Richard Koch

"Personal vehicles of players Player Personal vehicles created Bain Bain & Company; the unique Bain consulting formula; recommendations from client CEOs to other CEOs; Bain Capital Bezos Amazon; the Bezos business formula for Amazon Bismarck The Prussian state and army; North German Confederation; German state and military; successful wars against Denmark, Austria and France Churchill His opposition to Hitler; British state and Empire; their armies and people Curie Radium Disney Disney Studio; cartoons, movies and television; Mickey Mouse and later Disney characters; Disney’s personal WED corporation; Disneyland Dylan The folk movement; Columbia Records; songs and albums; fans Einstein Theory of Relativity; Zurich, Prague, Berlin, Caltech, Berkeley and Princeton universities; media Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning; lectures; awards; school of followers Henderson Boston Consulting Group (BCG); the Experience Curve and Boston Box concepts; Perspectives (short thought-pieces mailed to senior managers); BCG conferences Jobs Apple, NeXT and Pixar; Macintosh computers; Apple digital devices; Apple store; Apple apps Keynes The Economic Consequences of the Peace; King’s College Cambridge; The General Theory Lenin Iskra (Russian revolutionary newspaper); What Is To Be Done?; Bolshevik party; Russian state; military and secret police Leonardo His studio in Florence; his paintings, sculptures Madonna Record labels; albums, videos, movies; media; personal business ventures Mandela ANC; Robben Island prison; South African state Rowling Harry Potter Rubinstein Eponymous cosmetics empire; advertising and media; personality marketing and personal networking Paul of Tarsus City churches he founded; his letters (epistles) to them, Acts of the Apostles; Marcion and his pioneering New Testament canon Thatcher Conservative Party; British state and military; Falklands war; ‘Thatcherism’ programme in favour of free enterprise, against state business monopolies and abuses of trade union power"

"‘You’re a very clever boy, Einstein. An extremely clever boy. But you have one great fault – you’ll never let yourself be told anything.’"

"Albert Einstein is alleged to have said: ‘Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.’ Fish out of water must find the stream richest in results and appreciation."

"He thinks there are a few people who are special – people like Einstein and Gandhi and the gurus he met in India – and he’s one of them … Once he even hinted to me that he was enlightened."

"Leonardo expected painters not only to record nature, ‘but also infinite things that nature never created’28 – including cannons, armoured vehicles, flying machines (one of which resembled the modern helicopter), lizards that turned into dragons, and dozens of other fantasies."

"‘In world news, Picasso at seventy-nine years old had just married his thirty-five-year-old model. Wow … Life hadn’t flowed past him yet. Picasso had fractured the art world and cracked it wide open. He was revolutionary. I wanted to be like that.’"

"What does Bezos believe? •  High standards can be taught. If you start with a highstandards team, newcomers will quickly adapt. •  High standards are domain-specific. ‘When I started Amazon,’ Bezos says, ‘I had high standards on inventing, customer care, and hiring. But I didn’t have high standards on operational process … I had to learn and develop high standards on all that (my colleagues were my tutors).’ •  High standards result in better products and services for customers. But less obviously, ‘people are drawn to high standards – they help with recruiting and retention’. •  ‘And finally, high standards are fun! Once you’ve tasted high standards, there’s no going back.’"

"Shaw thought the most important decision any new firm can make is the type of people it will hire. He hired computer scientists and mathematicians because quantitative analysis was the firm’s power alley, but it wasn’t this focus which mattered most. What mattered was the intellectual firepower of his people."

"Bezos’ other great principle – Olympian standards."

"Disney was a harnesser and creator of visual and kinetic imagination, giving generations of children and adults part of their cultural heritage, and a spur to further originality and invention by many other ‘imagineers’, including many authors, film-makers and artists most beloved by children and adults today. His inventions are Disney’s legacy to the world, why he will always be remembered, and why, like every successful creator of unique characters, he still augments our imagination."

"Einstein proceeded by deep thinking from first principles – he proceeded from irrefutable axioms and observations proven beyond doubt, building on each one to move towards a new hypothesis about the nature of the universe. Einstein’s breakthrough was his theory of relativity, altering forever the face of the Earth."

"His strategic opportunism – which I have emulated, and commend to you as a route to unreasonable success – combined two elements usually seen as contradictory: •  Extreme determination on strategy, yoked together with •  Extreme flexibility on the means and timing of action, reacting to random events and grasping any opportunity they presented to advance his strategic objectives."

"Your skills – and improving them – are not the point. Far more important is what you try to do – the originality and reach of your mission, goal, destiny, whatever you call it, and your tenacity, nay, fanaticism, and luck in seeing it through to completion. •  Your objective must be new, revolutionary, imaginative and almost laughably ambitious. •  It must also be incarnated within your personality – it must come from the soul. •  Ultimately, the ‘what’ – in Lenin’s stirring phrase, ‘What is to be done?’ – is more vital than the ‘how’. This landmark is the what. The other eight landmarks are the how."

"While still a teenager, Einstein appears to have had two extraordinarily fertile expectations. We have touched on one of them earlier – that nature exhibits hidden harmonies which speak the language of mathematics and are precise, invariable and perfect; and secondly, that he had been put on the planet to lift the cloak of underlying reality. At a time of emotional stress when he was eighteen, Einstein found solace in his quest: ‘Strenuous intellectual work and looking at God’s nature are the reconciling, fortifying yet relentlessly strict angels that shall guide me through all of life’s troubles.’"

"‘A new idea,’ said Albert Einstein, ‘comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.’1 Intuition is not random. The more you are an expert in a narrow field, and have deep wells of knowledge and experience in it; the more you think about it, clearly, and with curiosity, the better your hunches will be. Intuition is not the opposite of knowledge – it’s adjacent to it, underpinned by it, the extension of"

"Incidentally, Bain did not buy them with money – he kept most of that for himself. He mentored and inspired them, simultaneously giving them free rein, yet retaining control."

"The excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates! —NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB"

"Success means going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. —WINSTON CHURCHILL"

"A hunch is only as good as the sum of past experience that produces it. —DR NATALIE SHAINESS"

"A hunch can be trusted if it can be explained … it is information you don’t know you possess. —MAX GUNTHER"

"Business thinking starts with an intuitive choice of assumptions. Its progress as analysis is intertwined with intuition. The final choice is always intuitive. If that were not true, all problems would be solved by mathematicians. —BRUCE HENDERSON"

"‘High-level intuition,’ says Robert Greene, ‘involves a process that is qualitatively different from rationality, but is even more accurate and perceptive. It accesses deeper parts of reality.’"

"You need intuition with these qualities: •  It must be important. Could it make a dent in the universe? •  It must be unproven and original. Otherwise it is a fact, not an intuition. •  It must be imaginative. •  It must be simple. •  It must contradict the experts. •  Yet it must be based on deep knowledge. •  You must star in the intuition. Your ambition and emotion are part of the package, part of the appeal, and an integral part of the driving force. Your singular intuition will eventually arrive unexpectedly and suddenly. Will it to come, and it will come. Do not rush it. It is the intuition of a lifetime, which will transform and immeasurably enrich your life, your world, and the whole world beyond you. It is worth willing; worth waiting for; and worth committing yourself to utterly."

"We can state some guidelines in respect of intuition: •  Trust your intuition only in areas you know backwards, or about people you’ve known very well for a long time. •  Author and investor Max Gunther says, ‘Never confuse a hope with a hunch … I’m much more inclined to trust an intuition pointing to some outcome I don’t want … Be especially wary of any intuitive flash that seems to promise some outcome you want badly’.2 •  Hone your intuition in your areas of special focus. Your most valuable hunches will be where you have developed unique knowledge already, and are using intuition to extend it."

"Jobs was a kind of bully, but a rare one – he bullied the strong, not the weak. His team were stars. He made them believe they were as incredibly, unbelievably good as they became. This is an extreme version of the Matthew principle – ‘To everyone who has, will more be given, and he will have abundance.’8 Jobs manifested a super-abundance of talent and achievement, nay, quite unreasonable achievement for a mere mortal."

"Step 1 – Project extreme optimism and determination to redirect reality to fit your philosophy and objectives. Do what others think is impossible, or which never occurs to them. Defeat the conventional view of what is realistic and unrealistic. Sharpen your willpower and convince yourself it could change reality. •  Step 2 – Brainwash brilliant followers or collaborators into believing they can attain the impossible – because you say so, and you have a track record of being right."

"To succeed, you need a serious intent to do so. Wake up each day determined that you will do something – anything, big or small, but something specific that you target for that day – to get closer to your destiny."

"Acquire unique intuition: The unconscious mind The Creative Brain by Nancy C. Andreasen. An accomplished psychiatrist with an interest in literary and scientific geniuses extols the unconscious mind and tells us how to be more creative. Enjoyable and most instructive. Strangers to Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson. Excellent – perhaps the most useful single book by a neuroscientist on how to use the power of the unconscious mind. Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow. Witty and wise – what the new unconscious teaches us. Incognito by David Eagleman. Also excellent. The Brain by David Eagleman. A more popular version of the book above, but does not appeal to me quite as much. Gut Feelings by Gerd Gigerenzer. How to make decisions better and more easily. A brilliant celebration of simplicity. The Zurich Axioms by Max Gunther. Splendid section on intuition. The rest of the book is fascinating too. The Luck Factor by Max Gunther, pages 133–155. Some overlap with the book above, but also excellent. The subtitle encapsulates the message – Why some people are luckier than others and how you can become one of them. The Genie Within by Harry W. Carpenter. Not up to date scientifically, but more useful than many of the books by expert neuroscientists. The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. As above – very useful. The New Unconscious edited by Ran R. Hassin, James S. Uleman, and John A. Bargh. A collection of academic papers. In my opinion numbers 11, 12, 17, 18 and 19 are the most interesting and useful. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. Very good stories and a few excellent points."

"The third lesson is that opportunity often comes in a disguised way. Keep your fixed objective in mind and wait for events to give you the break you need. Bismarck said, ‘Man cannot create the current of events. He can only float with it and steer.’ Desire deeply. Wait. Pounce. It may take you years or even decades. But you must be ready when the call comes."

"When I was thirty-three, and my vehicle hove into view in the shape of LEK, I asked myself whether I was ready to become co-founder of a serious global firm – that was what we intended – to rival the giants of BCG, Bain and McKinsey. I pondered the question, and eventually decided I was ready, because: •  I really understood the concepts of strategy consulting and how to sell it. •  I could see a gap in the market for our first phase of success – we could build a British-based firm able to package and sell ‘American’ concepts in user-friendly ways to British and European bosses. •  Not only was there a gap in the market, but there was also a market in the gap – a big target market which was under-served. We could see something that our top competitors couldn’t: that the decision-makers in British and European companies were often put off by American ‘power salesmanship’ and jargon, by a lack of intellectual subtlety, and a failure to understand local nuances. We aimed to capitalise on that. •  Although we were a new outfit, LEK had partners who had worked for two of our top rival firms at a senior level, and we reckoned we would be at least the peers of the consultants we would be selling against. •  We were really excited about being in business for ourselves, taking whatever risks we wanted to, choosing who would work in our venture and reaping the rewards for ourselves and our people. •  We were confident about the economics of our new business if we could sell large chunks of business. We knew that strategy consulting was highly profitable, that it required no capital investment, and that it could be cash-positive very quickly."

"Albert Einstein said that the secret of originality is to conceal your sources,"

"Any individual’s life contains countless unique particularities. Everyone’s story is different. But underneath the blur of local circumstances and personal idiosyncrasies, is there a common map that successful people followed which shows the way forward?"