Managing Your Career

LESSON EIGHT

Make Time for the Unexpected

Lynda Gratton

Professor of Management Practice, London Business School

THINKING BACK, some of my best ideas have come from the most unexpected places. I have a friend who’s a professor at the Royal College of Art, and about three years ago, she said to me, “Lynda, why don’t you come and hang around the Royal College of Art with me?” And I said, “Okay.”

At that stage I was the dean of the MBA Program at London Business School, so my job was to think about the education of the many hundreds of MBA students who come through London Business School. And we teach them in the way that most business schools do—you know, large classes, professor sitting at the front talking, and then maybe some group work.