Episode 2

Prof. Francesca Gino: How can you encourage curiosity and rebel talent?

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How do you respond to a world that feels more complex, and uncertain? Put your head in the sand, do the same, pedal faster, hoping it goes away? As silly as that sounds, many executives and professionals do this even while they talk eloquently about their context.

A better approach is to double down on your curiosity. At work this means being more curious about the needs and expectations of your customers, the dynamics of the workplace, the wider system you operate in and your own ways of thinking.

There are obvious things you can do: ask more questions, seek out new people to spend time with, learn new skills, spend time in new places (virtual or physical). It means being able to handle the feeling of being uncomfortable and out of your depth. It also means opening your mind to new possibilities, overcoming your limiting assumptions. Curiosity is the topic I discuss with my guest Professor Francesca Gino at Harvard Business School.

The best bits of these conversations are captured in my newsletter Flashes+Sparks.

Further resources

Francesca’s website.
My Strategy+Business review of Best Strategy Books of 2018, which featured Rebel Talent as the ‘Top Shelf Pick’.

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“Being rebellious is a way of being where we just don’t sit with the status quo, we don’t become complacent. We’re always looking at life and at work as opportunities for changing and learning continuously.”

Professor Francesca Gino, Harvard Business School

VIEW RUNNING ORDER

03.25	What her research on workplace productivity and engagement tells us.
05.50	The impact of leader sentiment and internal strength in dealing with the challenges of the pandemic.
08.03	How we sustain “better” behaviours in the post-pandemic period.
09.26	The biases she would be alive to if designing a workplace from scratch.
12.16	How to have effective productive disagreement in a virtual environment.
15.36	Is nurturing rebel talent a perpetual state of beta?
19.48	How she rebels in Harvard Business School.
22.53	How she measures her own impact.
25.30	Leading her life without trying to be perfect all of the time.
27.43	The frontiers of research in behavioural science.
32.13	What her research tells us about the design and execution of strategy.
34.23	The relationship between strategy and culture.