15 Lessons From 5,000 Years of History

I don’t watch a lot of TV anymore, but regularly find myself going down rabbit holes on YouTube!

One person I always enjoy watching is Michael Saylor.

AS CEO of major US public company, Strategy, Saylor is one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and like many founders, he’s a voracious reader.

And there’s one work he regularly recommends: Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization.

It’s not exactly a light holiday read.

Eleven volumes. Around 13,500 pages. Roughly four million words.

Saylor says he’s read the whole thing. More than once.

For the rest of us, there’s a problem.

At the average adult reading speed, getting through the entire series would take somewhere around 280 hours.

That’s 35 full eight-hour working days of reading.

Fortunately, the Durants did something rather useful.

After spending decades studying thousands of years of civilisation, they distilled what they’d learned into a tiny book called The Lessons of History.

Just 117 pages.

I’ve just read it.

So rather than asking you to sacrifice the next 35 working days, here are the ideas that jumped out at me - and what I think they mean for anyone running a business.

1. Human nature doesn’t change

Technology changes incredibly quickly.

Human beings don’t.

Fear. Greed. Ambition. Envy. Status. Love. Tribalism.

They were driving human behaviour thousands of years ago and they’re driving it today.

The business lesson: Don’t become so obsessed with what’s changing that you forget what’s permanent.

AI may transform how we deliver products and services.

But customers will still want to feel safe, important, understood and valued.

2. Competition is a feature, not a bug

History is full of competition.

Between individuals. Tribes. Companies. Nations. Ideas.

Competition forces adaptation.

The business lesson: A competitor isn’t necessarily bad news.

Sometimes they’re the thing forcing you to get better.

Complacency is often more dangerous than competition.

3. Success contains the seeds of failure

This may be my favourite lesson.

Successful civilisations become wealthy.

Wealth can create comfort.

Comfort can create complacency.

And complacency eventually makes room for hungrier competitors.

Businesses aren’t very different.

The business lesson: The moment your company feels comfortable is probably the moment you should start worrying.

Avoid complacency.

4. Wealth naturally concentrates

The Durants noticed the same pattern repeatedly.

Small differences in talent, opportunity, luck and risk-taking compound over time.

Eventually, wealth becomes concentrated.

But when inequality becomes extreme, political pressure builds to redistribute it.

Then the cycle starts again.

The business lesson: Never assume today’s economic or tax regime will last forever.

Build optionality.

5. Freedom and equality are in permanent tension

Give people complete economic freedom and outcomes become unequal.

Demand completely equal outcomes and somebody has to restrict economic freedom to achieve them.

Societies spend centuries moving backwards and forwards between these two forces. We’re witnessing precisely this in the UK now.

The business lesson: Political cycles matter.

Regulation, taxation and attitudes towards wealth don’t move in straight lines.

Plan accordingly.

6. Governments grow

Crises tend to expand the role of the state.

New taxes appear.

New regulations arrive.

New government programmes are created.

And temporary interventions have an extraordinary tendency to become permanent. This is not a new thing - it’s always happened.

The business lesson: Don’t build a business model that only works under today’s tax and regulatory environment. Be flexible.

Things change.

7. War is normal. Peace is unusual.

This is one of the book’s darker observations.

We tend to think of peace as the natural state of the world and war as the interruption.

History suggests almost the opposite.

The business lesson: Don’t build plans assuming stability.

Geopolitical shocks, supply-chain disruption, inflation and financial crises aren’t freak events.

They’re part of the landscape.

Resilience matters.

8. Economics eventually beats politics

Politicians can change laws.

They cannot repeal scarcity, incentives or mathematics.

Policies designed to produce one result frequently create another.

The business lesson: Incentives matter more than mission statements.

Want to understand how an organisation or a government really works?

Ignore what it says it values.

Look at what it rewards.

9. Technology changes. Human desires don’t.

The Romans didn’t have smartphones.

But they cared deeply about money, status, entertainment, sex, power, security and belonging.

Sound familiar?

The business lesson: The biggest opportunities often sit at the intersection between new technology and ancient human desires.

Uber was new. Wanting convenient transport wasn’t.

Amazon was new. Wanting convenience and low prices wasn’t.

AI is new. Wanting to save time isn’t.

What does your business do that humans will always value?

10. Civilisations usually weaken from within

Powerful societies aren’t always destroyed by a stronger external enemy.

Often the internal weaknesses appear first.

Debt.

Complacency.

Institutional decay.

Political dysfunction.

Loss of trust.

The external shock merely exposes what was already happening.

The business lesson: Companies are usually the same.

Businesses rarely fail because of one terrible decision.

The foundations can deteriorate for years beforehand.

11. Progress isn’t linear

It’s tempting to believe that tomorrow will automatically be better than today.

History says otherwise.

Human progress is extraordinary over long periods.

But the journey contains wars, depressions, revolutions, bubbles and spectacular mistakes.

The business lesson: Think long term, but prepare for volatility along the way.

A good strategy needs the financial strength to survive the journey.

12. Institutions matter

Great individuals matter.

But so do the systems surrounding them.

Laws. Property rights. Culture. Education. Markets. Trust.

Strong institutions allow people to flourish.

Weak institutions eventually overwhelm even talented individuals.

The business lesson: Don’t build a company dependent upon one or two individuals.

Build systems.

Great businesses should become stronger than their founders.

13. Every generation thinks it’s different

This one made me smile.

Every boom produces a reason why valuations no longer matter.

Every political generation believes its problems are unprecedented.

Every new technology supposedly changes everything.

Sometimes it does. Often it doesn’t.

The business lesson: Whenever somebody tells you, “This time is different,” reach for the history books.

14. Adaptation beats prediction

Nobody can reliably predict what happens next.

History is full of unexpected events.

What survives isn’t necessarily what predicted the future correctly.

It’s what adapted when the future arrived.

The business lesson: Stop trying to create the perfect five-year forecast.

Build a company capable of changing direction quickly.

Cash.

Talent.

Low bureaucracy.

Strong customer relationships.

Optionality.

These things buy you time.

15. History should make us humble

Perhaps this is the biggest lesson of all.

We know far less about the future than we think we do.

The most dangerous person in business isn’t the person who says:

“I don’t know.”

It’s the person who’s absolutely certain.

Because certainty kills curiosity.

And curiosity is what allows us to notice when the world has changed.

The paradox

After reading The Lessons of History, I was left with one thought:

Everything changes. And nothing changes.

AI may be the most important technological development of our lifetimes.

Business models will disappear.

Jobs will change.

Entire industries will be rebuilt.

But the humans on the other side of all this technology will still want many of the things our ancestors wanted thousands of years ago:

Security.

Status.

Belonging.

Purpose.

Love.

Recognition.

Connection.

And that’s something to ponder this weekend.

Until next time,

Alan

PS If you’d like to jump on a quick call to discuss your own plans, just hit ‘reply’.

PPS My conversation with Joe Bryan outlined the challenges facing the UK and the economy and how to prepare for it - worth checking out.

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