Whitney
Johnson
Track Timing
-
The S curve of personal disruption (10:16) |
Picking the right S curve (23:18) |
Discovering our distinctiveness (33:01) |
Leaning into constraints (41:10) |
Cutting our losses (44:45) |
Rethinking our metrics (48:18) |
Handling our identity (54:36) |
Discovery driven career planning (01:01:25) |
Author | Executive Coach
Whitney Johnson is the CEO of WLJ Advisors and one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50. She is an expert on helping high-growth organizations develop high-growth individuals. Whitney is an award-winning author, world-class keynote speaker, frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School's Corporate Learning and an executive coach and advisor to CEOs. She is a popular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and her course on Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times. In 2019, she was ranked #3 on the Global Gurus' Top 30 Organizational Culture Professionals. In 2017, she was selected from more than 16,000 candidates as a “Top 15 Coach” by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.
Whitney was the cofounder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen, through which they invested in and led the $8 million seed round for South Korea’s Coupang, currently valued at more than $9 billion. She was involved in fund formation, capital raising, and the development of the fund’s strategy.
As a former award-winning Wall Street stock analyst, Whitney understands momentum and growth. She was an Institutional Investor–ranked equity research analyst for eight consecutive years and was rated by StarMine as a superior stock picker. Whitney hosts the weekly Disrupt Yourself podcast, publishes a popular weekly newsletter, and she is married with two children.
In our conversation, we dive into her insights from her book Disrupt Yourself, where she adapts Clay Christiansen’s model of Disruptive Innovation to illustrate how we should think about our careers as riding multiple S curves where end up disrupting ourselves at each inflection point.
Published in September 2020.
Nuggets from the
Conversation
The S curve of personal disruption
Whitney speaks about the application of the Theory of Disruptive Innovation (Courtesy Late Clay Christiansen) as applied to Careers. She speaks about why going up and up on the same curve starts yielding diminishing returns and discusses how we can take a step back or sideways to slingshot ourselves into the next trajectory.
Picking the right S curve
Whitney speaks about how we all should think about the next S curve we could get onto in our journeys. She speaks to the notion of market risk versus competitive risk when it comes to identifying S curves. She goes onto say that the rewards are statistically better if we choose to identify a “job to be done” that is currently not being done or an unmet need.
Discovering our distinctiveness
Whitney speaks about how we all need to tune into our “super-power” and discover our strengths and use that as a starting point to discover our next S curve. She speaks about the fact that we are often quite blind to what our strengths are and have the tendency to shrug off complements when we get them. She suggests some ideas on how we can discover our strengths.
Leaning into constraints
Whitney speaks about how sometimes constraints bring out the best in us and drive us to innovate – at some level, I guess that is the whole raison d’etre of Jugaad innovation. She speaks about the need for an optimal number of constraints that bring out the best in us. She urges to leverage constraints as a tool of creation to gain the momentum up the curve.
Cutting our losses
Whitney speaks about the dilemma that a lot of face at the foot-hills of a new S curve. Should I persist with the pain or should I climb a different mountain. She speaks about the fact that even if we climb the right S curve, statistically, often, it is only a 36% chance of success which leaves us with a 64% chance of failure. She speaks about the 4 questions we need to ask ourselves to discern if we should persist or jump.
Rethinking our metrics
Whitney speaks about how we need to often rethink the metrics with which we need to measure ourselves as go from one S curve to another. Very often we are hardwired to think about metrics in a certain way and we often become a slave of that wiring/habit leading to disconnect with what we measure when we move from one S curve to another
Handling our identity
Whitney speaks about how we should think about our identity when we experience the free fall when we move from the top of an S curve to the foothills of a new S curve. She speaks about the criticality of having a clear “Why” and the notion of smaller S curves to make it less risky when you transition from one trapeze to another.
Discovery driven career planning
Whitney speaks about how we can think about picking career paths in a world with abundant opportunity. She speaks about the notion of maximizing optionality especially early in the career when one doesn’t know what one is truly passionate about.
