Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

Today, on the Disrupt Yourself Podcast, our guest is Hubert Joly, former CEO of Carlson, member of the board of directors of Ralph Lauren and Johnson & Johnson and currently chairman of Best Buy, where he was previously CEO for seven years. When Hubert took the job of CEO at Best Buy, they were in shambles. But he focused on people and purpose and ended up quadrupling the stock price. He was named as CEO of the year. At this moment, every company is in some sort of crisis. We've all been disrupted. It's not about deciding if we're going to jump to a new S-curve, we've just been pushed. So who better to turn to than a proven leader in a crisis. Hubert is talking to us today about his approach at Best Buy and how he would approach our current situation as a leader, why work is transformational for people and why purpose should be the thing that guides all of your decisions in work and in life. For a complete transcript and links from this episode, please visit https://whitneyjohnson.com/hubert-joly

Today on the Disrupt Yourself Podcast, our guest is Dr. David Peterson. David has been the Director of Leadership and Coaching at Google since 2011, Chief Transformation Officer at 7 Paths Forward, one of the original members of the Marshall Goldsmith 100, and one of the most influential coaches in the world. When you want to learn a new skill or level up - especially in sports - the first thing you do is find a coach. And in the world of leadership and personal development, it’s the same. One of the fastest ways for us to slingshot forward is to have someone help us see our blind spots, both the good, and the bad, and a coach can help us do that. And David Peterson is one of the best, and it is our absolute pleasure to have him on the podcast so that you can learn from him about how to navigate these uncertain times. For a complete transcript and links from this episode, please visit https://whitneyjohnson.com/david-peterson

Today our guest is Jennifer Petriglieri, associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. She's been shortlisted for the Thinkers50 New Thinker and Talent Awards and been named one of the world's best business school professors under 40 by Poets and Quants. Jennifer is an expert on how people craft and sustain their personal and professional identities under conditions of high uncertainty such as organizations in crisis or mobile careers, basically when disruption is in play. Which is certainly true in the case of dual-career couples where there is a dance of disruption as by turns each partner upends the other, or in a time like we're experiencing at this airing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Jennifer discusses some sound principles and frameworks for navigating the transitions that allow us to thrive in relationships and careers. Complete transcript and show notes available at https://whitneyjohnson.com/jennifer-petriglieri

Today our guest is Kelly Goldsmith. Kelly received her PhD from Yale, is now a professor at Vanderbilt, where she's received numerous teaching awards including being one of the youngest professors ever to be nominated for Professor of the Year at Kellogg where she taught previously. Kelly studies how people respond to uncertainty and scarcity, uncovering the seemingly paradoxical effects, which is why I wanted you to hear from her. Pursuing a disruptive course involves embracing constraints, the lack of something, which in addition to her academic research, Kelly knows about first hand, not only because she went on the job market in 2008, but because she was a contestant on Survivor: Africa, the third season of Survivor. Complete transcript and links available at https://whitneyjohnson.com/podcast

Today, on the Disrupt Yourself Podcast, we welcome innovation expert and one of the top-ranked thinkers in the world, Alex Osterwalder. You will hear how Alex views failure, about his mentorship with Yves Pigneur, and which companies he views as leaders in business model innovation. Alex explains the ideal work structure in the 21st Century, including why your company might need a Chief Entrepreneur or Chief Internal Venture Capitalist. We also talk about the power of using visuals, and what it’s like to be a company in the “sweet spot”. For links and a complete transcript, please visit https://whitneyjohnson.com/alex-osterwalder

In Episode 80 of our podcast, we started a series, on our seven-point framework of personal disruption. In Episode 100, we did a deep dive accelerant #1, take the right risks, we moved to play to your distinctive strengths in Episode 120, to embrace your constraints in Episode 140, and now we are to Episode 160, we are talking about battling our entitlement––the S Curve Killer. In this episode, Whitney will share her current thinking on the process of battling entitlement - discussing what entitlement is, what it can look like in different examples in our lives and what it takes to battle entitlement as we climb our own individual S curves of learning.  Complete transcripts and links available here: https://whitneyjohnson.com/battle-entitlement    

Our guest today is Mark W. Johnson, the co-founder and senior partner of Innosight, a strategy and innovation consulting firm he co-founded with Clayton Christensen in 2000.  Mark's latest book is titled Lead From The Future: How To Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth, and today, we're going to talk about what this means. Because whenever you make the decision to disrupt yourself, you are giving up what you have today for something you could have in the future, and the status quo that you have today, whether it's good or bad, is comfortable. We're more motivated by what we lose than by what we gain, and that's where Mark and his co-author Josh's work comes in. They've developed a process called future back thinking, a process that whether you are an organization or an individual, helps make living the present a little less scary, and the future a lot more hopeful and exciting. For a complete transcript and links from this conversation, visit https://whitneyjohnson.com/mark-johnson

Conflict is everywhere. Even in "normal" times, it's all around us. And it is inherent in the process of climbing an S-curve of learning. There will be challenges, there will be friction. Conflict is a constraint, so what do you do with that conflict? Does it stop you or does it become a tool of creation? Dr. Jen Goldman-Wetzler has an answer. She has the answer. She is the author of the new book, Optimal Outcomes: Free Yourself from Conflict at Work, at Home and in Life, which was recently named as a Financial Times Book of the Month. Show notes and complete transcript available at https://whitneyjohnson.com/podcast

You may decide that you are going to change jobs, move to another country to physically disrupt yourself, hoping to improve your lot. But based on Susan David's 20 years of academic and clinical research, it's how you navigate your inner world, your thoughts, your feelings, and self-talk; how you disrupt your mindset that determines how successful you will be. Her article on Emotional Agility was named the Management Idea of the Year by Harvard Business Review and her book by the same name has been a number one Wall Street Journal bestseller, USA Today bestseller and Amazon Best Book of the Year.  Links and complete transcript: https://whitneyjohnson.com/susan-david

Our brains control almost all of our thoughts, emotions, actions and reactions. For instance, the thought of wanting to get ahead in one’s career originates in the brain. The actions that we take (or do not take) to turn that thought into reality are governed by the brain. But while all brains may be created more or less equal at birth, some people nourish and exercise their brains to make them grow stronger while others do little to grow the brain beyond its natural progression. “To be an agent of disruption, first, we must become its subject, and that starts with understanding how our brains work.” To learn more about how we can tune our brains for peak performance, I invited Dr. Tara Swart to speak with me on the Disrupt Yourself podcast. Tara is highly accomplished; she’s a neuroscientist (Ph.D.), a psychiatric doctor (MD), a senior lecturer at MIT and King’s College London, and an executive advisor to business leaders throughout the world. Now more than ever, we need principles and truths to anchor us. The wonderful news is, that no matter what is happening around us, we have a brain that can forge neural pathways that serve us if we can be deliberate about what we are thinking and doing. Tara Swart’s work will not only help you accomplish your goals and dreams, but her work is also critical in managing through times of stress.