Go to www.LearningLeader.com for full show notes
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My guest: Nicholas Thompson is the CEO of The Atlantic and former editor-in-chief of WIRED. He's the author of the best-selling book (and one of my favorites of the year), The Running Ground. Nick shares why great leaders must balance being decisive with staying open to being wrong, how to build teams that challenge your thinking without creating chaos, and why the most important skill for the next decade is knowing what questions only humans can answer.
Key LearningsConsistency Over Intensity Creates Results - If you go out there every day, six or seven days a week, and a couple days you push yourself really hard, you get faster. There's no two ways about it. If you don't do that, you don't get faster. It's a very good reminder that you can get a lot done if you just go and allot time to pushing yourself.
Recommendation letter written by the Stanford faculty about Nick's dad to be a Rhodes Scholar: "Scotty Thompson is the kind of young man that comes along only once in approximately ten years. I cannot recall ever having known a student who possessed the same combination of intelligence, creativity, energy, drive, and dedication. He has attempted more, achieved more, than anyone we have studied– including some who now hold high office. He is generally conceded among those who have observed the student body since World War II to be the outstanding leader of the era. I think it likely that in the entire history of Stanford campus life, he has had no near rival since Herbert Hoover as an undergraduate."
Also about Nick's Dad: Tracy Bennett, one of his graduate students, said, "He was flamboyant, gently endearing, annoyingly arrogant, piercingly intelligent, entertaining, and more. I'd never met a man, nor had a professor, who was clearly so brilliant and at the same time so precariously insecure."
His grandfather, Frank Thompson, placed second in the Southern California extemporaneous speaking contest held at Whittier College. First place was Richard Nixon.
Parenting — "Nothing makes me more worried about failure than parenting." "Parenting is suffused with regrets, confusion, and mistakes. But when I run by, I know my children are rooting for me to succeed with infinite love and enthusiasm."
Running hard... Pushing yourself. Why do it? "Discipline builds discipline. Discipline is cumulative."
Sometimes You Have to Trick Yourself - I ran 10:48 because the track was bigger than I thought, and I didn't realize how fast I was going. If I had known I was running at a 5:23 pace, I would've shut down. My body would've started to hurt. Sometimes you can't let yourself know what you're actually doing, or you'll get scared.
Hiring at The Atlantic - The people he hires at The Atlantic share four must-have attributes: A spirit of generosity. A force of ideas. They're relentlessly hard workers. And they have an edge: an anxiety about getting great work done. That last one stuck with me. The best people aren't just talented... They're driven by a productive anxiety to do work that matters.
Becoming CEO of The Atlantic: The Search & Selection: The Atlantic conducted a yearlong search after President Bob Cohn left in fall 2019. When owners Laurene Powell Jobs and David Bradley announced Thompsont in December 2020, they said "Nick is singular; we've seen no one like him" and that he brought "a surround-sound coverage of relevant experience."
Move at an Uncomfortable
Published on 9 hours ago
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