24 Life-Changing CEO Insights for 2024

1. Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing with Brad Stulberg

I discovered that individuals, organizations, and even entire communities that navigate change skillfully possess a unique combination of ruggedness and flexibility. To be rugged means to be strong, solid, and determined, while flexibility entails being soft, supple, and adaptable without breaking. These two qualities are often seen as opposing forces, but those who successfully navigate change embody both. These adept navigators of change hold steadfastly to their core values and essential qualities, which provide them with a sense of ruggedness. Values such as compassion, kindness, discipline, intellect, wisdom, community, family, creativity, and presence serve as sources of strength and stability. However, they also recognize the importance of being flexible and evolving in response to their surroundings.

2. Three-Step Formula to Transform Anxiety into Action with Luana Marques

Anxiety itself is not the problem. The problem is what you do when you're anxious. Anxiety causes us to avoid important actions and stay stuck. First, you need to identify how you're avoiding. The only way to overcome avoidance is to continually check for it. There are three ways that all of us avoid: reacting, retreating, or remaining. People who “react” will fire off an immediate response. They go toward discomfort to get a quick fix—to eliminate. “Retreating” is an avoidance behavior. The person who scrolls on social media, ignores the email, pours a glass of wine, or stays in bed too long to get away from something that upsets them is retreating. The “remain” response is to freeze like a deer in the headlights. Checking your thoughts, emotions, and resulting behavior activates your thinking brain and calms down the desire to respond by avoiding.

3. What Winners Won’t Tell You with Malcolm Jenkins

When there's still time left in the game, anything is possible. The key is how to stay focused on the present moment. I believe that's how we should approach life and projects, as well as sports. It's about sticking to the process until the journey is complete. Once it's complete, then we can evaluate it. I have certain cues I learned from my sports psychologist that would help me stay in the moment.

One technique she would suggest is using a rubber band to snap yourself–something that brings you back to your sense of touch. Suddenly, I would bring myself right back into the present moment, and the anxiety about the future and the past would fade away. It would prevent me from falling into negative thought cycles. I would do this before every single play, whether it was a good play or a bad play, whether it was practice or a game. Because it became a daily habit, when those critical moments arose in a game, I wasn't taken aback by them. I didn't have to think about what my cues were at that moment. I was already steady and able to maintain that composure and high performance over time.

4. Everyday Dharma: 8 Essential Practices for Finding Success and Joy in Everything You Do with Suneel Gupta

In the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu scripture and one of the most well-known Hindu texts, dharma is defined as one's sacred duty. The question then arises: duty to what or whom? The answer lies in the fire that burns within you. Some refer to this fire as your purpose, others as your calling. My grandfather, who first introduced me to the concept of dharma on a porch in New Delhi, called it your essence. It is a unique assignment bestowed upon you by the universe. When you express this essence, you come alive in a whole new way. You become more caring not only towards yourself but also towards others. You transition from a state of self-centeredness to one of selflessness, driven by a desire to serve others. This energy illuminates you and those around you.

However, what I've come to realize about dharma is that it may sound poetic and beautiful, but it can also be incredibly painful. If you fail to live in alignment with your purpose, if you neglect your meaning, it's as if this fire inside you starts consuming you. That's the essence of dharma—it represents your inner flame, your inner fire. The choice lies in whether you allow it to consume you from within or whether you use it to light up the world around you.

5. How to Become Superhuman: Lessons from 30 Years Studying the World's Most Extraordinary Humans with David Verdesi

Someone who is striving to be in a state of integrity and alignment between their thoughts, words, and actions is, in a nutshell, a superhuman. A person who strives to live as such and bring forth the best possible version of themselves in all circumstances, embodying the highest human values of understanding, wisdom, intelligence, kindness, and compassion whenever possible, is what I believe to be a superhuman… a person who has sovereignty over himself, his being, mind, speech, and body… someone who delves into his own psyche and strives to make the unconscious conscious… By doing so, they see themselves without falsity, with honesty and clarity, and are therefore able to see others clearly as well. A superhuman takes complete responsibility, lives with radical truthfulness and honesty, brings forth the best of their being, and answers the call to be a better version of themselves.

6. Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life with Neha Sangwan

In an organization, burnout manifests as people cutting corners, low morale, and disengagement. Exhaustion sets in, leaving individuals unable to help themselves, let alone others. Our interconnectedness with one another fades, and we find ourselves giving up. To achieve a world that is fully charged, start with the individual. A fully-charged individual prioritizes self-care, ensuring they have the energy to make a positive impact in the world. They are aware of their values and make decisions based on what truly matters to them. When interacting with others, they establish healthy boundaries, understanding where their responsibilities end and others' begin.

In an organization, a fully charged individual recognizes the importance of being part of the solution. They provide resources, offer suggestions, and actively contribute to the well-being of others. They are attuned to their own needs, listening to the signals their body sends them. They take responsibility for their own well-being while also serving others. They recognize that different people feel valued in different ways, whether through verbal recognition, quality time, tangible gifts, acts of service, or physical connection. They know themselves well enough to ask for what they uniquely need from their leaders and teams.

7. How To Buy Back Your Time with Dan Martell

One thing that holds people back from finding success is a lack of clarity in their vision. Many people go through life doing the same things over and over again without getting different results. They lack a clear vision for their future. The formula for creating a successful future boils to having 1) 10 out of 10 clarity of vision for where you want to be 25 years from now 2) 10 out of 10 belief in that vision, 3) 100% commitment, 100% of the time. Confidence comes from keeping the commitments you make to yourself in private. If you want to be a leader and affect change, you must first embody the qualities you expect from others. Consistency, courage, creativity, resourcefulness, and kindness should be reflected in your daily practices.

8. The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card with Christina Wallace

It starts with identity. Many folks never get past this step, this notion that you are bigger than your current job title. You have so much to offer and how you are currently monetizing your time and your labor is only one piece of it. The reason this is important, number one, is in a world that is constantly changing and facing disruption, if you are your job title, then your identity can be taken away from you at any moment. You get a layoff, your company shuts down, you lose who you are in the same moment that you lose your income, your job, your reason to get out of bed in the morning. That's devastating for most people. Looking at your identity in a bigger way than just how you make money is crucial, because it leads to the second pillar, optionality. Optionality is freeing, but it's also a source of diversification…

We all know your financial portfolio should be diversified, yet we don't think about any other thing in our life as diversified.?There are things that we cannot control. There are changes and unexpected disruptions coming our way, and you need more than one iron in the fire. You need more than one bet on the table.?Designing a portfolio, for whatever stage of your life you're in, gives you that ideal mix of risk and reward. Balance is what is going to future proof your career and your life; Not everything has to pan out for the portfolio to still thrive.

9. How to Build a Unicorn & Master Entrepreneurial Success with Uri Levine

An entrepreneur is someone who makes the leap of faith of trying to change the world. Most of us are driven by value creation; we want to create more value than is currently there. The simplest way to do that is by solving a problem… There is something beautiful about solving a problem…?Once you start telling people about the problem that you would like to solve, if they agree that it needs solving and if they tell you their version of the problem, then they send you on a mission. This is when you fall in love with the problem. When you are in love with the problem, two things happen. First, the problem serves as the north star of your journey. Having a north star increases your likelihood of being successful. Your deviations from the course are going to be smaller and shorter, and it is very likely that you will eventually reach your destination. Second, the story that you tell will be way more compelling.

10. How To Decode the Future, Disrupt Your Industry, And Transform Your Business with Pascal Finette

Nobody can tell you exactly what the future will look like. What you can do, though, is create a model for the future where you can say that, with a certain likelihood, the following thing will happen. As an entrepreneur, you make your bet on that future, and then you tell the story around it. To get someone to buy into your story, you need to make that future desirable. Give people an opportunity to see themselves in that future. If you are just giving me a vision of the future that is exclusive to you, and I as an investor, employee, or client can't see myself in that future, I won't want to be part of it. One of the most important leadership characteristics is the ability to tell a story. If you don't tell a story, people will make up a story in their heads. The best leaders own the narrative and are consistent with it.

11. How to Supercharge Business Growth in 6-Steps with Donald Miller

Our businesses grow when we identify the problem that we solve, and we communicate that so very, very well. First, you’ve got to define what the hero, your customer, wants. Second, define the problem that they are experiencing. Why aren't they getting what they want? Third, you position yourself as a guide in the story—a guide who is helping the hero win. The guide is actually the strongest character in the story. Then you give the hero a three-step plan that solves their problem. Then you call the hero to action.

12. How to Move Fast and Fix Things with Frances Frei & Anne Morriss

You start with identifying the symptom, then ask yourself why it is occurring. As you continue to dig deeper, you uncover more underlying causes. The symptom is usually three to five “whys” away from the actual problem. Keep asking "why" until you reach a point where you are no longer gaining new insights or clarity about the issue. Once you reach that point, you know you have arrived.

13. Mastering Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be with Marcus Collins

Whether you are a marketer, a leader, an entrepreneur, a manager, a politician, an activist—even if you're a parent, trying to get your kids to take on a particular behavior—culture is the most powerful weapon that we have… because there is no external force more influential to human behavior than culture—full stop. And the better we understand it, the more likely we will be able to harness its power… Culture is an abstract, esoteric term. It's in everything. It's all around us… Culture is a meaning-making system with a set of conventions and expectations that govern what we do. It starts with who we are. Culture is anchored in our identity. Who am I? Based on who I am, I adopt a set of ideologies and beliefs that frame the world for me, that help me make meaning…

Because of who I am, I see the world in a certain way and, therefore, I behave in the world a certain way. I don a set of artifacts, symbols, clothes, and tools. There are social norms, rituals, ceremonies—conventions shared with people like me. And because of who I am and how I see and behave in the world, there's cultural production, cultural product, cultural work: literature, film, television, dance, art, brands, and branded products that I use to express who I am. My cultural subscription. What's the methodology for unpacking someone's culture, their convictions and expectations? It starts with understanding who these people are, how they see the world, and the conventions that govern what it means to be a part of their community. And that requires observing them in the contexts where they're practicing their cultural subscription.

14. How to Supercharge Business Growth with “The Experience Mindset” with Tiffani Bova

Over the past 20 years, we have invested billions of dollars in reducing the effort required from customers. We have gone from 10 clicks to just one click. An unintended consequence of this relentless focus on improving the customer experience has been a decline in the employee experience. We would never expect our customers to navigate through 10 different applications or open multiple tabs on a computer screen just to place an order. If we did that, we would likely lose our customers.

Yet, we ask our employees to do exactly that every single day. What we need now is an "experience mindset." It's about taking a moment to consider the intended and unintended consequences for our employees whenever we make changes for the customer. Does it make their job harder or easier? Are we burdening them with unnecessary processes? Do they have the necessary training to perform their tasks effectively?

15. How Businesses Can Fix the Future with Solitaire Townsend

Become a solutionist. Become an entrepreneur of solutions. We need business leaders to step up and do what they're good at, which is making money by finding the answers that the world needs.. The solutionist is a solver of problems, and being a solver of problems at the moment means solving the biggest problems we have in the world. There are three types of solutionists. Architects are big-picture thinkers. They think about how everything is connected. They can see where big things are going, they can see the themes. They're reading science. They're thinking about the economics of it on a massive scale. They tend to be really great strategists…

Then you've got the accelerators. Accelerators are often neglected in business, and sometimes even they themselves don’t see their importance. The final group are the actioners. So many people are Actioners. Their attitude is “Can we just get on with it? Let's stop talking about it.” It's great to bring a team together, but I want to do, do, do! You need all three types in a team. Architects know what needs to happen and where you've got to go. You need accelerators to pull the right people together and motivate them. And, of course, you need actioners, otherwise nothing happens. Of course, as a leader, you have to learn to be all three, but we tend to have an innate gift for one of them. It’s important for a solutionist to know how to build a team around you to reflect your strengths and bring their strengths alongside yours.

16. How to Win the A.I. Race with Kevin Roose

There's a principle in social psychology called the effort heuristic: our tendency to assign greater value to the things that we think other people have worked really hard on. If someone gives you a tapestry and tells you they’ve been working on it for years, that has a lot of meaning. If someone sends you a tapestry they picked up on Amazon and that was mass-produced in Indonesia, it won't mean nearly as much. We value things more when we know that people have worked hard on them…

In every line of business, we have to find the little personal touches that we can add to make it clear that it is being done by a human. How can you put your personal stamp on your work so that people will feel a connection to you? Every business is going to have to go through its stack and figure out which parts they can excel on efficiency and which parts they can excel on humanity.

17. Bio-Inspired: Key Insights from Nature's 4 Billion Years of Innovation Tiffany Vora

There are three critical lessons from nature. The first is that everything is interconnected. We can delve deeper into this concept, as there are numerous remarkable connections across space and time in the natural world that we can draw inspiration from. The fundamental idea is that everything is interconnected, and that's the first lesson. The second lesson is the importance of diversity. In the natural world, variation is not a flaw but a feature, and it is this diversity that drives nature's cycles of innovation. There is much we can learn from this principle. Lastly, the third overarching lesson is the significance of relationships. When we consider connections and diversity, we realize that we can achieve great things through relationships, provided we are open to exploring the various forms they can take. Some relationships may initially appear negative, but at a systems level, there is often a deeper dynamic at play, as observed repeatedly in biology.

18. You’ve Been Chosen: How To Thrive Through the Unexpected with Cynt Marshall

Colleagues love it when their leaders sit down with them and tell them “This is purely for educational purposes for me to learn from you. You're the expert. Help me figure this out: what do I need to know about this?” There's something you want to learn, they have the knowledge, and you want them to teach it to you. You're showing them you value their expertise and want to learn it so that you can serve them better. I've seen employees smile because they want to let you know what they know. After they’ve shared their knowledge with me, I make sure to circle back. If I'm in a big meeting, I try to share their expertise on their behalf. If what they’ve shared causes me to make a different decision, I will give that person the credit. As a leader, I do a lot of giving credit for the learning that I have that I've gained.

19. Key Lessons from Scaling Stripe & Google Claire Hughes Johnson

Sometimes, the role of the leader is to point out something that isn’t being said, even when that feels uncomfortable. In other words, asking, in an open-ended question, “Is there something we’re not talking about? What is not being said that should be said?" It can get tricky. Sometimes, you say it and, suddenly, there's a pin drop in the room. What's going on there? Either you're really wrong, or maybe people are afraid. You have to work through the reasons to understand how you can contribute to solving the problem. If they're not really offering the answer, put a hypothesis out on the table. Say, “My hypothesis is you have friction with this other team, but you're not really bringing it up. Can we just put it on the table and talk about it? Because it sounds like it's impeding our progress." Model the behavior and it will spread. You will have a higher-functioning team. This is about results. How do you get better results? It's by creating the type of environment that allows people to safely bring up problems that need to be solved.

20. The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay, and Meaning to Everyone's Work with Zeynep Ton

Low investment in people is really expensive for companies. Turnover cost alone can be 10 to 25 percent of their payroll expenses. The operational costs are even greater. Companies with high turnover end up creating a system that's vulnerable, uncompetitive, and almost inhumane. It’s a vicious cycle for workers and companies alike. Tens of millions of people don't earn enough money to live. They work multiple jobs; they can't sleep; they have stress; they have physical, cognitive, and mental health problems. And, of course, they don't do a good job at work. They can't serve the customer properly.

Why do so many leaders get trapped in this system? One reason is a lack of imagination, because of what business leaders have been taught for decades: that labor is a cost of production, that market pay is the right pay, even if it's not a living wage. The key part of the “good jobs” strategy is to position your team for success. Focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train, and operate with slack. Those are the four operational choices made by companies that invest in their people.

21. Breaking Through: How to Supercharge Your Communications to Open Minds, Move Hearts, and Save the World Sally Susman

Just be candid. Speak in real words. No corporate speak. Let your character and personal integrity shine through… Leaders need a framework to know which are the right issues for them to speak out about. I have created a framework of five questions to ask: 1. How does it relate to our purpose? 2. How does it impact our most important stakeholders? 3. How does it relate to our corporate values? 4. What are our options for reaching out? 5. What is the cost of our silence?

22. Awe: How the New Science of Wonder Can Transform Your Life with Dacher Keltner

You can add awe to any activity by looking for the mysterious in it. Take any activity—eating lunch, walking with a colleague, commuting, having dinner at home—and add awe to it by simply stopping, asking questions, and thinking about what's mysterious in the present context. It’s a myth that awe requires a lot of money or is rare or extraordinary. It's all around us. But if we don’t give ourselves a minute or two each day to find some awe, we probably won’t find it… Einstein said, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead—his eyes are closed.” Einstein was right.

23. Big Bets: How to Master Making Large-Scale Change with Rajiv Shah

What we encounter daily in the media, be it traditional or social media, is the issue at hand. It's negative news... However, what I witness each day allows me to maintain an incredibly optimistic outlook on solving these problems… To me, the key is to surround yourself with problem solvers and individuals who genuinely believe in and are actively working on fresh and innovative solutions. This approach helps me stay optimistic and also heightens my awareness of how these problems can actually be solved.

24. Anatomy of Breakthroughs: How to Get Unstuck When It Matters Most Adam Alter

We end up thinking that everyone else is doing great while we're the ones constantly getting stuck. Don't be fooled by appearances. Remember that feeling stuck is a natural part of the journey for all of us…Success favors those who persist in the game for an extended period. It's like throwing darts at a dartboard blindfolded. One single throw may not hit the bullseye, but the chances of success significantly improve with a thousand throws. It’s the willingness to stay in the game and be receptive to potential good ideas, capturing them when they arrive.

(25. Bonus!) How to Master the Science of Turning Failure into Flourishing with Amy Edmondson

I propose three types of failure or archetypes, and only one of them can be considered positive. This positive type of failure, which I refer to as intelligent failure, belongs in the category of failures that we can celebrate and learn from. It occurs when we are pursuing a goal or opportunity in uncharted territory where there is no established recipe for success. The only way to determine what works is to experiment and try different approaches. This type of failure is driven by hypotheses, although not necessarily formal scientific hypotheses. It involves having good reasons to believe that a certain approach might work before investing time and resources into it. Intelligent failure is contained within reasonable boundaries. It does not put resources or safety at risk in a way that we cannot afford. It allows us to take calculated risks and gain valuable knowledge without jeopardizing our overall progress. In essence, intelligent failure resembles an experiment that did not yield the desired outcome but still brings us closer to our ultimate destination.

While the notion of failing fast is suitable for innovation departments, scientific laboratories, and inventors, it is not appropriate for domains such as passenger air travel or surgical suites. The other two archetypes I refer to are basic failures and complex failures. Basic failures are single-cause failures that occur in familiar territory where we already know how to navigate. These failures occur when we become complacent, make a mistake, or some other single cause disrupts our expected success. It's important to note that "basic" doesn't imply small-scale; a basic failure can be significant in magnitude. The key characteristic of basic failures is that they have a single, simple cause. As the description suggests, these failures are highly preventable. On the other hand, complex failures are multi-causal, which is what makes them complex. They arise from a combination of contributing factors, where no single factor alone would lead to failure. It's the convergence of these factors that creates a perfect storm, resulting in failure. In hindsight, we often realize that we could have done better and prevented the failure. To mitigate these failures, training and standard operating procedures play a crucial role. Codification training and the use of checklists are valuable tools, but they must be employed with vigilance and an engaged mind. It's important not to view this as a mundane task; rather, it can be invigorating and thrilling to have a proven formula that works and to be fully committed to executing it effectively.

Interested in Additional Life-Changing Insights?

• Take one minute to register on IVY.com to receive daily introductions to global thought-leaders and their latest life-changing insights, in addition to full interviews featuring 500 luminaries - including all those featured above!
• You can now also supercharge your 2024 team off-sites, strategy sessions, and leadership training programs with expertly curated transformative insights by reaching out to our new IVY Growth Concierge via [email protected].

Here's to creating a joyous new year filled with peace, prosperity, and progress – for your loved ones, and the world at large!

All the best,

Team IVY