Disrupt Yourself Quotes

“When you make the decision to start something new, first figure out the jobs you want to do. Then position yourself to play where no one else is playing.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“When you disrupt yourself, you are looking for growth, so if you want to muscle up a curve, you have to push and pull against objects and barriers that would constrain and constrict you. That is how you get stronger.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Disrupting yourself is critical to avoiding stagnation, being overtaken by low-end entrants (i.e., younger, smarter, faster workers), and fast-tracking your personal and career growth.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“people prefer known risks to ambiguity.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“The more closed your network, the more you hear the same ideas over and again, reaffirming what you already believe, while the more open your network, the more exposed you are to new ideas.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“We're all equal before a wave. —Laird Hamilton, professional surfer In 2005, I was working as an equity analyst at Merrill Lynch. When one afternoon I told a close friend that I was going to leave Wall Street, she was dumbfounded. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she asked me. This was her polite, euphemistic way of wondering if I'd lost my mind. My job was to issue buy or sell recommendations on corporate stocks—and I was at the top of my game. I had just returned from Mexico City for an investor day at America Movíl, now the fourth largest wireless operator in the world. As I sat in the audience with hundreds of others, Carlos Slim, the controlling shareholder and one of the world's richest men, quoted my research, referring to me as "La Whitney." I had large financial institutions like Fidelity Investments asking for my financial models, and when I upgraded or downgraded a stock, the stock price would frequently move several percentage points.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“We’re all equal before a wave. —Laird Hamilton, professional surfer”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“It is vital that we are equipped with the humility to understand that changing the world and keeping innovation alive require that we change ourselves.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“So when you’re planning a move, be very clear on what the job is, from the company’s perspective and yours, both functionally and emotionally.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself, With a New Introduction: Master Relentless Change and Speed Up Your Learning Curve

“Pay attention to what’s going right, and you’ll grow faster.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself, With a New Introduction: Master Relentless Change and Speed Up Your Learning Curve

“I often hear it said that failure is not an option. I agree. Not because failure isn't permissible. It is. Failure is inevitable and sometimes even requisite. Poet John Milton said, "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." I think this is also true with success and failure. Just as the mind can make of every success a failure, in every failure there can be a success. As you disrupt yourself and sometimes struggle up the steep slope of a new learning curve, remember that failure may be your companion at times. If you welcome failure as a guide and teacher, you're more likely to find your way to success.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“It has been said by a number of psychologists who study recovery from trauma that mourning without empathy leads to madness. The person who suffers loss must be able to give testimony to someone as a way of working through and learning from this loss. We often think of loss of a marriage or a loved one, but there is also the loss we feel when a professional dream—even a small one—is dashed. Author Sue Monk Kidd said, "There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness." So don't hide your failures, much as you may want to bury them deep in the earth where they will never be seen. Acknowledge them and share them with someone you trust.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“An unusual illustration of this false paradigm comes from a 2009 New York Times article called "The No-Stats All-Star" about Shane Battier, formerly of the NBA championship team Miami Heat. Battier was considered by many inside the NBA as, at best, a replaceable cog in the machine of his team. When you google Battier you get lots of shots of the back of his head, seemingly mucking up the shot as the camera tries to focus on all-stars like Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant. Interestingly, nearly every team he played on had the magical ability to win. When he was on the court, his teammates got better, and his opponents got worse. It was said, "Battier seems to help the team in all sorts of subtle, hard-to-measure ways, with a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. They call him Lego, because when he's on the court, all the pieces fit together."5 Battier's definitive strength of quietly assisting his team wasn't a power position, so despite his amazing talent he wasn't thought of as an "all-star." If you aren't putting points up on the board, racing up the curve, or leaping from one tall curve to the next, by Western cultural norms, you are second best, a polite euphemism for "loser.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Every time you hop down to a new curve, you have the opportunity to recalibrate the metrics by which you gauge yourself. Just as a business moves from the messiness of start-up life to codifying process in order to scale, as you start to identify the metrics that measure what matters to you deeply, you'll be able to lock and load, then barrel up the y-axis of success. I don't know how you'll define success. Mine is best described by paraphrasing Samuel Johnson: the ultimate result of all ambition is to be happy at home. As you look to tip the odds of success in your favor, beware the undertow of the status quo—current stakeholders in your life and career, including family members, may encourage you to just keep doing what you are doing. The metrics you've always used to measure yourself are comfortable, and so are your established habits; performing well on your current path is practically automatic. You can almost convince yourself that staying put is the right thing. But there really is no such thing as "standing still."14 The "use it or lose it" principle applies to our brain cells just as it does to the muscles in our bodies. Neuroplasticity has a reverse function. Connections recede through lack of activation, while continual stimulation of neural pathways keeps them healthy and active, including—and especially—when you step back, down, or sideways.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“One of the most difficult aspects of jumping to a new curve is setting aside your ego. In her essay, "Shedding My Skin," Rebecca Jackson writes, "Have you ever let go of something that simultaneously protects and strangles you; something that both defines you, but also suffocates your evolution? just like a snake shedding its skin, you have to lose something critical to grow, leaving you vulnerable and exposed in the process."7 When we take a step down to gain momentum for an upward surge, for a time we will know less than those around us. This can deal a blow to the ego. In achievement-oriented cultures, it is very difficult to look dumb even temporarily, asking questions like, "Am I doing this correctly?" especially to lower-status team members. MIT professor emeritus Edgar Schein describes a willingness to acknowledge that "in the here-and-now my status is inferior to yours because you know something or can do something that I need in order to accomplish a task or goal" as the art of humble inquiry. For many, this can feel very painful. In fact, in some cultures, says Schein, "task failure is preferable to humiliation and loss of face."8”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Take Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who waged an unsuccessful campaign to regulate the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market. Soon after the Clinton administration asked her to take the reins of the CFTC, a regulatory backwater, she became aware of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, a rapidly expanding and opaque market, which she attempted to regulate. According to a PBS Frontline special: "Her attempts to regulate derivatives ran into fierce resistance from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who prevailed upon Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation." Put more directly by New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brien, "they ... shut her up and shut her down." Mind you, Born was no dummy. She was the first female president of the Stanford Law Review, the first woman to finish at the top of the class, and an expert in commodities and futures. But because a trio of people who were literally en-titled decided they knew what was best for the market, they dismissed her call for regulation, a dismissal that triggered the financial collapse of 2008. To be fair to Greenspan et al., their resistance was not surprising. According to psychologists Hillel Einhorn and Robin Hogarth, "we [as human beings] are prone to search only for confirming evidence, and ignore disconfirming evidence." In the case of Born, it was the '90s, the markets were doing well, and the country was prospering; it's easy to see why the powerful troika rejected her disconfirming views. Throw in the fact that the disconcerting evidence was coming from a "disconfirming" person (i.e., a woman), and they were even more likely to disregard the data. In the aftermath, Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the SEC, said, "If she just would have gotten to know us... maybe it would have gone a different way."12 Born quotes Michael Greenberg, the director of the CFTC under her, as saying, "They say you weren't a team player, but I never saw them issue you a uniform." We like ideas and people that fit into our world-view, but there is tremendous value in finding room for those that don't. According to Paul Carlile and Clayton Christensen, "It is only when an anomaly is identified—an outcome for which a theory can't account that an opportunity to improve theory occurs."13 One of the ways you'll know you are coming up against an anomaly is if you find yourself annoyed, defensive, even dismissive, of a person, or his idea.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“the immigrant population in the United States is a terrific example of how the combination of embracing constraints and being surrounded by a new culture can lead to an explosion of creativity. Immigrants are more than twice as likely to start a business as native-born Americans, and 52 percent of Silicon Valley start-ups include an immigrant. Forty percent of the Fortune 500 companies were founded by first-generation immigrants or their children.7 Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, makes this powerful statement about the importance of avoiding cultural entitlement: "Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n. But, when we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. Unless companies invest in the difficult task of creating new things, they will fail in the future no matter how big their profits are." If you want to keep innovation alive, look for ways to combine something old with something new.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“In 2010, she wrote another bestseller, Unbroken, the story of Louis Zamperini, a U.S. Army Air Corps lieutenant during World War II who crashed at sea and, after forty-seven days aboard a life raft, was captured and tortured by the Japanese.12 "I'm attracted," Hillenbrand says, "to subjects who overcome tremendous suffering and learn to cope emotionally with it." Zamperini himself summed up the secret to Hillenbrand's successful writing career: "because she's suffered so much in life, she was able to put my feelings into words." Every constraint, whether physical or mental, external or internal, can be a catalyst for moving up our learning curve.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Vala Afshar, chief marketing officer of Extreme Networks, is an interesting case study.3 Trained as an electrical engineer, Afshar joined Extreme Networks in 1996 as a software developer/quality service engineer, eventually transitioning to run the services business, becoming the chief customer support officer. In this role, Afshar became very active on Salesforce's Chatter, a private social network for business, and by 2011 had built a large internal following. As the chief information officer took note of Afshar's intracompany influence, he signed Afshar up for Twitter and gave him the mandate to interact with networks outside of the company. As Afshar prototyped his ideas in real time, he gained an external following. A publisher approached him about writing a book; his presentations on Slide-Share gained more than one million views; and he was promoted to chief marketing officer. Vala Afshar has become a thought leader, epitomizing a new breed of chief marketing officer, both highly social and highly technical—and Extreme Networks has unusually high name recognition for a $500 million company. Afshar's ability to shrink the space, getting immediate and actionable feedback, was pivotal in expanding his space into a high-profile public role. Fast feedback is also useful when it comes to identifying your distinctive strengths. Karen May, VP for people development at Google, invented a method she calls "speedback." It works like this: "partway through a training session she will tell everyone to pair off and sit knee to knee, and give them three minutes to answer one simple question: 'What advice would you give me based on the experience you've had with me here?' Participants say that it's some of the best feedback they've ever gotten."4 When we are willing to impose constraints—in this particular, instance, time—we have a better chance of identifying what is working and what needs to be changed.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Faced with the truth that he was not an actor, he wondered, what now? Burroughs eventually made his way toward writing. Because he writes well, he was able to do the job that he had hoped to do as an actor: connect with people. He then explains, "When I chose writing over acting, I didn't give up on a dream, I gave up on my choice of vehicle used to deliver the dream. Dreams are not like spleens, there's not just one per person." Like Burroughs, you may find that your distinctive strengths do not align with the learning curve you are hoping to scale. In which case, you'll want to jump to a curve that is a better fit. There is no shortage of jobs-to-be-done and problems to be solved. But there's only one of you. The right problems are those that you somehow feel called to solve, and are capable of solving, because of your expertise and accumulated life experience. As you consider making the leap to a new learning curve, examine the assets you've acquired, and focus on what you can do that others cannot. Then look for a job that no one else is doing. Just as Darwin's finches developed unique beaks to effectively get access to food, when you recognize and apply your distinctive strengths, you'll quickly move up the pecking order of your personal curve of learning.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“When Jayne Juvan, a partner at the law firm Roetzel & Andress in Cleveland, Ohio, started using social media, very, very few lawyers used these tools. Because her profession is so conservative, many of the attorneys she interacted with didn't see the opportunity. After only a few months of blogging, Crain's Cleveland Business interviewed Juvan on the use of social media by lawyers. In her first year of practice, she landed a client via social media. That was a game changer, because her colleagues began to see her as an owner, not just an employee. When she started to land wins, it became harder to navigate her profession because the legal industry was quite competitive. But, as she shares, "I didn't back off, because I now knew how powerful social media was." Good thing. When she was a third- and fourth-year associate, in 2007 to 2008, the economy collapsed. Her class experienced deep layoffs across the industry, which she sidestepped, in part because of her social media efforts. Most of the accolades she has received can be traced to social media. When she was considered for promotion to partner, the fact that she was being followed by prominent professionals on Twitter bolstered her case in a major way, as the CEO saw the potential of these relationships. According to Catalyst, only 20 percent of partners in law firms are women, and only 16 percent of them have $500,000 worth of business or more.6 Jayne Juvan made partner at age thirty-two, and at thirty-four, her billing reports placed her in the small percentage of women with $500,000-plus of business. Once Juvan had acquired the basic competencies involved in practicing law, social media became her distinctive strength, propelling her into the partnership ranks at her law firm.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Sometimes the strength will be less obvious. Consider Charles Darwin's finches, a subject you may vaguely remember from high school biology class. When Darwin first encountered these birds on the Galapagos Islands, he gathered numerous specimens, not quite realizing what he had discovered. Upon his return, he presented these specimens to the famous English ornithologist John Gould for identification. Gould's analysis revealed that the specimens Darwin had submitted were in fact highly variable. What at first glance were all just "finches" turned out to be twelve different species. There were similarities, but evolution had allowed each to develop a distinctive strength. Each species had a novel beak structure that allowed it to exploit a specific food resource. Some evolved to eat seeds, others fruit, others insects, and others grubs. In business terms, they all had similar core competencies (feathers, wings, feet, beak), but it was a distinctive, seemingly subtle strength—the type of beak—that allowed the finches to effectively compete for a specific type of food.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“When you make the decision to start something new, first figure out the jobs you want to do. Then position yourself to play where no one else is playing. Despite our love affair with the certainty of competitive risk, the natural world, business research, and brain science all tell us that trying something new is less risky and ultimately more satisfying. It's the difference between a friends-and-family lemonade stand that earns a few dollars and one that takes in multiples of that—because customers are truly thirsty for what you know how to do, and because you're the only one serving it up.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“It's better to be treated as a paper airplane than a fighter jet. When you are disrupting, the best possible start-up scenario is to be dismissed, even ignored, just as Blockbuster ignored Netflix—right up until Blockbuster was "netflixed."17 Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a good example of an organization that took on fly-under-the-radar market risk.18 A decade ago, SNHU was a two-thousand-student college with declining enrollment. Instead of trying to increase enrollment by competing for Ivy League-caliber professors at the high end or with government-funded community colleges at the low end, the university chose to play where no one else was playing—online. There was no guarantee that students would be interested in online degree programs. But because SNHU took on market risk, playing where no one else was playing, and there were many students looking for the flexibility provided by online courses, it is now considered the Amazon of education, with thirty-four thousand students enrolled. SNHU is in the process of jumping to yet another growth curve to decrease the cost of a college degree by measuring competencies rather than credits. One student demonstrated all 120 competencies in one hundred days. His associate's degree cost a grand total of $1,250. A good example of taking on market risk in personal, career terms is Amy Jo Martin, founder of Digital Royalty. In 2008, of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on advertising and publicity by the NBA, very little was allocated to social media. Martin saw an unmet need, and leveraged her expertise to persuade the Phoenix Suns to hire her as director of digital media, a first-of-its-kind position within the NBA. Martin's clients have included Shaquille O'Neal, and she has more than a million Twitter followers. Her gig sounds fantastically fun, but at the outset people wondered if it was even a job.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Fortune may favor the brave guppy, but what if you aren't a risk-taker by nature? According to psychologists Tory Higgins and Heidi Grant Halvorson, people can be divided into two personality categories: those who are promotion focused and those who are prevention focused.13 Those whose motivation is promotion focused are comfortable taking chances, like to work quickly, dream big, and think creatively: they are natural risk-takers, focused on maximizing gain. In contrast, people who are prevention focused tend to concentrate on staying safe, work slowly and meticulously, worry what might go wrong if they aren't careful enough, and focus on preserving what they have. So for the risk averse who are trying to convince themselves to try something new, the trick is not to focus on what will be gained by venturing forth, but to instead focus on what might be lost by standing still. For example, if I'm a really prevention-focused person thinking about asking for a promotion, I shouldn't try to psych myself up for it by imagining all the accolades I might win or the new projects I might take on. I should focus on what I might miss out on—the great projects I might not get assigned to, or the money I'm leaving on the table.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Nature Favors Risk Takers Starting something new means taking a risk. But in our society, the word "risk" has assumed mostly negative connotations. When someone tells us "that's risky," most of us have a visceral, fearful reaction. But Mother Nature seems to have built a loophole into our sense of well-being, because embedded somewhere within the human genetic makeup is an inclination to take risks. Of course, in order for evolution and natural selection to favor risk-taking as a behavior there has to be a benefit, and that benefit has to outweigh the outcome of doing nothing. Many examples from the animal kingdom support this hypothesis. According to research by Dr. Lee Alan Dugatkin, who was trying to understand a continuum of risk-taking, fish willing to take risks were likely to mate better.11 Guppies, for example, engage in what is known as predator inspection behavior. Predator inspection is akin to guard duty. A few fish break away from the group and slowly approach the predator to obtain information. In taking risks in the presence of a predator, a guppy is more likely to get eaten, but a male guppy that takes this risk is more attractive as a mate to females.12 The bolder guppies are also better at learning.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“Developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962, the S-curve model is an attempt to understand how, why, and at what rate ideas and products spread throughout cultures. Adoption is relatively slow at first, at the base of the S, until a tipping point, or knee of the curve, is reached. You then move into hypergrowth, up the sleek, steep back of the curve. This is usually at somewhere between 10 to 15 percent of market penetration. At the flat part at the top of the S, you've reached saturation, typically at 90 percent.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“While he was in school, we needed to pay our bills. I had to get a job. I'd majored in music (piano). I had no business credentials, connections, or confidence, so I started as a secretary to a retail sales broker at Smith Barney in midtown Manhattan. It was the era of Liar's Poker, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Working Girl. Working on Wall Street was exciting. I started taking business courses at night and I had a boss who believed in me, which allowed me to bridge from secretary to investment banker. This rarely happens. Later I became an equity research analyst and subsequently cofounded the investment firm Rose Park Advisors with Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School. When I walked onto Wall Street through the secretarial side door, and then walked off Wall Street to become an entrepreneur, I was a disruptor. "Disruptive innovation" is a term coined by Christensen to describe an innovation at the low end of the market that eventually upends an industry. In my case, I had started at the bottom and climbed to the top—now I wanted to upend my own career. No wonder my friend thought I'd lost my sanity. According to Christensen's theory, disruptors secure their initial foothold at the low end of the market, offering inferior, low-margin products. At first, the disrupter's position is weak. For example, when Toyota entered the U.S. market in the 1950s, it introduced the Corona, a small, cheap, no-frills car that appealed to first-time car buyers on a tight budget.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“a leading predictor of C-suite success is insatiable curiosity and a willingness to learn.4 This learning agility includes learning to adjust the metrics by which you measure your progress.”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work

“When you are driven by discovery, you take a step forward, gather feedback, and adapt. In”
― Whitney Johnson, Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work