Name: Adam Jacoby

Title: Co-Founder & Partner

Organisation: Immuto Group

5 Kids. Impact. Regenerative Capitalism. Democracy. Innovation.

Roll them up. That’s me.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Adam's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Finding my true purpose and then balancing the needs of providing for my family with doing work that I find challenging and meaningful.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

For starters, I’m not sure that I am a leader but for the sake of telling the story, I started my first business as a late teenager.

I didn’t expect it would grow or be successful and we (my partners and I) made many mistakes.

There is a real benefit to making elementary mistakes early and young, while those mistakes really only impact you.

As luck would have it, the first few businesses did ok and provided me an opportunity to live overseas and build relationships with incredible people who I still work with and count as friends to this day (nearly 30 years later).

As I had children and truly figured out who I am and what matters to me I had seen a lot of what didn’t work. This allowed me to spend more time on things that do.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I try not to over plan. 5 kids means anything can happen on any given day and usually does. I try to set myself a set of tasks each day and drive to accomplish them. Sometimes they are large, sometimes quite basic but every day I try to go to sleep having made a step forward during the day.

I also try to be quite ruthless about where I expend my energy. If it isn’t additive to my purpose and focus then I am happy to say no and miss out on things that others find important.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

Words are cheap. Believe people when they SHOW you who they are.

Also, leadership is ultimately about creating the condition for more great leaders. We were all young and learning once so make time for the next generation of leaders and help them avoid the mistake you made.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

The Lorax. I have read it to all of my kids over and over again.

We can’t keep on biggering and biggering and biggering.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Don’t allow your journey to be limited by those who can only see theirs. The obstacle is the path.

The journey of others is informative but not instructive.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

I have started global for profit businesses and I have started global not for profit businesses. The hardest working people I have ever worked with were in the not for profit space and they were volunteers., Never discount passion and value alignment.