Richard Branson

A revelatory account of the personal factors that shaped the Virgin Group founder's unconventional leadership style discusses topics ranging from his limited education and struggles with dyslexia through his self-employment values and beliefs about listening. 75,000 first printing.

Everything I Know about Leadership

The Virgin Way

Omar Fernandez

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Below are 20 points I wrote down to remind myself of some personal takeaways. However, more important than the takeaways here is the inspiring way in which Richard Branson makes this points and backs it with experience. 


1. Quit stuff you don't enjoy. Make time for those things that will help you truly add value. 

2. Listen. Listen and take copious notes.

3. Take a look at your business from the outside in. How do your customers see you?

4. On communication: keep it stupid simple (or KISS). Always say what you mean, and mean what you say. 

5. On public speaking: prepare, don't depend on a teleprompter, pause, don't use fillers, be assertive. If nervous, imagine a chat with friends at the dinner table. Famous speakers prepare, in some cases for an hour per minute of speech. 

6. Words to avoid: OK, quite, that said, let me get back to you (if not followed up on), and any other ambiguous language. Instead, use definitive language that won't ever be misinterpreted. 

7. Phrases to use often: I'm not sure, what do you think?, please, thank you.

8. Handwrite a thank you note or show your gratitude in other ways

9. Keep presentations concise, 2 slides are much better than 32. 

10. On mission statements: make it real. Make it unique to your company, it shouldn't be some jargon no one cares about and could apply to all of your competitors. It may be better to not have a mission statement at all. 

11. Poor leaders relegate instead of delegating. When you delegate, you give someone both responsibility and authority to make the decisions necessary to fix something. When a poor leader relegates, however, he has someone else take the blame for a problem they don't want to pay attention to and have little the can do about it. 

12. Strong leaders hold their ground and have sufficient technical knowledge of the problem to tackle it head on. 

13. Learn more and work diligently, and you'll get luckier. 

14. Ask questions over and over. For example, Virgin was spending a fair amount of time and money just collecting headphones from passengers and maintaining them. It turned out, it was cheaper to give new earbuds to passengers for free on each flight than to collect the old ones. Also, the new earbuds were higher quality - so passengers were even happier. 

15. Take a wide lens approach. Airlines traditionally focused only on service on the plane, Virgin thought about the entire journey including check-in, airport lounges, among other parts of the journey. Similarly, banks weren't great. Virgin sought to improve this by adding lounges to their branches. 

16. Team building is critical - ensure you spend time in recruiting regardless of your level of seniority. Ensure all leadership is strong and brings the team further together. 

17. Find mentors. They may have experience from building the analog version of what you're building, but that will nonetheless be priceless for you. 

18. Ensure there are no silos in the company, spend 25%+ of your time talking to people in other departments. 

19. Actively work to ensure everyone can provide input. 

20. Every now and then don't let the numbers cloud your instincts and knowledge.

The Virgin Way Everything I Know about Leadership

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