Disruption, Innovation, and Battling Complacency, with Whitney Johnson – Episode 242 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Speaker, coach, and CEO / Co-Founder of Disruption Advisors, Whitney Johnson, talks about disruptive innovation and the levers of disruption, making it scarier NOT to change, providing “proof points”, the “learn, leap, repeat” method, disrupting a MARRIAGE, when feeling scared and lonely is a positive sign, and silly little things that take over the world.

About Whitney:

Whitney Johnson is the CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company. She was named a 2021 Top #10 Business Thinker by Thinkers50, and is a globally recognized thought-leader, keynote speaker, executive coach, and consultant.

A LinkedIn Top Voice since 2019, Whitney is the WSJ, USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company.

On her popular podcast Disrupt Yourself, ranked in the top .5% of listenership of all podcasts, she has interviewed world-renowned thinkers, including Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and General Stanley McChrystal. 

Her major mentors and influences include renowned coach Marshall Goldsmith, the legendary human potential pioneer Bob Proctor, and the late Clayton Christensen, author of the seminal book The Innovator’s Dilemma, with whom she co-founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund.

Whitney shares her passion for personal disruption, helping individuals transform their lives, careers, teams, and companies, through her keynote addresses, lectures at Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning, and her LinkedIn Learning course Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship which has been viewed more than 1 million times. And, through her award-winning books How to Build an A Team, Disrupt Yourself, and Dare, Dream, Do, as well as her frequent article contributions to the Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. 

A former award-winning Wall Street equity analyst, Whitney understands how companies work, how investors think, and how the best coaches coach, all of which she brings to her work. 

She is married, has two children and lives in Lexington, VA where she and her family grow strawberries, blackberries and raspberries and enjoy making jam.

Learn more at DisruptionAdvisors.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Host
Whitney Johnson, one of Fortune’s 55 most influential women on Twitter. She’s been in the thinkers 50. She writes for the Harvard Business Review. Whitney has a couple books that we’re going to talk a little bit about today. So anyways, Whitney, welcome to the show.

Whitney Johnson
Thank you for having me.

Host
Yeah, I’m excited. So I want to talk about Disrupt Yourself. So it’s it’s been a few years since that came out, but I know that you talk a lot and kind of coach organizations and executives on on managing change and putting the power of disruptive innovation to work. Can you explain what you mean by disruptive innovation?

Whitney Johnson
Absolutely, at its simplest, a disruptive innovation is a silly little thing that takes over the world. Great examples of that are the telephone took over the telegraph. You had the car take over the horse and buggy. We have Netflix disrupting Blockbuster and Uber disrupting the yellow cap. So these silly little things that take over the world when you pursue a disruptive course, when you’re willing to be that silly little thing, your odds of success are six times higher and your revenue opportunity 20 times greater.

Host
So what does that look like for an organization, and then what does that look like to the individual to intentionally disrupt yourself? Like, what does it look like? And kind of, how do you do it?

Whitney Johnson
All right, so, so one of the big ahas that I had when we were investing using this theory of disruption was that this theory that we were applying to products and services and companies and identifying investment opportunities was at a very high level of framework for managing change, beginning with the individual. And so the last five years, I’ve been researching and codifying a framework of personal disruption, so that whether you’re scaling a business or trying to build a team or actually just trying to manage your own career. You’ve got a structure to do this. And so this framework of personal disruption, it has, it’s a seven point framework, which I’m happy to go through in just a minute. And my premise is, is that when you are willing to disrupt yourself as an individual, that you’re actually able to disrupt as an organization. Companies don’t actually disrupt. It’s the people who do it. And so this framework allows you to disrupt yourself, and then, by extension, as an organization, be disruptive, and basically to manage through change successfully, as opposed to having the change manage you. So the innovator’s dilemma, it’s risky whether you jump to do something new and whether you don’t jump. And the way through that is, whenever you think of yourself on at the top of a plateau or a learning curve, which is what I think about when I’m thinking about personal disruption, is we tend to think, Okay, well, if I can just motivate myself that it’s going to be really fun to bungee jump off this curve. It will work. But the reality is, that most of us aren’t really into bungee jumping, and so the trick to actually getting yourself to do something new is to make it scarier not to change. So instead of saying all these exciting things are going to happen if I’m willing to change, if I’m willing to disrupt myself, if I’m willing to jump off this cliff, instead if we will say to ourselves, let me think about all the bad things that are going to happen to me if I don’t jump. And behavioral psychology, if you study the work of Daniel Kahneman at all, you know that people are actually more motivated by a fear of losing something than we are by the prospect of gaining something. So we motivate ourselves to jump by saying to ourselves, okay, I know I don’t want to jump, but if I don’t jump, I might lose my job if I don’t jump, our company might go bankrupt if I don’t jump, and that gets us the motivation that we need to actually make that change. So how do you build the case? How do I build the case and and really that goes to the question, because I had written disrupt yourself, which outlines a lot of what you and I have been talking about. But then the question many people said to me, Well, how do I get my my organization, to let me disrupt and so build an A team was written with that idea of in mind, of helping you think about, okay, how do I manage my team, in order for us to be more innovative, in order for us to manage through change, and also helping you build as a manager, a proof point so that you can get your your manager to be comfortable with you managing this way. There are going to be things that are outside of your control. I mean, you can’t, if you’re a middle manager, you cannot change what the CEO tries to do. What you can do, though, is as long as the CEO or your boss stays out of your way, you can make it possible so that people are. On your team have the ability to learn and then leap and then repeat, to move up that learning curve, and as they’re able to figure out ways to play where other people aren’t playing, to go sell to clients, for example, that no one is selling to, to go find opportunities in doing that and their willingness to disrupt themselves, they’re finding opportunities for your team, and then, by extension, your organization. And as you build out those proof points, you are, in effect, packing a parachute for your manager to be comfortable with disrupting themselves as well. And so there’s this contagion effect, like we are the sum total of the people that we spend time with. Well, it’s also true that if you yourself are disrupting yourself, and you’re making it possible for the people who report to you to disrupt then there can be that contagion effect throughout or ripple effect throughout your organization.

Host
So what’s a proof point?

Whitney Johnson
A proof point is, is a data point. It’s it’s a, it’s a, it’s a piece of information that says to a person, hey, I have this idea. There’s something I think that we should do. And they say, Well, you know, I that looks kind of scary. I don’t think I want to jump off that cliff. And you’re saying, well, here’s some data that would suggest So, for example, we let so and so disrupt themselves. We let so and so take on something new. And look at x, y and z. That happened, our revenues up, our retention is up, turnover is down, etc. And so you’re, you’re effectively building out data that that makes it comfortable for other people around you to buy in, and effectively, like I said, packing a parachute for them. So they’ll say, oh, maybe this isn’t quite so scary, because this person that I’m working with just gave me five pieces of data that suggests that, in fact, it makes sense for us to do it.

Host
Thinking about teams and organizations. Do you think it’s always risky not to disrupt?

Whitney Johnson
So I’m going to answer that question with a yes and a no, because I think disruption honors the biology of change that being said, there are times when it does make sense to be quiet and to pursue the course that you’re on. So for example, if you think about this idea of a learning curve, or an S curve, that every every person’s on a learning curve, every organization is a collection of those learning curves. So at the low end of the learning curve, when you’re first starting in a role. You’re first starting in a project, you’re very inexperienced, and you know that you’re going to be inexperienced, so it helps avoid discouragement. And also you’re going to have lots of ideas like, why do we do it like this? And then you move into that sweet spot of that learning curve where you’re competent and confident and everything’s working, you’re humming, the team’s humming, and you’re at that point going very, very fast and very, very highly innovative. But once you get to the top of that learning curve, there’s a period of time before you jump where that going quiet does make sense. Where you’re evaluating, you’re getting perspective, you’re you’re analyzing what’s worked, what hasn’t, both for you as an individual and you as a team. And so within that larger process of change, there are pockets of time where it does make sense to not be moving forward and to think of yourself as being on the top of a mountain and taking in the vista of what you’ve accomplished and where you are before you then make that decision to pack your parachute jump to a new curve and to start that cycle of learning, leaking and repeating all over again. Also for for individuals, certainly it’s, it’s this whole idea of a side hustle, right where you you start doing a bunch of little bets. Can start testing and iterating on things and and seeing what might work and what might take before you jump to a new curve. So that, again, if you think about it like this, instead of just up here and jumping all the way to the bottom of a new one, you might be jumping here, but because you’ve taken all those little side hustles or bets or mitigating that risk, when you actually make the jump, you’re maybe jumping from here to here, as opposed to from here to here. And so this whole idea of personal disruption. There’s this learning curve that you’re on, and one of the levers of change that you can pull to disrupt yourself, and in fact, is the most, in my opinion, important, is this willingness to battle your own sense of entitlement. So right when you’re on the sweet spot of a learning curve, when your revenue growth is accelerating, your margins are expanding, you have this tremendous luxury of questioning, of asking, Okay, are we making the right decisions? What could we do differently? How could we disrupt ourselves, even in little ways, right now, but because everything’s going so well, it’s very easy to say this is the way things will and should always be, and so we get entitled. And if we’re willing to battle our sense of entitlement and to analyze, what could we be doing differently, and how should we be disrupting ourselves when we have the cognitive bandwidth to do it, when we have the financial bandwidth to do it, that’s precisely the time when we want to be asking those questions.

Host
You’ve mentioned this a few times. Learn, leap, repeat. Can you walk us through what that is, and why that sequence, and what that means exactly.

Whitney Johnson
So if you think about this idea of a learning curve, it’s in the shape of an S. It looks a lot like a wave. You start at the bottom of that curve, you learn you move all the way up the curve, and then once you get to the top of a learning curve, which is typically after three or four years, if you’re mapping against the 10,000 hour rule, and it’s time for you to leap to the bottom of a new learning curve, and you repeat so you start that process all over again. And the thesis of this book build an A team, is that if you want to build a team, build a company that can manage through change that is innovative, you will make it possible for the people inside of your organization to continually move along these learning curves, recognizing that your organization is a collection of those curves. And in fact, if you want to know if you as a company or team are about to get disrupted, the only thing you need to do is take the pulse of your workforce, because if you’ve got too many people who are at the high end of that learning curve, then you’re at risk, because that high end learning curve, yes, it’s the top of a mountain, but a plateau can very easily become a precipice. But if you’ll allow yourself move along the learning curve, three or four years, jump to a new learning curve. Three or four years, jump again. Your people will stay innovative. They will stay engaged, they will stay happy. And because they are innovative, your company will, by extension, be innovative.

Host
And so the danger is, when you get to the top of the S curve, and you just stay there basically.

Whitney Johnson
Exactly, exactly, and and because, because what will happen is, once you get to that top of the curve, the neuroscience says you start chunking everything. You’re a master, but you’re incredibly bored, and so you’re either going to leave and or you’re going to stay, and because you’re you’ve stayed, you’re going to get complacent. And so that’s the death knell for you. You’re going to get dialing it in. So you either going to get fired, or you’re going to have all these people who are working for you who are like, just phoning it in because they’re bored out of their minds. So if you want to get those people who are at the top, who are really capable people to continue to be at their best for your organization, you’ve got to give them something new to do. It doesn’t necessarily mean they need a whole new job. It might be that if you’ve been working with clients that run, you know, $10 billion businesses. You maybe give them clients that are working with a billion dollar businesses. Or instead of, you know, the accounts on the West Coast, you give them the accounts on the East Coast. You reconfigure their team, you give them a new boss. There are lots of different ways you can jump to learning curve, but you do need to put them in a position where they don’t have it all figured out, and in the process of figuring it out, they will innovate for themselves as well as for your organization.

Host
Do you think this applies, personally, like, to the personal life?

Whitney Johnson
Absolutely, this idea is of learning. So…

Host
You don’t want to get married to a new spouse every three to four years. I don’t suspect. That’s probably not what you’re…

Whitney Johnson
No, you do not. I am not saying that, but I do think, but, but to your point, I think there are reasons why. You know, at a certain point in people’s marriages, you’re like, oh, huh, we’re feeling a little bit bored. So you have a child, I’m being a little bit facetious. So you introduce children, you find new things to do together. So if you also can jump to a new learning curve, if you you one of you take on a new job, or you move to a new city, or you, you know, there are different ways for you to jump to that curve. And I think one of the wonderful things about marriage, actually, is that by working together as a couple, you’re actually able to help each other pack that parachute and jump into the curve, and so that you’re both developing, but you’re developing in tandem with one another, which I think is a really powerful anchor for anyone who is trying to live out a life of continual personal disruption.

Host
Okay, so last question always. So this is this, in the spirit of The Action Catalyst podcast is giving people insights that they can actually put into action. So if somebody is listening and probably need to shake things up a little bit, what’s the first thing that you would tell them to do, or what’s the you know, the biggest piece of advice that you’d say first thing is blank?

Whitney Johnson
Yeah. The first thing I would say is that if you feel somewhere deep inside of yourself that you need to try something new. And you don’t, you will die inside a little. And then the second thing I would say is that if at any point it feels scary and lonely, then you’re actually on the path to disruption. So, because disruptions playing where no one else is playing. And so those would be the first two pieces of advice I would give to anyone who’s thinking to themselves. You know, I think it is time for me to disrupt myself, knowing that you need to do it so you don’t die inside a little bit, and also knowing that if it’s if you feel scared and if you feel lonely, that’s actually the path that you want to be on, because that’s where you’re going to see your odds of success be the highest in terms of living, living, having a great career, building a fantastic business, and living a life that is is a happy, productive life.

Host
Wow. Whitney Johnson is who you’re listening to. Whitney, thank you for being here and for scaring the crap out of all of us. Obviously, we live in a world of disruption, whether we like it or not, so to have someone bring some researched insights to it really helps a lot. So we wish you all the best.

Whitney Johnson
Great to be here.