Faced with long odds, how do you keep your team motivated and moving forward? Alexis McGill Johnson is focused on building hope. As president of Planned Parenthood, Johnson is preparing for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade — and modeling a sense of relentlessness for her team, so they too can be fearless.
Sir Jeremy Farrar is UK’s pre-eminent scientific authority on Covid-19 and the chief executive at the research foundation Wellcome Trust. He shares the latest learnings of the Omicron variant – and offers a framework for handling the uncertainty. He shares two leadership lessons he’s learned during the pandemic: find time for yourself, and take warnings seriously.
“Go for the megatons.” That’s John Doerr’s recommendation for how we need to combat the existential threat of climate change. Doerr, a venture capitalist and author of the new book Speed & Scale, discusses decarbonization, what he calls “the greatest economic opportunity of the next century.” Business plays a critical role in advancing that movement.
Marc Lore is all too familiar with leaping into the unknown. One thing he’s learned from all of his audacious endeavors: you can’t leap alone. You need to convince your team, and more importantly, your customers to leap with you.
As an early internet founder and iconic venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen has thought deeply about the role timing plays in a startup’s success: when to launch that first product; when to ramp up scale; when to move into a new market. Getting the timing wrong can have a catastrophic effect. Getting it right can help you get to scale ahead of your competitors.
Too often, companies only focus on the type of scale that’s visible: massive campuses, thousands of workers, offices around the globe. But as Land O’Lakes proves, there are less conspicuous ways to scale – ways that supply your business with structural integrity. This is something CEO Beth Ford knows well.
How do you respond when your own users resist your data? That question is top-of-mind for Nielsen CEO David Kenny. For decades, Nielsen has measured ratings and demographics across TV and media. But as industry norms shift to streaming, Kenny has had to revamp expectations, taking heat from traditional customers. As he notes, nostalgia is the opposite of optimism – it assumes a known past is better than an unknown future. Kenny is choosing optimism.
Last year, SolarWinds became the subject of a massive and sophisticated cyberattack, potentially affecting thousands of organizations. CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna, who joined the company soon after the breach was discovered, speaks with host Bob Safian about how he and the company responded, and how other companies should approach the ever-looming threat of cyber-risk. “There is no such thing as ‘I won’t be breached because I’m too secure or too smart,’ says Ramakrishna. “You could be breached. And when it happens, be humble. Learn from it, adapt, and act with a sense of urgency.”
Your ability to make quick decisions in the face of a crisis can define your career. That’s been the case for Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, the now-retired president of Spelman College, the all-women’s HBCU in Atlanta. To solve complex conflicts, she stresses one point above all: listen. Dr. Campbell demonstrates how consistent leadership builds confidence and resilience.
The CEO of Illumina, Francis deSouza, has been locked in a multi-year battle with the FTC over the re-acquisition of a company it previously spun out, called GRAIL, that has a breakthrough cancer screening test. Talking with Bob Safian, deSouza reflects on the lessons of grappling with regulators, highlighting levers that can help to accelerate scale.
Reid’s personal advice on the most important success factor for any scale leader: your mindset. Talking with editor-at-large Bob Safian, Reid shares how he approaches every challenge with a learning mindset: ask the right questions, leverage networks, and build curiosity and resilience. To cement the idea, he shares Lesson One from the new Masters of Scale Courses app, starring Sir Richard Branson! You’ll learn an exercise from Reid that you can practice daily.
When the pandemic clipped tens of millions from BuzzFeed’s revenue, co-founder and CEO Jonah Peretti cut back on costs – but kept the growth flywheel spinning. By the end of 2020 his team had engineered a rebound, finishing the year with record profitability. With the acquisitions of HuffPost and Complex Networks, Peretti’s ambitions are just beginning.