Let’s turn first to the inputs, beginning with the role of discipline. An overarching theme across our research findings is the role of discipline in separating the great from the mediocre. True discipline requires the independence of mind to reject pressures to conform in ways incompatible with values, performance standards, and long-term aspirations. The only legitimate form of discipline is self-discipline, having the inner will to do whatever it takes to create a great outcome, no matter how difficult. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you create a powerful mixture that drives great performance.

To build an enduring great organization—whether in business or the social sectors—you need disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action. Then you need the discipline to sustain momentum over a long period of time. This forms the backbone of the framework, laid out in four basic stages:

Stage 1: Disciplined People

Stage 2: Disciplined Thought

Stage 3: Disciplined Action

Stage 4: Building to Last

The successful creative business leaders who speak to our classes don;t strive. They apply themselves to a task for the sheer joy of doing it. It is in this sort of effort that you, too, can experience your inner creativity.

In our Stanford classes, we recommend this: Get to work on something (almost anything) productive, with the simply (even foolish) confidence that the work that’s in front of you is part of your answer.

Each individual has a meant-to-be, a particular blending of talents and capacities that can guide him to achievement. Everyone you recognise as creative - not only our speakers but also such luminaries as Einstein, Picasso, Beethoven - has in common the amazing ability to express his own unique purpose here on earth. They have found that true creativity is being themselves. When Leonardo DaVinci was asked to name his greatest accomplishment, he answered, “Leonardo DaVinci.

Creativity is not just about making fascinating inventions or great works of art. It has to do with shaping your life and cultivating your very soul.

The point here is not about superhuman endurance, endless self-inflicted suffering, awe-inspiring work ethic, or even self-discipline. I’ve come to see that for individual lives it is more about feeling intrinsically compelled than about being fanatically disciplined. I used to think of myself as a disciplined person, but the more I studied these lives, the more I came to see that I never really needed discipline to keep going. If you so love what you’re doing, and you feel so well encoded for it that you simply cannot stop yourself from doing it, then how is that discipline? I love the time of bliss in the hours of transition from night to dawn, and there is nothing in the world I would rather be doing than creative work as the light changes. I still hit nearly every single day excited by the work at hand, checking my watch in the middle of the night hoping that it is far enough into the morning to justify getting up, thinking to myself, “Please, oh please, let it be at least 4 a.m., so I can get going!” That’s not discipline; that’s love.