Ambition and Growth: The Keys to Realising Your Potential

A note to young leaders.

Two things are necessary and non-negotiable if you are to realise your potential – you must be supremely, relentlessly ambitious; and you must have an insatiable desire for growth.

Here’s how the late, great John R Caldon put it to me, late one night, as we worked together at Macquarie Group:

“You want to make sure, Adam, that you are doing something different every two to three years. Otherwise, you will get bored and you’ll stop growing. If you’re feeling comfortable, you’re not being ambitious enough.”

Ideally, you can take on new challenges multiple times in the same company – the best careers are characterised by marathon spells with the same firm.

But if your company is not growing as fast as you are, then far better to change companies and keep growing than to stay where you are and settle for stasis.