Ep 174. Rita McGrath: Seeing Around Corners

“What you experience as a big, dramatic inflection point has almost always been gestating awhile.”

Rita McGrath

Rita McGrath, Columbia Business School Professor, is an expert on inflection points, paradigmatic shifts in the landscape. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. She received her Ph.D. from Wharton and has degrees with honors from Barnard College and the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. Her recent book Seeing Around Corners:How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen is about how effective leaders and teams see those shifts coming before they happen and can react in innovative ways to succeed.

In this episode, Stew and Rita talk about how to see around unpredictable, unprecedented, or blind corners in order to make the best decisions for employees, students, teachers, staff, families, and communities during this pandemic period. They discuss how remote work is radically altering our social and business landscape, creating opportunities for radical innovation, including in the ways and means of our communal commitment to raising and educating children.

Here then is an invitation, a challenge, for you, once you’ve listened to the conversation. Think about where “the snow is melting” in your world, metaphorically speaking, and ask yourself how this weak signal might affect what’s next in your life. Write to Stew Friedman to let him know, at friedman@wharton.upenn.edu, or connect with him on LinkedIn. While you’re at it, share your thoughts with Stew on this episode and your ideas for people you’d like to hear on future shows.

For more about Rita McGrath’s great work, visit www.rita.mcgrath.com, and subscribe to her newsletter.

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