Before it was an interest group or an academic discipline, business was what happened when people came together to offer things they had in exchange for things they wanted or needed.

 

While we can trace the origins of the modern institutions and conventions of business to particular times and places, its primal essence goes back far beyond recorded history – back to the origins of human society itself. Business came before the idea of money, or the idea of the nation state. Business, in its best and broadest sense, isn’t something you can be ‘pro’ or ‘anti’, because it is as basic and vital a part of civilisation as language, or marriage or ritual.

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The English world ‘business’ originally just meant being active and engaged. It was doing something that kept you busy – in the good sense, not in a mindless ‘busywork’ way. ‘Business’ was what the craftsperson did when a commission came in; it was how the farmer harvested enough crops to exchange with a neighbour or a neighbouring village, thereby ensuring his family survived the winter. Business was the adventurous spirit of the ancient peoples who set out in boats to trade shells and spices for the fruits of foreign lands. It’s the very same appetite for adventure – for enthusiastically embarking into the unknown in search of new commodities and new customers – that has distinguished determined leaders and their business ever since.

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Crisis and challenge are encoded into the basic formula of every compelling story. That’s why the lessons we absorb from a story of great leadership linger with us in ways dates and statistics alone can’t.

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But the more we have professionalised and theorised about the business of business, the easier we have made it for ourselves to forget these fundamental truths. Since the dawn of capitalism and the advent of the industrial age, we’ve been able to access evermore information, speculation and analysis about what ‘business’ is.

 

In the past decade, digital technology has multiplied the volume of data and expert discussion we can access beyond all previous imagining. This new information can be massively useful – but only as long as it doesn’t prevent us from being able to draw back and see the bigger picture. Trying to keep up with all the trappings of modern business can sometimes distract our attention from the handful of simple, timeless truths that exist about doing it well.

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There are five principles to which I believe outstanding businesses – of whatever size, era or market segment – unfailingly return. Considered collectively, these strengths – the impulses to Democratise, Revolutionise, Simplify, Organise and Author – are all defined by a quality I call Limitless. These principles endure precisely because they are not strict instructions about what and what not to do. Instead they are instructions to keep thinking about how your organisation relates to the people within it and the world beyond it. They are reminders never to rest on fossilised dogmas, never to unquestionably assent to the assumptions of today. That way, you can see the opportunities and interconnections others might be too blinkered to imagine.

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Akio Morita knew the feudal Japan he was born into was headed for change after World War II, despite the propaganda efforts of the government. His foresight was crucial to the half-century of unrivalled success enjoyed by Sony, the company he founded. Coco Chanel eschewed the constraints of the corset, the restrictions of fussy fabrics, the mannequin mentality and seasonal gimmicky of the fashion establishment to make clothes that fit women’s lives – rather than the other way – and thereby forged an idea like no other. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were the tycoons of the industrial age that helped establish America as a nation of full economic participation, making it the richest, most inventive and most productive country on earth. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, the giants of the digital age, continued this tradition. Gates made his fortune in technology and now presides over the world’s largest private philanthropic enterprise, deploying its vast resources to enhance healthcare and reduce extreme poverty around the world, while also expanding educational opportunities and access to information technology in America. Jobs returned to the disenchanted Apple, catapulting it back into prosperity, while revolutionising several industries and creating history’s most valuable company. At Netflix, Reed Hastings did away with spurious rules and regulations and outflanked better-resourced rivals to establish a fast-moving entertainment brand that soon set the pace for the entire industry.

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Risk was inherent ad acknowledged in all these ventures, but risk is inherent (and too often ignored) in any business – especially those that doggedly stand still as the world around them changes. When our Limitless heroes faced and embraced the reality of risk, the returns were dizzying. Many of them failed before they succeeded, but, as we will see in the stories that follow, crisis and challenge are encoded into the basic formula of every compelling story. That’s why the lessons we absorb from a story of great leadership linger with us in ways dates and statistics alone can’t.

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It wasn’t blind egotism that gave these leaders the assurance to ignore received wisdom and established assumptions about how things had to be done. Their confidence came from their faith in people and in the power of good ideas. They didn’t try to impose rigid thinking on a changing world, but responded to change around them with boundless generosity, optimism and endeavour. The notion of business as a kind of conquest ignores the fact that enduring leadership is about service to your public, not giving them orders. Understood in that context, the pursuit of profit isn’t the be all and end-all; it’s the indicator that makes you rethink your approach if your public declines to vote with its wallets.

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Every great company is great because of the way it responds to the one-off context in which it exists.

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In many respects, the things that really count are the things we still can’t reduce to accountancy and enumeration. Rather than being a formula about investment and return or profit and loss, being Limitless is about having an expansive outlook on the world. It’s a broad-minded capacity to perceive possibilities beyond those imaginable in your immediate context. Rather than allowing people to cling to the seeming safety of prejudices and presumptions, it obliges them to face the future in a positive and energised way.

 

Influential leaders in modern business history never let themselves forget this underlying truth. For all their varied experiences, approaches and achievements, the heroes featured in this book never lost sight of the simple qualities that define a better business. That’s why they nurtured organisations and ideas that outlasted all comers. That’s why their examples remain peerless repositories of knowledge, inspiration and wisdom.

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People carve ‘proven’ formulas for business success because they want to be indemnified against the possibility of failure and relieved of the burden of thinking for themselves. Smart leaders circumvent this compulsion by reformulating wisdom and insights to inspire new thoughts, rather than slavishly copying pre-existing solutions.

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In their different ways, these trailblazers channelled the core principles of good business better than the rest. They reached out to more people than their rivals. They changed the world because they had visions they knew how to share with the rest of us. They looked upon corporate organisation not as an obligation, but an opportunity. They didn’t allow their own cleverness to distract them from the virtues of simplicity.

 

Aged 21, I helped to found AKQA. As an all-digital start-up, AKQA embodied everything that’s most celebrated in the entrepreneurial aspirations of today. Since then, we’ve gone from start-up to an enterprise with over 2000 employees across 17 offices around the world. The journey – always educational and often difficult – makes it clear that staying true to our founding ethos is a constant, but immensely satisfying challenge.

 

In the face of the inevitable growing pains and problems, I found myself turning away from the business quarterlies and the daily news feeds to the tasks of the influences, leaders and organisations that inspired me at a time before AKQA and continue to provide perpetual motivation to the present day.

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The best leaders have the courage and empathy to help their colleagues, customers and community lead better lives.

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The way those legends created companies that survived global upheaval and generational change provided perspective and enlightenment. They provided examples of staying lean and responsive as a business grows and inevitably becomes more elaborate. They offered boundless proof of the merit of having a conversation with as many people as you could, and, time and time again, they demonstrated that the best way to bring about change is to give your all to the present so the public is able to benefit fully from the future you envision.

 

Business isn’t something we do; it’s everything we are.

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Fascinating, uplifting and complex, those pioneers gave us unforgettable quotations, stirring speeches and inspirational ideas, but not instruction manuals. They didn’t presume to leave behind how-to guides for future leaders. They knew that every great company is great because of the way it responds to the one-off context in which it exists. They knew that you couldn’t cut and paste a bulletproof business plan or management style guide from another place and time and hope to succeed in yours, because no two situations or environments are the same.

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The legacy the pioneers do leave to those hoping to learn from them – the one that unites all their valued achievements – is spectacular market proof of the value of an open, enquiring mind. There’s a reason why it’s called leadership: the moments in which you really earn the name are the ones for which there is no handbook. The moments in which every possible choice is tough and fraught with risk are the ones that make or break you. It’s when life is thrown out of balance – when you face tough competition or the economy is thrown suddenly into recession – these moments of crisis, and the required resilience with which you react to them, become the defining events that shape destinies.

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People crave ‘proven’ formulas for business success because they want to be indemnified against of the possibility of failure and relieved of the burden of thinking for themselves. Smart leaders circumvent this compulsion by reformulating wisdom and insights to inspire new thoughts, rather than slavishly copying pre-existing solutions.

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The reason a Limitless outlook has endured through numerous generations of belief systems, commercial markets and leaps in scientific understanding is that its adherents have all rejected the unchallenged cultural assumptions of their day. Instead, they heeded their own direct perception and strived to examine the life of things below the surface. They gained their edge not through cynicism or mercenary moves but by being more open to 

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It is through stories, not numbers, that human beings make sense of the world. Stories are what survive of human culture. And the ones that endure do so because each generation is able to find new perspectives and lessons in them. They discover ways to adapt and adopt ancient truths into modern reality.

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possibility than their peers, by being alert to everything around them and by prizing possibility and promise over established limits and the status quo.

 

If we can get a better perspective on our present by learning from the wisdom of the past, we might also catch a glimpse of a whole new Limitless future.

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Good Leaders don’t inflict their fears and insecurities on others and then rationalise them to make themselves feel better. The best leaders have the courage and empathy to help their colleagues, customers and community lead better lives. They see the humanity in others and therefore deal with people and situations in a compassionate way.

 

Limitless leaders have a sense of ‘enoughness’ in their personal lives. They focus their energy on making an unlimited contribution to the world’s progress and preservation. The know of the dangers of inequity. They are aware of the limitations of our planet and that the inexhaustible plundering of the earth’s precious irreplaceable resources, if left unchecked, will create environmental catastrophes of the kind that there is no ‘undo’ button. Today’s most progressive leaders understand that the only growth that is healthy and sustainable is the growth of quality across everything an organisation does. 

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In Limitless, I’ve gathered the stories and insights of leadership that have meant the most to me. Most of them are true tales of individuals who founded and sustained world-beating businesses, but I’ve also included ideas from the philosophies of the shokunin and the mandala.

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These ideas celebrated in Limitless are not explicit rules you can learn by heart and apply without thinking – if they were, they would have already gone wrong and rusty. Statistics and rigid strategies can become meaningless with the passage of time. It is through stories, not numbers, that human beings make sense of the world. Stories are what survive of human culture. And the ones that endure do so because each generation is able to find new perspectives and lessons in them. They discover ways to adapt and adopt ancient truths into modern reality.

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The five timeless principles endure precisely because – like stories – they aren’t strict instructions about what and what not to do. Instead, they are imperatives to keep thinking about how your company relates to the people within it and the world outside it. They are reminders to remain open to a progressive future instead of restricting your thoughts according to the established boundaries of today.

 

The supreme value of story to convey the potential of business has never really been in double. I believe that the tales of hundred-year-old companies might contain more wisdom than the newest management fads and their simplistic explanation of success. The true stories of triumph, tribulation, trial and error behind big firms may well provide a better grounding for the day-to-day reality of doing business. Stories that resonate are about human nature, which is why they stand the test of time.

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Business isn’t something we do; it’s everything we are. If we choose to embrace that fact rather than bury our heads, the scope we have is without bounds.

 

Fear eats the soul, but hope nourishes it. Optimism is essential if you’re going to break through accepted barriers. If we can get a better perspective on our present by learning from the wisdom of the past, we might also catch a glimpse of a whole new Limitless future.

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- Ajaz Ahmed