Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

For almost as long as humans have been using coins and dollars to trade and grow, we’ve also been using them as weapons.  It’s almost a magical thing, one thing that can be traded for anything you want. And the people in charge of that currency control the magic. The idea of a common currency is intertwined in just about every facet of our lives, up to the very top on Capitol Hill. It seems natural that someone should be in charge of this huge power. But this is where a cryptocurrency butts in and says, why does anyone have to be in charge? Today we’re going to focus on the practical promise of this emerging tech with Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8. Practical, like two billion unbanked people getting access to a stable bank account. Hut 8 is one of the largest crypto mining operations today, and we’ll hear from Jaime how her background in everything from IBM to Blackberry enabled her to take the lead on this new project.   

We form teams every day. Boarding a plane, figuring out the best place for overhead bags. On the highway, we form impromptu caravans to squeeze through traffic. There are the more formal teams, too, the ones we occupy at work or at home. We’re all teammates. So how can we be better? David Burkus has the answer. The best-selling author of Leading From Anywhere and Friend of a Friend is out with a new book – Best Team Ever, The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams. NASA, Adobe, everyone wants to know what David knows about good teams.

Were we born with our instincts, or were they imprinted on us as at an early age? How do turtles know to lay their eggs in the exact spot they themselves were hatched? It's part of a field called evolutionary psychology -- evolving in ways that influence our behaviors as much as whether or not we walk on two legs. Shade Zahrai is a master of unpacking that hindbrain thinking. Shade is a behavioral strategist and leadership coach, and the founder of Influenceo Global Inc, where she works to strengthen the leadership of companies from Microsoft to McDonalds. With one-point-two million followers on Instagram and almost a million on Youtube, Shade’s bringing her unique take on building confidence and team compatibility to new audiences.  

We start every episode of this show with those words -- the building block of that growth is you. Today, we want to bring our focus back to that philosophy, that change begins with the individual. Every question for our guests, and every show itself, is structured around that core idea.  So we’ve got a special episode – a roundtable discussion of business leaders from around the world, as well as big fans of the podcast. We want to turn the mic back to the individuals listening to us, to hear how they're changing and disrupting. Thank you to Alice Kirk, Gary Stockton, Jane Barratt and Molly Cantrell for joining us on this experimental format.  

A rat learns to cook. A trash compactor learns to love. Two office workers -- who are the monsters under your bed, mind you -- discover a new source of renewable energy. The possibilities at Pixar are infinite. But how do you shoot a movie entirely on computers? And who’s going to make the software for all of this? Ed Catmull took on those questions in the early 70s, inventing many of the early computer techniques that got a 3D image on the big screen. With funding from fellow visionary Steve Jobs, Ed and his team at Pixar did what was impossible just a few decades earlier. In 1995, Toy Story -- the first computer-animated feature film -- was on the big screen. But it wasn’t just money or software that made Pixar into the storytelling, tear-jerking behemoth that it is today. Out this month is an expanded edition of Ed's manual to success, Creativity Inc. In the book and in our conversation, Ed details his careful, cultural maintenance over 40 years at Pixar.

If this show was about medicine, we do a lot of classroom learning. But today we’re going to hear from the equivalent of a front-line Army medic, hitting the ground to get an idea of how all these theories about leadership actually get used.  Sudha Ranganathan is the Director of Product Marketing at LinkedIn. In that role, ecosystems are at the heart of what she does. She creates the conditions that allow these ideas like the s-curve thrive in the ecosystems she builds. From the University of Mumbai, she’s brought her systems-engineer mindset to Singapore, to San Francisco, to companies like Proctor and Gamble and Paypal.

When sales are down and overhead costs are skyrocketing, what’s the instinct? Cut costs, maybe? Fire some folks? Trim down, get leaner? Zeynep Ton says that instinct is shortsighted. It’s outdated. More than just old, it’s a deadly cycle, because cutting costs continues to come at the expense of the foundational unit – the employee. Zeynep is a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Business, and her new book – The Case for Good Jobs – is out next month. By turning almost 40 years of Jack Welch-ian thinking on its head, Zeynep builds the argument that the only way to grow in those crucible moments is to spend more – on the employee. Shortsightedness will kill us, Zeynep says. Nothing beats a good job.

Representation is the basis of our political system. We can’t get everyone’s vote on every issue – folks are busy, and that would take way too much time. So we pick someone we trust. Have you ever represented someone else? It's terrifying. You have to make decisions on behalf of all those people, and those decisions could impact their home, their business, their politics, their whole way of life. But in that way, representation can be one of the highest callings a human can achieve. Our guest today has put the representation of others at the center of her life. Her Royal Highness, Ambassador Reema Bandar is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s representative to the United States. In every conference room and congressional office, she’s speaking for about 38 million people. From a museum curator to a champion of women's rights, the ambassador has learned to center her own voice, and in the process, the voices of millions.

What does it mean to be the only one in the room who knows something is wrong? You're the only one in your company who sees the number they missed. What do you do? Do you speak up? Try this on -- is anything really that bad going to happen if you keep it to yourself? All those little decisions, to sit on some information, or fudge a number, they add up to the tune of about one trillion dollars of fraud a year.  Kelly Richmond Pope is a forensic accountant, a professor at DePaul University and an award-winning documentarian and filmmaker. Her documentary on the not-too-distant world of fraudsters and whistleblowers is called “All The Queen’s Horses,” out on Netflix. And now Kelly is out with a book, "Fool Me Once," diving deep into that same world. She’s covered everyone from Madoff, to Elizabeth Holmes, to the embezzler of a grill from Lowes. We’ll talk about what makes a predator in this world, what makes prey, and how the line isn't as distinct as we'd hope. That's where the third path -- whistleblowing -- comes in.  

It’s said that cliches become cliches for a reason. There’s at least a bit of truth to them. So try this one on - you are your own worst enemy. There’s a reason it gets repeated. Everyone finds a moment where you just can't get out of your own way, no matter how good your intentions are and how strong your will is. So how does the founder and CEO of Positive Intelligence fight back against his own saboteurs? Shirzad Chamine is the mind behind democratizing Positive Intelligence, sometimes abbreviated as PQ. And your PQ score is a test of how strong your mental fitness is -- how you bounce back after something negative. Before his work with Positive Intelligence, Shirzad was CEO of the Coach Training Institute, the biggest coach-training organization in the world. He's a New York Times bestselling author, and an electrical engineer -- which you'll hear informs a lot of his perspective. We'll talk about Shirzad's life, his own worst enemies, and how he learned to be his own best friend.