Future Shaper summary

Let’s begin with a story about a great leader in history. 

In the early 1960s, American president John F. Kennedy had a vision. In a simple sentence, Kennedy communicated what he wanted to achieve: “To put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.” 

Imagine you’re an artist sitting in front of an easel. Before you is a blank canvas and, to your right, is a collection of paints and brushes. In this moment, there are no rules: you can paint whatever you like. It’s this freedom – the boundless potential of that blank canvas – that enables artists to be creative.

Like artists, future shapers seeking creative solutions also need freedom. In fact, when figuring out what your vision is for the future, it’s best to let your imagination run wild – and to set aside your concerns for how you will implement it. 

In the early 1990s and the decades before that, the world of business looked much different than it does today. Back then, it was typical for business leaders to sit at the head of a long boardroom table, giving out instructions and assigning tasks. Leaders were king – or queen – of their corporate domain. 

This model has changed entirely. Today, the old “command and control” style of leadership no longer works. There are two reasons for this. First, employees are more empowered, educated, and autonomous than ever before. Second, traditional corporate hierarchies have been flattened. In other words, companies function less like monarchies and more like democracies.

Imagine two teams. One is diverse. It consists of men and women, black people and brown people, younger people and older people. The other team is homogeneous – a group of men, most of them white, all about 40. Some people might find this surprising, but the diverse team consistently outperforms the homogenous team, despite its members having far fewer commonalities. Why?

Here’s the key message: Build a creative and resilient team via diversity and inclusion.

Meet Sanjay. He’s a senior commercial lending manager in a bank, and he’s had a brilliant idea. Sanjay has observed that his bank is comfortable lending money to bigger businesses, but it’s unwilling to fund entrepreneurs. Fully aware that Apple and other major global businesses began as scrappy start-ups in need of capital, Sanjay decides that he wants to incubate an “entrepreneurial bank for entrepreneurs.”

But then Sanjay encounters a problem – a platform problem.

As a leader, you’ll always have a team of people depending on you for direction. If you’re lackluster about your goals, it won’t only affect your own level of motivation, but that of your employees, too. 

Employees, whether consciously or unconsciously, tend to copy the mood and behaviors of their leader. For example, if you walk into the office with a thunder cloud above your head, it’s likely your employees’ moods will turn gray, too. On the other hand, if you can put your worries aside and be consistently motivated and energized, your team’s productivity will be positively affected as a result. 

Steve Jobs. His name has become synonymous with success, innovation, stylish design – all the things that businesses yearn to achieve. But a major chunk of his career was defined by failure.

In 1976, he started Apple, which got off to a good start. But after an unsuccessful product launch in 1985, he got kicked out of his own company. Then he founded a new company called NeXT.