Thought Sparks

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, professor of business psychology at University College London and an adjunct professor at Columbia University,  and the author of Don't Be Yourself: Why Authenticity Is Overrated (and What to Do Instead). 
 
00:00 Introductions 
01:06 Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? 
02:54"Don't Be Yourself”: Why This Book, Now 
05:21 Authenticity Versus Leadership, and Being the Leader the Situation Calls For 
06:59 The Visibility of Authenticity  
09:18 Power and Self Censorship from Jeff Pfeffer 
11:04: The Four Mantras of Authenticity 
11:30: Mantra 1: “Honesty” 
14:18 Mantra 2: “Don’t Worry About What People Think” 
15:45 Skill Building and Self Awareness, from Matt Beane 
18:27 Mantra 3: “Always be True to Your Values” 
21:42 The Overton Window and How Norms Shift 
24:03: Herminia Ibarra’s Critique of the Authenticity Paradox 
26:44 Mantra 4: “Bring Your Whole Self to Work” 
27:57 Diversity and Belonging at Work 
30:22 How Employee Engagement Fits Into the Authenticity Picture 
32:27 How DEI Interventions Utilize Authenticity  
34:36 The Return to Office: Why Senior Leadership Might Prefer In-Person Work 
35:38: Chip Conley’s Learning to Love Midlife 
36:37: Tech Bros, Solopreneurs, and Authenticity to an Extreme 
38:27 Practical Alternatives: Your Right For Self Expression Versus Your Obligation to Others 
41:22 The Self Complexity Framework and Office Politics 
44:41 How to Interview: Honesty versus Employability 
48:32 Gen Z: Developing Grit and Learning from Feedback 
55:28 AI Paranoia and Adaptation 
58:42: Gen AI as “Intellectual Fast Food” 
 
 
Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.  
 
New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.  
 
Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  
Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. 

Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. 

Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. 

Connect with Rita on TikTok. 

Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  

Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes José Marcilla, President of Latin America and Canada (LACan) Region at Novartis, and author of “Unlimited Leadership”.  
 
00:46: Why this Book, and The Crisis of Good Leadership 
3:04: Jose’s Journey and Career Path 
5:16: Burnout, and the Need for Leaders to Focus on What They Can Control 
8:06: Humanism in Leadership: The “Hardware” and “Software” that Leaders Need 
10:38: Explaining Tough Decisions to Your People 
13:42: Novartis’ Transformation Strategy: The Intersection of Technological and Biomedical Revolutions 
16:00: Building an Inspired, Curious, and Unbossed Culture at Novartis 
18:01: Clarity and Simplicity in Corporate Strategy 
19:50: The Next Best You: Are You Changing as Fast As The World Is? 
22:59: Staying Grounded as a Senior Leader 
25:40: Setting the Tone Around Innovation and Failure 
28:16: How Leaders Can Repair Eroded Trust in 3 Ways 
32:37: Amy Edmondson’s 3 Types of Failures 
34:59: Leaders as Coaches: How Coaching Training Changed Jose’s Leadership 
37:40: The Delayering Question: Bureaucracy Eats Culture for Breakfast  
43:19: What Leaders Need to Unlearn 
45:15: Advice for Gen Z: Going from a “Tetris” Mindset to a “Roblox” Mindset 
50:27: The Importance of Mentorship 
 
 
Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.  
 
New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.  
 
Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  
Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. 

Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. 

Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. 

Connect with Rita on TikTok. 

Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  

Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Steven Goldbach and Geoff Tuff, authors of Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift. They explore how leaders can align their organizations amid the “drift” that can accompany large transformations and other contexts of uncertainty.  
 
8:52: Early Research: Beyond the “70-20-10" Innovation Portfolio 
13:32: Strategy, Budgeting, Governance, and Career Advancement: Forces in Opposition 
16:05: Detonate, Provoke, Hone: From Blowing Up the Playbook to Operationalizing a New One 
20:46: The Difference Between Honing and Sharpening, from Chef Flannery Colton 
25:41: Treat Change as the Normal Thing, Not the Weird Thing 
27:36: What are Management Systems?: The Critical Fifth Box of the Choice Cascade 
35:03: The Role of Visionary CEOs 
38:00: A Guide to Human Behavioral Change, and Patience 
42:40: Transformation and Innovation at Deloitte 
48:00: Case Studies in Collaboration from Sony and the Mayo Clinic 
51:49: Diseconomies of Scale, and the Risks of Being Too Big to Hone 
59:00: Single-Person-Unicorns, and How Units of Value Creation Change 
1:01:05: “We Don’t Have Eight Planets to Burn”: The Sustainability Question 
 
 
 
Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.  
 
New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.  
 
Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  
Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. 

Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. 

Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. 

Connect with Rita on TikTok. 

Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  

Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, welcomes Sylvia Acevedo,  a trailblazer with experience spanning NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to executive roles at Apple, Dell, and IBM, and serving as the CEO of the Girl Scouts.  
 
1:56: The Trailblazer’s Playbook: From a Dirt Road Town to NASA and the C-Suite 
4:33: Sylvia’s Origins: A Girl Scouts Model Rocket and Lessons in Failure 
8:31: Breaking Big Goals into Smaller Pieces 
11:25: “Don’t Leave a Cookie Sale Until You Hear No 3 Times”: Lessons in Tenacity from the Girl Scouts 
14:01: “Girls Like You Don’t Go to College”: Becoming One of the First Hispanics to Earn a Graduate Engineering Degree from Stanford 
18:06: Innovating Above and Beyond at IBM 
21:23: A Mental Checklist to Reach the C-Suite 
30:50: Building Back Better after Failure at Autodesk 
33:58: “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”: The Link Between Personal and Professional Growth 
36:58: Family Tragedy, and Sylvia’s Transition from Technology to Education 
39:05: The Power of Influence in Changing Opinion 
42:09: Leading the Girl Scouts: Empowering Girls in Civics, Technology, and Entrepreneurship 
46:11: Historically Women’s Colleges and the Girl Scouts: The Role of Single-Gender Spaces 
48:49: Leadership in Chip Manufacturing 
53:07: The Story of Sylvia’s Name, and Bilingual Systems Thinking 
54:46: The Power of Taking Even Small Actions 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thought Sparks are the brainchild of Rita McGrath. They are insightful actions, strategic ideas, actionable suggestions and innovative approaches that help organizations and leaders master the future with less fear and more confidence.  
 
New episodes of the Thought Sparks Podcast are released every other Tuesday at 11am Eastern.  
 
Want to learn more about Rita’s ideas and hear more of her conversations with business leaders and innovators?  
Listen to more Thought Sparks Podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify. 

Watch Thought Sparks episodes on YouTube. 

Follow Rita on LinkedIn, Instagram, X and Blue Sky. 

Connect with Rita on TikTok. 

Sign up for her Thought Sparks Newsletter on Substack.  

Learn more about Rita, her books and ideas at RitaMcGrath.com

In this week’s Thought Sparks Podcast episode, Rita McGrath, a Columbia University Business School Professor, C-Suite strategist, business founder and best-selling author, sits down with Don Tapscott, CEO of the Tapscott Group, Chairman and co-Founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, and author of “You to the Power of Two”.  
 
00:00: Introductions and Don’s Expertise in Blockchains and Identic AI 
3:04: Predictions about the Web, Revisited 20 Years On 
5:20: Blockchain and The Transition from the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value 
7:27: A Personalized Future with Identic AI 
11:18: The 3 Phases of Digital Identities 
13:10: Digital Feudalism: How Digital Conglomerates Own Our Digital Identities 
18:14: “What’s the Ghost in the Machine?”: When AI Gets Embedded in Daily Life 
20:06: The Jobs Question: How AI Will Affect the Nature of Employment 
26:00: From Firms to Individual Contractors: When Units of Value Creation Become Smaller 
31:12: The Need for a New Social Contract in the Age of AI 
37:29: Rebuilding the AI Stack Around a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure 
42:155: Movement Building for Self-Sovereignty over a Digital Future