of internal politics, of learning how to engage and influence people in a positive way, of progressing as a star individual whilst keeping colleagues and teams on side. Of balancing personal ambition with collective progress. Resilience demands that we:

• Have ambition: Knowing what you truly want, and are prepared to work hard and persevere in order to achieve it. Vision isn’t just a milestone, it becomes a pursuit. Whilst not everybody will know  your ambition, you will, and it will keep you striving.
• Have purpose: This is why you want to achieve more, it’s about what will be better when you achieve your ambition, not just for you, but your business, your family, your world. Purpose is how you contribute, what you fight for, why you get up in the morning.
• Have passion: You need to love it, to be great at it. Otherwise it’s not worth the sacrifices, the long hours, and the pain. Aligning your purpose and ambition allows you to find love, for your work, your team, your business, and the world you seek to impact.
• Have persistence: You will sometimes fail. Few things change without challenges. Failure doesn’t define you, it refines you. If you didn’t fail, you wouldn’t learn. There is always another way. Stay confident and stay strong.

Gratitude

You could say they are two of the most magical words: thank you.

People want to know that their work is appreciated. Showing gratitude to your people is the easiest, fastest, most inexpensive way to boost performance. In “Leading with Gratitude” Adrian Gostick shows that gratitude boosts employee engagement, reduces turnover, and leads team members to express more gratitude to one another, strengthening the bonds within teams. He also shows that gratitude has benefits to you for those expressing it, and is one of the most powerful factors in predicting a person’s overall well-being, more important than money, health, and optimism.

Despite these benefits, few executives effectively utilize this simple tool. In fact, Gostick says that “people are less likely to express gratitude at work than anyplace else.” This is because of a series of a series of myths which are almost the opposite of seeking gratitude – some think that fear is the best motivator, that people get enough praise already, that they know it anyone, that there’s not time, that it sounds too paternalistic,  that its better to save praise for when people really deserve it, and it can sound fake.

The best leaders look out for how people contribute and seek reasons to express their gratitude. This requires leaders to look for the good things, not just the problems; pay attention when things are going well, not be consumed by problems. It is also about recognising effort and intent, even if it doesn’t succeed, and small things that might seem trivial but are vital. It’s also about being timely, saying thank you in the moment, not at some later review point. And the leaders role modelling, also encourages others to be grateful to each other too.

We all take gratitude for granted. But it can go along way, and transform attitudes and performance. I will never forget the boss who gave me his company car for a week to drive. Or the colleague who collected an award, and immediately gave it to the youngest team member, rather than putting on their own desk. Or the leader order her team new smartphones with special team screensavers for a job well done. Gratitude doesn’t need to be about money, it could be a personal gift, a small act of kindness, or two simple words.

Gratitude is also not just at work, but in life. A business leader isn’t anything about family and friends. They are the hidden support team who give encouragement, motivation and sacrifice to help us achieve more. And it also yourself. We recognise that we need to challenge ourselves, push ourselves, lead ourselves. Maybe also, just occasionally, indulge yourself too.

Most people are quite good at solving problems, but less good at defining the problem to solve.

I first met Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg in Hong Kong whilst I was working with Time Warner. His approach is incredibly simple, so simple you might dismiss it, and he also has a rather arrogant streak, which perhaps comes with knowing that most of us are trying to solve the wrong problems. His new book What’s Your Problem? might help.

Reframing is a powerful technique that focuses on diagnosing a given problem – such as, ‘what is preventing us from making progress‘ or perhaps a problem faced by your customers – and then, crucially, challenging and reframing your initial perception of that problem.

The importance of reframing becomes clear when you look at how people tend to approach problem-solving. By nature, innovative people are often action-oriented and tend to apply brute force in the shape of trial-and-error. That is often a good approach. But the tendency to ‘jump into action’ also creates a danger that people keep trying new solutions without understanding whether they understand the problem correctly – or if they are even targeting the right problem in the first place.

The trial-and-error approach benefits tremendously from being combined with reframing; a little bit of analysis can save people a great deal of wasted effort. But it is critical to introduce the idea of reframing as early as possible, before people start falling in love with a particular type of solution.

Try this worksheet:  Techniques to Transform Obstacles into Opportunities

In a survey, 85 percent of companies said they often struggle to solve the right problems. The consequences are severe: Leaders fight the wrong strategic battles. Teams spend their energy on low-impact work. Startups build products that nobody wants. Organizations implement “solutions” that somehow make things worse, not better. Everywhere you look, the waste is staggering.

As Peter Drucker pointed out, there’s nothing more dangerous than the right answer to the wrong question.

There is a way to do better. The key is reframing, a crucial, underutilized skill that you can master with the help of this book. Using real-world stories and unforgettable examples like “the slow elevator problem,” Wedell-Wedellsborg offers a simple, three-step method … “Frame, Reframe, Move Forward” … that anyone can use to start solving the right problems. Reframing is not difficult to learn. It can be used on everyday challenges and on the biggest, trickiest problems you face. In his new book, he describes how leaders at large companies, from entrepreneurs, consultants, nonprofit leaders, and many other breakthrough thinkers.

It’s time to stop barking up the wrong trees. Reframe, and growth and success will follow.

“What it Takes” is the memoir of Steve Schwarzman, cofounder and CEO of Blackstone, one of the world’s largest investment firms.

He talks about why leaders need clarity of purpose, to dare to think big, and realise the profound impact of AI. One of his mottos is that “it is just as easy to do something big as it is to do something small”, a mentality he has applied to philanthropy as well as business.

Schwarzman grew up in a successful entrepreneurial family selling curtains in Philadelphia. His father was content with the one store, but Steve was not. He had more ambition. At high school he wanted to bring the best bands to play. At college he started a dance society to meet more girls. He went to Harvard then ended up at Lehman, where he learned about finance and discovered his real strength. In 1985 he co-founded Blackstone with friend Pete Peterson, and grew it to hold over $500 billion in assets under management.

He says, “To be successful you have to put yourself in situations you have no right being in. You shake your head at your stupidity, but eventually it gives you what you want.”

Here are 25 rules for work and life that are woven throughout his book:

• It’s as easy to do something big as it is to do something small, so reach for a fantasy worthy of your pursuit, with rewards commensurate to your effort.
• The best executives are made, not born. They never stop learning. Study the people and organizations in your life that have had enormous success. They offer a free course from the real world to help you improve.
• Write or call the people you admire, and ask for advice or a meeting. You never know who will be willing to meet with you. You may end up learning something important or form a connection you can leverage for the rest of your life. Meeting people early in life creates an unusual bond.
• There is nothing more interesting to people than their own problems. Think about what others are dealing with, and try to come up with ideas to help them. Almost anyone, however senior or important, is receptive to good ideas provided you are thoughtful.
• Every business is a closed, integrated system with a set of distinct but interrelated parts. Great managers understand how each part works on its own and in relation to all the others.
• Information is the most important asset in business. The more you know, the more perspectives you have, and the more likely you are to spot patterns and anomalies before your competition. So always be open to new inputs, whether they are people, experiences, or knowledge.
• When you’re young, only take a job that provides you with a steep learning curve and strong training. First jobs are foundational. Don’t take a job just because it seems prestigious.
• When presenting yourself, remember that impressions matter. The whole picture has to be right. Others will be watching for all sorts of clues and cues that tell who you are. Be on time. Be authentic. Be prepared.
• No one person, however smart, can solve every problem. But an army of smart people talking openly with one another will.
• People in a tough spot often focus on their own problems, when the answer usually lies in fixing someone else’s.
• Believe in something greater than yourself and your personal needs. It can be your company, your country, or a duty for service. Any challenge you tackle that is inspired by your beliefs and core values will be worth it, regardless of whether you succeed or fail.
• Never deviate from your sense of right and wrong. Your integrity must be unquestionable. It is easy to do what’s right when you don’t have to write a check or suffer any consequences. It’s harder when you have to give something up. Always do what you say you will, and never mislead anyone for your own advantage.
• Be bold. Successful entrepreneurs, managers, and individuals have the confidence and courage to act when the moment seems right. They accept risk when others are cautious and take action when everyone else is frozen, but they do so smartly. This trait is the mark of a leader.
• Never get complacent. Nothing is forever. Whether it is an individual or a business, your competition will defeat you if you are not constantly seeking ways to reinvent and improve yourself. Organizations, especially, are more fragile than you think.
• Sales rarely get made on the first pitch. Just because you believe in something doesn’t mean everyone else will. You need to be able to sell your vision with conviction over and over again. Most people don’t like change, so you need to be able to convince them why they should accept it. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.
• If you see a huge, transformative opportunity, don’t worry that no one else is pursuing it. You might be seeing something others don’t. The harder the problem is, the more limited the competition, and the greater the reward for whomever can solve it.
• Success comes down to rare moments of opportunity. Be open, alert, and ready to seize them. Gather the right people and resources; then commit. If you’re not prepared to apply that kind of effort, either the opportunity isn’t as compelling as you think or you are not the right person to pursue it.
• Time wounds all deals, sometimes even fatally. Often the longer you wait, the more surprises await you. In tough negotiations especially, keep everyone at the table long enough to reach an agreement.
• Don’t lose money! Objectively assess the risks of every opportunity.
• Make decisions when you are ready, not under pressure. Others will always push you to make a decision for their own purposes, internal politics, or some other external need. But you can almost always say, “I think I need a little more time to think about this. I’ll get back to you.” This tactic is very effective at defusing even the most difficult and uncomfortable situations.
• Worrying is an active, liberating activity. If channeled appropriately, it allows you to articulate the downside in any situation and drives you to take action to avoid it.
• Failure is the best teacher in an organization. Talk about failures openly and objectively. Analyze what went wrong. You will learn new rules for decision making and organizational behavior. If evaluated well, failures have the potential to change the course of any organization and make it more successful in the future.
• Hire 10s whenever you can. They are proactive about sensing problems, designing solutions, and taking a business in new directions. They also attract and hire other 10s. You can always build something around a 10.
• Be there for the people you know to be good, even when everyone else is walking away. Anyone can end up in a tough situation. A random act of kindness in someone’s time of need can change the course of a life and create an unexpected friendship or loyalty.
• Everyone has dreams. Do what you can to help others achieve theirs.