This week I’m summarising the conversation I had last week with Martha Lane Fox, who is a remarkable human being and a fascinating example of true leadership.
The word that summarised this episode for me was serendipity and I think that’s what we’re really missing right now, those moments of spontaneity. So how can we create those moments?
Martha introduced this concept describing the very early stages of her career, when her first job was really to become a cheerleader for the internet. She credits the success of her first company to a few things, and highlighted building trust and credibility about the internet with investors, users and employees. She had to build up this relationship which had never existed before.
When we discussed how she survived the original DotCom Bust, Martha walked me through the following:
1- timing was everything and got lucky. Had enough cash enough to ride out the original bust.
2- Co-founding relationship was right.
Had 2 people making the company grow fast.
Able to do more breadth and depth by dividing and conquering.
3- Learned that success is all about the people.
Empowered her young team
Helped them feel real ownership and accountability. That is the secret.
Martha describe herself as being a generalist and gets her focus comes being centred around her passions. Her earliest life passion was social justice, which is where she anticipated she would be addressing complex problems in prison systems but instead her roles in the internet and government are really united in this central theme of social justice, and being an advocate.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about her TED Talk: “The Digital World is having a midlife Crisis!” and the 3 big questions she asked:
What would your answer be to these questions? What do you think?
Finally, here’s a few ways on how you can create opportunities for yourself:
What did you think of this week’s episode? I’d love to hear from you! Email me at hello@annhiatt.co :)
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Take care,
Ann
