My guest today is Rita McGrath. Rita is a world-renowned professor at Columbia Business School, where she directs the popular Leading Strategic Growth and Change program. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. She has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s top ten management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. Rita is the author of the best-selling The End of Competitive Advantage and her new book is Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen. Rita has been rated one of the 25 smartest women to follow on Twitter by Fast Company and was voted HR Magazine’s “Most Influential International Thinker.” I’ve followed Rita’s work for several years and got connected with her personally after one of my team mates was lucky enough to be taught by her at Columbia. In this chat, we cover: * How she prioritises what projects she decides to work on * How Rita minimises decisions * How Rita gets the most out of her assistant * Where her book ideas come from * How to make something interesting * Rita’s approach to deciding what to read and maximising the impact of what she does read * Having a personal board of directors * On how failure can lead to a better future * How she arrived at the title for her latest book * Rita’s approach to doing Deep Work * How Rita’s approach to writing has changed over the last year * Rita’s go-to sources for information Find out more about Rita at https://www.ritamcgrath.com/, follow Rita on Twitter, and get your copy of Seeing Around Corners. Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. Get in touch at [email protected] If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a short monthly newsletter that contains three cool things that I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy