Whitney Johnson shares how to approach personal and organizational growth, and it's about to get playful

"Grow yourself, grow your people, grow your organization." In this week's You've Got This, speaker, founder of?Disruption Advisors?and author Whitney Johnson outlines what inspired her professional focus on disruption, how she's thinking about 'The Great Aspiration,' and her growth advice for leaders. Enjoy reading her answers below, along with announcing our next guest, CEO and co-founder of game development company Arkadium Jessica Rovello.

Victoria: "Can you tell us about your career journey? How did you come to identify disruption as the key concept you wanted to specialize in and help others understand?"

Whitney: "After graduating from college, my husband and I went to New York for him to get his Ph.D. in microbiology at Columbia. Manhattan was not on my radar at all and being there initially terrified me. A huge disruption. But this was a time in our lives when I had to step up to the breadwinning plate with my BA in music. It was a daunting prospect.

I landed my first job as a secretary to a retail stockbroker at Smith Barney. Across from my desk, a bullpen of stockbrokers, all men, would hard sell potential clients with challenges like 'Throw down your pompoms and get in the game.'

Sexist, of course. And (slightly) offensive to me, a former high school cheerleader. But it fueled my next disruption. I didn’t think of it that way at the time, only in retrospect, but I decided it was time for me to throw down my pompoms. I started taking business courses at night. Within two years I moved from secretary to investment banking analyst, an uncommon move. From there I went to equity research. By 2004, I’d been an award-winning analyst for almost eight years. I was feeling restless; I thought a move into management was what I wanted, but I didn’t have support. I was a success where I was, and that’s where the higher ups wanted me to stay.

So I left Wall Street to strike out on my own. By this time, my husband was teaching in the UMass Medical School, we had two children, and I’d been commuting to New York from Boston for a while. Letting go of the successful Wall Street career made sense from the personal and family standpoint too. In Boston I met Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen who introduced me to his theory of disruptive innovation, which is that a legacy business, a Goliath in its field, could be overtaken—disrupted—by a silly little David.

Working with Clay in the Disruptive Innovation Fund that we co-founded revolutionized my thinking about growth. I started recognizing that my equity analyst self was the incumbent Goliath. My future self was the upstart David.

"Disruption isn’t just about products; it applies to people too. In fact, people who disrupt themselves are the driving force in organizational disruption."

In 2012, I codified a seven-point framework of personal disruption in a Harvard Business Review article; three years later I had a book, Disrupt Yourself. I followed that with Build an A Team in 2018, teaching leaders how to leverage personal disruption to build top shelf teams. My new book, Smart Growth, is the result of 20 years of researching, writing, and coaching about human potential, and how we realize it. And I’m the founder and CEO of Disruption Advisors, an author, executive coach, podcaster, speaker, and thought leader on personal disruption, learning, growth, talent development and leadership."

Victoria: "With your new book Smart Growth: How to Grow your People to Grow Your Company, you've outlined various ways that you can create a company culture focused on helping empower growth. What do you hope people take away from the book, and why is it so timely at this present moment?"

Whitney: "Let me address the question of timeliness first.

Psychologists have found that periods of severe stress often lead to personal transformation, or what they call post-traumatic growth. We have passed—are still passing—through a season of almost universal stress. It has precipitated changes beyond our control. It has fueled our desire to take control, to the degree that we can, of the changes that impact us. Many people are leaving their current employment, in a mass exodus the press has dubbed 'The Great Resignation.' I believe it ought to be called 'The Great Aspiration.' People are not simply opting out. They have discovered through long months of challenging change that they desire and aspire to pursue other things, in different ways, than they are currently doing.

My premise in Smart Growth is that personal growth is a default setting in human beings. We have a deep yearning to achieve our potential. But we struggle to know where or how to apply our efforts.

Likewise, organizations, though for different reasons, also have a growth imperative—and growing organizations require growing employees. But leaders don’t really know how human beings grow. Talent development initiatives are uninformed, haphazard, and ineffective in many cases if they are implemented at all.

In Smart Growth I use the S Curve of Learning—an adaptation of E.M. Rogers' diffusion curve—and apply it to the process of growth. It’s a three-phase learning curve with slow, laborious progress at the launch point on the low end of the S; rapid, rewarding growth in the sweet spot up the steep back of the S; slowing, stagnant growth as potential is exhausted in mastery at the top of the S. The book breaks this down in greater detail, of course, and we share findings from neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines, as well as lots of great story examples. But it’s a simple visual model that demystifies personal and professional growth. I hope the book will, among other things, answer these three questions:

"Why, despite our desire to learn, is it often difficult to start something new and stay with it?

What is required to gain and maintain momentum on a new S Curve of Learning?

Why is it that when we’ve become very competent at something do we sometimes tire of it and feel we can’t do it anymore?"

I want individuals to read the book and better understand how to proactively direct and pursue their own growth. I want leaders to understand that too, and also how to use the model to advance their employees' growth as a mechanism for organizational growth.?

Grow yourself, grow your people, grow your organization. That’s the order of operations."

Victoria: "What advice would you have for those who are looking to grow as leaders as we start this new year?"

Whitney: "Three things: First, understand the growth process. How do people learn and make progress? When you know this, it increases your capacity to grow. You can choose growth; you can direct it.

Second, learn to apply this understanding to help your people in their growth. The S Curve of Learning model provides a common language for you to have important conversations to understand not just where people are in their growth, but where they perceive themselves to be, which is even more important. This is an amazing tool for talent development and recruiting and retaining talent.

Third, the beginning of a new year is a natural launch point. Start early in the year to build momentum off the launch point of that new beginning.

?"To accomplish these things, start with small goals, ones you may think are ridiculously small. Success is rewarded with little squirts of dopamine in the brain that improve our sense of well-being. Failure, on the other hand, negatively impacts brain chemistry. So early successes help sustain us through launch point challenges until we hit the sweet spot, where momentum can take the wheel."

The beginning of each day is a launch point too. Orient yourself each morning. Before you check your email or social media, spend a few minutes thinking about what you want to do and why you are doing it. Each day is a new S Curve to scale. Morning is the base camp of your day."

Follow Whitney on LinkedIn.

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Next week's guest:?Jessica Rovello

If you enjoy mobile games or interactive content, you'll want to get to know our next guest, CEO & Co-Founder of Arkadium Jessica Rovello. She's worked in interactive entertainment, ranging from producing the pioneering Blair Witch Project site to Arkadium which has developed more than 300 mobile and online games. With that in mind, here's what I'll be asking Jessica:

• How did you know that interactive content and mobile games were what you wanted to pursue professionally?
• With 75%?of adults aged 45-64 playing games for approximately 16 hours per week, in 2021, how do you see the casual games space continuing to evolve and grow?
• What would your advice be for others looking to create in gaming or interactive content?

Have a question of your own for Jessica? Weigh in the comments below, and thank you for being a part of You've Got This!