Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring A.J. Jacobs & Rita Gunther McGrath

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the LinkedIn Live version of our podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. And today's going to be a blast because we've got 2 really amazing, unique, and interesting people. So we've got AJ Jacobs and Rita McGrath. Now, normally I sort of blow through the bios, but today I'm not going to do that. I'm going to give you the full bios on these 2 because they're really, really interesting. And I think we're going to have a fun conversation. So Rita Gunther McGrath is a bestselling author, a sought-after speaker, and a longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She's widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. If anyone's experienced times of uncertainty lately. I'm sorry about that. She's received the number 1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named to one of the world's top 10 management thinkers in its biannual rankings. And then we skip some of the other stuff, but multiple author, et cetera. AJ, who some of you may know, is an author, journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig. He's written 4 New York Times bestsellers that combine memoir, science, humor, and a dash of self-help. He's an editor-at-large at Esquire, a commentator at NPR, and a columnist at Mental Floss. His books— just the topics of his book are amazing. So anyway, welcome to both of you. Thank you for spending some time with us today.

Pleasure to be here.

Yeah, thank you.

Great. So let's start with you, Rita. Tell us just a little bit about your path, your journey as a thought leader, and what you tend to focus on.

Well, I work on the intersection between strategy and innovation with splashes of entrepreneurship thrown in. I started out my career actually as a public servant. I wanted to be in politics and ended up, well, as a cog in the bureaucratic machine. Eventually decided to get away from that, went back to get my PhD, landed at Columbia Business School. And that's really been the sort of professional path. In terms of the work, it's all really around this subject of leading and managing under uncertainty. which is a focus of my work on innovation in particular.

Got it.

I was having trouble hearing Rita at the end there. Can you— can everybody still hear? Jess, can we still hear everybody? I think so. Okay, AJ, there we go. Maybe mine started. Sorry, the joy of technology. So AJ, tell us a little bit about your work and your path and your nontraditional— Sort of deep dive into things that you master.

Yeah, I'm a nonfiction writer and I love to do things and try to learn lessons from them and share those lessons. So they could be on anything in my life that needs improvement, which is everything. So I did one about following all the rules of the Bible. Is there anything to learn from that on how not to gossip? And I did one recently on gratitude where I thanked 1,000 people who had anything to do with my morning cup of coffee. And that was a real lesson in gratitude. And I did one actually on George Washington's rules of life. So that— lived by those for a while. So that, that, that was some leadership right there.

Yeah. Yeah, I would think. Cool. So you've both taken obviously very different paths, but you're both at what I would say is sort of the top of your respective games. And we were chatting a little bit before we went live about, you know, obviously one thing to always ask authors is, well, what's the next book? Because they can always answer that question, whether it actually has a pub date or it's still residing in their brain. Tell us a little bit about your experiences on the business side of publishing. So what are the things that you're looking at now? Because it's changed, right? It used to be, you know, your job was to come up with a unique idea, and both of you do, or have the domain expertise or whatever. But, but maybe, maybe touch a little bit. We'll start with you, Rita, on how different publishing is and what to expect or not expect from a publisher these days.

Sure. So I think, um, publishing, at least in the business world that I, that I work in, uh, has become, um, kind of overwhelmed with books. So people have now understood that a book is like a big business card. If you don't have a book, you're not even in the game. So that creates enormous pressure to produce a lot of books that frankly Many are really just articles with a bunch of anecdotes thrown in. So, I think that's one reality. And, you know, I think there's just an overwhelming amount of books. And, you know, the question is really, is anybody actually reading them? Are the ideas actually having impact? So, that's a big question mark. I think to the extent they ever did, publishers have really stepped back from any role in promoting them other than, you know, they include them on a brochure maybe, or maybe they'll—

Right.

—assign a publicist to you or something. But you're really on your own as far as spreading the word once the book is written. Um, and a lot of people who are new to that world, they think the writing— once you're done with the book and you hit, you know, print or whatever the equivalent is these days, you're done. And that's just the beginning.

Yeah. So I, I want to push on something you said there, or maybe unpack, is that you said, you know, there are a lot of books out there that could have been an article. And it used to be back in the stone ages, or not that long ago, where oftentimes it would be an article that became a book. There was maybe a great article in HBR or wherever it appeared, and it took off for whatever reason or just got certain folks to be intrigued. And they said, you know what? You should spend— instead of spending a month or 2 on an article, maybe you should spend 6 months on a book. There's something here. And that's a whole different psychology, if you will, than, yeah, I read this book, and it was 240 pages. But you know what? Give me the TED Talk. And I don't really care about the money, but I didn't need 6 hours of my life for that. And I think that's really kind of the rub now. AJ, what would you, what would you say about that? So if you're going to spend a year, you know, one of your books was A Year Living Biblically, I guess you could have written a shorter version of, you know, My Lunch Living Biblically or something.

Right. Yeah, I would agree with Rita that it all depends on why you're writing or reading that book. So like she said, some are calling cards, some are ways— some of my friends use them as ways to get speaking gigs or media appearance. My books, I actually, uh, are partly for the speaking, but mostly I want people to actually buy and read or listen to them. So in that case, for me, my strategy is to go big, to take on The biggest topics in life that cannot be reduced to an article. So my book on gratitude was about how the entire world, where it took thousands of people to make a simple cup of coffee because you needed the farmer and the—

Sure.

The people who—

Distributor and the roaster.

Yeah.

So it was all, you know, it was a global project. And same with my year of living biblically was all about every part of my life was affected. My, the way I talked and thought and dressed and my, uh, how my face looked. I had a huge beard. So that's my, my solution is to go big.

Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. And then I think I want to pick up where you left off, Rita, is, you know, the burden, the role, the function of marketing and making the books a success really falls on the author. And I think that's a good thing and a bad thing, right? Because there's only a brief moment, a brief window in time where there's actual alignment between the author and the publisher. And I think that's really the gist of the struggle, right? Like the publisher only makes money, number of units sold times some profit margin per book. An author you know, in the grand scheme of that year or their life, the, you know, royalty side, the event, whatever, the economic piece directly derived from the book is probably not life-changing. And the book serves as a piece of a larger puzzle. So talk about sort of the— your experience marketing and what you do differently now than you might have, uh, when you were marketing your books years ago.

Well, my first book, um, I made all the mistakes first-time authors make, which is you forget that you have many books in your life. And so I tried to stuff everything into it. So I think it's over 400 pages long. And as with many newbie authors, I assumed the publisher would do a lot more than they ended up doing. And so today, you know, I really think about how the book's going to be positioned and marketed before I even begin a serious writing effort.

You work backwards. Yeah.

Yeah. And for me, a bit like AJ, I think, I do try to take on big topics. Now, they're not as broad an audience as you would have. I think your books probably appeal more to, like, any person could read your book and get something out of it. With me, it's much more of a business audience, probably more of an executive audience. But I also like to take on topics that I think are interesting. And for me, the writing process and the research process teaches me so much. And it's a really great way of staying at the cutting edge. And I'm in strategy. Strategy changes like every minute. So, you really have to be on top of your game if you're going to be adding value.

Yeah. So, it feeds, it makes you a better strategist, right? By forcing you to see different things and experience different things and do different— so, you know, you're constantly sharpening your tools, if you will. What would you say, AJ? Any thoughts on that?

In terms of marketing, sure, it changes all the time. There, you know, influencers holding up a book on Instagram, according to my publishers and agent, is now as powerful as NPR, especially, you know, if it's a super famous person, uh, not just like a low-level influencer. I would say though, I still do many of the things I used to do. One is just trying to slice my book into as many different sectors as possible. So for instance, with the, the book about the Bible, you know, of course I'm gonna try to appeal to mainstream USA Today types, but also—

Sure.

Religious publications, but also the Bible has, uh, has sex advice. You know, the Song of Solomon is all about sex. So I pitched Glamour magazine on, you know, sex tips from the Bible. So to me, that is a, that is a key for every book I do. I, I try to blank—

So stay there for a minute because I think whether Glamour took that or not, The creativity is really interesting, right? To say, oh, Glamour, you know, always on the COVID of Glamour as top 10, you know, whatever, whatever, spice up this. I never would have thought, you know, a year immersed in biblical work would have been pitched to Glamour. But I love— because it's a widespread audience, whatever— the creativity that you put in isn't just in the writing, but how do I connect the dots to connect this to people that might not otherwise be looking for a book because there probably wasn't a big market for people looking to read books on a year, about a guy that spent a year living biblically, right? You had to sort of bring it to them. In Rita's world, there is a market for C-level execs, CEOs, senior business leaders, et cetera, that are constantly looking to take on that information. So I think it's, I don't know if one's harder than the other. They're different, right? So Rita, I think your world is, cuz you are more traditional nonfiction business writer that stays focused in your lane. You know who your people are, you know what their struggles are. So you're now probably more thinking around, well, what's keeping them up at night? So your last book, which was— I may screw up the title— was Thinking Around Corners. Was that it? Did I get it right? Yeah. Was really amazing and timely, even though when you wrote it, COVID wasn't a thing. But it accelerated the need for senior leaders to strategically think around the corner. which used to be sort of this luxury, maybe I can read that on a Saturday morning. But when everything was changing so rapidly about every element of almost everyone's business, that became a break glass in case of emergency book. So did you experience sort of the things beyond your control making it more relevant or timely or in demand?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I, you know, for once I timed a book perfectly. You know, I wish I could tell you this was a grand strategic plan. It wasn't. But it came out right at the end of 2019. And yes, I mean, the demand has has been incredible. And I think the nature of what I'm doing has changed. So my talks very often would be, oh, you know, give us, give us the high-level overview, do a little sort of edutainment, you know, make it approachable. And, and that was all great. And I would say probably 60% of what I'm doing these days is, how am I supposed to think about this? What's our next step? How do you know, help frame it for me? How do I learn faster? You know, it's really much more, how do I actually do this? Which I think is kind of a change in Yeah, I want to get back to that.

I mean, AJ, do you have something on that that you'd add to that?

Well, I would say, yeah. I mean, timing is certainly partly luck. My next book is about puzzles, and it's— I chose it before the pandemic, and now puzzle, you know, Wordle and jigsaws are everywhere. So, but part of it is, yeah, just looking around and seeing what is on the horizon and what is coming up.

Which isn't easy to predict. And I think it's also being open-minded enough to realize, how do I connect to something that's happening in the universe right now that's beyond my control, that we're all experiencing, that's relevant? I want to go back to a point that Rita made, which I think is critical in this sort of, are we post-COVID yet, or wherever we are now, which would be whatever, which is the difference between a thought leader as an edutainer, Like, hey, let me bring you into the keynote. Basically, give me your book summary, tell me something interesting, and then we're going to go to the cocktail party and we'll chat about that for a bit. Or I can tell my friends when I got back that I saw Rita or AJ speak and they were lovely. To organizations going, yeah, we could— this digital stuff is a great way to consume content. It's kind of lousy for connection and community, but they're looking more and more. We're starting to see the market change to go to thought leaders to develop capabilities, to develop the skills, to develop the insight instead of just the storytelling piece. How are you reacting and responding to that from an operating your business perspective?

Do you want me to go first?

Yeah, yeah, that'd be— yeah, if you could.

So 2 things. I absolutely agree with you. And what I've created is a sister company to my sort of speaking company. It's called Bullies. And we do 3 things, basically. So there's some advisory. So we actually come into your organization give you some guidance. The second thing is a software spine that you can think of as a structure for organizing your innovation efforts. It's not like a software product like Slack or something, but it's a spine for it.

Sure.

And the third piece is very relevant, which is short online learning modules, which you can take at work in real time. And the question I'm increasingly asking people is, okay, so you've got 6 to 8 hours, right? You want to sit down with a book or you want to take that same exact amount of time, get through one of my learning modules, and guess what? You're going to be able to do stuff. with it after you've done that? And which, which are you going to spend your time on? And I suspect we're going to start to see much more demand for thought leadership, not only expressing itself between printed pages, but actually translating into capability-building things. And it's so easy to create a short online course these days that I'm suspecting that's going to be a big wave of the future.

Well, I think the reality is that I don't care how good of a speaker anyone is. You typically don't change behaviors in an organization that lead to results and outcome. It's just not realistic. But if I can get a bunch of people individually to go through some 4, 6, 8-hour journey and develop those capabilities, that's different. And I think it's interesting in that, you know, lots of times you read a book and it says, oh, and go do this and go write this down. And like, nobody's doing that. So, AJ, let me get your thoughts on that, if we could.

I think it's a, it's a great point. And the more interactive, the better. So for instance, with my book on gratitude, I got a lot of schools who would assign their students— they didn't do coffee because I guess kids don't— some kids drink coffee, but it could be books, it could be games, it could be anything. And they had to go around and thank 10 people who made it possible.

And so they took the same— I just want to make sure I understand. So you went through 1,000 people to get you your cup of coffee.

Right.

And they ask the kids something.

They had to pick something. They had to read my book. So they read my book, uh, and then they had to do their own project based on my book. And then I would come speak to them and hear about their experience and relay my experience. And I found it lovely. And like you say, it's a much better way to learn, learn by doing.

They learned how to be journalists, how to ask questions, how to be You know, maybe you— people might come back at you and not like this, but you might have started a whole wave of new consultants coming out in the world, right? Said one consultant to the others. Right. But right. So they learned some skills. It wasn't just that they figured out lots of people touch their Snickers bar or their juice box or whatever. Yeah, but it doesn't just magically appear in the fridge, right?

Like, you got to reach out to people.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. And I think that that's a great challenge for thought leaders to say today is to say, okay, Well, how can I break this down to the molecular level, the teachable level, so that others can develop the capabilities? And I think where people sometimes get stuck with that is saying, well, I'll never be Rita. Rita's been doing this for quite some time and she's got a PhD and da da da da da. And we're saying, no, no, no, you don't compare that to that. You know, that, that's, that's not fair. Your baseline is here. We could take you up. Rita might be here. It doesn't really matter as long as I can improve your baseline and get you to see, believe, act. behave differently, that's an outcome. And I think it's a way that thought leaders need to sell their solutions today. Very cool. So I'm glad you're both sort of doing that. I love the school example. You've got some amazing examples, AJ.

Thank you.

Maybe if you could each share, as we start to wrap down in a little bit here, one thing that you've, you know, you're really proud that you've done well over the years, and one thing that maybe you might wish you had done differently? You want to start, AJ?

Sure. I would say I try to spend 15 minutes every day just brainstorming ideas. And so I do come up with a lot of ideas. 98% of them are pretty terrible. And I'm okay with that because I do believe it's a numbers game. And hopefully that 2% will turn into an article, a book, a post, anything. So I am a— I do think I'm, I'm good at generating ideas. Not all of them are great, but some of them hopefully are worth pursuing.

How many do you typically generate in 15 minutes? Is it 1? Is it 10? Is it depends on the day? Is it—

At least, I mean, they could be tiny, tiny ideas like, you know, what if I made a snowman with a A vape instead of a pipe. Like, that's a tiny idea. Or they could be like, my next book should be about, you know, epistemology, the quest for truth. So they could be small or big, but I come up with, you know, 20 or 15 a day, small or big. I love it. And something I could do better. I, well, I think I need to be, to adapt a little more to Because I, you know, I saw— I was one of the first people to join Twitter. And I was just like, I'm too exhausted. I got a real job. And I never really followed it up. So I've got to be a little more fast on my feet at pivoting.

Got it. And Rita?

Well, something I'm proud of looking back is my work on discovery-driven planning really went into what became The Lean Startup. And it's now standard curriculum in a lot of entrepreneurship classes. And I think it has been a force for good, positive change. You know, things I could have done better. I mean, there's legions, but I'll pick on a recent painful example. So I started this company, Valise, which you can learn about at valise.com. It's 5 years now and we're just really getting our feet under us. I've been through 3 tech stacks. I've been through 4 different management teams. And, you know, you look back and you ask yourself, well, is that just the tuition I had to pay to get where I am right now? Maybe. But certainly it would have been less painful to get there more directly.

Well, yeah, and it always takes more time, more effort, more money, and one bad hire and all that. Well, this has been phenomenal. I appreciate both of your— I feel like, you know, longtime listener, first-time caller, but I love both of your bodies of work separately. And I was thinking about, you know, let's put 2 people on that probably Usually aren't on the same panel, and this has been, this has been a lot of fun, and I hope you, uh, enjoyed yourselves and learned something along the way as well.

It's great to meet you, AJ. I'm stunned at your discipline. I mean, a whole year biblically? Wow. Well, yeah, I can do that.

The key is to announce it publicly, so if you back out, then you're a coward. Right, right, right, right. That's the force.

Uh, but yeah, anything you want to announce publicly, AJ?

Well, I already announced my puzzle book, so that is the one for now. But yeah, this was great. I really enjoyed learning, and I can't wait to dive into Rita's work and listen more to you, Peter.

Cool. It'd be fun to see you two collaborate on something. I don't know what that would be.

Really interesting. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Yeah. Thanks.