The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership

teams actually work better when group members are clear on their own responsibilities but uncertain on how they can achieve the team’s goals. They found that rather than too much spoon-feeding, a healthy degree of uncertainty forces participants to think more creatively about how to accomplish the group’s objectives.

Just as ‘small is beautiful’ has always been the Virgin way in terms of company scale, so too we tend to favour keeping the size of project teams to a minimum whenever possible

It takes lots of little things to make big things’.

What’s trending out there and how can I best reinvent my business to take advantage of it?’

Trust the process, trust your instincts and trust your team. Don’t start second-guessing yourself or worrying about a few mistakes along the way – you will only learn from them.

you don’t train attitudes, you have to hire them.

Shawn Achor’s fascinating book The Happiness Advantage is based on a decade of positive psychology and neuroscience research at Harvard University and Fortune 500 companies. His book reveals that when we are more positive our brains are ‘more engaged, more energised, creative, motivated, healthier, resilient and productive’ – a pretty compelling list! His conclusion is that ninety per cent of one’s happiness is generated from within, not by external factors like fat bank accounts and expensive possessions.

Sorry, but this is the stuff of fiction! Going it alone is a wonderfully romantic notion but few if any entrepreneurs ever brought an idea to life without a lot of help. It can come from family, friends, mentors, business partners or all of the above but to be successful in business, collaboration is the key.

The book cites the power of positivity in the present and how we can rewire our brains in as little as twenty-one days by way of things such as starting each day with a ‘random act of kindness’ like sending at least one email praising someone, or writing down three new things each day for which we are grateful. Such actions get one’s dopamine flowing, which, in simple terms, makes you feel better about yourself and, well, the better you feel the better you perform.

We tell our people, “Don’t worry about profit. Think about customer service. Profit is a by-product of good customer service. It’s not an end in and of itself.”