Disruption for Smart Growth and Less Anxiety at Work with Whitney Johnson

Welcome to Anxiety at Work --> We hope the time you spend with us will help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and your personal life.

Whitney Johnson is CEO of the tech-enabled talent development company Disruption Advisors, an Inc. 5000 fastest-growing private company in America (2020). One of the top ten business thinkers in the world as named by Thinkers50, Whitney is an expert at smart growth leadership. Whitney has worked at FORTUNE 100 companies, and as an award-winning equity analyst on Wall Street. She co-founded the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Harvard Business School’s late Clayton Christensen. She has coached alongside the renowned Marshall Goldsmith, selected by Goldsmith in 2017 as a Top 15 Coach out of a pool of more than 17,000 candidates. Whitney understands how companies work, how investors think, and how the best coaches coach.

An award-winning author, Johnson teaches the S Curve of Learning to managers and companies as both a keynote speaker and a frequent lecturer for Harvard Business School’s Corporate Learning. She is a LinkedIn Top Voice (2020) with 1.8 million followers. Her course Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship has been viewed more than 1 million times.

Whitney is a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. Author of the bestselling Build an A Team (a Financial Times Book of the Month) and Disrupt Yourself, fittingly described by Publisher’s Weekly as “Savvy . . . often counterintuitive . . . superb.” She hosts the weekly Disrupt Yourself podcast with guests including Brené Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and General Stanley McChrystal.
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Transcript

welcome to the anxiety at work podcast I'm Chester Elton and this is my dear friend and co-author Adrian Gostick.
well welcome everyone we hope the time you're going to spend with us will help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace in your personal life and we invite experts from the world of work and Life to give us ideas and most importantly tools to deal with anxiety in our world
Our Guest today is our dear friend Whitney Johnson. Whitney is the CEO of disruption advisors and one of the 50 leading business thinkers in the world as named by thinkers 50. Whitney is author of the new book smart growth as well as the best sellers built in a team and disrupt yourself a fellow member of Marshall Goldsmith's hundred coaches she started her career as a Wall Street stock analyst and now helps individuals and companies around the world through her disruptive innovation theories she also has a wonderful podcast called disrupt yourself put it on your listen list it is fabulous so welcome to the show Whitney we're delighted to have you on our podcast
well we've known Whitney for some time and and we love her work and you're gonna love it as well and we want to talk about your new book uh Whitney which talks about growth but in smart ways and you know we all want to grow Our lives our careers and often we get freaked out when and I hear this from a lot of younger people older people we get freaked out when things are moving too slow too fast so how can we look at our own personal growth and maybe a more mentally healthy way?
well we have developed something called the s-curve of learning and it's based on the diffusion curve that was developed by Everett Rogers back in the 60s to look at how quickly an innovation would be adopted it looked at how groups change over time as I was investing with Clayton Christensen at the Harvard Business School we were using this s-curve to look at Innovations and their adoptions and I had an aha this Insight that we could use the S curve to help us understand how individuals change and so it will help you and I think about what growth looks like all right so um I so this S curve of learning what it does is it gives you this simple visual model to trace growth both the where you are in your growth and the emotional experience that you're having at a very high level there are three major faces there's the lot phases there's the launch Point The Sweet Spot and Mastery and every time you start something new you're on a new S curve and what's going to happen at the launch point is um you're going to potentially feel overwhelmed I'm discouraged and that's all normal because what's happening is your brain is running this predictive model many of your predictions that's running are inaccurate your dopamine drops and so growth is happening at the launch point but it feels slow and when you know that you can say I'm discouraged oh situation normal I'm supposed to feel this way and also it helps you not get impatient of oh I want to get through this part I just need to get over with no you don't want to go too fast because if you go too fast then you might make decisions that aren't in your best interest and so it allows you to be in this messy place to be slow and to really encourage you to stay there as long as you need to until you decide yes it's time to move into The Sweet Spot then you get to The Sweet Spot your brain is running this model your predictions are increasingly accurate you feel exhilarated you feel this sense of growth not only is fast it feels fast and then Mastery the top part of the Curve model it is complete you have figured everything out the only problem is is that you're no longer growing you're no longer getting dopamine your dopamine is kind of flatlined and so the growth here is slow so you now when you're thinking about your personal growth when you're thinking about your organizational growth you've got this model slow fast slow is how you grow and when you understand that when you have your map for for growth then you're going to increase your capacity to grow slow fast slow is how you grow that you know that's easy to remember right 
you know, I love that you talk about Clayton Christensen I I know that he was a huge mentor of yours and uh and such a delightful guy you know I got to meet him a couple of times you forget how tall he is it was like six eight or something like that he just that big guy and and your early career there you know um on Wall Street and investing. talk about your you know talk about your own growth because you had a lot of situations there where to use your language you had to then disrupt yourself and that couldn't have been easy and by the way a perfect time to plug your podcast disrupt yourself which Adrian and I both listened to and is fabulous but back to your your journey that disruption you were with Clayton Christensen you were learning all this stuff it couldn't have been easy.
um yeah, well thank you for talking about my podcast I need to learn from you how to do that you're so good at talking about other people's work um so uh yeah I was working on Wall Street I was an equity analyst I um was doing very well I had been Institutional Investor ranked for eight years straight um but what happens and this is the S curve is you know we talked about being at the top of the curve well that's this place where you're very good at what you're doing but you feel like you can no longer keep doing it because you're not getting that dopamine and I was having that experience I'd been doing this for eight years I was very good at what I was doing I was feeling like I want something more I went to my boss and said hey I think I want to do something new and he said we like you right where you are. You can do this in your sleep and so I had I had this kernel of an idea that disruption isn't just about products and services but also about people and that's when I made the decision to leave Wall Street become an entrepreneur and I didn't end up working with Clayton Christensen for about two years two years later and so there was this whole period of of messiness of trying to figure out what being an entrepreneur looks like at the launch point of the curve and I wish I would have known then what I know now which is that's exactly how I was supposed to feel but there were a couple of years that were very um very messy
And and I love that you talk about you know the mess of beginning because one of the things I wanted to ask you is is to you know we all want to learn right but but when we start something it's difficult to stick with it and uh so I love just what you're saying that you know we get overwhelmed we get discouraged et cetera but so why first off don't we stick with new things and how more importantly how do we overcome that tendency? 
yeah so we don't stick with them because we start to do it and it and and the older we get the more we can insulate ourselves from ever doing anything new and so that muscle of doing new things gets very very flaccid. it gets very out of shape so we need to practice trying to do new things and so three things that you can do when you're at the launch point of a curve that will allow you to build momentum are number one know that it's going to feel awkward know that it needs to be awkward and that allows you to separate out your identity and not say well it doesn't mean I will never be good at it it doesn't mean I'm a failure it just means oh yeah I'm doing something new and you're supposed to feel gangly and awkward just like when you were learning to walk as a two-year-old that's the first thing the second thing that you can do is you can use the fact that moving along an S curve is basically a dopamine management exercise where you're you know dropping the launch points spiking in The Sweet Spot flat at the high end well how can you at the launch Point get dopamine you do that by setting small ridiculously small goals so I want to start exercising I'm not going to run 30 minutes a day I'm going to put on my tennis shoes every day for a week and that starts to build those neural Pathways and oh by the way you can upside you know surprise on the upside because maybe you put your tennis shoes on and you walk for 30 seconds and your brain says good job so that's another way you can build momentum because you get all this dopamine that's feels good and then you can start to get over into the sweet spot where the momentum takes over and then the third thing you can do you all know what your coaches- I'm a coach is accountability Partners say what you're going to do to someone by when I'm going to put on my tennis shoes every day for a week and and and Chester and Adrian I want you to know I'm going to do it and I'm going to report back that I did it and those three things put together are going to give you the ability to persevere through the messiness of the launch point.
you know building momentum just is so important isn't it those those celebrating those little wins along the way those little check-ins like you say start with putting on your tennis shoes and say boy that really is a very ridiculously small goal you know um the thing is is once and maybe this is just you know me and Adrian but we start to do something new and we start if there's all that excitement and we start to make progress It's Not Unusual that you kind of get tired of it all of a sudden is the whole world is ADD and how do we how do we then in the answer curve how do we how do we not abandon stuff that we're you know that we're making progress towards we're having some fun and not lose that that intensity is it those little small goals along the way what else can we do? 
oh yeah it's a great question so I think in this particular so at the launch point you've got that momentum building and you move it into the sweet spot I think in The Sweet Spot of your curve it's about staying focused because if you think about this idea you're going fast it's a car around a race track you know you think self-determination Theory competence autonomy and relatedness so you want to stay focused on what you're doing don't take on too many S curves at once maybe do three or four at a time so you can continue that that metamorphosis up into Mastery but then there's the Mastery piece which is if you're really good at something um and you're not getting a lot of dopamine you start to get bored and your brain says I know I'm good at it but I feel like I just can't keep doing it because I'm going to die inside a little bit so then the question becomes if you have this I if you if you have this idea of um okay let me back up so the question becomes if you're in Mastery and there's something that you're really good at but you want to keep doing it so for example you're the CEO of a business and this is your livelihood it's a business that you care about the what you want to ask yourself is how do I make it so that this is a summit but not the summit so you find ways to push yourself back into the sweet spot so for example if you're a business owner let's say and you are the you've run it you've been here for 20 years maybe you start a podcast maybe you find a way to Mentor other people you do these S curve Loops where you bring other people along maybe you find you ask yourself well how can I opt you know how can I grow even faster or how can I um really focus my energy on developing people something that will allow you that will challenge you that will push you into the sweet spot I'll give you an example for myself if I look at my portfolio of S curves you could say all right well I'm in The Sweet Spot overall I've got um you know as a podcaster I'd stem and The Sweet Spot is as a speaker I'm probably a sweet spot going into Mastery but I stay in The Sweet Spot because I'm trying continually to get better as an author probably in the sweet spot but as a business owner who's building out a technology tool and trying to scale a business definitely the launch point and it's that thing that I'm trying to do that's allowing me to stay in The Sweet Spot overall and so if you think of your life as a portfolio of s-curves just optimize have some of the launch points summon Mastery and the majority in The Sweet Spot 
I really like that concept of a portfolio of s-curves yeah I hadn't heard that before yeah where you know in your life you've got different s-curves and where are you you know when you get to that Mastery phase you know again keeping your interest in keeping that dopamine how important is it to keep feeding your brain I mean you know like you're you're an author we're an author are you constantly reading what are you doing to make sure that you you're feeding that dopamine that fix that you're still growing and learning is it books is it audio books what is it for you
for me um well I it's I mean sometimes I listen to audiobooks but right now I don't have a very long commute because I work out of my house so I don't really you have to be really short books that really really short we could listen to them while you're putting on your tennis shoes it's just a thought that 30 seconds of time to tie my shoes um yeah so I would say that the way I am continually learning is a combination of things one is that as you I have a podcast I have a LinkedIn live and so I'm I'm continually reading books to prepare for the podcast and the LinkedIn lives and so that keeps me really sharp another way that I think really feeds me is that I um I'm continually talking to people I mean one of the things you learn is you know as a coach yes you're trying to help other people improve but as you're listening and processing and holding that space for other people that also um is a way that I'm learning so it's it's in my interactions with other people as well as the reading that I do for um interviewing people.
now we've been talking with Whitney Johnson this has just been such a terrific discussion Whitney if you haven't picked up her new book smart growth pick it up today she really is one of the best business writers that we have around and now Whitney we want to come back now this the podcast is called anxiety work you've written about anxiety for the Harvard Business review and on your own website what are some techniques you recommend to help people who are dealing with mental health issues to to grow and to thrive? 
all right so the first thing that I would say is that um you are not alone I struggle with anxiety and I think that one of the best ways it to help other people is by being willing to talk about your own anxiety and also being willing to talk about it with other people because psychologists have said that you heal from trauma by having other people bear witness to your loss and so a willingness to talk about your anxiety is going to is really important um the second thing that I do and suggest I do these and I suggest is to impose structure so we were talking just a minute about those small ridiculously small goals and so sometimes when I am feeling anxious and I suggest that other people do this is break down time break down your time into much smaller increments don't think about what do I need to get done today what do I need to get done this afternoon focus on what do I need to get done in the next five minutes and that allows you to bring back to the present moment and focus on now and then the third thing that I would suggest and um I you'll appreciate this is I will sometimes just say what am I grateful for right now because if I'm talking about three things that I'm grateful for in this moment like I've got a microphone that allows me to do this podcast I'm talking to two people that I enjoy that make me laugh that brings me back into the moment and it's pretty it what it tells my brain and my body is you're probably safe because if I had a bear chasing me and I was running for my life I wouldn't have time to stop and be grateful so that that triggers for me that I'm safe um two other thoughts is I would say uh therapy therapy therapy coach coach to help you have that bonus prefrontal cortex and then finally um take breaks and pace yourself I find that my anxiety will mount as the day goes by and it's because I stop taking break and so just you know if you're working for 15 minutes get up walk around get out in the fresh air those are all suggestions that I would make to help manage through anxiety.
excellent advice you know, and it keeps coming back to tennis shoes. I mean a bear is chasing, you want to make sure you've got your tennis shoes on you know what I'm saying another good reason yeah and tie those shoes up every day exactly hey um talk about some of your personal practices you mentioned a couple along the way and you know I know that you're a person of faith and when you said you know it's really important for people to know that they're not alone in your personal practices and whatnot does your faith play a role in managing your mental health? 
oh a hundred percent a thousand percent yeah I mean what I do is so I get up every morning I um the first thing I do is I pray. well actually I listen to or read a sacred text then I pray for some people that might be meditation but it I'm continually thinking about how can I bring God into my life and how can because knowing and believing that he is there um allows me to be grounded it allows me to be centered it allows me as I just said and you reminded me to not feel like I'm alone that I will be okay there is someone providential divine who has my back from there I look at my top three or five three or four priorities for the day I start working I do yoga sometimes I some days I run I put on my tennis shoes I take lots of breaks and at the end of the day I actually sometimes in the afternoon take naps those are very restorative and help me kind of manage as well and then in the evening I'll alternate practices between what I'm grateful for and sometimes I just focus on what did I love doing that day this is the Marcus Buckingham work and so I bookend my day with those spiritual reflective practices and those allow me to move through my day and manage the anxiety which is like a fly and always lurking but continually trying to move through that and beyond it. 
I love that. that's so beautiful. thank you so much. yeah it's such a such a great practices and uh and it's such a great discussion today so if you had to summarize one or two things you'd want our listeners to take away to to try and cultivate more smart growth in their lives where would you uh what would you point out for us? 
I would keep it very simple and I would draw the S on a piece of paper or with your finger and just say, okay so I've got the Launch Point I've got the Sweet Spot I've got Mastery. Where am I in my current role? where am I in my life? what S curves do I have going on are happening right now? because once you understand that you will be able to orient yourself. you'll be able to have compassion and grace for yourself of like oh this is why I'm struggling I'm at the launch point I'm doing something new or oh God this is really fun or oh now I understand why I need to start something new because I'm bored and growth is my default setting. and so by having this map it's going to allow you to know where you are and then know what's next and as I said I believe that growth is our default setting and so this this gives you a map in order to do that. 
you know I love that growth is your default setting. thank you so much Whitney. you know we've been big fans for a long time we're just delighted to have you on the podcast thank you for your vulnerability thank you for sharing your s-curve the portfolio and I guess there's really only one last question we need to ask Adrian that is How many pairs of tennis shoes do you think
well Whitney thanks so much for being with us today we yeah we are big fans of your work and hopefully everybody runs out and grabs your new book and uh and thank you again thank you
well Ches, Whitney Johnson. What a what a coup to land Whitney on our show. One of the real thought leaders in in American business right now. and I love what she said. I've used her ideas before on this S curve of learning because so many times whether we're, you know, deciding on a new career we're gonna move we're gonna whatever we're doing in life there is there is this process we go through right? where this launch where we're overwhelmed and we want to rush through that as quickly as we can right? and we I just love her advice slow down um slow is how you grow. love that. 
yeah I agree with you Whitney is the legend. we love uh Whitney. we fall into work for a long time yeah that slow fast slow is how you grow I thought was a great mantra, you know, you go slow because you're learning and then you can't hit the point and then you go really fast and then you slow down as you as you catch up. It's messy she said. I always love the expression the masterpiece is in the mess. you know, enjoy that messiness. what can you learn as you're going forward and you're growing and you're moving through that S curve. 
stay focused I thought was a great one. you know we're easily distracted. I know in my case it always as I say yes to way too many things. and I loved her advice that you know stay focused you don't have to say yes to everything you can actually, the discipline of saying no is really important and that was one of my big takeaways.
yeah no I love that and I love that for you by the way yeah absolutely um what do I love to uh she says the muscle of doing new things gets atrophied. now this was for me uh this was my smack upside the head. you know you and I have been doing what we do for many years we love what we do but sometimes you know how often do we push ourselves into something new and we did a couple years ago we started doing Executive Coaching which we hadn't done before and it was new and it was and it was different. but she's right those muscles get atrophied if you don't try something new, and so I loved he point of ridiculously small goals. you know it might be today I'm going to who you know I'm going to get up and I'm gonna do the first thing and so I thought that was really great advice that getting in motion I think is so key and you know that's really what she was talking about you've got this big list that becomes overwhelming. do that first thing. set a small goal. get to the shower. okay you're in motion now. you can start to do things. 
I really appreciated her advice to one on an accountability partner. someone with you along the journey. I think that's one of the reasons that you and I have had such a good relationship for now over 22 years is that you know we've got somebody we can count on. we've got somebody we can trust. we've got somebody that you know holds us accountable. 
um one other thing that for me was a good takeaway from what you just said about trying new things is understanding that the new things don't always work. you know I remember you and I tried the clubhouse thing, and it worked really great for a lot of people and we just didn't get it. It just wasn't part of who we are and how we work. and the clubhouse thing it was fun to try and you know yeah we've tried Facebook we've tried Instagram and it just wasn't our thing and but we found things that worked for us and so and I love that she says you know don't take on too many s-curves at once. so that's where an accountability partner can help I think is that to say you know because we do that with each other we kind of go okay yeah but should we really do this and so what you and I have done we say we take on one big new thing a year and that's worked well for us. the one new s-curve a year. yeah and then the last thing for me was manage your portfolio of s-curves which I thought was just brilliant. you're going to be in an s-curve in your personal life. you're going to be in an S curve in a new thing that you're developing. you know whether it be for your business or whatever.. an s-curve with your family and so on. and are you managing those? and where are you in each one of those? because you're going to be in different places and just realize that that's going to be the case and to her point, don't get your portfolio overloaded. you don't have 50 things in your s-curve portfolio. I'm thinking 48.49 tops. 
yeah well I feel disrupted. I don't know about you. in a good way though uh Whitney does that she comes in and shakes your thinking up and so we want to thank Whitney Johnson for being our guest today. big thanks to our producer Brent Klein to Christy Lawrence who helps us find amazing guests like Whitney and to all of you who listened in today.
yes and you know download the podcast and share it with friends and family you know uh Whitney really does give such great advice it's such a compact format you know it doesn't say eight hours to listen to an audiobook or read a book you know you've got 45 minutes with great advice so download it give us a five star rating if you can. and share with your friends and family. we also have a community we thrivetogether.global creating a safe place where people can talk about anxiety in the workplace and of course if you can't tell we love presenting we love speaking to audiences whether it's virtual or it's in person. if you've got a an event coming up and you want to talk about anxiety. you want to talk about your culture. you want to talk about gratitude, give us a call. we would love to be at your event with you and we promise we will deliver a world class. Chester will speak it birthdays, bar mitzvahs, whatever you have. yeah I do the speaking Adrian does the balloon animals. it's awesome. yeah thanks everybody for joining us today pick up a copy of our book “Anxiety at Work.” Until next time, we wish you the best of mental health. take care and be well.