CB LIVE! Courage to Leap and Lead with Rita McGrath, Episode 96

Hello everybody. You know, it's Tuesday and it's— that means it's time for CB Live. Do you know, I looked at the camera today and I was wearing these glasses and I thought I look a little pale. And you know, Black women can say that we look a little pale. And I thought Okay, I need to jazz this up a little bit. So how's that? Okay, good to rock it out. All right, all right. So here's my secret for today. I heard Rita speak for the first time at Thinkers50. I was nominated, she won, of course, and I heard her go up against a bunch of men. One of those men was just trying to unravel her, and this woman stood her ground in such a pleasant way to put him in his place. Not that I'm against men, you know, I'm married to an Italian, so I can't say that. But I love it when a strong, powerful woman comes right back, uses her femininity and just goes for it on an intellectual basis. And she did that. I was so impressed. I wanted her on my show from that second. And I thought, oh, she's so powerful. I don't know if she'll say yes. And I was intimidated to ask her to be on. So When you're intimidated, take a page from CB's book on courage and go for it. So I asked her, and look what happened. I am so excited to present Rita McGrath today. She is a guru in strategic planning, and I thought I was good. This woman She has written— what is it, 4 books now, Rita? 5?

5, yeah.

5 books. And her latest one— please show it, Rita.

Gotta get the camera shot right.

Yeah, Seeing Around Corners. I can't wait to talk to her about that. But first, let's find out about Rita the person. Rita, introduce yourself. And when I say that, I mean, tell me about your childhood and how you got to where you are.

Well, my parents were immigrants from Germany. They were both scientists. So, I grew up in the kind of house where any question over the dinner table could be settled with something out of a book. That's kind of the mode that we were in. And we always had a lot of arguments about— well, not arguments, but, you know, discussions about which fact was right or not. So, I grew up in that sort of house. Very much respecting research and science. We moved the family from New Haven to the Rochester area because my dad took a job initially with Xerox and then with Kodak.

I was gonna say Kodak.

Yeah, totally, totally. So I was there, you know, I was there during the glory days. I worked for an optician during high school. Yeah. And, you know, people would regularly come in in March with the Kodak bonus. I mean, it was just like a guarantee. Oh my gosh. Pretty amazing.

Okay. And of course, the famous quote, it's a Kodak moment.

It's a Kodak moment, for sure. Yes.

Okay. What were your parents scientists in? What—

My mother was a microbiologist, and my dad was an organic chemist. And in fact, my mom's work had such a big impact on the field that many years later, it was sort of rediscovered. And I was very proud because some of her early work was part of stream of research that led to the Nobel Prize for self-repairing DNA.

Wow.

Yeah, pretty cool.

Impressive. Wow. No wonder why you can hold your own. The scientist background from your parents and research. Wow. I am so even more impressed. Okay, go forward then.

Oh, so I went to college at Barnard College in New York. Uh, the New York area ever since. Um, professionally, originally I wanted to be, uh, doing something in the public sector, so I did, uh, my, my major was political science, and then I did a master's in public policy, which was super cool, and spent about 10 years actually working in government, which was neat. And the cool thing about government—

Sorry, doing what for government?

Uh, I was doing the first of what today we would call digital transformations in the procurement area. So, you know, the thing about government is if you're capable and you're young, you know, the first few years of your career go like this, right? And the problem is that then the rest of your career goes like that. So I was looking for a change and applied to the Wharton School where I was accepted to do my PhD in management, basically.

So this heading, Rita McGrath, it really should read Dr. Rita McGrath.

I— if you— it would not be inappropriate, but I don't insist on it by any means. One of the most fun things we get is my husband and I are members here at a local theater in Princeton, and they always address the envelope very carefully, to Dr. and Mr. McGrath.

I love it.

I love that, right?

What does your husband do?

My husband's an actuary. Which means— yeah, yeah, he's one of those guys that can look at a wall, like, full of spreadsheet cells and say, that one and that one cannot both be true. And, like, I am always in awe of that skill.

But you can do the same thing in research. My God, your dinner conversations must be incredible.

It's fun. It's fun. We have a good time. Yeah, we do.

I remember when I first met an actuary, I was working for MetLife, and I said, what is, what is an actuary? The answer was, we predict when you're going to die. And I thought, what the heck?

Well, there is that aspect to it, right?

Yes, that's why you saw my reaction.

You've heard the old joke about the extroverted actuary?

No, what's that?

He looks at your shoes when he's talking to you.

I like that. So then, okay, how did you guys meet?

Uh, we actually met through friends in New York. Um, I had— by then I was working for— yeah, I was working for the City of New York in my government job. And one of my best friends from college was dating a guy who reported to my husband. And so that's how we met.

What a way to ensure your job, huh?

Right?

Okay, so, all right. So then you went to Barnard, one of the best, and then, okay, then to Wharton, another one of the best. And then what?

Well, what happened next was kind of an accident. I'd finished my dissertation, which is always a big deal, right? There's 2 kinds of dissertations, completed ones and not. And I'd raised the money to do a postdoctoral year at Wharton, doing sort of finishing up my research. And the thought was, Well, get, get some, get your papers underway and, you know, without the burden of teaching and everything. And my friend from Columbia called and said, look, you know, we have a strategy opening this year. Why don't you come along and give a job talk? You know, it doesn't, doesn't hurt you. And then I hadn't planned to be on the market for another year. And so I came along, gave the talk. I turned out to be the number 2 pick of their committee. The number 1 person decided to go somewhere else. And so I joined Columbia and have been there since. Wow.

And so what specifically are you teaching there?

Well, I teach in our executive education programs, and I teach— so I have a 1-week program that I run called Leading Strategic Growth and Change, which, as the title suggests, is for people facing issues of needing to change or needing to grow. And then I also run some of our custom programs. So right now we have a big one going on with Genentech, which will be near and dear to your heart because Because it's intended to accelerate the career progress of their diverse talent, which has been a very exciting project to run with them. It's been very— they've made a big commitment to it. And then I teach days here and there in other people's programs. So I might do a half day on entrepreneurial leadership in a larger program on some other topic.

I think you need a program on courage.

A program on courage. That's a good idea.

Yes, indeed. So, okay, change and growth. Let's talk about that reality. What is it that blocks leaders from change? And do you separate change from growth?

I think they're different processes. They have a lot in common, but I do think they're different processes. So you can have changes that are in response to negative growth or a negative outcome. But you Very seldom can get growth without change of some kind. So, I think they are very related. What blocks leaders? A lot of things. The status quo, the existing reward system, the fact that you're dealing with an organization that was probably built to do something entirely other than what it's doing now. And change is hard. Change is hard. Human beings are kind of wired to do the easiest thing. And the easiest thing is just continue to do what you've always done. Making a change means making an effort. Just summoning up that effort is something I think leaders sometimes find difficult.

If reward and status quo are 2 of the things that keep people in place, and there is this nesting that happens in place, how do we get people to have the courage to come out of that nest, And use their wings to fly?

Well, I think you need 3 things. I think you need something that is currently dissatisfying to you. And I think Whitney Johnson does a great job of describing this. It's like you've grown, you've grown, you've grown, you've grown, and now you're just not growing anymore. Things are kind of pleasant, but they're not really exciting. You're not really feeling motivated. And those are all good signs that it's time to You step up to whatever comes next for yourself. You've sort of reached a peak. I think the second thing is that you need to be able to see where your opportunities could be. And that's where building out a really good network is important. That's where, you know, knowing what your options are is important. I think people sometimes get themselves trapped in thinking this thing here is the only thing I can aspire to be. So sometimes in the course of a class, I'll ask people, what would good look like in your career or your life? And you get back this response like, well, I want to be a level 2 E4, category 2 executive. And so they're thinking of some box on the org chart. And that's what defines their life. And I'm like, well, no, why do you want to do that? And so if the answer is something like, well, I want to lead a creative team, I want to make a big impact in this problem area, I want to do whatever, what people need to realize is there's lots of ways of doing that. And that bureaucratic slot may be one, but there are many others. And I think not having that sense of optionality often traps people. They think, if I make this irreversible decision and it doesn't work out, I'm dead for life. And that's usually not true. And then I think the last thing is you need a way of managing the transitions. You want to be able to bite them off in chunks that are manageable for you. One mistake I see people making when it comes to courage is they try to go too far in one big leap, right? Whereas a lot of times there's a lot of preparation that's necessary before you can make a great big leap, I think. And it's like a 2-step, 2-speed process rather, I think. And I don't know how you think about it, but definitely there's a lot of sort of tinkering around before you actually get to the point where you're now going to go for it.

Yes, actually, you know, The platform that I use is one that I created, and I'm writing a book about it, is that it's a 6-stage process to get to actually implementing courage. And you're absolutely right. People just like— the first thing that happens is people wait too long.

Mm-hmm.

They wait until they are so stuck in the quagmire that they don't see a way out. You know, so that's the first problem I have that I see. And then the other thing is that they've waited so long that they feel that they just must jump right now and go for the whole thing, the whole 9 yards. And if it doesn't work, it's because the 9 yards weren't laid out correctly and there were just too many blocks. And so therefore, let me go back into my old comfort zone.

Mm-hmm.

And of course, none of that works. And it's ironic that you said dissatisfied. I love that you said that the first, but it's a shame that we have to get to that point of dissatisfaction. And worse, many people don't know what's causing that dissatisfaction.

Right.

So I just spoke to one of my assistants this morning. And it was one of those tough conversations because I had noticed that her commitment was dwindling in my, in my thinking process. Work just wasn't getting in on time, and there wasn't the communication. And I thought— and I knew what had happened because she's in the Philippines.

Hmm.

And during COVID she was working from home, and that's when we started to work together. You know, I had her attention 100%. And so I said to my husband, I don't want to have this conversation, but I know I must have the courage to have it. So I said to myself, just before we started to think— talk, I said, okay, what are the positives? And so I said, all right, so that's the beginning of the conversation. So I sat and I said, so let me just say to you, this is what I so appreciate about you. And it was all true. And I could see she was really quiet because I know she was waiting for the but. I said, and so here's what I see happening.

Mm-hmm.

And then Here's what I see are the options. And I could see her eyes like, wow, I have options.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, so the options are because you've gone back to work physically and you can't take on the load that we have for you, I think some of your options are to hire out. You know our system, you know what we're doing, and communicate.

Mm-hmm.

Right? So we could start there. And the expression on her face, it was like sunlight came. And then she said to me, You know, CB, I wanted to talk to you about my professional development. I was stunned because normally we don't think of people being on 1099 as thinking of professional development. I said, of course. One of the things she said to me as we were talking, she said, you know why I like working with you? I said, Why? And she said, I feel appreciated. She said, it's so nice to have the compliments and the direction and the appreciation. And I said, well, thank you. And she said, and it's made me realize I am probably not happy where I am. And I thought, oh my God, I didn't see that coming. And so I said to her, well, you know, it's really hard when you experience working with appreciation and then you go back and you're considered a bean counter.

Mm-hmm.

I said, so you've had an opportunity To really see what it's like working for yourself and to have great clients and so on and so forth. And I think, as you said, Rita, so many people are unhappy, but they don't have the network to figure out there's other opportunities. And because they don't have that, they don't have in their head The fact that there are other options or additional options out there.

Yeah, I would agree.

And I, I love the title of your new book, Seeing Around Corners. I'm kind of jumping ships, but— and I haven't had a chance to read it yet, I will admit, it's on my list— but the title itself, and I love the illustration I'll show it to you one more time. Yes, please show it again, the maze that you go through. I would love for you to talk about how do people see around corners, and this links back to what we're talking about, if you don't have a network or if you don't have a system of appreciation or you actually don't even know that there's a corner there that you can turn.

In your personal life, you mean?

Personal or work. I'm thinking work right now.

Yeah. I think the networking point is enormously important. What I would observe is for women and people who are in minority status in the society or in the company that they work in, They tend to have networks that are execution networks, which are very dense, right? So, we know each other. We get stuff done. We can finish our sentences. We're just, we really trust each other. It's a very dense, tight-knit kind of thing. And that's really good for getting work done, right?

Mm-hmm.

It's not so good for finding new opportunities because everybody in our little execution network all knows the same thing. So, there's not new information coming in. So, to get new information, the kind of network you need to create is called an opportunity network. And these are people, you know, 2, 3, 4 leaps away. Like I met a guy who knows a guy who happens to be in the— I'll make this up— magazine business. And then you and I are talking and I said, oh, you know, I met this guy who's in the magazine business. You're interested in advertising. Why don't I connect you? Right? But because I'm like the connector between the two of you, that gives me the opportunity to do you a favor, do him a favor, and down the road, If I come to you and say, CB, I really could use somebody who knows something about, I don't know, sonar or something, and you happen to have somebody like that in your network, then we can refer each other. So I think one of the things people who, to be blunt, are less advantaged, are less privileged, it's harder, right? And it takes more effort and you have to put time into it when you're already putting time into a lot of other things. But it really is important, I think, to build that time into the creation of your personal and professional life, because that's really where the new information comes in. And so how that connects to seeing around corners is that's what you want, right? You want that thing that challenges your existing assumptions, and you want that moment where you go, wait a minute, that's not what I thought, right? Or that moment of insight. And I think those come from people that you don't know well. I think it's having that balance between the two that's really valuable.

We're going to take a break, 2 seconds. Now I want to come back and I want to talk to you about what you just said. 2 different types of networks. One is a dense one, in which you basically get things done. And the other one is the opportunity network, which allows you the opportunity to explore.

Mm-hmm.

I love the distinction between the two. And I want to focus on this opportunity network because you said something about It's almost like a privilege to have an opportunity network. I know what you mean by that, but for people who are listening, why is it a privilege?

Well, people that are valuable to you, right, as part of your network are people who have some resource that be difficult for you to access on your own. So that could be money, obviously. It could be access to places. It could be access to other people. They've got something that is valuable, and that could be social capital, could be reputational capital, and, and, and, and, and. And so those people, you know, have limited amounts of time like everybody else. So to break into those networks, you know, is often difficult if you're from a non-standard kind of place. So I'm from a big university. It's got a big brand name. There's almost nobody who wouldn't at least say hello at a cocktail party or whatever. And so it's very easy for someone who has all that glide path to do that kind of opportunity network building. It's much harder if you're not physically or reputationally part of those existing networks. And there's a lot that we know. People tend to gravitate toward people that they know, even in events where the purpose is to come and meet new people. People tend to hang out with people that they're like, that they have some similarity with. And people tend to be most comfortable with people who are a lot like them. And so all of those things get in the way of really breaking into new groups of people in your networking. And so it can feel really uncomfortable. And you talk about courage, right? I mean, how many people would boldly go forward and say, I'd love to meet you, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And the risk of being rejected is often something people are very concerned about. Now, in my experience, that risk is hugely overblown. I mean, most people are nice. And if you're in a social setting where it's appropriate— now, I can talk about where it's not appropriate, but where it's appropriate, you're at an industry-level cocktail party or something, or you're meeting at a conference, and the expectation is everybody's there to get to know one another. And so it's okay, you know, it's sanctioned. I mean, it's permitted. And very few people will be rude or nasty or, you know, otherwise unpleasant if you just go over and introduce yourself. One little tip I would have for your listeners about, you know, how do you network when you don't like networking? And a lot of people don't like networking.

Introverts.

Yeah, introverts, but also people who just, they don't like the discomfort of having to be talking to a stranger.

So I also want to talk about when it's Oh sure, I will get back to that.

But, um, one of the things that I can recommend is find a topic that you really do genuinely care about, something that you're passionate about. And then when you are in a networking kind of situation, don't just say, you know, hi, I'm Rita, blah blah blah, but say, oh, you know, I've, you Do your homework so you know who's there. But assuming this is this is in the ballpark, say to somebody, "Oh, you know, Mr. Smith, I read your article about." I'll make this up: microbes. I'm actually really really interested in gene programming and how digital and genetics are coming together, and I wondered if if you might be willing to give me some guidance or some advice. People love to give people love to give advice. So if you ask someone. for advice. Clearly you are of superior intellect because you have recognized their deep levels of expertise, right?

Yes. Okay.

Some tips on networking. So where is it not appropriate? Um, it's not appropriate in a situation where the person genuinely believes that they should be free from being bugged by strangers. So, you know, don't rush up to someone who's having a dinner in a restaurant and try to introduce yourself, right? That's just— that doesn't work. You know, they're entitled to be off the clock, right, at that point. It's also not appropriate when you're really, really being obnoxious about the inequality in your relationship. So, you know, this will happen to me quite frequently. You know, people will come up to me and without any offer of anything, just kind of say, oh, could you— would you blurb my book, for example? Like they don't even know me, and it's like, "Would you blur?" First words out of their mouths: "Would you blur my book?" And that, you know, to me that borders on inappropriate because, you know, it's not an exchange, right? It's it's sort of an imbalance in terms of what they're looking for. And you know, you need to build some some rapport before you should even make a request like that. So I'd say, you know, go in with an offer, right? Some kind of pleasantry. Go in with something that's mutually beneficial. beneficial. And beware of the context. One of my most distressing networking stories is I was in the Academy of Management, which is a big gathering of management scholars. And the particular year I'm thinking of, they had set up this system where if you wanted to— now this was before, kind of before internet became so prevalent and everybody had everything on their phone—

Mm-hmm.

You could actually put the number of your, the phone number for your hotel room in this system and then say what you were interested in doing and if people wanted to meet up because it was such a large conference, it was hard to find people. So if people wanted to meet up, they could call each other and make appointments and so forth. And so it's 2 in the morning and my phone goes in my hotel room, like in this Academy of Management meetings. And I'm like, are the kids okay? Is the house on fire? I mean, of course, the phone rings in the middle of the night, you think something's wrong. And it turns out to be this Korean doctoral student. And I said, what are you calling me for at 2 in the morning? He said, oh, I knew you'd be free.

Stop.

I'm not making this up.

Wait a minute.

Somehow this kid had gotten out into the world with like no, no understanding of social boundaries.

No protocol, nothing. And what did you respond?

I said, well, as a matter of fact, I was sound asleep. This is not a good time to talk.

You're so polite.

And then I think, I think I unplugged the phone. You'd never put your number out there if you thought you were going to be giving it to people who were that crazy.

You know, I had a similar situation. Uh, so as I mentioned, I'm writing my book and I have a, a coach and, um, I'm gonna self-publish, but he takes you through the whole process. And, um, he has these check-in calls twice a week. One is just a regular one, and the other one is any strategic questions that you have. And so I was on the call, and I happened to mention what my, my mental deadline was for getting this book done. And I said I wanted to be able to When I go to Renaissance Weekend this year, I want to be able to say my book is almost ready to be published, right? I just felt like this was something that I needed to do for my personal development. And he said, what's Renaissance Weekend? And I explained it to him. And he said, so how do you get me in? And I thought— I did— I couldn't even remember his name. I said, um, that's not an easy request. And I, I had trouble trying to be kind and yet say, are you crazy? I don't even know how I got it. So it amazes me the boldness that many people have. I mean, if, if he was joking, I would, you know, that would be fine. But as serious as a doorknob, okay, he could probably use some lessons. How to network and how to be appropriate. And so my question for you is, how do you know when the right time is there? That's number one. And number two, if you're not in these groups, how do you How do you get into these groups? I think that's going to be the number one question that listeners want to know about.

Sure, sure. Well, I think the first, you know, about timing, is it an appropriate time, right? Well, so is the context one in which the person you want to connect to reasonably has an expectation that they would be approached by strangers, right? So, you know, is it a conference? Is it a course? Is it a networking event? networking event? Is it a trade show? You know, those are all contexts in which people are there to network. So that's completely appropriate. And, you know, if they don't happen to think you're overwhelmingly amazing, have a short conversation and you move on. And then if you want to, you follow up. So I think the first thing is, what's the context? Now, contrast, right? The person's out with their family in a public park and you happen to recognize them because they're famous in your field or whatever. Unless there's some natural reason why you overlap, like you're both standing there and it's T-ball and you're both bored out of your minds watching these 5-year-olds whack each other over the head with baseball bats, then it's okay to make a casual remark. Oh, you know, is your child on the team? You know, you can kind of begin that way. That's okay. But if it's, you know, not a related kind of thing and they're entitled to a sense of privacy, I would leave them alone at that point. How do you break into networks when you don't know who's there? Well, I think the first thing you want to do is do your homework. And where a lot of people who are not very good at networking kind of don't do themselves any favors is they don't do their homework. So who are the significant people in whatever it is you want to understand? So if I were trying to meet a particular kind of scientist, I would want to know who their co-authors were. I would want to know what institution they had been at. Where are they now? What's been their background? And that's, you know, we've got LinkedIn now. That is as simple as a query on LinkedIn. So, you know, this being difficult is not an excuse. It's not difficult. Um, so once you've identified the group or groups that you want to begin to work toward, um, I would— before you try to connect with them on LinkedIn, you know, before you get there, I would see if they're on some of the other platforms. Like, Twitter is a good one, right? Are they active on social media? Do they— where do they hang out? What are they talking about and writing about? And a lot of times you can meet someone very easily by getting involved with those conversations. Like, even if you don't link to them on LinkedIn, you can go in, you can comment, you can, you can, you know, have a discussion. And so just as an example, there are 3 people that I'm connected to now who I've never met in person, but they've been very active on LinkedIn conversations. They've made smart remarks. I've gone back and looked at their body of work and it's pretty cool. And, and so now, you know, I would not mind if they reached out and said, hey, you know, I'm going to be doing XYZ. Would you be interested in participating in some way? I would not be offended by that because we've got a record of positive exchange. So before you just, you know, go up to somebody and say, hey, would you blurb my book? Right? You want to build up some kind of human interaction. The young people, it's interesting, have come up with something even different. What they do is they direct message each other on Twitter and they'll direct message famous people and say, you know, I'm a I'm a young painter just getting started, and would you, would you put in a kind word for my portfolio? That kind of thing. So the readiness of social media has made it easier to reach people who are not in your immediate physical network.

I love that. You know, I had an example this week where I received a note on LinkedIn from a young lady who said, I'm having a conference about— for women and about women in business, and I'd love to talk to you about it. And I thought, okay, that's an incomplete message, right? I wrote her back and I said, what would you like to talk about? Would you like for me to speak? Would you like advice on how to put it together? What would you like? And she said, well, I didn't want to ask you if you would speak, somebody of your caliber, But I would love it if you did. And I said, all right, let's set up some time on Zoom and talk. It was such a clever way of doing it. And I— and she said to me, so I have this conference and it's free. And we— I talked about— she said, first tell me more about you. And I thought, has she done any homework? But she had.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, well, What do you know about me? She wasn't prepared for the flip question, and she told me everything about me. I said, well, I think that pretty much covers it.

Mm-hmm.

Tell me about you. And she told me, and I said, I see. Tell me about the conference and how are you going to charge and what you're going to do. And I said to her, I wouldn't do what you were doing. And I gave her some advice, and she said, Oh my God, that's the best idea ever. So while I was talking to her on the phone, we ran over, my next meeting started, and so I introduced her to the next person. I said, this is my new mentee, and I wanted to see how she reacted. And she said— she was so darling about it, and I thought, I would love to support her. For this webinar. She's in South Africa and she's really interested in helping women break through in business. And I said, and by the way, there's a new book that came that I haven't read because I'm behind in my reading, as you know. And it was this one. She said, that is so fabulous. I said, I can't recommend it because I don't know. But I love the COVID I love the name of it. It was so me. I said, you know, uh, let's start there, right? Hey, Rita, I want to go back to you now, and I want to talk about, um, your website.

Oh, sure.

And I love that you said doing better, doing a better job by seeing Around the Corner, which was directly to your new book, which, audience, I can't wait to get. So Rita, show it again. There it is, Seeing Around Quarters. And you see the maze that she has on, which is so fabulous. It's a great image for it. How can People in business see around the corner. Now, before you answer that, when I was coming along in business, uh, it was very trendy to have an R&D department.

Mm-hmm.

That at that time, that was really looking around corners to see what new products and services you would come out with. And of Of course, the Fortune 500 company, they were so into it. I worked at General Foods in branding and marketing, so familiar with it. And then that sort of disappeared. And fast forward, we had COVID and nobody was prepared for a new product, a new service, what to do. They did not see around the corner.

Mm-hmm.

Tell me your advice on how organizations, particularly corporate America, without giving away the secrets of your book, how can they see around corners? How can entrepreneurs see around corners? How can they protect their investment?

So the first observation I would make is that the strategic inflection point, right, that moment when the thing is here and now we've got to figure out how to deal with it, right? So it's March of 2020 and the pandemic has arrived, right? That kind of moment. They feel as though they came out of nowhere. And that's almost never true. There are always early warnings. There are always weak signals. And somebody always sees them. But here's the problem. What most—

And we had Bill Gates tell the world.

In 2015. We had a Wall Street Journal article in 2017 not only laying out the fact that it could be a coronavirus, but that it was highly likely to originate in China, and here would be how its global spread would go. And it was like a textbook of what actually happened. So it's not that we didn't know, it's that we preferred not to acknowledge it.

Not to know.

Well, and I think that's the second part, right? Which is if you are willing to pay attention, and I call it getting out to the edges. Right. So, you know, I mean, big changes don't wrap themselves up and present themselves to you at the boardroom, right? They start out there where things are weird that are happening, right? So some guy in a loading dock says, well, that's strange, you know, a pallet never arrived from that company before. Or somebody gets a call to a call center that introduces some kind of new problem you've never encountered before. It's all these weak signals, right?

Mm-hmm.

there are these communication breakdowns between what people see in the world, the frontline people, the frontline employees, and how strategic decisions get made. So, there's this big disconnect between what people are seeing and what gets into the strategy conversations. So, I think a couple of things to recognize are, first of all, these things take forever. And so, I mean, we had the Jetsons, in 1962 promising us robotic autonomous cars. Right. And that is a really long time ago. And it just takes a long, long, long time for that to become real.

So let's take a break. Why does that happen? I remember my first trip to Europe and I saw Tetra Paks.

Sure.

And it took 10 years before it reached the United States. What is going on?

Well, a lot of these things require a whole ecosystem to be a complete offering. So let's take an example. General Magic, right? You may remember them in the '80s. They were like the dream team of Apple people and high-end tech and Silicon Valley's best and brightest. And what they were essentially trying to invent was an iPhone. I mean, they had it all designed, right? And it was looked like what we would recognize as an iPhone today. And so they had the need right, right? They had the fact that we want to carry around this thing that would be this supercomputer in our pockets, but it was 1980-something, right? We didn't have the internet. The miniaturization wasn't there. The battery life wasn't there. The connectivity wasn't there. So all the things that make this thing useful weren't in place yet. And so even though they could see it, right, they could see where we needed to get to, getting there is really And so if you think of a lot of them—

but, but sorry to interrupt, you know, you, you stir my mind up. But, um, I remember seeing cell phones like crazy in China and Japan way, way before they hit here. My question is, yeah, but why is it taking so long to get to the United States?

And because of the ecosystem. No, it's because of the ecosystem. What happened in Japan is you had a common cell phone standard set by NTT Docomo, just as an example, and similar in China. And so everybody who had a cell phone could communicate with everybody else that had a cell phone. In the early days of cell phone here, if you were a Verizon person, you could not call an AT&T person.

Right.

And we underestimate how long it took to get those phone giants to operate interoperably. Then the next thing was, so if you're a Verizon person and I'm an AT&T person and you call me, it's going to cost you more than if you call another Verizon person. That was the next wave, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so everybody was like super like, I'm not— I don't want to make calls across networks because it's really expensive. And it took a long time for all that to get sorted out so that I can now call you seamlessly on the phone. And even today, you know, like the kids have the— like the message box is green if you've got like a Google phone, an Android phone, and it's blue if you have an iPhone. And apparently this is a big status thing for the kids.

I had no idea. Mm-hmm.

And so they put pressure on— the ones that have green dots put pressure on their parents to get them iDevices.

What a riot! You know, where do you find this information out?

Who would have thought, right?

Okay. Yeah. So, okay. I still am going to challenge you back. Why is our ecosystem so archaic?

In which area?

In the United States, in many areas. That leads us so long.

Yeah. Well, in the US, we have a long tradition of letting markets sort things out rather than having a government entity or a regulator say this shall be done. So for example, with cell phones in Europe in 1992, I want to say, the global standard for mobile communication or GSM standard was put in place and all the European countries signed on. Therefore, all the companies, companies like Sonera and Nokia and other companies like that in Europe now knew they had a standard that was settled, right? And now you could build out the infrastructure on that standard. Here in the US, we tend to let markets figure these things out. And so it's very chaotic. You may remember a few years ago we had the HDTV versus Blu-ray big, you know, standards battle. And it wasn't until Walmart and the other retailers said, hang on, you know, as long as there's no standard, nobody's going to make a significant investment in buying this equipment. And so we're just going to decide it's going to be Blu-ray. Boom, done. And all the people on the HDTV side of that battle lost out. But a government did not come in and say this shall be done. It's a very much more of a market thing. And it takes a much longer time than if you have somebody who decides. Now, the benefit of it, right, is that you have more market-oriented solutions. But the negative is it takes everything a lot longer. So if you look, for example, at broadband infrastructure and you look at Korea, which has made a nationwide commitment to universal access to high-speed, high-quality broadband, they're acres ahead of us. Now, this is another seeing around corners thing, Bo, by the way. And I channel here William Gibson's phrase. He says, the future is already here. It just hasn't been evenly distributed yet. So if you want to know what's going to be the case in broadband and virtual and XR, VR-enabled systems, take a trip to Korea and go look at what they're doing because that is where the future is already materializing.

So the same thing— and we have to go back to talking about your book— the same thing is happening then With crypto. Okay. So what is your prediction? And where do you see that going?

Um, again, it's an incomplete technology. I think we really struggle to understand, you know, what its real value is. We're already finding the early evidence that these things can be hacked. There's a lot of stuff that can go wrong with these sort of immature technologies. Now, boom, right? And then a bust. And then the survivors of the bust are where you start to get the reality coming in. And so not so much in crypto, but in other blockchain-enabled places, we're seeing that technology now be used in real applications. So IBM, for example, has really got a lead on how you use these blockchain techniques to do things you couldn't do if it had to all be managed centrally.

So do you see cryptocurrency being a real thing here in the United States?

You know, this is where I'm going to say another thing about, about seeing around corners, because what a lot of pundits will do is they'll make a point forecast. They'll say, this is the future, follow me, right? And what I prefer to do instead is say there are scenarios in which, yes, absolutely that happens, but there are also scenarios in which it doesn't. And what I want to do is say, these are 4 possible or 5 possible or 10 possible futures. And I want to work backward and look at the signals that I can see right now to see which one seems to be winning out. And it's opening your mind that way to the possibility of multiple futures that I think is part of the Seeing Around Corners magic.

My God, you're like a modern-day Faith Popcorn Plus. Okay. Going back to your book and talking about seeing around corners in business, how do we do this?

Well, in the book, I lay out one technique, which basically says, if you think about the future, there are events I call time-zero events, something that represents a significant shift from where we are now to where are in the future. So I'll give an example. Appetite for a traditional 2-year MBA is cut in half. Only half the kids are applying that ever used to apply. That's the time zero event. And what you want to do is say, well, you know, if that were to happen, right, there's an awful lot of schools that would have to completely rethink what they're doing. Either they drop the MBA or they substitute it with some other degree or they— but there's actions they would have to take. But before that could happen, Right? If you go back in time, there's always things that tell you whether it's becoming more or less likely. So for that particular time zero, I'd be looking at things like what's the interest, you know, in hiring MBAs? Because, you know, as long as interest in hiring MBAs is still strong, people are going to still get them. But if the interest in hiring MBAs drops down, that's a problem. Secondly, what do we pay people who have MBAs? And if your MBA degree gives you a boost versus you get paid pretty much based on what you were doing before the MBA, then again, it's a negative. So you accumulate as many of these weak signals and then you watch them over time and you say, which ones are starting to materialize? And this is where the courage part comes in because some of what you're hearing could be really bad news. And you have to be willing to be open enough to accept that and understand what it's telling you.

So Rita, let me ask you, Really challenging question. What's the time zero for the increase in killing in schools, mass murders in schools? What are we— what's going on here?

The time zero? Well, I think the fact that we have now come to regard violence in schools as normal is we've already passed the time zero. I mean, if you wanted to talk about a fix for it, I think you'd need to be moving— and now you're in the realm of big social change. I mean, the pressures that would be for measures to more safely manage guns would have to be greater than the pressures that argue against that. And so I think what you want to be looking for is something that is more powerful than the argument that keeps things the way that they are. But, I mean, if somebody very famously once said that, you know, the shootings in California were a real turning point, that we, you know, those interested in more controls on guns basically lost, that, you know, if we decided as a nation it was okay for schoolchildren to die in Sandy Hook, that was game over, you know. Now, if you want to— if you were taking the other position, right, what you want to be working toward is some kind of sensible rules that people, a broad swath of people can agree on. Now you're always going to have extremists on both ends, right? You're going to have people who are like, absolutely not, guns should never, they should be melted down en masse. And then you're going to have people who are like, oh, guns are safe enough that they can go in your breakfast cereal, right? So in between those 2 extremes are more nuanced views. And what I think you want to do is try to land on where people have more nuanced views. So a very good analogy for guns to me is the automobile. I mean, back in the day, if you had an accident, you were as likely to be killed by your own windshield as you were to, you know, be killed by the other car. We didn't have airbags. We didn't have all the safety progressions. And by the way, the auto companies fought like hell for this to be—

Yes.

And it wasn't until, I think, I think it was Ralph Nader's book. What was it called? Death at Any Speed or something like that. Yeah, I remember. That was the idea. But it wasn't until this muckraking, reality-changing book came out that people started to say, hang on, this isn't right. Global environmental movement. It wasn't until Silent Spring came out and drew people's attention to this. So I don't know what kind of narrative one would need or analogy one would need. use. But you need, you definitely need enough people with enough courage to say we can move towards sensible safety measures, you know. And, you know, some of this stuff is kind of bizarre when you put it in a public health context, right?

Yeah.

That there's any restriction at all is a violation of the Constitution. I think we can all agree we're safer with guns, you know, with a car cars being regulated. We're safer with environmental pollution being regulated. We're safer with certain kinds of things being off limits for ordinary people to get.

Yeah. And the crossover is how people in the United States, our country that feels that the government is stepping in just too much. So, and I wondered when I asked that question, Is the true answer, as you look back and you see, for example, the automobile industry, and you saw how many people were killed just by their own car alone, and you realize that there were safety measures that you could put in place.

Mm-hmm.

With this that we're going through, these mass murders, and of course, government now saying that we are now giving credence to the term mass murders. Are we looking at the wrong thing? Is it guns that we should be looking at? Well, there's—

I think with the gun debate, the first thing I would argue is this is a very commercially driven debate. And the gun manufacturers and the gun owners— there's a fabulous history that was done of this where there was a period where gun Gun ownership and gun purchasing and guns for leisure was really on a steep, steep decline. And what the gun industry was faced with was very similar to what the tobacco industry was faced with, which was, you know, less interest, declining sales, bad population. And so what they decided to go was— to do was go on the marketing offensive. And so what you started to see was the marketing of guns as, you know, cowboys and glamour And, you know, overlaying all these kinds of things. But then what you started to see them do, and this is fascinating, and there's a great book on this, which I have just over there, called How Change Happens. And what the author of this book does is she compares guns to other things like gay rights. And one of the things she points out is that these are not movements focused on legislation. These are movements focused on people's identity, and they have lots of leaders, and they have lots of leaders at a local level. So let me just take LGBTQ because it's less kind of emotionally instant than guns. What they did in that movement was they said, look, we're not going for the endgame. Like, we're not banning or making it a free-for-all. Where we're going to start is with states that have laws that are disproportionate. disproportionately harming gay youth, basically. And what we're going to do is try to dismantle some of those laws. That, that's, that's like job one, right? I'm going to take it state by state by state. And they had local groups in each state. And if you think about it, I forget the statistic, but let's say it's 1 in 10 people in the world is gay. That means 1 out of every 10 parents has at least 1 person they know that is in that situation. And in people could be, you know, people could be approached where they were reachable. Um, and the fancy word for this, um, is the, uh, what is it called? I just was talking about it this morning. It's a— it's the point in which reasonable people can come to an agreement, right?

I love it.

Um, and they said, you know, these young kids, they're being bullied. There's no— there's no protection for them. The laws are allowing this or even encouraging it or even making what consenting adults agree to illegal. You know, we can all kind of agree that's kind of 19th century, right? And those conversations, but it was an on-the-ground battle. And so I would argue with guns, guns have become a marker for identity. It's not necessarily about whether I use them or enjoy them or whatever, it's part of who I am. And once you've got something that's part of who I am, any challenge to that becomes a challenge to my personal identity. And I think that's why in many cases these debates are so fraught. It's sort of like you're either against me or you're with me. Most of the gun owners I know are very rule-abiding, well-trained, sensible people who, like, they're not going to sit there and say, don't put airbags in cars. I mean, they're not going to tell you don't put reasonable safety measures on a tool that I use for personal pleasure, right? I mean, so I don't— I think this is a very, very variable issue. vocal minority that really is against any kind of sensible, healthy rules around the safety of very dangerous things, right?

Yeah, well, when I think about the LGBTQ+ community and how they've moved forth, um, it's certainly a, um, case study for other challenging areas like diversity to move forward. And you kind of wonder, why hasn't diversity moved forward in the same speed as our correcting our viewpoints? I shouldn't say correcting because that's judgmental. Of our Opening our minds to hearing more information and learning more about how to coexist, as in the, the gay population. And you had people like Harvey Milk But then you also have Martin Luther King. So why? What allows one movement to see around the corner, to quote you, to move forward, and the other movement is stagnant? I had so many people reach out to me during the killing of Floyd. CB, what do you think? You're an outspoken person.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, well, it's not that I'm just outspoken, I have lived through Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and so on and so forth. And sadly, the memory is short. It's like having a child. The pain goes away. The concept of pain goes away. That's what the issue is. And somehow the concept of pain with LGBTQ stayed with us. Why the difference? Why aren't we seeing around the corner so that we can get to a healthier place?

Well, the person who's more of an expert in this than I am is a gentleman named Robert Livingston. He's at Harvard. And for those that are interested in this, he wrote a fantastic book called The Conversation. And he talks about needing to go through several stages. And the first stage is to recognize that there is structural racism in this country that a lot of people are very reluctant to acknowledge. And it's easier to tell if someone is a Black person or a colored person than it is to tell if it's a straight white person, right?

Yeah.

So, there's that. But secondly, there are these deep structural barriers that have institutionalized many racist practices. How schools are zoned, you know, how much of a home loan you can get. I mean, it was just 6 months ago, there was a Black couple that owned a home that had it appraised, and they thought the appraisal was really off. And so they hired a white couple to take their place, took down any hint that this might be owned by a Black person. The appraisal amount was like 25% higher, and nothing else about the house changed. And I mean, that's structural, you know.

I have worked to tackle that one.

Sorry.

Oh, I have one to top that one. When I sold my house in New Jersey, there was a sister house that was next door. So the man who built my house built 2 houses that were identical for his 2 daughters. Their house sold for so much more than my house sold. Their house was owned by a white couple, and Zillow was at fault. Because Zillow priced them differently. And I contacted Zillow and I said, why are you doing this? This is the situation. And my house was actually in better shape. And they said, it's what the market will bear. That was their answer.

Well, so I think what Robert's— what Robert's model suggests is we first have to acknowledge that these things real. I mean, I think that's just— I would hope a lot of people are not still in denial about that. Then we have to empathize. We have to build ourselves to care enough about correcting that. And the thing I think is sad is if I look at it in the greater picture of where the spoils of capitalism go, you've got an entire category of people who are working in terrible jobs. And this is white people, Black people, Latinx people, but they're working in terrible jobs. So, you know, if you're— let's just say you're a white person, you're in one of these awful retail jobs where you don't have a predictable schedule, you're not making enough money to really reliably put food on the table, you have all these anxieties that come from, you know, just trying to get by every day, and then, you know, some professor from Columbia comes along and says, here's one more thing to put on your plate, right? Of course you're not going to want to do that, right? It's just, it takes effort, it takes And then what, what Robert talks about very explicitly is you need strategies. So what are some strategies you're going to use to correct some aspect of the situation that you're facing? And then you need to be prepared to sacrifice. So if you're going to make a difference, right, you're going to make a difference, you've got to give up time or money or emotion or some combination of all of them. And if you're not willing to do that, you're not going to be an agent of change in this regard.

Absolutely. Okay, go. Oh my gosh, we're over time. You know what, let's just take a break.

Okay.

And I'm gonna do part 2 and continue the conversation. Okay, so I just want to spend some time really— I keep saying this and then we go off onto another subject, and it's because it's so great talking to you. I love this. Um, I wish the days of having tea parties were back where, you know, you just sat and just spewed knowledge to each other. I remember doing that in Greenwich Village in the coffee shops, and I miss that so much. And don't you dare ask me my age after that comment. Your book specifically, tell us, tell us. Seeing Around Let's go back to how can leaders do this?

Well, I think the first thing is you have to see them coming. And so that's preparing you for different futures, setting up the systems which are going to feed you information about what could be happening. And then when you get to this pivotal moment, and this is where the courage comes in, saying, okay, I see enough now. to have confidence I can move in this direction and have the courage to make the changes that are necessary. And then there's the question of how do you bring the organization with you? How do you make sure that the institutional structures that need to be in place are there? Investments that need to be made are there. The things that need to be stopped get stopped. That's a whole change process in and of itself.

So I know that you said setting up systems before. and I, and I'm— I heard that again, and I want to come back to that because what does that mean to you? So if you're, if you're Alan Mulally back in the day, we know he set up a great system of the LPR that he called it something else, uh, system.

Mm-hmm.

But today, especially after COVID, what is the key system that you can set up that will allow you to see around a corner? Or am I giving away the book?

No, no, no, not at all. I mean, Alan's system works really well because what he did was brought together people who saw different parts of the organization and empowered them— well, required them not only to be very candid about what they were seeing, but to do so in a public format. And I think that general principle could be adapted to any kind of system. I'll give you an example of one I happen to think was very smart, which was set up by a guy named Gisbert Ruhl. He was the CEO of a German metals processing company called Klockner. And he wanted to take the company on a digital journey. He felt that was going to be an important part of their future, but he wanted to make sure he was able to get information from everywhere. And so he set up what he called non-hierarchical communication. It happened to be an instance of Yammer. Gave everybody in the company access to it and made it known that he wanted to hear about it. If they saw something going on that they thought he should know about, he wanted a message, a quick picture, a text, or something. And then, he very rigorously attended the Yammer platform for a while until people got the message. Yeah, I want to hear. And so, it set up— think about it. Seamless, cheap, effortless communication all across the company. Something like that can be done today. It can be done very inexpensively.

Here's the but. Yammer is like the— he used it as the advanced suggestion box. People are afraid of their jobs, of losing their jobs. Actually, not so much after COVID now because there's so many job openings. But in general, particularly people of color, what do you need to do to ensure that you're getting good information, good feedback? What are you doing to ensure that people won't lose their jobs if they're honest with you?

Well, I think as a leader, that's where an entirely new kind of leadership becomes essential. Which is, you know, it's about the issue, not the person. It's about, don't, you know, this old line, don't bring me a problem without bringing me a solution. That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard said.

I used to use that all the time, Rita.

It misses the point. The problems you want to know about are the ones nobody knows how to solve yet, right? I mean, if I knew how to solve it, I should have gone and done that already. I shouldn't even be bringing it to you. So I think establishing psychological safety, putting in place mechanisms like the nominal group technique, right? Where here's an issue before us, before anybody starts talking, and everybody's kind of looking at the most important person in the room, we're all going to write down our view, right? So for example, at Amazon, what they do is instead of using PowerPoints or that kind of thing, they start every important review meeting with a 20-minute read of a 6-page document. And you know, the person preparing the document has to have really thought it through. And you know, in meetings, like people put up PowerPoints, and then on slide three, some executive says, "Oh, I want to understand how this is going to affect them." Blah blah blah blah blah. And you know, before you're even through the deck, the person's thrown off course and doesn't have anything. So there's a lot of very simple practices you can put in place in organizations that assure better flows of information. Now, if you don't want to hear it as a leader, and do make it.

Okay, well, I, I said that as though I don't believe it. It's not that at all. I am totally in agreement with you. I would like to see us as a country, as organizations, do a lot more of that. Don't be afraid to say what you think. afraid of what you're going to hear. When I started the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, it was my baby. I ran it. About 5 years in, my board of advisors said, wait a minute, CB, you're holding us back. You are the person that's holding us back. My feelings were so hurt.

Mm-hmm.

And then I realized They were right. So I learned to shut up in a meeting and to listen first. And I wish for all executives that they start to think about that opportunity, what it opens up. It does allow you to— look, you can't see around corners by yourself. You have to have the input. You have to have the courage from employees. To have that courage, you have to give them the power of courage. Rita, it's been such a pleasure.

Indeed.

I, you know, I had no idea we were going to take this. Um, I'm sure you didn't either. I love the so many topics topics we covered in such a short period of time. I enjoyed your wisdom.

Thank you.

And I love how you can rattle off names and places, and I'm like, oh my God, it's been a pleasure.

Well, thank you very much for being such a gracious host.

Thank you. And I, I would love to use a lot of this interview in my Great, absolutely. Great, great. Well, audience, you have been for a ride today, as I have, and it's been a good one. I know that my mind is like ready to explode from my head. I have so much information. I need to listen to this interview a few times. to capture everything that Rita tossed out at us. It's going to be like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I have to capture that. So I am so glad I'm going to put this on translate to have all of the information. Rita, thank you so much.

Oh, thank you. Talk soon.

Talk soon.

All right, bye.

Bye, audience, and I'll see you next Tuesday Same time, same place. Meantime, have the courage to step up, speak up, and stand alone.