In a professional setting, view loyalty as a stabilizer but ultimately prioritize performance, growth, and achievement over lifetime loyalty to clarify values and drive company success.
Regularly ask yourself if you would fight hard to keep an employee who was quitting; if not, proactively offer them a generous severance package and seek to replace them with someone you would fight to keep.
As a leader, visibly sacrifice your self-interest for the company’s benefit to foster a powerful force where everyone works collaboratively towards the organization’s success.
Reduce bureaucracy by replacing rigid rules (e.g., detailed expense policies) with clear principles and examples, empowering employees with freedom and responsibility.
Create memorable phrases for your core values (e.g., ‘big-hearted champions who pick up the trash’) to guide employee motivation, emphasizing both care and performance, and fostering self-responsibility.
Recognize that jobs will be lost to producers who use AI, not AI itself, so embrace AI as a tool to enhance your performance and stay competitive in your role.
Use AI tools (e.g., Claude, Gemini, OpenAI) as a primary search replacement and personal tutor to rapidly educate yourself on new topics by posing questions, significantly accelerating your learning rate.
For independent businesses facing large competitors, strongly counterposition by identifying niche markets willing to pay a premium for a differentiated experience, or integrate with the larger ecosystem.
Reframe work-life balance as ‘work-life integration,’ leveraging modern technology’s flexibility to blend professional and family life (e.g., working after family time) rather than viewing them as competing zero-sum activities.
Adopt a technocratic, long-term approach to philanthropy: identify root causes of human misery, then make bold, ambitious, science-backed bets to tackle them systematically.
Support policies that enable school choice and empower teachers to create new, independent nonprofit schools, allowing parents to choose the best fit for their children and fostering educational flourishing.
Master the art of business by consistently finding ways to simultaneously increase customer happiness (revenue) and operating income (profit), outperforming competitors in this dual pursuit.
Minimize process in creative/inventive businesses to maximize innovation and variation, but embrace it in safety-critical businesses for consistency and error reduction.
During interviews, share a meal with candidates to observe their interactions with service staff, which can be a telling indicator of their humanity and character.
For reference checks, avoid candidate-provided references; instead, proactively seek out independent references (e.g., through LinkedIn) who are likely to be more candid, and ask if they would hire the candidate again.
Be open-minded in hiring, take chances on instinct, and rely more on observing actual performance over several months than on short interviews, as initial impressions can be misleading.
For long-term employees experiencing a rough spot, consider shifting them to a different role to help them regain high performance, taking their history into context.
In creative fields, encourage and celebrate experimentation and even failures to foster a culture where people are willing to try new things, rather than simply replicating past successes.
Clearly define the distinction between entertainment content (which may contain controversial or non-admirable elements) and workplace values to manage internal conflicts, especially for employees in creative industries.
Frame inclusion efforts around enabling all employees to contribute at their highest ability, recognizing this as a commercial interest for the company, and creating a comfortable environment for them.
Invest time in health, diet, and exercise, as prioritizing these areas will improve your performance and effectiveness in other aspects of both your professional and personal life.
To achieve world-class performance in any field (sports, cooking, business), cultivate a maniacal, obsessive, and intense drive, pushing hard and dedicating tremendous energy.
If you believe your weaknesses are harming the company, be willing to self-sacrifice (e.g., offer to step down from a leadership role) for the company’s success, prioritizing the organization over personal ego.
Define personal success as having a positive impact and doing good for other people, regardless of the specific domain (business, philanthropy, government service, etc.).