Kayvan Kian wrote the bestselling book What is Water: How Young Leaders Can Thrive in an Uncertain World. Kayvan’s book and his work as a consultant with Mckinsey seeks to show young leaders how to grow, how to thrive, and how to contribute in any situation.

Recap / Takeaways

• Creation is a magical thing that's always happening all around us
• Young leaders often have more overwhelm, doubts, and insecurities
• What is Water book: 
  • Fish don't know what water is
  • You need to become better aware of your context (what's around you)
  • He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. (Nietzsche)
  • You can transform many difficult situations to a positive if you find the why behind it
  • You must know yourself (what are you good at, not good at)
• Making better choices
  •  Ask yourself questions to narrow down your criteria:
    • Which one makes more money?
    • What aligns with my values?
    • What do I personally want?
    • What things do you want prevent?
• Scaling + Growing companies
  • How do you make sure founder isn't a bottleneck?
    • Come up with criteria for decision making
  • How to best utilize the talent you currently have?
    • People might have been hired for a unique skill, but people have more than that one skill
  • How to protect the culture that you have? 
    • You don't notice what your culture is
    • Get an outside perspective - get input from new team members, customers, outside consultants
• How to take things to the next level
  • Don't just look back and measure things that have already happened. Instead find indicators that are forward-looking that you have control over and can measure
  • Ask yourself: What does success look like? Given that picture of success, if we keep doing what we're doing, how confident are we that we have a good shot at this?

Action Item

1. Think about what you're contributing to in the bigger sense (for yourself, friends, family, team, and society)

Connect with Kayvan

https://nl.linkedin.com/in/kayvan

"What is Water"

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