From the creator of How I Built This, stories of crisis, failure, turnaround, and triumph from some of the greatest leaders in the world.

Introducing Wisdom From the Top

From the creator of How I Built This, host Guy Raz invites you to listen in as he talks to leadership experts and the visionary leaders of some of the world's biggest brands. Along the way, you'll hear accounts of crisis, failure, turnaround, and triumph, as the leaders reveal their secrets on their way to the top. These are stories that didn't make it into their company bios, and valuable lessons for anyone trying to make it in business.

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One of the things Andrea Jung remembers Steve Jobs saying was "fail forward." If you don't fail you're not risking enough. For over a decade as CEO of direct-sales giant Avon, Andrea Jung was one of the most powerful women in the cosmetics industry. During her tenure, Jung saw striking success, but also faced daunting challenges with a failed product rollout and massive restructuring. Since 2014, Andrea has brought her passion for supporting female entrepreneurs to her job as CEO of Grameen America, a non-profit focused on micro-lending. In this classic conversation from 2020, Andrea and Guy mine the many lessons she has learned from more than twenty years of running organizations that empower women--by supporting them as entrepreneurs.

Failing Forward is Key: Andrea Jung of Grameen America

When he was a young management consultant at Boston Consulting Group, Morten Hansen put in long hours–up to 90 a week, regularly.  The highest performer in his office, however, was a colleague who clocked significantly less hours and rarely came in on weekends. This experience helped inspire Hansen’s research on work and is a central topic in his latest book, Great at Work: How top performers do less, work better, and achieve more. Join Morten and Guy as they explore the ideas around how to make a greater impact by doing less.

Do Less to Work Better: Morten Hansen



When Maria Ross was trying to teach her son that empathy was a way to success, the world around them seemed to be sending the exact opposite message. So Ross took her years of experience as a management and brand consultant to make the case for empathy not as a moral imperative, but as a business strategy. It's an equation worth studying. Here, in her 2021 conversation with Guy Raz, she describes the way she turned her research into a book called The Empathy Edge: Harnessing the Value of Compassion as an Engine for Success. 

How to Succeed Using Empathy: Maria Ross

Explorer, writer, and publisher Erling Kagge came from a childhood enriched by an artistic household (the likes of Chet Baker and Eubie Blake once visited his home) and by ready access to nature.  He was the first person to complete the Three Poles Challenge -- reaching the South Pole, the North Pole, and the top of Mt. Everest -- on foot. He talks about what a life of extreme exploration has taught him about silence and the value of failure.

Don't Waste Your Failures: Erling Kagge

Jeff Jones has had a few front row seats to crisis. From the 2013 Target data breach to a tumultuous period at Uber, he’s helped navigate companies out of some tough situations. So, when Jeff became the President and CEO of H&R Block in 2017, he was prepared. How a young man from West Virginia went from being an ad guy to heading one of the biggest tax preparation companies in the US during a global economic downturn and public health crisis (this conversation took place in 2020; the lessons to any business leader are timeless).

Introducing Wisdom From the Top

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