What Tony Blair can teach you

The thing he regrets from his time in power

I recently listened to this episode of the Dwarkesh podcast where he interviews Tony Blair. Blair has a political consultancy where he advises world leaders and seems to be positioning himself as a bridge between politicians and tech. I don’t know very much about him beyond the fact that he was the UK’s Prime Minister but I enjoyed the conversation.

First, I think it is extremely cool that a guy can start a podcast for ~$50, work very hard on it, and in a few years be interviewing the biggest CEOs in the world and former heads of state. Technological progress brings a lot of bad stuff but that is a good thing in my mind.

Second, I connected with what Blair said he would do differently knowing what he knows now. He said that he actually had more power than he realized to change things, and he wishes he would have used it. Specifically, that meant he should have been more aggressive in changing his cabinet to get the right people in place.

It interested me because I usually expect people in politics or other power systems to become cynical and talk about how hard it is to change things. So Blair’s statement surprised me. It made me reflect on when I’ve had issues in the past, and the experience holds for me too. I remember being unhappy in my first job for a few months, largely because I couldn’t access data I needed and the person who could grant me access to it didn’t want to give it to me. This was very frustrating; I felt powerless and resentful and ineffective.

In retrospect I should have just told my boss “hey, I can’t really do my job well without this data, can you help me get access to it?” and it would have gotten done. It would have taken a little bit more energy and agency than moping about it did but it would have immediately made my life way better (I know this because the person withholding the data left a few months later and I got access to the data and my life got way better).

This is becoming a theme in what I write about: people who are able to overcome the initial activation energy required to do things end up with better, more interesting outcomes.