Colab 2024 - Mentora Institute
LiFT

Growth Strategy in an Era of Great Transformation

An executive, invite-only event led by two of Columbia Business School's most sought-after professors.

About the Event

The world of business today is in the middle of a new kind of arms race — innovation arms race. Competitive advantages are short, and the winners will harness innovation as an organizational capability, complemented by rapid shifts in leadership behaviors & mindset to drive performance breakthroughs.

In this CoLab, attended by over 30 executives from large organizations, we explored how to: 

  1. Develop winning strategies under rapid fire change
  2. Increase organizational velocity in responding to market shifts
  3. Inspire people across the ranks to move in new directions

“This is the approach to truly humanizing business.”

The winners in today’s economy will be those who continually tune in and respond to new shifts with agility.

Professors Rita McGrath & Hitendra Wadhwa hosted a vibrant exchange on how to develop breakthrough strategies in this time of pervasive and disruptive change.

Valize Highlights

  1. The field of strategy is descended from industrial economics that makes two fundamentally problematic assumptions — that industries exist, and that the normal state of things is equilibrium. Both can be dangerous traps.
  2. Strategies have a lifecycle — there is the innovation process that creates new possibilities; the scaling process that creates new, profitable businesses; the exploitation process during which profits can be enjoyed; and often the erosion process which requires disengaging from old advantages and deploying new ones. Unfortunately, most managers are only taught to deal with the “exploit” phase, leaving large gaps in their understanding of what is required.
  3. We are moving from an understanding of change as the unusual thing, to change as the normal thing — that requires us to be able to continuously reconfigure our organizations.
  4. We need to get smarter about healthy disengagement — leaving the past behind without overly damaging people and careers.
  5. Resource allocation is a fundamental challenge — how do you get your best resources matched to your best opportunities? How do you align strategy, budgeting, project governance and rewards? (Note: The Valize SparcHub software is designed to help with this.)
  6. Innovation needs to be a proficiency, not just “Innovation Theater.”
  7. Your talent is in a permanent tour of duty set of expectations — you need to manage people who may not be attached to your organization for a long period of time.

Intoduced by Valize

Sparchub, a software tool to keep track of ideas, manage your opportunity portfolio, and capture what your team is learning.

Learn More About Sparchub

Mentora Highlights

  1. High-performance leadership is a state, not a trait. We get there when we activate our inner core, the space within where we are beyond ego, attachment, and insecurity.
  2. Every individual can cultivate this high-performance state by activating 5 core energies — Purpose, Wisdom, Growth, Love, and Self-Realization.
  3. We do our life’s most beautiful work when we blend the material with the spiritual, by operating from our inner core.
  4. You are not one personality — but multiple personalities, depending on the situation you are in, the thoughts and feelings you’re having, and whom you are with.
  5. To activate high performance, we do not need to cultivate new neural pathways — we need to activate pathways that already exist within us, which we are not using actively at work. We can do so by pausing and preparing before performing in high-stakes moments.
  6. By mixing & matching 25 simple actions across our 5 core energies, we can create almost any behavior we need to adapt with agility to the ever-shifting conditions around us.

Introduced by Mentora

LiFT, a Gen AI-powered performance coaching tool that anyone can use to generate immediate and tangible gains in performance. The tool will launch in Q1, 2024.

Learn More About LiFT

EXCERPT FROM “THE PERMISSIONLESS ORGANIZATION,” HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW, JAN-FEB 2023

“Companies with three or four layers, faster-problem solving, and a permissionless mindset will outcompete traditional players with 10 layers and slow decision-making processes.”

 

EXCERPT FROM “LEADING IN THE FLOW OF WORK,” HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW COVER STORY, JAN 2024

“In a cross-organizational study […] more than 100 executives who adopted Leadership-in-flow saw their ability to achieve successful outcomes rise by an average of 135% within six weeks. Our findings reveal that people have an innate capacity for exemplary leadership far beyond what many realize.”

We explored the intersection of strategy, innovation, leadership, and performance.

AND THESE ARE THE IDEAS THAT RESONATED — IN OUR ATTENDEES’ OWN WORDS…
  1. “Average companies put their best resources against their problems. Great companies put their best resources against their opportunities.”
  2. “Leadership is a state of mind.”
  3. “[We need to] develop leaders to be effective storytellers on behalf of the enterprise — and not over-rely on singular voices in leadership.”
  4. “People are loyal to their networks — not necessarily their organizations.”
  5. “We have never really had the world we want. We have to imagine it into being.”
  6. “[We need to] build a bridge between leadership soft skills and strategy frameworks.”
Executives also mentioned resonating with the following:
  1. The shortened cycle of a competitive advantage and their implications
  2. Imagination as being a key leadership skill
  3. The need to think about ‘arena’ over ‘industry’

 

At the end of the CoLab, we invited executives to make commitments to themselves. And this is what emerged.

“I commit to…”

  1. 10 minutes of quiet contemplation a day
  2. Leading with positive intention
  3. Being aware of inflection points
  4. Using my 5 core energies
  5. Leading from my inner core
  6. Using storytelling and identifying the villain
  7. Democratizing leadership
  8. Making the extraordinary ordinary

 

Meet the Faculty

Hitendra Wadhwa Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School and Founder of Mentora Institute
Dr. Hitendra Wadhwa

Founder and CEO, Mentora Institute
Professor, Columbia Business School

Hitendra’s mission is to discover, codify, and teach the laws of success in life and leadership which form the foundation of our work at Mentora. With an MBA and Ph.D. from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a lifelong study of the world’s mystic traditions, Wadhwa brings a mathematician’s rigor and a truth-seeker’s spirit to some of today’s most vexing questions about authenticity, success, leadership, and human potential. He has codified many of these principles in his book, “Inner Mastery, Outer Impact: How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success”, published by Hachette Book Group in 2022.

→ Read More About Hitendra

“Professor Wadhwa is not only a phenomenal educator and storyteller, but he is also a great human being. His delivery was absolutely great. From his responsiveness to our questions and follow-ups to the content in his book and putting together an outstanding group of speakers, everything contributed to my personal growth and introspection, making me want to become the best self I can be.”
“Professor Wadhwa is an absolute light in this world. His wisdom and perspective can open your eyes, heart, and mind and shift your perspective. Within the span of a few days, I experienced a transformation unlike anything I have ever experienced before — and I know that this never would have happened had the class not been led by the wonderful Hitendra.”
Rita McGrath Guest Faulty at Mentora Institute and Professor of Strategy at Columbia Business School
Rita McGrath

Guest Faulty, Mentora Institute
Professor, Columbia Business School 

Rita Gunter McGrath is a best-selling author, sought-after speaker, and longtime professor at Columbia Business School. She is widely recognized as a premier expert on leading innovation and growth during times of uncertainty. Rita has received the #1 achievement award for strategy from the prestigious Thinkers50 and has been consistently named one of the world’s Top 10 management thinkers in its bi-annual ranking. As a consultant to CEOs, her work has had a lasting impact on the strategy and growth programs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

→ Read More About Rita

“Rita’s insights generated great engagement and comments from leaders sharing eye-opening observations and building on her examples throughout. She delivered the inspiration and illustration desired and it was exactly the right focus and challenge for this team.”
“The feedback I received [from Rita] is fantastic and mind-blowing. She’s such a smart fast-thinking strategic person.”

Hear from our attendees

“The combination of hardcore strategy and humanistic leadership energies was very powerful!”

“The discussion [at this CoLab] highlighted how you can create a culture and aligned processes that embrace change as a constant — rather than as an exception.”

“I appreciated the presentation of ideas around strategic inflection points, and the historical references that were cited. The LiFT demo was very helpful in envisioning the future of this tool.” 

“[The CoLab had] so many rich examples of strategy and leadership in relatable times.”

“I loved the networking, the shared learning, and the spirit [at the CoLab]!”

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