Teach your team to value conflict and develop a tolerance for passionate and respectful disagreement. When hiring, fight the tendency of your teammates to seek people they “really get along with.” A better hiring criterion is, “Will they challenge us? Are they likely to bring a different point of view?” And then, when sparks start to fly (within

that “everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Chances are your reaction to others is as much about you as it is about them.

Despite appearances, simplicity takes deep understanding and synthesis.

Even when you think you’ve worked out the fastest route from A to B, a local cabdriver will always know a way to get you there faster. When you think you already have the answer, you don’t experiment with other options—if only for the sake of efficiency.

always reflecting backward and incorporating forward.”

you need to tenaciously evaluate it. Why did that work? How do you do it again? How do you spread it to your team?

The future is drafted by people doing work they don’t have to do. You need to be one of those people—and hire them, too. There is too much wondering and talking, and too little doing. So don’t talk: do. Care indiscriminately. If you’re willing to actually do the work, you’ll have more influence than those who simply do their jobs.

The best way to complain is to make things.”

You’re either a cog in the system or a designer of new and better systems. Of course, if you aspire to transform your industry and leave a valuable mark in your world, you’ll need to challenge every system you find yourself confined by. When you see something wrong, take the initiative to fix it.