Rita McGrath – Seeing Around Corners: Leading Through Uncertainty

What if the biggest risk in leadership wasn’t failure — but success that blinds us to change? In this episode of the Positive Leadership Podcast , I had the great pleasure of welcoming Rita McGrath , one of the world’s most influential voices on strategy and innovation. A professor at Columbia Business School and author of The End of Competitive Advantage , Discovery-Driven Growth , and Seeing Around Corners , Rita has transformed how leaders think about disruption, renewal, and adaptability. Together, we explore how to spot inflection points before they upend your business, why discovery-driven learning is the antidote to overconfidence, and how purpose and curiosity can keep teams resilient in uncertain times. Rita also shares a warning for today’s executives: when companies rush to go fast and big in complex environments — without room to test and learn — it’s almost always a recipe for disaster. From AI and education to human adaptability and leadership humility, this conversation will change the way you think about strategy in a world where advantage is always transient. 🎧 Listen now — and discover why I believe that good strategy isn’t about predicting the future, but about preparing to learn from it. If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like: Amy Edmondson – How to fail well: Jean-Pascal Tricoire – Turning Sustainability into a Growth Engine: Sal Khan – Revolutionizing Education: 🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, jpcourtois.com 📩

You can listen to Rita McGrath – Seeing Around Corners: Leading Through Uncertainty online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Rita McGrath – Seeing Around Corners: Leading Through Uncertainty is an episode from The Positive Leadership Podcast by Jean-Philippe Courtois.

This episode is 84:51 long.

This episode was published on Oct 15, 2025.

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