The Science of Personal Growth
with Disruption Expert Whitney Johnson
Where are you on your growth curve?
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa Kay Solomon talks with bestselling author and disruption expert Whitney Johnson about when and how to change your path, stick with something new, or challenge yourself.
Drawing on Clayton Christensen's theory of disruption, Whitney shares how embracing change can unlock personal growth and new opportunities.
Together, Lisa and Whitney explore the S Curve of Learning, why feeling like an imposter is often a sign you're growing, the power of reaching out to people who inspire you, and the relationship between stability and disruption.
In this conversation, we cover:
Why personal disruption is the key to continued growth.
Why learning often feels uncomfortable before it feels rewarding
How understanding the "S Curve" can help us recognize where we are in our own development
A preview of Whitney’s upcoming book, Steady
Along the way, they share stories about taking risks, reaching out to mentors, and why one well-crafted email can change the course of your career.
Whether you're starting something new, considering your next career move, or simply feeling ready for another season of growth, this conversation offers practical frameworks—and plenty of encouragement—for embracing what's next.
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Whitney Johnson: What are you doing when you're disrupting yourself? You're building new neural pathways. You're choosing; you're using your agency to rewire your brain. With personal disruption, the reason it's the hardest kind of disruption to do is because you are disrupting you.
Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow, starting today.
This season on How We Future, we're exploring big ideas that can change the way we think about work, leadership, and the future. Today's big idea is disruption. I'm thrilled to be joined by bestselling author and CEO of Disruption Advisors, Whitney Johnson, whose work builds on Clayton Christensen's groundbreaking theory of disruption and innovation.
In this conversation, we explore why growth often feels uncomfortable, how Whitney's S-curve can help us navigate change, and why becoming more human may be the most important skill in an AI-driven world. As you're listening, I'd love to hear from you. Where are you on your own growth journey? Are you just starting something new, finding your stride, or are you ready to take on the next challenge? Leave a comment. We'd love to continue the conversation. Let's get into it with Whitney Johnson.
Whitney, this season, we're talking about big ideas. The idea that we can intentionally invest in our own growth and even, as you say, disrupt ourselves, I think it's a really big deal that can help us have tremendous opportunity, but we're not often taught how to do it. Anyway, all to say, I'm so excited for us to talk. Maybe we'll get started with, how did you discover this idea that we could disrupt ourselves?
Whitney: It started with I was working on Wall Street as an equity analyst, and I came across Clayton Christensen's work. This is back in the early 2000s, so over 20 years ago. I was covering emerging markets, telecom, and media. At that point in time, wireless telecom was growing like gangbusters, wireline wasn't, and for a variety of reasons in the emerging markets.
I came across Clayton's work, The Innovator's Dilemma, and realized that this was an explanatory mechanism: that this silly little thing of wireless, even though the sound quality wasn't as good, et cetera, it was disrupting wireline because you didn't have to have credit. Sound quality, it wasn't great, but it was better than no sound and no conversation at all.
As I started to look at his work and how it applied to products, I found myself-- Maybe this is just something I do intuitively. I'm not going to say maybe. I've learned, in fact, I do it intuitively. I looked at his work, and I said, "Wait a second. I am talking to my manager here on Wall Street and saying, 'I would like to do something else.'" They said to me, "We like you right where you are." I said, "I am now understanding the theory of disruption. If I want to do what I feel like I'm meant to do in life," which was only a very vague notion, "maybe I need to disrupt myself."
I started applying this theory of products and services to me as an individual. That's where this idea of disrupting myself came in. Over time, started really studying that. I ended up working with Clayton, starting a fund, and investing with him alongside with his son. During that period of time, then I wrote the article "Disrupt Yourself" in Harvard Business Review and just have now built a body of work around this idea of personal disruption.
Lisa: First of all, I think the fact, and there's a lesson right there, this idea that you're in a place, you're doing some work that's known, you get an idea for something that's different, you bring it back to the people that you're working with and you're excited about it and they basically say, "No, we want you where you are." The fortitude to say, "Wait a minute, I'm not going to stay here," because it's what you know, and now what I know, "I'm going to continue to learn, stretch, and find another way."
I actually want to hear the story how you got to actually meet Clayton Christensen because personally, I love reaching out to stretch people. People that inspire you, that is one of my favorite things to do because it leads to so many great conversations, relationships, and opportunities. For those that don't know, Clayton Christensen really is the godfather of innovation and disruption. The fact that you got to work so closely with him, learn with him, and then do something new with him, build a fund, I just find endlessly exciting.
Whitney: I'll tell you my story, and then I want to hear one of your stretch stories because now I find myself intrigued. I was sitting in church. This was, again, 2003. It was a big church gathering up in Boston. He was one of the speakers. I heard him speak and I was absolutely gobsmacked. I'm like, "Who is this guy?" I didn't actually know anything about his academic credentials.
For those who don't know, he was 6-foot-8. He was this giant of a man, this consummate storyteller, but this rigorous intellect behind that. I heard him speak and I was just like, "Wow." I bought his books, I started reading them, and I went to this seminar in Washington, DC, where he was talking about telecom. I thought, "This is so interesting." Then this is when I cold-called him.
I actually think we were living in Boston at this point, but I sent him an email. I sent him my research report that I'd written, this really big research report on América Móvil, which is disrupting wireless, or wireless disrupting wireline. I sent it to him, and I just said, "Hey, I wanted you to know, here's my work." That was the first introduction. Then it turned out that there was-- In our particular faith, everything's volunteer. He was one of the heads of public affairs for our faith in the greater Boston area. I ended up working on a committee where he was there.
I think saying I stopped him might be a little bit strong, but I will say there clearly was an intentionality that I wanted to be able to work with him.
Lisa: I am so happy to know this story. It's always been a mystery to me how you first met. Dare I say, Whitney, when I hear you tell it, it's like you were really leading like a futurist. You're like, "Wait a minute, I don't exactly know how this is going to play out, but I have a calling. I have a pull. I've heard something that stirred something new in me. I want to follow it."
Again, maybe it's not like, "I know exactly how this is going to work out. We're going to start a fund, and then I'm going to write a book." This idea of I want to be closer to this influence that made me feel something. The idea that the direction was right, but you didn't exactly know what the steps were. You followed that hunch. You thought, "How do I authentically both signal that I really understand and I'm deeply moved by what he was sharing," and that you brought something to the conversation, to the relationship that allowed him to say, "Wait a minute, I'm getting to know you too."
Oh my gosh, that is so valuable for people to realize. You can create something from nothing if you have an approach that's steeped in curiosity, connection, generosity. That's so much of what we're trying to do in the series of conversations we're hosting, which is to say this doesn't have to be a mystery or for a chosen few. There are approaches that you can learn how to do. They're not always going to work. They may not always lead to being a Thinkers50 bestselling author like you have, but that moment was so critical to really recognize you could have just been like, "That was great day at church. What's next?" You didn't.
Whitney: Exactly. It is interesting. I think, Lisa, you point out something really important because I think about this sometimes is when there is this stretch piece, and I do want to hear your story, I'm not letting you off the hook, when there's that stretch piece, is asking ourselves why we're reaching out to that person and also our spidey sense of why they might be reaching out to us because sometimes when people are powerful, they draw people to them. There's this magnetism, right?
Why are we reaching out to them? Is it just because they're powerful and we want to be around a powerful person, or are we reaching out to them because there is something about who they are in terms of their humanity, or is there something about their ideas that you think, "I need this. For me to become a more whole person, for me to be able to accomplish what I feel like I'm meant to accomplish, there's something about what they're doing." The ability to articulate that for them or to them, I think, becomes powerful, and people can pick up on that.
Lisa: That authenticity and taking the time. I totally agree with that. Then you also realize most people want to help other people in some way. Then your opportunity as the person that wants to reach out is to make it easy for them to help you. Earlier we had our chair colleague, Tina Seelig, about her new book "What I Wish I Knew About Luck." One of her takeaways is that make your request specific so that people can actually know the best way to help you in a focused way that's not, "Can I have coffee for X amount of time?" Something vague and general, like, "Hey, I'm looking for this. I'm excited about Y. I want to talk to you about Z. Can we meet to talk about it?"
Now everybody has some clear boundaries, so now you can spend the energy and explore creatively as opposed to roaming in the dark a bit.
Whitney: That goes back to that piece of then people know, "Oh, you're reaching out to me specifically because you specifically have the expertise that I'm looking for, not you random person who are powerful," which I think is really important. I want to hear your stretch story.
Lisa: Oh my God. I have so many stretch-- You're making me think I'm going to make a list of like-- I'm a huge fan of the well-crafted cold email or LinkedIn. Years ago, I used to teach a class at Stanford called Networking by Design to teach this very skill set and this idea that networking is not transactional, but it's actually building relationships authentically. I think it is one of the most generative, innovative things you can learn to do because you can reach out to different perspectives. They can spark new ideas. You can test ideas quickly if people respond, and you can share them. It's also a resilient move. When you're out of options, you're like, "How do I learn from somebody else?"
I think strategically, it is foundational for people to learn how to build relationships. Without oversimplifying, I do think that social media, in part, has lulled some of our emerging leaders in thinking that if they have a lot of followers, they have a big network. Having a robust network of people that are willing to engage with you, as you said, build a relationship, is very different than a large following. I didn't mean to hop on the soapbox, but there you go.
Whitney: I want to add one more thing to what you just said, which I think is really important, is that that willingness to do the stretch is there is something about it puts you in a place of recognizing where you might have self-limiting beliefs or not. It also becomes an opportunity for you to grow as a human being, so this idea of growth. A couple of years ago, probably five years ago, I was talking to some friends, and I said, "I really want to interview Ed Catmull on my podcast.
Maybe you even have had him on your podcast. He was a founder of Pixar. He wrote the book Creativity Inc. It's a brilliant book. I said to my friends, "Oh, but he won't do it." They said to me, "How do you know? Have you asked him?" "No." At that very moment, they, of course, dared me to reach out and ask him. Guess what? The generous person that he is, he said yes.
Lisa: Incredible. Ed Catmull is one of my inspiration heroes, too. Creativity Inc. is one of the best business books, best biography books. It is fascinating. I love how in that book, he goes into talking about some of the struggles that they had. He's very honest. It's incredible. All right. Let me get to the stretch story. A number of years ago, maybe eight, nine years ago, I was in our local independent bookstore called Kepler's in Menlo Park. It's next to a cafe. It is textbook perfect of an independent, community-oriented store.
Anyway, I'm looking for inspiration. I'm getting deeper into the craft of teaching innovation and helping students take risks because I'm really going deep on improv as a practice. I notice this tiny little book called Do Improv, right there, basically inviting me to buy it, by a guy named Rob Poynton. I buy the book. It was just before President's Weekend. We were going up with our kids to go skiing. I do not ski. I had a lot of time on my hands, so I read the entire book cover to cover in like a day and a half. I was like, "This is giving me a whole new vocabulary to understand improv as a leadership skill. I must meet Rob Poynton."
Sure enough, I track him down, I send him a note, and basically said how much I love the book, how much it resonated with me, like you sending your research report, a little bit of my background, "Can we set up a conversation?" Long story short, he gets back to me. It takes us maybe two months to set up a conversation because he was working on an organic olive farm in rural Spain, and he didn't have great internet access.
We ended up having a conversation. We then end up collaborating. He ends up flying to the Bay Area from Spain. I set up a whole week for him where we visited Stanford. We visited CCA, where I was teaching. We had a whole event with him, where I brought in another author. I just created all this opportunity for him to learn and for him to participate. It was fabulous. Then a couple years later, he invited me to go to Oxford, where he was teaching, to teach in his leadership program. It was all because of that same kind of thing. I read a book, it inspired me, I reached out with an email that suggested how much I really appreciated what he did and why, to your point, I wanted to make that connection.
Whitney: What a great story. I've heard him speak. Coincidentally, it was in Turkey, like six or seven years ago.
Lisa: Oh.
Whitney: Anyway, very fun. That's a fantastic story. When I hear you share that story, it makes me think of what would have not happened had you not sent that email.
Lisa: Right. Nothing. What did I lose by taking that chance? Maybe like, oh, I spent an hour working on an email, probably more. I spent so much time working on these emails, just to really make sure. I also think our younger friends don't always realize how much care and attention you can put into, particularly that initial invitation to build a relationship. You're right, nothing to lose if it's done well.
Whitney: I would say even more so. I remember having a friend tell me-- Actually, a friend, my therapist, tell me years ago. I had written a letter to actually Peggy Noonan because I thought when she wrote that book, What I Saw at the White House or something-- I don't think that's the right title.
Anyway, she didn't answer me back, but what my therapist has said, and I think this goes, and I think it's really interesting, she said, "It doesn't matter whether they answer you back or not because the mere fact that you wrote that letter, it's doing a couple of things. Number one, it's you expressing gratitude, and gratitude's a good place to be. Number two, when you're writing that letter to that person, there is a piece of you that is being called forth by your wanting to connect to them, and your naming it, and that's starting to unfold in a way that it wouldn't have if you hadn't written the letter," which I thought was really interesting.
There's our psychological perspective on why to write the letter, even if they never answer.
Lisa: Again, I think at the end of the day, and this is a big theme that keeps coming up-- I think it's worth noting that you and I also contributed chapters to a forthcoming book coming up called Leading for Tomorrow. A huge theme of that book is human-centered leadership. I think what you're talking about is that even amidst all of the change we're experiencing, learning how to connect at the individual level is so foundational, and that's never going to be disrupted.
I don't care how strong these models get, and that we have these relationships with bots and all the rest, connecting at that human level and the way that you described it, to me, it's really helping people feel seen, feel honored, feel appreciated at the most foundational level. That is going to be enduring no matter what. That ability to feel gratitude, I think, is a resilient skill as well. You're probably like, even if they don't come back, you feel alive, and you are sharing how somebody made an impact on you.
Can I share one more thing? I teach a class at the d.school now called View from the Future, where every week we bring in a guest who is on the edge of their field to help our students understand where these industries are going so that they can think about jobs of the future as opposed to careers of the past. The one assignment that is non-negotiable is that they have to write two handwritten thank-you notes to at least two of the guests that come in.
They have to be handwritten because I really want them to take their time, and they have to be personal in that way. It's just great for everybody. It's great for the student, giving them a boundary and a scaffold to be appreciative. It's amazing for the guest who is coming in. We're not paying them. They get this package at the end of the quarter that's a surprise to them about how they've impacted. It's one of my favorite things too.
Whitney: It's brilliant, Lisa. Every professor should do that who have guests come in because that is so valuable. They're already willing to volunteer their time, but getting that "Here's how you made an impact." Back to what you were saying a minute ago, with technology, that human humaneness is going to become even more valuable, even more precious.
Lisa: Whitney, I want to talk about a big theme of your work, of course, since getting inspired by Clayton Christensen and how you've taken it in just such extraordinary ways, this idea of personal disruption. Disruption is one of those words that I think, like innovation, like design, means lots of things to lots of people. Can you define disruption for us, particularly through the lens of a personal application?
Whitney: Sure. Let's start with a basic definition of what do we mean when we say a disruptive innovation. The way that Clayton described it at a very simple, high level is it is a silly little thing that takes over the world. You might have had the telephone take over the telegraph. You had the automobile, which initially was a very silly little thing, take over the horse and buggy. You had Netflix disrupt Blockbuster. Now you have AI. I don't know that you would call it silly, but it is taking over everything.
If you think about it from that standpoint, from a product or service, you saw Singapore; it was a very disruptive country, et cetera, the idea of personal disruption is very different because with personal disruption, you're the disruptor and you're the incumbent. You're the silly little thing, and you take over the world because what are you doing when you're disrupting yourself? You're building new neural pathways. You're choosing, you're using your agency to rewire your brain. With personal disruption, the reason it's the hardest kind of disruption to do is because you are disrupting you with personal disruption.
Lisa: Wow. I never thought of it that way, that you are both the disruptor and the incumbent. I imagine the incumbent feels pretty safe. They don't want to be disrupted in some ways. They do, but they don't. How do you navigate?
Whitney: Sometimes I'll say to people, "The price of a new and better self is your old self." It's like that incumbent self that you need to topple and that willingness to do it. There are all sorts of paradoxes with this because on the one hand, like you said, we want to disrupt ourselves. We want to grow. Maybe this is a good time for me to talk briefly about the S-curve and how I've reimagined that as well.
Back to what I said earlier, I took the theory of disruption, sort of the management theory, and I said, let's apply it to the individual. Another thing that I did in working with Clayton is that we were using the S-curve. That's been around for decades. It was popularized by Everett Rogers. That looked at how do groups change over time. We looked at how quickly an innovation would be adopted.
For me, I started to think, I'm pretty sure, I had this hypothesis that we can use the S-curve to understand what growth looks like and what it feels like. Basically, what you've got with the S-curve of growth for an individual is you've got three major parts: a launch point, a sweet spot, and mastery. You've got on the Y-axis, up and down, and then you've got the X-axis of time. It's like a big S, which goes launch point, sweet spot, mastery.
When you start something new, and you're at the launch point of an S-curve, what happens? Your brain is running a predictive model, has a hypothesis about what is it going to take for me to go from the bottom of this curve to the top. Well, at the launch point of that S-curve, most of your predictions are inaccurate. Most of them are wrong. Dopamine, the chemical messenger of delight, it de-delights or drops.
The feelings you have when you're doing this new thing is you're thrilled that you're doing it, but now once you start trying to actually move, you're going to feel overwhelmed, you're going to feel afraid, terrified, impatient, like an imposter, "I thought it was a good idea to do this new thing and now I'm not so sure," which is why it's hard to start new things. What's interesting is at the launch point, mathematically, growth is actually at its absolute fastest, but because you can't see it, it feels slow. The launch point of that S-curve is growth is fast, but it feels slow.
If you persevere and you stay with it, you're going to tip into the sweet spot that Malcolm Gladwell popularized. What happens here? Now you're running your predictive model, but your predictions are increasingly accurate. Dopamine now is going to spike. You're going to have these emotional upside surprises. Growth is fast here. It feels fast, and you start to feel really exhilarated, like, "This is so fun. I love this."
Then there's mastery. This gets to the disruption piece. What happens in mastery? In mastery-- When I say mastery, I don't mean that you're the world's foremost expert in something. It just means I did what I came to do. Maybe I wanted to learn five songs on the ukulele. Maybe I wanted to graduate from college, whatever that is, but I did what I came to do. Here you're getting a little bit of dopamine, but you're not getting a lot because growth is, in fact, slow.
You've got slow, then fast, and then slow, but here now you have a dilemma because on the one hand, you like being master of all that you survey. You like being really good at something. You like the fact that you're a senior in college and you're like, "I've got this college thing down." You like that. On the other hand, your brain needs more dopamine. On the other hand, you know instinctively that if you stay here for too long, you'll stop growing and you'll start dying. You know that your plateau will quickly become a precipice if you stay here.
Our bodies were wired to want to disrupt themselves. You make the decision: I am going to disrupt myself so that I can continue to grow, so I can go to a new S-curve. Now, the other thing that I will say is that even though this is true, sometimes we are just so comfortable staying where we are because we like those thick neural pathways and those comfortable routines. Things happen around us that disrupt us, and then we get the opportunity: what do I want to do with this? I just got disrupted. Do I want to stay here and throw a tantrum, or am I going to now disrupt myself, change, and adapt so that I can move through this disruption with a sense of agency? That's how all those pieces fit together.
Lisa: I feel like you just described the last 30 years of my career. Thank you so much. I appreciate the science behind it. I can definitely relate to when I'm feeling like I'm in a groove, the dopamine has drifted a bit. I am such a aggressive learner. I love learning new things, and I love extending that when I could really give a speech on the same thing, I'm like, "No, what's the next thing?"
I think that is incredibly enlightening to understand that and to see that there's a pattern. To your point, that there's a way of understanding this so that we're not individualizing it. I think sometimes we can feel so lonely when we're going through something, and we don't understand the larger map of where we are, where we want to be, and exploration. I imagine it's very comforting to leaders to work with you to feel like there's a path forward.
Whitney: Yes, it does. The normalizing is exactly what happens. It normalizes in the sense of when you're working with a leader, and they say, "I love my manager, and I love this company, but I'm feeling restless, and I'm feeling a little bit bored." Then they can say, "You're not pathologizing it some way. It's just that your brain's saying, 'Please give me more dopamine. I need to do something new.'"
At the same time, when people are doing that new thing, and they're feeling completely like, "Oh, what am I doing?" It allows them to say, "All right. It is true that I may not eventually be good at this. I acknowledge that, but probably the only thing that I know right now is that I just am at the launch point of the curve and it feels lousy." What's important, now you work with a lot of college students, so they're still in this place of doing lots of new things, this muscle of disrupting ourselves, it can get very flaccid as we get older because we can create our conditions where we never do new things.
We eat the same food. We go to the same places. We go on the same trips. We interact with the same people. We don't push ourselves to new things. Now you said you need this. You've trained yourself to need this because you've built the neural pathways that say, "Give me more dopamine," but a lot of people don't. That's one of the reasons why, when people retire, they get old because they're not doing new things.
Lisa: I think it's so important to be framing learning as a source of growth, as a source of fuel to keep us engaged and vibrant. That's such a beautiful way of framing. The way that you talked about also how sometimes we get comfortable in what we know, it reminds me, going back to improv, one of my favorite quotes that I learned in my own deep dive into improv from Keith Johnstone, who wrote the book Impro, one of the early teachers of improvisation as a way of being in the world, not just performing.
He says, "The people that say yes are rewarded by the adventures that they have, and the people that say no are rewarded by the safety they obtain. There are more people that say no than yes, but we can learn." I think what you're doing is helping people nudge their way into the yes of the adventure of learning, even if it's uncomfortable.
Whitney: That was beautifully said. The S-curve is meant to nudge people in the direction that they actually truly want to go, because I believe that we are wired to grow. Something I've thought about a lot is none of us have ever met a two-year-old anywhere on the planet of the billions and billions and trillions of people that have been born that didn't want to walk. They all want to go from crawling to walking. We are hardwired to do it, but then we build up this thing that we get afraid because we get knocked around a little bit. Yes, this is what this tool or this framework is meant to do, to do exactly what you just said, to nudge people to do the thing that we actually really truly want to do.
Lisa: I'm curious, Whitney, if you've seen certain traits or characteristics of leaders that are more comfortable taking that leap to disrupt themselves. Here I'm curious, too, going back to Clayton Christensen, when I read his Innovator's DNA work, which was a little bit more around the personal traits that innovators had that might have been different than those that might be more comfortable in a managerial role-- Innovators are unique in that they are a bit more comfortable bringing something new to the world, or they feel like that there's a quest or question that's pulling them forward.
That was some of the most enlightening work that I had seen. This idea that innovators observe, question, experiment, associate, and build relationships, that was very eye-opening. In fact, when I first started teaching at CCA, I would have my students do their own individual assessment on where they were with the Innovator's DNA as a sort of before-and-after. I'm sort of leading here with the question, but I'm curious if you've seen patterns of leaders that are more comfortable taking that leap, even when often they're in very successful places. It's a hard perch to leave from if they're feeling comfortable.
Whitney: It's interesting. I have not done a deep dive study like you have. Let me just say that up front. What I will say is that sometimes I think there are some personality types that are more prone to doing new things. I'm a big student of the Enneagram, so I do think that you do see some of that. I would say, and my hypothesis would be, given the study that you've done-- Actually, I'm just going to speak from an N-of-1 for me right now.
I think that the people who I personally feel continually driven to make progress and to improve, so for me, it's about the only way I'm going to make progress and improve is by doing new things. I think there are going to be some people who are driven by they want a challenge because they need to feel challenged to feel alive. Some people are going to want to do new things because they feel they need to do new things to feel alive. I do think there's some personality piece, but in general, I think that anybody, any person who wants to make progress in their life is going to find ways to disrupt themselves regardless of their personality type.
Lisa: A gift I think you've given them is a language for it rather than they're just, "What's wrong with you? Why do you keep moving?" You're like, "Oh, no, this is natural for me to want to keep growing," and the S-curve. Again, going back to this idea that the S-curve gives us a language and a framework for understanding that.
I wonder, Whitney, in this moment where it feels like a new technology model is coming out every day that is disrupting us, what have you seen in terms of the velocity of how people need to continue to upscale or to push themselves, perhaps even before they're really ready for it? What advice do you have for people that find themselves needing to disrupt before they got to that maybe psychologically comfortable place that it was on their own volition?
Whitney: It's interesting. Thank you very much, AI, because it's made our work even more relevant than ever. Where people are reaching out to us is to manage the whole human side of this disruption that's happening. More often than not, the conversations that we're having with people are, "Let me share with you this framework so that you understand what it looks like and, more importantly, what growth feels like, what this change feels like."
As Dr. Dan Siegel said, when you can name something, you can tame it. As people can start to name, "Okay, this is exhilarating," or "This is terrifying," then it allows their brains to stop focusing on the threat response, frees up cognitive capacity so that their executive functioning skills can kick in, and they can start to problem-solve.
What I would say that the work that we're doing right now is really giving people a way to navigate this change so that they can regain their sense of agency and then they'll figure out what to do with all the change, because every person's going to do it differently because they have different needs and different things that they're trying to get done in their lives, but the important piece is at any given moment, we feel a sense of agency.
One of the things that the S-curve and the idea of personal disruption does is they help a person feel their agency so that they can then figure out how they're going to move.
Lisa: Again, you're really speaking to why we started this podcast, is to help people understand that there are models out there, experts like you, researchers, that are really thinking about how we hold onto the power and the influence that we do have, whether it's over ourselves or over the relationships we build or the ideas we bring to life.
I really appreciate your focus on the feeling part of change. Sometimes we intellectualize what's happening, and we don't give ourselves time to be like, "This feels scary. I feel overwhelmed."
An earlier conversation we had was with my colleague, Scott Doorley, who is the creative director of the d.school. He talks about, "We need classes in change literacy. Not just tech literacy, but change literacy because it's not predictable. It's not linear." Sometimes I say to my students who feel overwhelmed by it, I was like, "Thank God you're not a robot. You're not an algorithm. You have emotions. Those are real. There's data in that. How do you learn from yourself?"
I would love to get your thoughts on "I feel very lucky that I work with young people that are often just going into their first jobs or starting their career." What advice do you have particularly for young people on what will probably be a lifetime of S-curves?
Whitney: It's interesting because my husband's a college professor and we work with a lot of students in this age. Two things I would say. Number one, we have this amazing, wonderful, magnificent technology. I want you to learn how to use it, use it well, and use it wisely. I want you to do all of that in service of you as a human being, a marvelous human being that has a heart, that has a soul, that has agency, that has a sense of calling, that has a sense of mission.
The people that I meet that are in their 20s or late teens and early 20s, I meet so many remarkable people. I'm sure you do as well. The more that you can use AI to help you become more human, the better off we're going to be on this planet. I think that while on the one hand there's upendedness that people are experiencing disruption, I also believe that there's equal and opposite reactions. At the same time, as much challenge as there is, there's as much good. You are the generation that gets to help bring that about. That would be my thoughts for you.
Lisa: Oh my gosh. I love that. It's both an aspiration and an invitation. That's what I got in there. My hope is that as technology continues to be a part of our lives, you never lose your humanity, and the invitation is to learn how to think about technology in service of it. I think that's just so beautiful. I'm ready for you to give our graduation speech.
I know, Whitney, you've been working on a new book. Do you want to give us a little sneak peek of what you've been working on?
Whitney: I do. I had this question that was posed to me probably close to a decade ago, and it really stuck for me, which is, "So, Whitney, is it all disruption all the time?" I said, "No, of course not. Of course it isn't." I didn't have an answer other than, of course there isn't, and I bristled. That started me really exploring and wondering. This next book that I am coming out with it's being released next year. Right now it's with beta readers, so it's still very much new. It's titled Steady: The Power of Stability in a Disrupted World.
What I have done is I've said, "I know I've been preaching the gospel of disruption for 15 years, but you cannot have transformation if you only have disruption." Only disruption devolves into chaos. If you want transformation, you have to have disruption, and you need stability, and they are corresponding powers. We preference disruption. We lionize disruption. This book is meant to say, how do you stabilize as a leader? How do you identify the people who are willing to do that stabilizing work?
Then the book ends, and I hinted at this just a moment ago: while it seems like everything's going on in the world, if you look, you will see that it's probably at least 80% stable and 20% disrupted. If you're willing to focus your attention, you will see that the world is far more stable than it feels.
Lisa: What a gift that book will be, and what an important message. It is hard to operate in a moment where you feel like you're constantly out of balance. Nobody does their best work that way. This reminder that actually we live in both, that we can be stable and we can grow and we can look for an opportunity to change, I think is just absolutely valuable and doesn't get talked about enough.
Even when I teach futures, a lot of people think, "Oh, the future is totally unpredictable. We don't know what's going to happen." I think there's actually a lot that's knowable. There's a lot that's steady. I know a year from now I'm going to be a year older. I know I'm going to want to have relationships and meaningful moments. I know I'm going to want to eat food that not only provides calories for my body, but gives me nourishment.
There's actually a lot that we can know. We can't necessarily predict everything, but this idea that stability can be a source of strength and that we need it, I think, is such a valuable message. The other thing that I hear in what you're sharing, Whitney, is this idea of we have to navigate the tension of steadiness and disruption. That's not a problem to solve. That's something to manage. That starts with us. I just think, again, such a critical message that we're not taught, on how to navigate for ourselves, let alone our teams and our organizations.
Oh, that is so exciting. What has been a surprise that you have found in the research or working on this book?
Whitney: Two things. I want to come back to your comment about future because a thought occurred to me on that. I think the surprise has been, for me, is that this was surprisingly hard to write.
Lisa: Oh, interesting.
Whitney: Surprising. It's taken me a long time to write this book because I needed to get to the point where I've bought into the lopsided view of disruption is more important than stability, so how did I shift my own thinking and my own view and talk about stability as a corresponding power and not othering it or not putting it on a pedestal? "Oh, it's so nice," but not really believing it.
I think that was the surprise for me of how difficult this was and how much I needed to change internally to actually write the book that I felt needed to be written. That's the surprise. The other thing, too, though, I think is really interesting about what you said about the future. You probably already do this, but I write a letter from my future self at least once a year.
You know what I think is interesting about that is that's a lot easier in some ways in setting a goal because your future self actually can stabilize you because if your future self says, "Thank you so much for spending time with your family. Thank you so much for exercising. I'm healthier because you did," there's all sorts of psychology stuff in that. Your future self can actually stabilize your present self, which I think is beautiful.
Lisa: I love that. I have had my students write a letter to their future selves about how they got an A in the class. One of the reasons why I have them do is, like you said, I want them to visualize success. I want them to be successful. The other, secretly, is I don't want them complaining to me that they got an A-minus. If they establish their goals and they say, "I showed up to class on time, I did all the reading, and I engaged," and then halfway in class I've noticed they're coming in late, they're not really engaged, I'll say to them, instead of me being like the homeroom murmurer-- These are young adults. I say, "Go read your letter. How are you doing? If there's an opportunity, go read your letter."
I love that. For our friends listening, I hope it's still around; futureme.org is an electronic version of doing exactly what you just said. You can set a date in the future. You can write a letter. It gets sent to your email. Even though you know your past self did it, your future self is surprised, like, "Oh, look at this letter that came from me. This is amazing."
I love that it's a discipline that you do because increasingly, I think with all the speed, the far out future can feel harder and harder to imagine, but if we chunk it up and we break it down, and that's really, again, a gift of your work, is to give people models and practices so that it doesn't feel so daunting, it can just be extraordinary, a way of growing ourselves and growing value that we can create in the world.
Whitney, thank you so much for being with us. I'm such a fan of your work. I'm so grateful that you are carrying the legacy of Clayton Christensen and helping us all get access to it in individual ways to make us enjoy these growth moments more. We really appreciate it.
Whitney: Oh, Lisa, thank you. This was really, really fun. Thank you for having me.
Lisa: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of How We Future. If this conversation resonated with you, here's something to try. Think of one small way you can disrupt yourself this week. Maybe it's starting something you've been putting off, writing a letter from your future self, or sending a thoughtful email to someone whose work has inspired you. As Whitney reminds us, growth often begins with one intentional step.
If you try one of those ideas, we'd love to hear about it. Leave a comment and tell us how you're disrupting yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's ready for their next S-curve. We'll see you next time on How We Future.
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Links from the episode:
About Clayton Christensen
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
The Innovator's DNA by Clayton Christensen, Jeff Dyer & Hal Gregersen
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
FutureMe.org (write a letter to your future self)
