When Daniel Roth interviewed Angela Ahrendts,

Daniel Roth said,

You talk about giving back, you wrote a great post for International Women’s Day, where you talked, it was a letter to your daughters. And one of the things you told them was “Don’t look back. Always be looking forward.”

You were the CEO of Burberry, then you went to Apple as the Senior Vice President. Do you really never look back? Do you ever think “I was CEO, now I’m doing this, what is my path, what did my path teach me about where to go next?” Or are you always just thinking about what’s coming down the road.

Angela Ahrendts talked,

95% of the time I try to look forward. I think looking back just, it’s over, right? I don’t want to ever say I wish I would have. I’d rather live in the moment, do everything. And the older I get, the faster I feel I got to go. Age and experience are a funny thing, but I think looking back you get yourself in a spiral.

What if this, and what if that and what if, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s over. It’s gone. I’d rather challenge myself to look out two years, look out three years, and I’m reading four and five books at a time to try to feel from social leadership to inevitable.

What I do love is that for three years we’ve been working on this new store experience, to impact our teams and impact communities. And from Zuckerberg’s manifesto, to Bill Gates’s recent interview, to Thomas’s new book, to Dov Seidman’s, they’re all talking about the role the companies have to play in the community.

And so we’ve been working on this, we’re unveiling it at the same time that everybody says it’s what great companies should do. So that’s what I love, that’s why I’d rather focus and stay ahead of the curve, and isn’t that the job of leaders?