Introduction to the New Edition
When Disrupt Yourself was first published in 2015, the Boston Globe called it “the What Color Is Your Parachute? career guide for the entrepreneurial age.” With this accolade came the inaccurate perception that Disrupt Yourself only applies to entrepreneurs and career changers. Our research shows that it applies to strong performers in all situations.
In my book Build an A-Team (2018), I expanded on this premise. If you want to retain your high performers—whether early career, mid-career, or seasoned professionals—you will allow, encourage, and even require personal disruption; you will make it possible for them to learn, leap, and repeat. It’s a manager’s responsibility to help them jump to something new or risk losing them.
Take the pulse of your workforce. If you have too many people who have learned all they can in their current role and aren’t leaping to a new one—disrupting themselves—then your team and organization are at risk.
Many fast-growing companies—startups, growth-stage companies, private-equity-backed firms—even Fortune 500 companies—on the rise have found Disrupt Yourself and Build an A-Team valuable. They understand they will only get where they want to go by making sure their people grow.
Perhaps your company is taking off. You have a great business strategy in place and the future looks bright. But, if you don’t have high-growth individuals engaged in a constant state of personal disruption, they won’t be able to carry the heavy load of exponential growth.
Disrupt Yourself lays out a seven-point framework of personal disruption––a proven algorithm for developing the high-growth individuals you need. Below is a brief review of each step with links to podcast interviews of related inspiring stories.
Take the Right Risks
It’s been said that amateurs compete, professionals create. That sentiment applies to helping people take the right risks. High-growth individuals seek avenues to create. Managers who want to develop those individuals help them find the right opportunities. They don’t pit people against each other; they pit them against themselves.
Podcast links:
In-depth exploration of the topic: https://whitneyjohnson.com/right-risks/
Interview with Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of Innovation at GE: https://whitneyjohnson.com/beth-comstock/
Play to Your Distinctive Strengths
For high-growth companies and individuals, this is increasingly important. It’s human nature to obsess about weaknesses. In a typical 360-degree review, weaknesses are identified, and the focus placed on how to eliminate them. It is more effective to focus on distinctive strengths.
Dianna Newton Andersen, an entrepreneur turned social-good activist at Younique Foundation, shares a story of her college basketball coach who had the team take shots from different places on the court. He would record individual percentages and then have every person on the team memorize those percentages. This allowed each team member to literally play to each other’s distinctive strengths.
It is possible to do this with business teams. When people feel strong, they are more willing to venture into new territory—to play where no one else is playing.
Podcast link:
Interview with Benjamin Hardy, author of the book Willpower Doesn’t Work: https://whitneyjohnson.com/benjamin-hardy/
Through hundreds of interviews for my books and podcast episodes, I saw a pattern: I was gravitating to the stories of first- or second-generation immigrants. Immigrants embrace the constraints of their experience—alien culture, foreign language, financial limitations, negligible networks, and so forth—as an accelerant to growth.
Constraints give us something to bump up against. They make us stronger and more focused. Whether we lack time, money, buy-in, or expertise, constraints can help us develop resourcefulness and use the lack to our advantage.
Podcast link:
Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game, shares how constraints honed his craft as a novelist: https://whitneyjohnson.com/orson-scott-card/
Battle Entitlement, the Innovation Killer
This is the hardest—and most crucial—accelerant to embrace. It is possible to become a high-growth individual without some of the other competencies, but without this one, your efforts will inevitably fall short.
All of us place our own interests above others in small, insidious ways, such as showing up late for meetings, assuming things will go as we expect, feeling jealous of another person’s success, and a myriad of other things. But the world does not revolve around one person. The story cannot be “It’s all about me.” Gratitude is the way forward because the focus is on what we already have and what is going right. Pay attention to what’s going right, and you’ll grow faster.
Podcast links:
Interview with Paul Hill, formerly with Mission Operations at NASA: https://whitneyjohnson.com/paul-hill/
Interview with Dave Meltzer, CEO of SportsMarketing1: https://whitneyjohnson.com/david-meltzer/
Interview with Donna Hicks, a Harvard professor and conflict and resolution expert whose work emphasizes treating others with dignity: https://whitneyjohnson.com/donna-hicks/
Step Down, Back, or Sideways to Grow
The whole point of disruption is to move up the y-axis of success over the x-axis of time. When you disrupt yourself, you are making a conscious decision to leave a comfortable spot and move down the y-axis, on the premise that the slope of your next curve will be even steeper, leading to another period of rapid growth and success.
Managers can make this possible––a carefully calculated step back can be an employee’s slingshot to a high-growth future.
Podcast links:
Interview with Dave Hollis, a former Disney executive: https://whitneyjohnson.com/dave-hollis/
Interview with Carine Clark, a serial CEO: https://whitneyjohnson.com/carine-clark/
Give Failure Its Due
Failure doesn’t limit disruption; shame about failure does. High-achieving people need to be reminded of this. Failures are inevitable and can be educational. Whether we see an experience as a failure or success is always our choice. Both the up and the down are part of personal disruption.
These podcasts address the value of failure in poignant ways:
Interview with Maren Kate Donovan, founder and former CEO of Zirtual, which went from rapid growth and success to shutting down almost overnight: https://whitneyjohnson.com/maren-kate-donovan/
Interview with Brené Brown, best-selling author and expert on vulnerability and shame: https://whitneyjohnson.com/brene-brown/
Be Driven by Discovery
Disruptors take the right risks and play where no one else is playing. They are constantly iterating––figuring it out as they go. Companies need people who can do a dogleg pivot and change direction as new data emerges. Seventy percent of all successful new businesses end up with a strategy different than the one they initially pursued. Just as this is true for successful companies, it is true for people. It’s okay to end up in places you didn’t expect. When you do, it’s the best kind of surprise.
Podcast links:
Interview with Susan Cain, best-selling author of Quiet, who began her career as a Wall Street attorney: https://whitneyjohnson.com/susan-cain-disrupt-yourself-podcast/
Interview with Jason Jedlinski, a senior executive at Gannett Media: https://whitneyjohnson.com/jason-jedlinski/
Maureen Chiquet, former CEO of Chanel: https://whitneyjohnson.com/maureen-chiquet/
Applying Personal Disruption in Your Team and Company
Revisiting Disrupt Yourself four years after its initial publication has reminded me of the powerful effect the principles of personal disruption can have on the success of individuals, teams, and companies.
The seven steps are discussed in sequence, but you may want and need to tackle them out of order. Taking the right risks, playing to your distinctive strengths, and embracing constraints tend to be important first steps in disruption.
Stepping back to grow may happen mid-disruption, but it can also be a first step. The same is true of giving failure its due.
Being driven by discovery needs to happen throughout the process of disruption—at the beginning, middle, and end; while battling entitlement is especially relevant as you become increasingly successful.
High-growth organizations need high-growth individuals. Whether you work for a Fortune 500 company and need your people to get comfortable with being uncomfortable so that growth can happen, a billion-dollar company growing at 30 percent a year, or a growth-stage company doubling revenue this year alone, you need people who know how to grow.
The Personal Disruption framework is a road map that will get you where you want to go. Because companies don’t disrupt, people do.
Whitney Johnson
Lexington, VA
June 22, 2019