Riding The Storm

Lachlan Reed

G’day, folks—Lachlan here, propped up in my old shed in Sydney, kettle on and, if you can imagine it, some razor-sharp violins from Vivaldi’s Winter just slicing through the air. Sort of sets the mood, right? Makes you think of cold foggy mornings—footy oval covered in frost, or maybe, just maybe, a battlefield where every breath comes out like smoke. And mate, if you’ve ever sat through a tense share-holder meeting or a last-ditch startup pitch, you know the cold I’m talking about.

Lachlan Reed

Tonight, we’re cracking open a text that's as sharp as those violins—Machiavelli’s The Prince. Don’t tune out, seriously—it’s not some old Italian bloke rambling on; it’s a living manual. For every CEO or prime minister, for the folks just trying to get a leg up at work—it's about power, survival, and what happens when the storm of fortune hits. Old Machiavelli, he reckons leadership’s a wild ride, right? In his world, you’re never fully in control. Sort of like trying to keep an ancient trail bike upright in a hailstorm—think you’re running the show, but the next big patch of mud or black ice, and wham, you’re off in the weeds.

Lachlan Reed

I reckon that’s why this old book keeps showing up, boardroom to battlefield. It’s that weird tension—knowing you’ve gotta keep moving forward, never totally sure if fortune’s on your side, or if you’re just one turn away from hitting the deck. Anyway, that’s the mood we’re riding into tonight. Let’s see if we can warm up a bit and pick apart how ol’ Niccolò saw storms, and why it still matters the morning after.

Lachlan Reed

So, Machiavelli kicks off The Prince banging on about fortune. He calls it a river—sometimes calm, sometimes bursting its banks and flooding everything in its path. I mean, honestly, it’s as unpredictable as a Sydney forecast—sunny one minute, sideways hail the next. And Machiavelli reckons, sure, you can’t control the weather, but you can build yourself stronger banks. That’s your strategy: prepping for whatever fortune throws at you.

Lachlan Reed

Now, this isn't just some old-school theory—take Sun Tzu’s Art of War; he says winning’s about strategy, not about being the good guy. Nietzsche comes in swinging, talking about will to power, like it’s the only compass when things go sideways. Freud? Freud gets deep—says every leader’s got these hidden drives, half the time you don’t even know what’s pushing you to act.

Lachlan Reed

You see it still, right? Modern CEOs during COVID—talk about pulling decisions out of thin air, balancing empathy for their teams with the ruthless maths of survival. WWI, generals stuck in the mud, fog rolling in over trenches, zero clue if their plan’s gonna work but ramming through anyway.

Lachlan Reed

But let’s not stay in the past—look at WWII for a sec. Churchill, right, he was all about doing whatever it took, even if he had to break a few rules or twist an arm. Hitler, by contrast, stuck hard to ideology, wouldn’t budge. And well, one adapted, and one… did not. Sometimes you gotta know when to grip tighter on the brakes, even when everyone’s shouting that you’ve gotta throttle on, pedal to the metal. I’ll be honest, I’ve had a few trail rides where listening to the loudest bloke got me nowhere but bogged.

Lachlan Reed

Point is, leaders don’t just float—they survive storms by mixing a bit of virtue with a big scoop of cunning. That cold, tense feeling—the Vivaldi violin thing—that’s not just battlefields. That’s every big call, every gamble you take when the outcome’s murky, and fortune’s coin is spinning in the air.

Lachlan Reed

Alright, let’s zoom out and look at the terrain from above. You’ve got Machiavelli’s realism—keep your boots dry, get the job done, whatever it takes. But then, across the field, you’ve got the Romantics—think Byron, Shelley—all heart and vision, ready to rebel against anything cold and calculated. Nietzsche’s there too, yelling at everyone about herd morality, saying leaders can’t just follow the crowd if they want to truly change things.

Lachlan Reed

And, mate, that’s where the real fight is. Boardrooms, not trenches. Today, it’s founders in t-shirts and sneakers talking about changing the world, but up against regulators saying, “Hey, slow down, rules exist for a reason.” Tech giants juggle innovation—move fast, don’t break the law, hopefully. Politicians face it every day: chase the big, idealistic pitch, or keep their feet on the ground?

Lachlan Reed

You can almost hear those old words echo, through overlapping voices—maybe it’s an old Churchill radio crackle mashed up with some kid at a pitch comp in Surry Hills: “We go forward together” versus “We’re here to break everything and rebuild it.”

Lachlan Reed

And I reckon, late at night, it’s not all spreadsheets and strategy calls. Even the sharpest operator fights doubt—the ghosts of what could go wrong—hoping fortune’s gonna tip things their way when the sun finally comes up. That storm Machiavelli wrote about, it's still swirling, just in a different part of the world. Makes you wonder what vision and reality you’re juggling next, eh? Thanks for riding the storm with me tonight. Catch you soon, in the midnight hours, when the ideas bite hardest.