Disrupt Yourself Podcast with Whitney Johnson

When you're making decisions, professional or personal, what's your north star? How many people know your north star? How many of your colleagues know what you've built your life around? There's this idea, of leaving home at home and only bringing into work your work self. Can you really leave at home what fuels you and drives you? When Lori Winkler at the top of Johnson and Johnson's HR departmen...

  Human resources can be a funny term. What kind of resources do we rely on as humans? Food, water, shelter – but what about emotional resources? What about the resources to become a good person, not just a healthy person? In a company, human resources are always comprised of other humans, and Chris Rainey's made it his mission to cast a light on the wonders of this profession. We can forget that...

There's a saying that curiosity killed the cat. Have you ever seen a cat investigate a glass you left on the countertop? Or knock over a shelf of books while they try to perch on top?  There's something to admire in that attitude, that kind of pure, unabashed curiosity. You'll find Diana Kander to be that same kind of curious. A self-described serial entrepreneur, she played and continues to play...

Who were you ten years ago? How did that person think? How did they see the world? And what about today? How have those things changed? How would you feel if you passed that person on the street tomorrow? Would you recognize them? Now instead of who you were, ten years ago, what if it's who you want to be ten years from now?  Hal Hershfield understands that connecting with our future selves can fe...

Isn't it frustrating when you just can't say what you want to say? You have all the words ready in your head, you've practiced what you're going to say, but you… just… can't? It's frustrating in part because it seems like we're failing at the basics. Communication? Saying words out loud? Didn't we figure that out around the same time we figured out farming, and the wheel? So why are we sweating an...

To give to another is to give up something you have. It's the basis of the world philanthropy, "phila," meaning love for one another. Two episodes ago we talked with Alan Mulally, about how that kind of love isn't wired anywhere in our brains. We are not that far from our hunter-gatherer ancestors – why would we ever give up our food to strangers? Aren't we hungry too? Our guest today is a philant...

With ChatGPT now released in a usable format, the world's been abuzz with the potentials – and pitfalls – of artificial intelligence.  Our guest today says that the word – artificial intelligence – is misleading. Artificial anything, artificial turf, sweeteners, they all try to get as close to the real thing as possible. Chris Duffey, strategic development manager for Adobe, says that isn't the go...

What does it mean to advocate for something? We all know what it's like to give a nervous presentation. But to adjust the question a bit – what does it mean to advocate for someONE? Specifically, yourself? Joining us today is Jayshree Seth, Chief Science Advocate at 3M. Her role today involves clearing away the brush and undergrowth of misinformation to show the world that science is not a scary m...

Today, we've got a special episode, one of my personal heroes––Alan Mulally. You've probably sat in a Boeing 777 before. He was the chief engineer on that plane. You might have a Ford sitting out in your driveway. He's the reason Ford was the only major American car company that didn't take a bailout in 2008. Alan Mulally has sat in many seats — President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Pr...

Attention is the real currency of all advertising. It's how many seconds they can keep your eyes glued on whatever billboard or TV ad is in front of you at that moment. And then there's the science of why exactly it caught your attention, in the first place. Advertisers represent this fascinating intersection of business and psychology, so today we want to find out what we can glean from this uniq...

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 natura...

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 n...

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...

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...

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 co...

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 th...

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...

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....

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...

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...

Have you ever had trouble saying something simple, like "no?" No, I can't do that. What about all the times you might have said yes, when in your heart all you wanted to say was, no? Vanessa Patrick is an award-winning consumer psychologist, she's currently the associate dean at the Bauer School of Business, and now she's out with her new book, "The Power of Saying No."  Have you ever said no, and...

The temptation to compromise on our values is always there. Compromising could make things easier for us. Not only can it get you out of a hole, compromising could even make the number on your paycheck bigger.  Sometimes we have to. Sometimes those expectations were ridiculous to begin with. But when it comes to compromising on the core of who we are, why would you ever meet yourself in the middle...

You know that little bright red wagon, with the long front handle? Maybe, you might have even sat in one, careening down a hill. The wagon, and the company that makes them, is called Radio Flyer.  Over a hundred years since that first stamped metal wagon, that same company now makes a Radio Flyer Tesla S for Kids, in that same bright red. Right next to the classic wagon on their website, you can n...

Joining us this week is Executive Advisor and Diversity Strategist Stacey Gordon. Stacey is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Rework Work, and author of UNBIAS: Addressing Unconscious Bias at Work.

Tom Peters has walked many, many paths in life, more than many of us can claim. He's been a Navy Seabee overseas in Vietnam, a White House advisor, a McKinsey consultant, even a PBS show host. You might know him as the author of the 80s management bestseller, "In Search of Excellence." Recently, Tom had the idea to start up a podcast of his own, and asked our host Whitney to be his first guest. To...