The Journey of Writing a Book

Writing a book is like jumping to a brand-new S Curve.

As many of you know, my new book, Smart Growth, comes out on January 11. In anticipation of the book’s launch, I sat down with my business partner Amy Humble on the Disrupt Yourself podcast to delve into the process of writing a book. While we all consume many books throughout our lifetime, we rarely get to hear about the journey of a book. It is not linear, and it’s not an individual act. This was a fun podcast to create. I switched roles from interviewer to interviewee, and it gave me a chance to reflect on the book writing process.

Why did I decide to write Smart Growth? Let’s start from the beginning. My most recent books, Disrupt Yourself and Build an A-Team, focus explicitly on disruption, first for individuals and then for teams. The S Curve of Learning? played an important supporting role in both books, serving as the structure through which we disrupt ourselves, our teams, and companies. And it struck me that while people are interested in disruption, they are fascinated by the S Curve.?

In our interview, Amy recalled a particular conversation we had after I spoke to a group of chief experience officers. I was relaying this observation about the S Curve, and she remembered thinking, “We had been packaging so much around it, and it was time for the S Curve to stand on its own, with all its complexities and the richness. That straightforward model of launch point to the sweet spot to mastery needed to be explored a bit more. We needed to find out through research and through stories what else there was to learn and teach about the power of the S Curve.”

You may be asking yourself, what is smart growth and why is that the book’s title? Growth is our default setting. The question for many of us is, “What does growth look like? How do I grow? How is it possible?” The S Curve is an explanatory mechanism to help us think about what growth looks like and gives us landmarks and road signs that tell us where we are in our growth, empowering us to grow faster and smarter.

As an interesting aside, titling a book is more complicated than it may seem.? We went through so many iterations looking for a title that wasn’t already used and perfectly captured the book’s essence. So much thought goes into every aspect of the book writing process.?

In many ways, the actual act of writing a book is a laborious, painful process. You have a vision of where you want to go, of what it looks like at the top of the mountain when the book is complete. But it's a long journey from the valley up the mountain, and it’s difficult to get that initial traction off the launch point. What do I want to say, and how do I structure it? How do I write the principles we want to share in a clear, simple, and illustrative way?

Similar to mountaineering, writing is not a solitary endeavor; it’s a team sport. I had numerous advisors who played a pivotal role in helping me structure and organize the book. I have phenomenal writers who were in the trenches with me daily, going back and forth on essential concepts working to develop and distill key ideas and valuable anecdotes.?

In addition to the team involved in the design and creation of the book, the editing process requires you to engage a variety of individuals. Once we had a draft of the book between 50-70% complete, I sent it out to 6 or 7 different people to review. I will never forget sending it to Julie Berry, a longtime friend, and best-selling author. She absolutely eviscerated my book. And honestly, I was grateful. Of course, it’s difficult to receive critical feedback, but I knew the book wasn’t where I wanted it to be, and I wasn’t sure how to get there. By being willing to let her read the book and give her unfiltered feedback, I saw the path forward and how to make the book what I knew it could be.?

Another piece of feedback that sticks out in my mind was from Harry Kraemer, former CEO of Baxter Healthcare and current Northwestern Professor. He said to me, “Whitney, I just read your book. I know you well enough to know that you are a very values-driven, spiritual person, and I saw none of that in the book.” His comment took me aback, especially because someone said the same thing to me when I wrote Dare Dream Do, and you would think I would have learned. As a consequence of that conversation with Harry, I significantly modified the first chapter. I learned an important lesson about the value of being willing to put our ideas out into the world when they're still not fully formed. If you think they're fully formed, people won't give you feedback in the same way.?

As our interview about the book came to a close, Amy asked me why someone should read Smart Growth. Put simply; Smart Growth demystifies the process of growth. And once you demystify the process of personal growth, you start to unlock the process of growth for yourself, your people, and your organization.