Dear colleagues:
It sure was nice to be back in person on our gorgeous new Columbia Business School campus. My course on growth and change, called Leading Strategic Growth and Change received an evaluation of 4.95 out of a possible 5! I guess the participants were as glad to be back as we were to have them. Among the cool components of the course was a fireside chat with the incredible Joyce Roche, founder of Girls, Inc. and a highly acclaimed executive in her own right. Click here for more information.
We also kicked off a partnership with Genentech, a joint effort between Columbia Business School and the company to accelerate diverse talent, called gLEAD. It’s energizing to see real commitment to taking advantage of the power of diversity at the company.
Later this month, I’ll be in California for an amazing BLK SHP event called Powershift, and in Nashville for a talk and running part of the Genentech program virtually.
If you are curious about my upcoming schedule, your go-to resource is my “events” page. Click here to view it.
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This Month’s Thought Sparks
You can’t avoid the digital dimension of your business, even if you wanted to! (May 3)
Asking what your digital strategy is today is as absurd as asking what your electricity strategy was 120 years ago. And yet, many companies haven’t yet gotten the message. Our friend Steve Denning took that point very much on board in an article in Forbes.
Bright promise and dashed hopes – the AT&T Media strategy saga (May 10)
Big, promise-heavy mergers seldom deliver to their high hopes, but this was one spectacular story that I detail here. Oh, and just got a tidbit from a participant in one of our programs who was there at the time. The AT&T people wanted to institutionalize their HR practices across the media businesses, like mandatory drug testing for all employees….let’s talk culture clash, shall we?
Startups in distress: We’ve Seen This Movie Before (May 17)
One of the icons of our current era in entrepreneurship is the unicorns – fast-growth businesses, backed by truckloads of venture capital money – who seem to be able to defy the laws of Entrepreneurship 101. That is until they can’t…
Counting down our list of discovery-driven planning misses, Part 1 (June 3)
Everybody loves a “top ten” list, right? So read on through for the first half of ours at Valize.
In the Press
This was an honor – I’m now listed as one of the Academy of Management Subject Matter Experts!
So great to be listed with other notable authors on the inside/outside best books on innovation:
https://insideoutside.io/best-25-books-on-innovation-for-2022/
The Nordic Business Forum replayed a webinar I recorded on early warnings. Available here:
https://www.nbforum.com/newsroom/blog/leaders-digest-may-2022-2/
Think you are doing right by your customers? Think again and suggest this article by Steve Denning that cites my experiences
And just for fun, some art and culture news as McCarter Theater in Princeton brings back its gala for the first time in two years
We now have a recorded demo of the SparcHub system available for your perusal
You can tap into an explanation of the theory that makes the Discovery Driven Growth system facilitated by the SparcHub system as well as an overview of product features at this link. I’d love to know what you think of it!
Our first cohort of online learners is halfway through!
The program is launching this month with a combination of live-online sessions led by myself and online recorded sessions that participants can take in their own time. You can find out all about the current modules at this link. Want to experience what the course is like? We have a demonstration mini-course for that offered at no charge.
Get in Touch, Keep in Touch and an invitation to shape the agenda
We’re all about learning new things in 2022. You can follow me on Twitter (@rgmcgrath), on Instagram (@ritamcgrathofficial), on LinkedIn and on YouTube.
And an invitation: If there are topics you’d like to see me explore in a Thought Spark, let me know!
Warmly,
Rita