Be a Starfish leader. Richard lets others speak first. In the management meeting, Adam gave a solid presentation about his exciting new company, Ionic Security. Richard waited for almost ten of his team to ask questions before he joined the conversation, creating a space for genuine engagement. In deferring to others first, he learned what his team thought and their concerns about security, allowing him to offer better-informed comments and to probe the subject in greater depth. Richard’s management and leadership style is pure Starfish: he does not over-control his companies or their CEOs. When I asked the group CFO how they could improve security across their dozens of companies, he said, “We will not ask them to report into us on it. We just ask them to discuss it with us at events like this. We expect them to intelligently manage the risk and we don’t want to be bureaucratic or get in the way”. Decentralization and respect are two reasons why Virgin has amassed such an impressive portfolio of companies, united by their most important asset – a great brand.