Whitney Johnson

The most important funding mechanism for your company's growth is the learning and growth of your people. But somehow jobs muffle people's innate desire to learn––they find themselves bored, stagnant, or wanting more at work. In this keynote, you will learn about the S Curve of Learning™, a model for smart growth. We will answer questions like, why, despite the desire to grow, can it be so difficult to start? What does it take to gain and maintain momentum once people start? And finally, why do people outgrow things so quickly? The answers to these questions prepare you to understand the growth process and identify where each person, including yourself, is in his/her growth. When you know where people are on their S Curves, you can help and support them as they move forward. Grow yourself to grow your people to grow your company. That's smart growth.

Be inspired to build a team of high-growth individuals.
In this session, you will learn about the S Curve of Learning, a framework for managing a team of high growth individuals.
The secret to building a high-performing team is to have a plan for developing each employee no matter when they are on their personal learning curves. In this keynote, you will learn about the S Curve of Learning framework and how to identify where each employee is–– whether at the low-end where growth can be slow; in the sweet spot, rapidly accelerating up the curve; or, at the high end, where growth tapers off. You build a high performing team by recognizing that everyone is on S Curve, including you, and managing people accordingly, with support at the low-end, focus in the sweet spot, and challenge at the high-end. Your team is a collection of S Curves. You build a team that can carry the high load of growth by optimizing those curves, with approximately 70% of your people in the sweet spot, and 15% at the low and high ends respectively.

Nearly everyone wants a culture of innovation: innovation opens new markets, creates jobs, drives revenue, and is an engine of economic growth and personal wealth. But have you pulled back the curtain on what is necessary to foster an innovative culture? In this thought-provoking keynote, Whitney Johnson, re-imagines the S-curve as a tool that we typically use to understand how quickly an innovation will be adopted, but for understanding how to promote and implement disruptive ideas, identifying variables that can accelerate/decelerate innovation such as: taking the right kinds of risk, battling entitlement (a surefire innovation killer), and getting the metrics right. Listen closely to Johnson’s intriguing approach, and you’ll not only accelerate into the sweet spot of your own S-curve curve, you’ll have the tools to put innovation on over-drive across your organization.

Disruptive thinking improves the odds of success for products, companies and even countries, and harnessing this powerful mindset begins with the individual. In this compelling keynote address, Whitney Johnson builds on her Harvard Business Review article Disrupt Yourself, applying the road-tested theory of disruptive innovation to the individual, providing practical tips along with real-world examples of personal disruption, with a focus on how managers can drive individual and firm-wide innovation. If you are ready to move your organization to the next level, it’s time to disrupt the status quo and innovate from the inside.

The idea is simple, but powerful: disruptive companies and ideas upend markets by doing something truly different – they see a need, an empty space waiting to be filled, and they dare to create something for which a market may not yet exist. An expert in driving innovation via personal disruption, Whitney Johnson will demonstrate how you can put the power of disruptive innovation to work. To help your company in unexpected ways, dare to innovate. Dream big dreams. Do something astonishing. Disrupt yourself. In this session, Whitney Johnson will share stories of disruption and will teach you how powerful it can be in your organization’s evolving
reinvention.