Rita Gunther McGrath

How's it going to affect my business? How's it going to affect our industry? And what do I do about it? And there's also this lack of understanding.

And I teach at Columbia Business School with Rita McGrath and her legendary program there.

And so I teach there four or five times a year.

And the class we taught in March, I asked the class at one point, I said, who in the class has heard of OpenClaw? One hand went up.

Because if you're not intentionally choosing your vantage point, you're choosing to stay blind as you hurtle around the corner.

Now listen to my conversation with the brilliant leadership thinker and Columbia professor Rita McGrath on how to navigate strategic thinking in times of supreme disruption.

So I did most of my growing up in Rochester, New York, which is a relatively small city.

It wasn't global there.

It's up to you to notice it and figure out what to do with it.

A bit like Unlock Moments then.

Rita McGrath is one of the world's leading experts on strategy and innovation, ranked among the top 10 management thinkers globally by Thinkers 50 on multiple occasions and winner of their number one award in strategy.

She's a professor at Columbia Business School, bestselling author of five books, a trusted advisor to CEOs navigating growth, disruption and reinvention.

This is another edition of the ThoughtSparks podcast.

I'm Rita McGrath, and this week I am absolutely delighted to be joined by Carolyn Stokes, who is an author, executive, a world traveler, and a keen observer of the management scene.

And she's come out with this terrific book called Aftershock to 2030, A CEO's Guide to Reinvention in the Age of AI, Climate, and Societal Collapse.

Now, if that hasn't gotten you intrigued, you're just not getting attention.

[upbeat music] Hello, everyone.

Uh, Rita McGrath here, uh, with another edition of the Thought Sparks podcast.

Um, my guest this week is someone I've been re- really looking forward to talking to.

It's Rebecca Heinzer, who is the author of this terrific book.

In this episode...

Columbia professor and author Rita McGrath, whose book, Seeing Around Corners, helps us get better at spotting change before it smacks us in the face.

She talks about reading the weak signals, looking beyond lagging indicators, and starting with strategy before throwing AI at the problem.

And for CMOs trying to prepare for what comes next, she makes a strong case for looking a few moves ahead while everyone else is still reacting to the last one.

All right, let's dive in.

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Rita McGrath has been helping leaders spot inflection points before they become obvious for years.

And right now that feels like a skill that's less the nice to have and more like we need this to survive.

No, no, no. Um, uh, to host.

But I'm delighted to be hosting Rita McGrath from Columbia, whose great area of expertise is something which is vastly less prevalent than it should be, which is corporate entrepreneurship.

Mm-hmm.

Is that...

In this book, Johan makes a, a hopefully and deeply researched argument in a world where algorithms write strategies, generate designs, and analyze markets, our professional value, our, uh, irreplaceable advantage lies in five distinctly main human capacities: curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, communications, and collaborations with practical wisdom at the center of this b- all being orchestrated.

Uh, so the book's been praised, uh, by Phil- Philip Kotler, Rita McGrath, who's been on our show before, and the CEO of SHRM, Johnny C. Taylor, who called it both a wake-up call and a roadmap.

Pleasure to have you on Windside Personal Growth, uh, and to do this.

Well, you know, we've had just a flurry of books, if you wanna call it, lately, Johan, about AI and how we're gonna adopt and where we're going and what's gonna happen.