NextList

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Logo: J.P. Morgan.

A stylized globe with radial lines is shown with the word Nextlist prominently displayed over it.

James Chilvers wears a dark suit and red tie. He sits indoors with a blurred background featuring flowers and framed artwork.

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Hello, I'm James Chilvers. And I'm thrilled to be joined today by the former prime minister, Sir Tony Blair. His

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A red book cover displays the title Tony Blair On Leadership Lessons for the 21st Century with a patterned purple background.

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new book, On Leadership-- Lessons for the 21st Century, offers a masterclass for those leaders aspiring to drive lasting impact and change. It

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Tony Blair wears a navy suit with a purple tie and smiles. He is seated in the same room. There are yellow curtains in the background.

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features on JP Morgan's NextList 2025. Thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you, and thank you for featuring it on NextList.

Your

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The two men sit across from each other in green armchairs. Tony Blair's book on leadership sits propped up on a small circular table between them.

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book offers a unique perspective, both during your time as prime minister and from driving your institute. Could you share some of the most surprising or unconventional lessons you believe are particularly valuable?

You learn over time that it's important for anyone in a position of leadership to have the skills to get on with people and to understand that part of your job is to bring the best out of people. And therefore, a lot of it is to do with strategy and direction and policy and all the very obvious things about leadership. It's an essential but often overlooked requirement that you have some sort of emotional empathy for the people you're leading.

Any organization, any country, it needs a direction. It needs a story about itself. What are we trying to do? Why should people feel motivated? What's the essential purpose?

And if you don't have that sort of shaping narrative, then people often are stumbling around in a bit of a fog. So it's important you develop that narrative, but it's got to be real. It's got to be one that you believe in and one that makes sense.

And then from the narrative come your priorities in a leadership position.

I talk in the book about what I call the four Ps of leadership. And the first is prioritization. Because if you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing-- certainly, if you're trying to run a government. Secondly, the importance of policy, of getting the right answer to the problem you're trying to solve. And that's a much, much more difficult job than people often think.

Thirdly, of course, personnel, the people. And finally, performance management implementation. So what you often come across are leaders with very bold ambitions, great ideas, but they haven't drawn them down into policy, and then they lack the skill to implement. And that's the-- I mean, certainly in government, the toughest thing is to get things done, is to move from the great vision you have about where you should be to the reality.

You also delve in your book into the concept of developing a legacy, which is something we're very focused at at JP Morgan. What strategies would you recommend to leaders who are aspiring to create a meaningful and lasting impact in their fields?

The most basic thing is that if you're leading an organization, or indeed a country, that you leave it in better shape at the end of your time than at the beginning. I mean, that's a pretty obvious legacy to aim for.

But I think the less easy to define legacy is about the culture and the values of the organization or the institution. And those are the things that will sustain it over the long term, and the things that will nurture its talent, give it real-- a sense of what it is.

I think we're in an era of almost unprecedented change. And I think the most important thing, again, apart from all the obvious things about having direction and purpose and so on, is to spend time really understanding the world. And one of the things that has somewhat shocked me since I left office is the amount I've learned afterwards.

Any leader, if they are going to be a good leader, has got to have a perpetual sense of curiosity. And in a world that's changing very fast, that means all the time trying to think about that change, understand it, so that you can master it and harness it better.

Were you able to find the time to do that when you were a prime minister?

Finding time for strategy when you're actually in a position of leadership is very hard, but it's very critical to do it. When you're leading any organization, certainly when you're leading a country, there are events. There are crises. There are scandals, certainly, in the case of politics. There are things that are colliding and interfering with your focus on what really matters.

And I sometimes say that the job of a leader often involves pushing back against the kind of conspiracy of distraction with different events and things happening, some of which you can control and some of which you can't. But it's important all the way through that, that that doesn't distract you from the things that really matter, the things that are going to improve your country or your organization, the things that are going to make it succeed rather than fail.

You've been an incredible advocate for the potential benefits of AI. How have you been able to find the time to get up that curve?

Well, I've had good people working for me and with me. I mean, I am not a technology specialist. And like most people of my generation, there's elements of it that I find mildly terrifying.

But I think I can step back and look at it. And I really do believe that this technology revolution, and particular the changes that are now going to happen to disrupt virtually every profession, every walk of life, should disrupt the way government works. I think this is the 21st century equivalent of the Industrial Revolution, and so it will, in the end, change everything.

So there can be material benefits, but there may be some downsides. How do you think government should try to address some of those potential downsides of the AI Revolution?

It's a good point because people often think when I talk about the importance of this technology revolution I'm saying it's all good. I'm less arguing about whether it's a good thing or a bad thing because it's general purpose technology, but just that it is a thing. And it's going to have its enormous opportunities attached to it. I think there's not a single walk of life in which it won't be quite revolutionary, its implications.

But what that means is the bad that can come with it is equally great. You can have disinformation, fake news, opportunities for people who want to do bad things to do them better. Yes, you're going to have all sorts of issues to do with regulation, but start, at least, with some sense of the opportunity of how you can use the technology to change the way public services and government work.

And secondly, realize that when you're dealing with these elements that have got a strong downside to them, you're going to need at least to understand the technology sufficiently to be able to handle them well.

Thank you so much for being with us today, Sir Tony. And thank you for joining us today. You can learn more about JP Morgan's NextList at jpmorgan.com/nextlist.

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A stylized globe with radial lines is shown with the word Nextlist prominently displayed over it.

Logo: J.P. Morgan.