The Mosaic Principle: The Six Dimensions of a Remarkable Life and Career

Life--personally and professionally--is lived to the fullest as a mosaic, encompassing a rich and complex set of diverse experiences that provide purpose, meaning, happiness, and success.

Yet, the pressures of modern society push us toward narrower focus and deeper specialization in our lives and careers. Our pursuit of specific expertise risks us becoming isolated from those different from us; our lack of shared experience fosters suspicion and conflict. Today we have businesspeople and government officials who persistently distrust and demonize each other; a fortunate swath of society with professional and financial security, increasingly isolated from those left behind; and community leaders who struggle to relate to and connect with the communities they serve. In every walk of life we have allowed ourselves to be pushed into self-defining cocoons from which it is difficult to break out.

Nick Lovegrove's compelling vision provides the way out of this contemporary trap. He supplies vivid portraits of those who get it right (such as Paul Farmer, the physician whose broad and imaginative choices bring health and hope to the world's poorest people) and those who get it deeply wrong (such as Jeffrey Skilling, the former CEO of Enron) and connects their experiences with a blueprint of six skills--a moral compass, transferrable skills, contextual intelligence, prepared mind, intellectual thread, and extended network. The Mosaic Principle will help you to succeed in an ever-changing, more complex, and diverse world, and build a more remarkable and fulfilling life.

Nick Lovegrove is the US Managing Partner of the Brunswick Group, a global corporate advisory firm. He spent more than 30 years at McKinsey & Company, primarily in London and Washington, DC At various times, he led McKinsey’s Global Media Practice, its Global Public Sector Practice, and its Washington office. He served as an independent advisor to the British Prime Minister’s strategy unit, and as a member of the board of directors for the Royal Shakespeare Company and TeachFirst. Since leaving McKinsey in 2012, he has been a senior director at the Albright Stonebridge Group; a senior fellow at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; and a visiting lecturer at the Blavatnik School of Government. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and four children.