“When we tell ourselves we’ll do something later, we run the risk of waking up one day and finally realising it’s just not going to happen, not because we failed, but rather because it just became too late to try.”

Strauss Zelnick

Leadership: the last war.

When Matt Damon and Ben Affleck tried to break into Hollywood in their 20’s, they had no luck. Part after part, audition after audition, they failed. But instead of collapsing in disappointment or internalising the failure, they decided to stop the repeating pattern. Instead of fighting over a limited number of roles for unknown actors, they knew those numbers didn’t add up. They needed to do their own thing. So they wrote the perfect movie for themselves to star in (it was about their lives, their home). And that changed everything. It was great, and Good Will Hunting launched both their careers. Explained here by Billy Oppenheimer.

A thought for leaders: In The 33 Strategies of War, Robert Greene uses the phrase “fighting the last war”, which is our tendency to get stuck repeating tactics, strategies and approaches. He writes, “What most often weighs you down and brings you misery is…your tendency to fight the last war…You must force yourself to strike out in new directions. Attack problems from new angles.” So, in 2025, don’t get stuck in your last war. Change the circumstances, the angle, the way in. Tip the balance. Write your own movie script.

Culture: one note.

A long time ago, the indigenous pygmies (Baka people) of Cameroon invented a bamboo flute. An incredibly simple instrument. It plays only one note. On the surface, that sounds quite boring. But in this short piece, the writer and musician Francis Bebey described the simple but incredibly inventive technique they use to play the instrument. They have a conversation. They play the instrument and then reply to it. The result, is remarkable. One note, made totally hypnotic. Amazing music produced from a tiny, single note, bamboo flute, with a sound that’s like “one of the prime numbers of music”. The instrument and the player in a perfect dance.

A thought for leaders: Tools play such a prominent role in the world we live in. And looking into 2025, technology will continue to be the dominant force in our lives. But we must remember, tools, just like instruments, are only useful in the right human hands. And just like the bamboo flute, the real magic comes from the dance between the tool and the player. The essential creativity from you, and your people, comes from using the tool to amplify our creativity. Not letting it use us, and drowning it out.

Performance: acts, not careers.

We live in a chaotic era. Technology is reshaping industries, jobs and behaviours at ever increasing speeds. So, do we need to rethink the whole notion of a career? Marie Dollé wrote about the need to look at acts, not careers. A car-eer is a “vehicle” moving on a very fixed route, from point A to B. But life, and work, has never been less linear. And job types, roles and titles have never been more fluid. What if, instead of careers, we thought about acts. What if each job, is another act on the living breathing stage of our life. Where each act becomes an opportunity for reinvention. Thinking like this, helps us to lean into uncertainty with less fear, and encourages us to embrace change.

A thought for leaders: Career, in many ways, can feel like a noose. Defined. Fixed. A dead end. But in this time of accelerated change, our need for constant reinvention has never been greater. New beginnings will be ever present. And on the stage that is our life, we need to perform each new act, as well as the last. We need to be able leave behind the past, and approach each new act with our best, freshest performance. And as Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change”.

Podcast: Ep 69: Confessions of a Guru – Part 2: The Non- Negotiables.

This edition includes a recent episode from the Vaults, Ep 69: Confessions of a Guru – Part 2: The Non- Negotiables. You can listen to it here.

You can follow Flow Group on Linkedin here.

Hope you enjoyed and please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

P.S. This month’s featured work is by South African photographer Anne Nobels. She uses the female body and its expressiveness to counteract paralyzing panic attacks. These pictures are from “Outside The Lines”, a series on human vulnerability, where she tries to visually describe symptoms of her continuous fight against the disease.