Stuff I Wish I'd Known When I Started Working

AIMING HIGH THE ONLY LIMITS ARE THE ONES YOU SET YOURSELF

At some point in any career, a normally unjustifiable risk might need to be taken to make the quantum leap from the mediocre to the big time.

– Sir Ranulph Fiennes, British explorer

I remember being a kid and watching on a black and white TV the Alabama race riots. I remember – even as a kid – wondering how this problem could ever be solved, how this level of hatred could ever be overcome. Fast forward 50 years and there’s a coloured president in the White House. Pretty much anything is possible.

In my teens and twenties, the Iron Curtain was a fixed part of the geography of Europe. It was hard to see how that situation could ever change. Look at the map of Europe now. Germany ...