The Virgin Way: If It's Not Fun, It's Not Worth Doing - Softcover

Branson, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1591847982 ISBN 13: 9781591847984

Verlag: PORTFOLIO, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

This is a book on leadership from someone who has never read a book on leadership in his life.

While building the Virgin Group over the course of forty years, Richard Branson has never shied away from tackling seemingly outlandish challenges that others (including his own colleagues on many occasions) considered sheer lunacy. He has taken on giants like British Airways and won, and monsters like Coca-Cola and lost.

Now Branson gives an inside look at his strikingly different, swashbuckling style of leadership. Learn how fun, family, passion, and the dying art of listening are key components to what his extended family of employees around the world has always dubbed (with a wink) "the Virgin Way."

This unique perspective comes from a man who dropped out of school at sixteen, suffers from dyslexia, and has never worked for anyone but himself. He may be famous for thinking outside the box—an expression he despises—but Branson asserts that "you’ll never have to think outside the box if you refuse to let anyone build one around you."

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Sir Richard Branson is an international entrepreneur, adventurer, icon, and the founder of the Virgin Group. His autobiography, Losing My Virginity, and his books on business, Screw It, Let's Do It and Business Stripped Bare, are all international bestsellers. He is also the author of Reach for the Skies, Screw Business As Usual, and most recently Like a Virgin.

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PART ONE

Chapter 1

OLD BLOCKS AND YOUNG CHIPS

Leadership lessons begin at home

Sometimes the greatest leadership lessons can come from the most unexpected places. Some elements of leadership are almost certainly genetic and there is no escaping the fact that we are all products of our upbringing and our environment. As the saying goes, ‘An apple never falls far from the tree that bore it’. Well, as anyone who knows my mother Eve or my late father Ted will testify, I am certainly no exception to the rule. I recognise a lot of traits in myself that I have clearly inherited from my parents – mostly good – although just a few of the things that drove me nuts about my mum and dad when I was a kid almost certainly had the same effect on my own children.

From my first memories of her, my mum was always on the go, buzzing around the place. She had a seemingly limitless imagination for coming up with new business ideas. I don’t recall her ever considering herself an entrepreneur – that was probably only because I don’t think the word existed back then and if it did nobody knew what it meant – but she was certainly the definition of ‘enterprising’. Eve is a human whirlwind. No matter what the latest big thing was, she’d always manage the whole process by herself from developing the ideas to crafting the products, to making deals with distributors, delivering and selling the goods. Nobody else could get in her way, it was her show and hers alone! I remember being very impressed by one of her more successful ventures, which was building and selling wooden tissue boxes and wastepaper bins. This one made it to some fairly swanky stores but they were generally more local ventures. She was absolutely tenacious, and taught me never to cry over spilt milk. If an item didn’t sell, she’d just write it off, learn from the experience and quite dispassionately move on and try something else. My sisters and I were always being dragged in as unpaid child labour, ‘a labour of love’ she’d call it, or the household chores would be delegated to us while Mum was in manufacturing mode. Obviously I didn’t realise it at the time but there was unquestionably a lot of osmosis going on in that house that would stand me in good stead later in life.

Eve hasn’t changed much even though she is now . . . oops. As she was the one that taught me never to talk about a woman’s age let’s leave it at ‘she is rather well into her eighties’. In her early life she had a spell as a West End dancer, and later became a stewardess for British South American Airways – that was in the really glamorous days of flying when they had to don oxygen masks to cross the Andes. To this day she just never stops moving! I don’t exactly lead a sedentary life myself but I swear that sometimes I have trouble keeping up with her.

One recent example was when quite out of the blue she casually announced her intention to organise a charity polo match – not exactly the kind of thing one expects from an octogenarian! But this wasn’t going to be something on the village green near her home – she was planning to do it in Morocco! Surprised but far from stunned, I told her in no uncertain terms that I thought it a really crazy idea; not only would it be a huge amount of work but it would probably end up costing her money rather than raising it. She listened intently to what I had to say and then went ahead and did it anyway. Not only did it happen but it was a huge success and raised about a quarter of a million dollars. So while I was denied the opportunity to say, ‘See, Mum, I told you so’, I really had to admire her tenacity and so instead simply said (a very quiet) ‘Well done, Mum.’

Another of those family signature characteristics that I am told I have inherited is forever insisting on getting the last word in on any given subject. Well, just to show how flexible I can be on such things, I am going to let Eve have some of the first words in this book so (as a published author herself) I invited her to write a few thoughts. Based on what I’ve just told you about her, see if any of the following sounds familiar? ‘Apples and trees!’

Dear Ricky,

If you're really going to let me say something in your next book, then here it goes.

We saw it in you from virtually the first moment you began to talk. But even before that, when you learned to walk we realised we were going to have our hands full; you were just a toddler but you were clearly someone who liked to do things his own way and on your own terms.

To make matters even more interesting, as you grew you perpetually had some crazy new scheme or other up your sleeve that you were convinced was either going to change the world, make lots of money, or both! On a few such occasions we would say things like, ‘Oh don’t be ridiculous, Ricky! That’s never going to work.’ More often than not, however, your father and I instead opted to give you plenty of scope to learn by your mistakes and so left you to get on with your Christmas tree growing, bird breeding and all the other weird and wonderful enterprises you came up with. Almost without exception they all ended in some form of a disaster with us picking up the pieces – literally and metaphorically – but we’d soldier on and just kept hoping that one day the lessons learned would help you in life.

And that certainly would seem to have turned out to be the case. After a rocky beginning, once you and Virgin had become an established success, Ted and I would often ponder on just how differently you might have turned out had we been more controlling, or some might say ‘better’, parents. What if we had insisted that you not take so many silly risks and, rather than allowing you to drop out of school at sixteen, forced you to buckle down and complete your education? Like your headmaster at Stowe, who famously (now) predicted that by twenty-one you would either be in jail or a millionaire, we too shared some very serious misgivings about what the future might have in store for you.

As we now know, of course, we needn’t have worried. What we saw as being a pig-headed little boy who was utterly determined to do his own thing, turned out to be nothing more than the growing pains of a budding entrepreneur. If only we had been able to recognise that at the time we might have had a lot fewer sleepless nights!

Love, Mum

I read that some wag once said of me, ‘That Branson chap is the luckiest person I know. You just watch – if he ever falls off a high building he’s almost certainly going to fall upwards!’ Please don’t hold your breath on this one as it’s not a theory I intend to test any time soon! Others have suggested that I was simply ‘born lucky’. Perhaps!

In my opinion ‘luck’ is a highly misunderstood commodity. It’s certainly not something that drops out of the heavens, you really can work at helping it along – but more on that later. For now suffice it to say that I came into this world a lot luckier than most people. I had the good fortune to be born into a wonderfully loving family where I enjoyed a safe and ‘sensible’ childhood in post-war England. I grew up in a home where there were few if any excesses, but at the same time my two sisters and I never really wanted for much of anything, especially affection and guidance from our parents.

Looking back on that period of my life I have to heap praise on the stalwart efforts of my mother and father, as I certainly was not the easiest child to bring up. Apart from being dyslexic I was blessed with an indomitable spirit that, whether she...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PORTFOLIO
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1591847982
• ISBN 13: 9781591847984
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: M.E.G Cards & Gifts; 443000000000; paula@megcards.com; ; 48 Cloyfin Road; Unit 4, 48 Cloyfin Road; Coleraine; Londonderry; BT52 2NY; Irland