Defying Organizational Drift with Rita McGrath and Steve Goldbach & Geoff Tuff

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.

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