Discovery CEO Adrian Gore explains why he wrote a book

Discovery CEO and founder Adrian Gore wrote a book to codify and share the intellectual concepts and values that helped him build his company over 34 years. 

The book, titled The Four Principles: Multiply Your Impact in Life and Leadership, is linked to Gore’s experience leading Discovery. 

Founded in 1992 with a medical savings product, Discovery has grown into a financial services giant valued at R180 billion on the JSE. 

The company now offers services ranging from life insurance and medical aid to banking and investment products. 

Gore told Daily Investor that the principles in the book have become embedded in Discovery’s culture and its internal induction process. 

“The truth of it is that Discovery was built on top of these ideas, concepts, and values. We debated, measured, and researched them over decades,” Gore said. 

“Then my team felt strongly that we should put this in a book and share it with society in some way. That was the genesis of it.” 

Gore explained that the four principles of disciplined optimism, focused urgency, declared goals, and the Pareto tail inform Discovery’s operations, hiring, and new business ventures. 

These principles flow from Gore, through his executive team, to the rest of the company.  

Gore has shared some of his personal habits in promoting the book, including waking up at 2:45 in the morning to work for an hour before going back to bed. 

While this does not align with Vitality’s Sleep Rewards program, Gore said it gives him clarity and an hour to do deep work before his day begins. 

As someone who works 15 to 16 hours a day, the CEO did not find writing a book an outlandish task. 

“It was much harder work than I thought it would be. It was two years of hard work. I thought it would initially take two months,” Gore said. 

“It was difficult to put it all together. The scale of the research and what I was trying to accomplish with the book.” 

Obsession and targets

Gore explained that revisiting the principles and going through the research brought to light how true they are and how they apply to Discovery. 

As someone who lives by the principles, Gore said he almost took them for granted, but the book brought them back into focus. 

It appears to have given the CEO a second wind at the age of 62, with his intensity and urgency visible during Discovery’s annual results presentation and subsequent interview. 

“I learned how true those principles are. Going through the research and becoming embedded in it again, I became so convinced that you can remedy this miscoding,” Gore said. 

“You can’t recode yourself as a human, but you can remedy it and, if I look to where Discovery is now, I can see every principle in the business.” 

Gore said the four principles are integral to how Discovery does business, makes decisions, and operates on a daily basis. 

“The 15% to 20% growth corridor to 2029. That is a declared goal of dramatic importance to us. I can’t sleep at night because of it,” Gore said. 

“I am pushing to the hilt on that issue. I hope the new business initiatives are transformational. We are trying to push it into the Pareto tail.”

“I think about what we do. We have made positive decisions around what others see as risk. We take it as positive.” 

Discovery is set to achieve the impossible with its growth targets through 2029, effectively aiming to double in size between 2023 and 2029. 

Doubling the size of a business that generated R70 billion in revenue in its 2023 financial year and R6.6 billion in profit is no mean feat. 

To do so, Discovery aims to grow its normalised profit at 15% until 2029, boosted by reduced spending on its new business units as they become profitable.

The company’s return on equity will rise to between 15% and 20%, and its cash conversion ratio will soar to 60% under this plan.

Discovery has exceeded these targets in all results since its declaration, with Gore making it clear that the company will not take shortcuts. 

“Our view is that we are not traders. We are operators and do not speculate on short-term fluctuations,” Gore explained.

“We do not take a single view on anything for the immediate benefit. We look at things over the long term. “