Ep 238: Robert Brunner - In 20

Edited highlights of our full conversation.

What makes great happen?

Robert Brunner was the Director of Industrial Design for Apple, a Partner at Pentagram and the Chief Designer of Beats by Dr. Dre, before becoming the Founder of Ammunition. They describe themselves as a design studio dedicated to bringing products and services that matter to market.

He was named one of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business,” and his work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Design is the art and science of knowing what to start and when to stop.

In that respect, it’s very much like leadership. There are best practices but no absolute rules. Imagining and re-imagining what’s possible is where it gets its fuel.

Leadership is a position of staggering opportunity. And yet, I’m constantly reminded of how few people fully appreciate the potential of the position they hold. How restricted they seem in their imagination of what is possible.

I’ve come to realize that this is not caused by a lack of ambition or interest. It is caused by a lack of awareness and understanding.

Understanding of the power of leadership. Awareness of their own potential. And their impact.

I’m fortunate to work in industries and with companies that are populated, almost exclusively with kind and thoughtful people. They don’t all, always act that way, but when they don’t it tends to be from insecurity or self doubt or personal trauma.

These things can hold all of us back. I speak from deep experience. Both of others, and of myself.

When you step into a leadership position, you have the power to change the world. Perhaps a small corner of it. Perhaps more than that.

It is the part of your life in which you can make the biggest difference in the life of others and learn more about yourself than at any other time.

Do not let that go by without self exploration.

What do you want to do with this opportunity? What do you want to make of it and with it? What would great look like?

And, crucially, what is stopping you from achieving all that? What do you think and feel about yourself that is going to get in the way. Imagine your future. Design it. Then go and lead it.

I promise you one thing. You’re already better than you know.