Thought Sparks

MOSTRA MENO In this #fridayfiresidechat ​ @Sally Helgesen recounts aspects of @Francis Hesselbein's leadership style.  Showing junior people how to handle a tricky call from the @NewYorkTimes, trusting associates to resolve differences on their own, avoiding becoming an #advicemonster ​, all part of the #webofinclusion ​ that women leaders have historically created.

Roger Martin, one of the world’s most highly acclaimed thinkers, is an unsurpassed master at navigating intellectual polarities. His new book, “When More Is Not Better” explains how our systems designed to drive economic optimization are ultimately highly dangerous – and what we should be doing instead. We’ll be talking about the book, about Roger’s approach to developing strategies (hint: don’t s...

"America," said Peter Georgescu, "is the star of my life's story."  And, worried that his grandchildren may not have that America, in which "I became the best Peter Georgescu I could be," he has written a fiery manifesto in "Capitalists Arise!"  The book takes us through the painful path of inequality and warns that if we don't heal the middle class, we'll end up with blood in the street...

A visionary leader from a rather surprising place, Paul LeBlanc has presided over the dramatic transformation of Southern New Hampshire University and shown many skeptics that it is possible to reinvent our institutions.  From a sleepy school with a few thousand on-campus students experiencing their "coming of age" years, to a national powerhouse of around 135,000 enrolees, LeBlanc has been a...

TED phenomenon and author of the book "Powerful," Patty McCord, the founding talent leader at Netflix, will be joining me for a Friday fireside chat. We'll talk about why so many things we believe about HR are just plain wrong, what people should be thinking about with respect to their talent today and how to create the context that releases the power of high performing teams.

Victoria Montgomery-Brown has a new book out - "Digital Goddess" which tells a no-holds-barred history of her abandoning her nice, safe, corporate job and hurtling into the world of entrepreneurship.  The book is full of stories that are honest, often funny and really illuminating for anyone who has ever wanted to follow their dreams and start a business.  From getting arrested just as y...

Rita Gunther McGrath is a best-selling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. Rita is one of the world’s top experts on innovation and growth and is one of the most regularly published authors in the Harvard Business Review. She is consistently ranked among the top 10 management thinkers in the world and was ranked #1 for strategy by Thinkers50. Rita...

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? Asks the provocative title of Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic's recent book. A major issue, he suggests, is that we all too often confuse confidence with competence, meaning that many - even most - people who achieve formal leadership roles are not actually very good leaders. Among the solutions we'll discuss are improving the way we evaluate and select le...

How do you go from a newly-minted music degree to a secretarial position to becoming one of the leading analysts on Wall Street to co-founding one of the most successful boutique investment firms of all time to running your own business and being ranked as a top thinker by #Thinkers50 ​? Not to mention writing best-selling books?  My #FridayFiresideChat ​ guest Whitney Johnson would say that...

Creator of the Business Model Canvas and CEO of Strategyzer, Alexander Osterwalder joins Rita McGrath in conversation. Rita interviewed Alex about his new co-authored book "The Invincible Company," the implications of its lessons for other firms and his guidance for how to navigate through these nerve-wracking times.

With everyone wondering what the future holds, especially now, it was an enormous pleasure to welcome my friend, quantitative futurist Amy Webb to a #FridayFiresideChat ​.  She offered a great key to thinking about the future, namely "what would it take for X to be Y".  I brought up the Jetsons, that old 1960's era television show and Amy astonished me by recounting that the first patent...

Dave Ulrich is a legend in the world of talent and organizations. In this fireside chat, he and Rita McGrath will exchange ideas on the people implications of the COVID-19 crisis, focusing on the critical leadership behaviors that are going to be essential now and as we rebuild for the future.

I was absolutely delighted to welcome David Kidder, serial entrepreneur and founder of Bionic to our #FridayFiresideChat ​!  David shares Bionic's approach to building growth engines quickly - going from $1 to $100 million, fast.  We also talk about the Startup Mindset and the five practices that gifted entrepreneurs use to build and scale their businesses, why minimizing regret is a gre...

Erin Meyer's ideas have been fundamental to our understanding of how cultures work.  Her first book, "The Culture Map" is used by organizations all over the world to help them communicate better, adapt their corporate cultures to local environments and understand seemingly inexplicable behavior on the parts of their global teammates.  I was thrilled, then, that Erin teamed up with Reed H...

Why bureaucracy is the enemy of so much innovative, human-led creativity and what to do about it.  Gary Hamel, co-author of the new book "Humanocracy" and I touch on his body of work in general, which has had a huge influence on me, but more recently his efforts to create a framework for real organizational change.  This full #FridayFiresideChat is chock a block with insights from one of...

What an absolute pleasure to spend an hour with my good friend and innovation thought leader Geoffrey Moore.  In this #FridayFiresideChat , we discuss the arc of his breakthrough work.  He's influenced generations of innovators both in the world of tech startups and in large organizations trying to become more agile and innovative themselves.  His most recent book, "Zone to Win" is...

Herminia Ibarra just recently published a super-timely Harvard Business review article on the topic of "leader as coach", in which she explores the skills that are so sorely needed to create higher levels of organizational capability.  Most of the executives she works with, unfortunately, think they are much better coaches than they actually are!  In this far-ranging #FridayFiresideChat...

Talking to Jeffrey Pfeffer is always a gift, and this #FridayFiresideChat does not disappoint!  We discuss the ideas in his recent book "Dying For a Paycheck" among which are that while physical workplace safety issues have largely been addressed, the invisible toll on workers' mental health has not. One of Jeff's interesting ideas is that a company's benefits managers could tell you - if you...

In his new book "Conscious Leadership" Whole Foods Market Co-Founder and CEO John Mackey takes us through his journey as the leader of a company that changed what we expect from our grocery stores.  From the opening story in the book - in which he came close to being ousted in a corporate coup - to the later discussions of fending off an activist investor before orchestrating a merger with Am...

Capitalism, by many accounts, is committing "slow suicide."  It was a thrill, therefore to be joined by Rebecca Henderson, professor at Harvard Business School and a dear friend to talk about her new book, "Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire."  In this wide-ranging #Fridayfiresidechat , we discuss the urgent need for all of us to rethink assumptions in a capitalist world gone comp...

My #FridayFiresideChat guest Sylvia Acevedo has had an astonishing career. From a childhood in a neighborhood with dirt roads and few opportunities to a full-scholarship education to NASA, Stanford and beyond, this tech executive never looked back at her "Path to the Stars" as her book is called.  We chat about the challenges of overcoming setbacks, the unexpected twists lives and careers can...

We need good jobs and we can have them! My dear friend and @MIT Professor Zeynep Ton joined me in a #FridayFiresideChat , to talk about the Good Jobs Strategy.  Her pathbreaking book presented her research that showed that successful operations, combined with good jobs, can allow firms to outperform, even in historically low-margin sectors such as retail.  She shared the results of a Bro...

Have you fallen off a humor cliff in which every day is full of spreadsheets, powerpoints and meetings and each one seems a little less fun than the one before?  If so, I have just the antidote for you.  It's Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas' wonderful new book, "Humor, Seriously" now available for pre-order (with goodies) prior to its February 3 US publication date.  Just in time...

Even if you want to spark innovation in your organization, the challenges can seem terribly daunting. In their delightful co-authored book "Eat, Sleep, Innovate" DBS Bank's Paul Cobban and Innosight's Scott Anthony make it much easier to engage in everyday innovation.  The book is chock-full of practical, fun examples of how you can get rid of frustrating and obsolete controls and replace the...