I spent more than a decade in Singapore, the most formative years of my career. It is a place I called home, it has a special place in my heart, and it is also a case study in nation building. A small island with sparse resources, built into a modern day utopia by the sheer will of its people and of its lion-hearted leader, Lee Kuan Yew. Every time I read about the statesman, I learn something new.
But this time, I was reading about the legendary Charlie Munger (the master of worldly wisdom and mental models). And I was surprised to hear that he was a big fan of LKY (he claimed to have a bust of LKY in his study), and that his top mantra in life came from LKY. And it was “Figure out what works, and do it”.
Sounds very simple, but it is profound. Most folks don’t spend enough time figuring out what works. To understand what really works, one needs to turn off autopilot, question everything, experiment, and drill down into the essence of the solution.
And once ‘what works’ is clear, more often than not, we don’t execute. Conviction, courage, grit, all need to converge to ‘do it’.
How do you go from the third world to the first? What is a mantra that can be used to build an entire country? “Figure out what works and do it”. 👉 Repeatedly.