Disrupting Your Calling | An Interview with Whitney Johnson

This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally ran in February 2018.

Whitney Johnson started as a secretary on Wall Street while taking business classes at night. She worked her way up to an award-winning equity analyst and later co-founded an investment firm with the late Clayton Christensen, She is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Build an “A” Team, and Disrupt Yourself, and hosts the weekly Disrupt Yourself podcast.

Whitney grew up in San Jose, California and served a Church mission in Uruguay. She attended Brigham Young University, where she received a B.A. in music and met her husband. They have two children (a son and a daughter), and live in Lexington, Virginia.

Highlights

10:35 In her twenties, Whitney asked herself, “Do I believe?” While she took a step back, her husband fasted for her on and off for two years.
13:13 While serving in her current calling she realized, “I don’t need to save them just love them.”
18:20 Early in her career she started a blog to help her discover what her dreams were.
19:30 Every man and women needs to learn how to be a ship and a harbor.
21:00 Her first book came out in 2012, Dare Dream Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare To Dream
22:30 She later wrote the book Disrupt Yourself: Putting The Power Of Disruptive Innovation To Work
25:10 A disruptor is a silly thing that takes over the world. When you disrupt yourself you take over your world.
26:10 Disrupting is managing change.
28:00 How do you disrupt yourself or your ward?

Seven Levers of Change

28:35 #1 Take the right kinds of risk

29:00 Serve the Lord the way you need to using your talents.
32:00 Ask yourself what you want to accomplish in this calling.

32:40 #2 Play to your distinctive strengths in your calling.

34:40 What am I bringing to the table in regards to my calling?
36:25 Think about the things that make you feel strong.
36:45 Think about what exacerbates you. That is one of your strengths.
37:05 What compliments do you get all the time? That is your super power.
37:20 Read your patriarchal blessing. Look for your spiritual gifts while reading it.
38:30 Are you using your strengths and your superpowers deliberately in your calling?

38:50 #3 Embrace Constraints

39:10 How do we turn those constraints into a tool of creation?
40:20 Elders Bednar’s 2017 General Conference address Bear Up Their Burdens With Ease is a great example of how our load is what gets them out.
42:05 Elder Carmack’s address about the Powers of the Priesthood is a great example to use your Priesthood Power at its fullest.
42:20 Be prayerful and listen to the Lord.
44:00 Communicate and be open about your constraints with your Bishop.
45:20 Extend callings and invite them to pray about it first.

45:56 #4 Battle Entitlement

47:00 The Church helps battle entitlement by the way it is organized, and callings change.

48:45 #5 Give Failure its Due

48:50 Reframe your failures.
49:30 We believe we can change, but we don’t always act like we believe it.
50:10 Be open about the things that are hard for us.
51:45 Ask yourself, “how can I make meaning of this?”
51:40 Shame limits disruption, not failure.

53:51 #6 Step Back in Order to Grow

54:20 In church we step back to grow as we get new callings.

55:03 #7 Be Driven By Discovery

55:50 With each new discovery, alter your plan.
56:30 We are driven by discovery in our church when new information is shared in callings.
57:00 Deal with ambiguity. Work with the unknown. Alter your plan.
57:50 The sin of certainty: we battle entitlement when we feel like we have it all figured out, when we feel like we have no questions, but the questions are what we need to guide us to discovery.
58:55 Those seven principles move you along the learning curve.
60:00 Heavenly Father helps us jump to a new learning curve.
60:00 Studying the learning Living Christ helps to remind us that Jesus Christ is the foundation.