1.
Some Impressionistic takes from the book of
Whitney Johnson
“Disrupt Yourself – By Ramki
ramaddster@gmail.comv

2.
About the Author
Whitney Johnson is the CEO of boutique
consultancy WLJ Advisors and one of the
fifty leading business thinkers in the
world as named by Thinkers50 – an
expert on helping high-growth
organizations develop high-growth
individuals.
Whitney is an award-winning author,
world-class keynote speaker, frequent
lecturer for Harvard Business School’s
Executive Education, and an executive
coach and advisor to CEOs.

3.
Prelude
Why Disrupt ?
 Not everyone has to abandon the traditional path, of course. Certainly
if you’re working toward an ambitious and potentially achievable goal,
such as managing a division at your firm or winning a C-suite job in
your industry, disruption is unnecessary.
 You’re pursuing what Christensen calls sustaining innovation: when a
company gets better at what it’s already doing and provides more
value to existing customers. But if as an individual you’ve reached a
plateau or you suspect you won’t be happy at the top rung of the
ladder you’re climbing, you should disrupt yourself for the same
reasons that companies must.
 First and foremost, you need to head off the competition. As you
continue to improve along the dimensions of performance that the
employment market has historically valued, you risk overshooting
demands. What you do reliably, if not brilliantly well, can be done just
as effectively by many peers—and perhaps more swiftly and affordably
by up-and-comers.

4.
Prelude
Why Disrupt ?
 Second, consider the greater rewards that disruption may bring. It’s
true that disruptive innovation in business tends to start out as a
low-cost alternative to existing products or services, and of course
you don’t want to embrace a career strategy that reduces your own
price point. But when you disrupt yourself, you vector to a new set
of metrics.
 In some cases, you might initially take a pay cut in return for a
steeper trajectory; after all, the endgame of disruption is higher
demand for what you produce.
 In other cases, you might even boost your pay while still
undercutting the competition in your new role, organization, or
industry. Remember, too, that when it comes to personal disruption,
compensation is not just financial. Psychological and social factors
also matter.

5.
Historical Review of Disruptive Innovation
-- it’s what...
The telephone did to the telegraph
The light bulb did to the oil lamp
The Model T did to the horse and buggy
- and, more recently,
What Toyota did to GM
What Netflix did to Blockbuster
What Airbnb did to hotels

6.
Making Disruption Personal
 Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, popularized the
idea of “disruptive innovation.” In this paradigm, companies enter a
market by selling a product much cheaper than the firms that currently
dominate that market and thus turn it topsy-turvy.
 “Disruptors” have little power at first. Larger firms don’t regard them as
threats and dismiss them, as American automakers once dismissed
Toyota.
 Those on top don’t defend themselves against or invest in such would-be
competitors. Disruptors then embark on a period of intense growth, like
America Movil, which went from 1% of the Mexican wireless market to
25% in just five years. As disruptors redefine the playing field, their
growth follows a specific pattern – the “S-curve.”
 At the start, S-curve growth is slow – nearly invisible. The line of the S-
curve is almost horizontal. Then the disruption hits a “tipping point”:
Growth explodes and the line shifts to sharply vertical. At “saturation,”
when the disruptive competitor has captured 90% of the market, its
growth drops again.

7.
Making Disruption Personal
 You can use the S-curve as a model of “personal disruption,” as well
as a framework for corporate shifts. The S-curve helps explain how
your career trajectory sometimes stalls and sometimes markedly
twists.
 The S-curve model can help you develop a new personal algorithm –
“self-disruption.”
 The model incorporates what happens neurologically as you learn.
Learning follows the S-curve.
 You don’t learn the same number of facts each day. During some
periods, you “plod along,” not learning anything new.
 During other periods, you learn rapidly, building quickly on what you
already know. Learning triggers the neurotransmitter dopamine, so
you experience pleasure as you soar up the incline of the S-curve.
 When the learning curve flattens at the top of the S, your brain
releases less dopamine. As you get bored and feel less emotional
reward from learning and achievements, you may need to disrupt
yourself again.

8.
“When you disrupt, you are walking into the
unknown, exposing yourself to the risk of failure.”
People see the world through conceptual lenses, or
“personal algorithms.” These predictive patterns work
well if your actions fit an immediate cause-and-effect
pattern, so you know what to do. Deciding how to
proceed becomes more difficult when something
delays feedback or when growth follows “a nonlinear
progression.” Then you need other models, such as
the S-curve.

9.
Riding the S-Curve

10.
Seven Steps of Personal Disruption

11.
Step-1 –The Right Risks
 The first step in disrupting yourself is to take the right risks.
 To distinguish between right and wrong or foolish risks, examine and
define “the Job-to-Be-Done.”
 To generate an innovation, find a problem your customers need solved.
This solution will be partly “functional” – providing goods or services –
and partly “emotional” – helping people feel good about your proposal.
 “ 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” .
 As you begin your process of career disruption, consider the functional
and emotional aspects of your situation.
 Make sure you can cover your basic financial needs. Reduce ambiguity
and stress by clarifying to whom you answer and how you will get paid.
 Payment includes both financial compensation and emotional rewards.

12.
Step-1 –The Right Risks
 Consider your relationship to risk and reward. Are you “promotion focused”
and motivated by possible rewards? Or are you “prevention focused” and
motivated by safety and security? Either will work if you frame risk-taking
correctly.
 When you have to take a risk, determine if it is a “competitive risk” or a
“market risk.” When you take a competitive risk, you know your idea has a
market.
 You don’t know if you can compete and win. If you know that your
innovative idea meets an unmet need, but don’t know if a market exists for
it, that’s market risk.
 The human brain isn’t comfortable with uncertainty, so people prefer to take
competitive risks. Research suggests that market risks are actually “less
risky.” When you invest in an innovation that tackles market risk, the rate of
potential growth is higher. When choosing a company or a new path, look
for a “job no one else can do.”

13.
Step-2 –Unmet Needs
 Seek out unmet needs and identify “your distinctive strengths.” Special
strengths are your evolutionary advantage, much like birds whose beaks let
them eat seeds no other bird can open.
 People often misunderstand themselves or take their gifts for granted. To
identify your strengths, methodically review your life.
 “ Disruptors not only look for unmet needs, they match those needs with their
distinctive strengths “
 What enabled you to survive tough situations? Did you develop special skills by
undergoing those trials?
 Which activities make you feel stronger? What sets you apart from others? The
exact traits you have that may frustrate other people or make them think you
are strange could be your strength.
 If people regularly compliment you on an aspect of yourself that you dismiss,
that aspect may be your road to disruption. As you find your strengths, apply
them where the competition doesn’t and where customers’ needs aren’t being
met.

14.
Step-3- Embrace Constraints
 To disrupt yourself and create a successful new path, welcome the
limitations that help you innovate.
 Some of this is simple math. Imagine a life without constraints. You
choose every action freely.
 At each step, having infinite choices would soon overwhelm you.
Constraints push you closer to having to use the scientific method.
 That means you test your ideas by changing one variable at a time.
That’s a strict constraint and it leads to clear answers. The human
brain is bad at multitasking. You function much better when you focus,
and constraints support focusing.
 You can take the idea of constraints too far. You need resources to
innovate.
 People functioning under extreme scarcity lose the mental edge
creativity demands, yet too much abundance weakens innovation.

15.
Step-3- Embrace Constraints
 Consider a “U-curve” to describe the ideal space for innovation. Too few
resources produce scant innovation; add more and you enter an ideal
range of opportunity. Add too much, and innovation drops off. Being
creative about financing projects can power disruption.
 “Constraints offer structure that can liberate us from the chaos and
disorder of entropy”
 Constraints on knowledge can be useful: Newcomers don’t know the rules
governing a field, so they try new things despite conventional wisdom.
When you encounter constraints, like limited time, don’t just accept them
by reducing your ambition.
 Shift your mind-set: Become a “transformer,” and find a “workaround.” This
often means shifting paths or processes and approaching things
differently. To generate this shift, view the situation as a “can-if.” Instead of
saying why you can’t do something, identify what you’d need in order to do
it. You can do it – if what? Seek support in new places, and charge up your
emotions to carry you along.

16.
Step-4- Battle Entitlement
 Entitlement can undermine you in an insidious way. To disrupt
entitlement, change your culture, Travel. Broaden your network.
 Some entitlements are emotional: You like things as they are. If
you have money, you feel you deserve it.
 If you’re a boss, you may want to run the business as if your
employees are your friends rather than your direct reports.
 That’s emotional entitlement, and you can forestall it by being
grateful. Rather than accepting that you deserve what you have,
keep a daily gratitude journal and record three things you feel
thankful to have.
 “Every time you hop down to a new curve, you have the
opportunity to recalibrate the metrics by which you gauge
yourself”

17.
Step-4- Battle Entitlement
 If you suffer from “intellectual entitlement,” you resist ideas from
people you see as beneath you.
 This mind-set incorporates fallacies like the confirmation bias –
giving more weight to information that confirms what you already
believe than to evidence that contradicts your beliefs.
 You might dismiss ideas from one group, age or gender because
you consider them different or inferior. Instead, seek and listen to
“dissenting voices.”
 Heed people who are new to your firm or who don’t know your
field. Change how you think and speak about your relationships.
 Practice being the outside voice; try to make fresh perspectives
appealing.

18.
Step-5- Change Directions
 Instead of pushing upward on the same career path, move
sideways or even down the ladder.
 Let your people do the same. They will develop broader skills by
rotating through different jobs.
 The Tractor Supply chain began in 1938, when market demand for
tractor parts was high and constant. Today, the US has fewer farms,
and its farmers use more reliable tractors. Tractor Supply’s revenue
dropped. The new owners of the company found that “hobby
farming” was growing as commercial farming shrank. The store
aimed at this new market and now flourishes.
 “ Beware the undertow of the status quo- current stakeholders in
your life and career Including family may encourage you to just
keep doing what you are doing.

19.
Step-5- Change Directions
 You have to be in the right stage of your career to change
directions. Early in your career is a better time to take sideways
steps because you face little risk and have a lot to learn. You
also can take risks when you’re senior and already have “a
golden parachute.”
 When you’re in the middle, people are more likely to ignore or
sabotage your attempts at disruption. Before you step back, get
ready.
 Try something new on a vacation or a sabbatical. Changing
positions might be right for you, but still be hard on your ego.
You’ll need to “rethink your metrics.” Don’t measure by your
previous scale. Accept the standards of your new position.

20.
Step-6- The Value of Failure
 Adults praise children for their innate abilities, rather than for the
effort they put into mastering a subject.
 As an adult, if you think your performance reflects your innate
qualities, failure will feel catastrophic to you.
 Instead, build a mind-set that rewards effort. Whether you disrupt
yourself or an entire market, you’re plunging into the unknown;
failure is a possible and likely outcome.
 Contemporary culture defines success as coming in first and sees
everything else as failure.
 This forces everyone to compete for stardom, rather than seeking
ways for a team to perform better together.
 Don’t let the outside world apply its standards to your efforts. Learn
from each failure.

21.
Step-6- The Value of Failure
 Learn from each failure. One lesson is learning when to quit.
Sometimes failure is a form of feedback telling you that you should
be working in another field or taking another approach. Continuing
to grind away on goals that don’t work for you will ruin your health.
 “Listening to dissenting voices doesn’t happen automatically. It
must be practiced. “
 If you hesitate to take a specific risk, adapt Toyota’s “five whys”
technique.
 Ask why five times: Why do you hesitate? Why do you cling to the
past?
 Why does the current way of doing things seem better? Drill deeper
by asking why until you identify a root cause. Changing isn’t only
doing something new. Change means risking your identity.

22.
Step-7- Driven by Discovery
 Be an explorer. Shift from “conventional planning” to “discovery-
driven planning.” In conventional planning, you project the future
based on the past.
 You assume continuity and similarity. Though this feels familiar and
safe, it doesn’t fit true disruption – a path that requires discovery-
driven planning.
 “ Self-disruption will force you up steep foothills of new information,
relationships and systems.”
 Consider Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the American West. They
left St. Louis on keelboats, but abandoned them when boats no
longer fit the waterways.
 They hunted for supplies in new regions and traded with the native
peoples. They accepted and adapted to changing circumstances.

23.
 In “disruptive innovation,” companies enter a market by selling a
product much cheaper than the firms that currently dominate that
market, thus turning it topsy-turvy.
 Apply disruption innovation at a personal level as you redefine your
career path.
 Disruptive innovation follows an “S-curve,” with slow growth at first,
then explosive growth, then slow growth again.
 To disrupt yourself, take “the right risks.”
 To generate innovation, find a problem your customers need solved.
 Embrace constraints. Limits can help you focus and be creative.
 Entitlement blocks innovation. Try to escape “emotional” or
“intellectual entitlement.”
 Change directions: Step down or move sideways on the career ladder
to learn what you need to learn.
 You may fail. Learn from failure.
 Let an explorer’s sense of discovery drive you.
Key Take away…

24.
Mail your comments to ramaddster@gmail.com