On the show today, I am talking to Whitney Johnson is CEO at Disruption Advisors and author of “Smart Growth – How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company”. It’s full of advice about how individuals and organisations can realise their potential by charting where they are on Whitney’s reimagined version of the “S curve” model. Whitney has insights that speak to all of us, regardless of where we are on our professional journey. She’s got examples from companies – big and small – who have helped retain key talent by keeping them learning, developing and remaining firmly engaged. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• How individuals and organisations can realise their potential by charting where they are on the S-curve model

• How recruiters can identify people at the right stage of their career path

• How to juggle multiple S-curves at the same time

• Tips on how to navigate professional development as we continue to build a new world of work, post-pandemic

• Whitney’s thoughts on how HR can add business value, as we start to come out of the pandemic

Support for this podcast comes from Visier. You can learn more by visiting https://www.visier.com/ 


You can listen to this week’s episode below, or by using your podcast app of choice, just click the corresponding image to get access via the podcast website here.

Interview Transcript

David Green: Today, I'm delighted to welcome Whitney Johnson, CEO at Disruption Advisors and author of a fantastic new book, Smart Growth: How to Grow People to Grow Your Company, to the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  Welcome to the show, Whitney.

Whitney Johnson: Thank you, David.

David Green: It's great to have you on the show, and I'm looking forward to talking about your work.  Can you provide listeners with a brief introduction to you and your work?

Whitney Johnson: Well, you've introduced me, I'm the CEO of Disruption Advisors.  But the work that we do is, we help you grow yourself, to grow your people, to grow your company, to help organisations who are growing very rapidly; and I think coming out of the pandemic, we're going to continue to see rapid growth, and it's helping make sure that your people can grow as quickly as you need them to.

David Green: Great, well that's something that's definitely going to appeal to our listeners, I know, mainly HR professionals who, a lot of them get into the profession to do exactly that, to help their organisations grow their people.  Before we get into your current work in more detail, it would be great to hear a little bit more about your career history and how you got into the world of talent development leadership in the first place.

Whitney Johnson: Very circuitously, David!

David Green: Isn't that always the way?

Whitney Johnson: Yes, I think it is.  My background actually is, I studied music in college and when I graduated from college, I had gone to New York with my husband.  He was getting his PhD at Columbia and we needed food on the table, and so I was the designated breadwinner.  So, I started actually working as a sales assistant to a retail stockbroker on 1345 Avenue of the Americas at Smith Barney in Manhattan, and I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew I needed to put food on the table.

But something really curious happened, which is every day as I would go to work, there was this bullpen of young stockbrokers sitting right across from me that were trying to get people to open up accounts.  This is when you would dial and get people to open up a brokerage account.  They would say things like, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this is a great investment!", and then they would say, "Throw down your pompoms and get in the game!"  Initially, I'm very offended, because I was a cheerleader in high school.  But eventually I thought, "I need to throw down my pompoms".

So, I started taking business courses at night: accounting, finance, economics; I had a boss who believed in me which is, talking to HR leaders, we need bosses that believe in us.  That gave me the opportunity to move from being a secretary to an investment banker.  So, I did investment banking for a few years, then I had a boss who was laid off.  They moved me, but really shoved me into equity research, which turned out to be a career maker, and I think that's another important lesson.  Sometimes those huge setbacks are the setups to have our career took off.

As an equity analyst, I was Institutional Investor ranked, but discovered that I was more interested in the momentum of people than I was of stocks.  We had training that we did, this is 2003, 2004, and our boss had me do some of the training.  American Idol at the time was at its apex, Tom Peters had written the book, or the article, A Brand Called You, and I did this whole training about, "As an analyst, if you were a contestant on American Idol, if you were a brand, what would you be?  Would you be the forensic analyst?  Would you be the stock-picker?  What would it be?"  So, I spent all this time on this training that I wasn't really getting paid to do and I thought, "I care about the momentum".  At one point, someone said, "Oh, yeah, you're focused on picking not only stocks, but people and investing in their dreams".  So, that was the beginning of it. 

It still took a number of years.  I left Wall Street, I started a fund with Clayton Christensen at the Harvard Business School, where we were investing in disruptive innovation.  But then, around 2012, I wrote an article called Disrupt Yourself, and I had thought to myself, "Disruption, we're applying it to products and services and companies and countries, this silly little thing that takes over the world.  Not too much of a stretch now for me to say, 'Well, could disruption also apply to people?'"  And so, that's when I wrote this article of, "I think if you want to disrupt as an organisation, you need to help your people disrupt".

So, fast-forward to today, we were also using the S-curve for investing to figure out how innovations were going to be adopted, or how quickly they would be adopted, and now you understand the pattern.  I said to myself, "The S-curve, I think it can also apply to people".  And so today, we take this work and we have this tool that people can use to look at where are they in their growth, where are their people in their growth, where is the organisation in their growth, and we wrap coaching and workshops around that.  But that's the evolution from the stocks and the investing to the people.

David Green: Wow, that's a great story and as you said, we end up in our careers, and it's not always chosen to do it; you find out what you love, what you're passionate about, what you're good at, and we go from there.  And you've set up the S-curve conversation perfectly, because that's where I'm going to go to next, Whitney.  So, we're going to spend most of the time today exploring the concepts of the S-curve as a career management tool.  First of all, it would be great if you can explain for listeners what is the S-curve of learning?

Whitney Johnson: Well, some of you are going to be familiar with it, because it's been used for product development and been around for decades.  It was originally popularised by the sociologist, Everett Rogers, and as I said a moment ago, it was used to look at how an innovation would be adopted.  What he found is that they were adopted along the shape of an S.  And so, he was looking at how quickly a hybrid corn would be adopted, and he found that over the first three years -- actually, excuse me, it took five years for 10% of the farmers in the state of Iowa in the United States to adopt this new type of corn.  But then after five years, the next three years, the penetration went from 10% to 40%.  So he said, "This is a model, this S, helps us understand how groups change over time".

Well, the S-curve of learning, this was the "aha" that I had as we were using it in investing.  I thought, "I think that this S-curve can help us understand how individuals change.  We can use this to think about what growth looks like, what development looks like".  So at a very high level, I reimagined this S-curve for individuals, and let me just walk through it very quickly.

There are three major parts: there's a launch point, the sweet spot and mastery.  And what's happening for us is that whenever we start something new, our brains are running a predictive model.  We're making predictions of, "What is it going to take for me to be successful in this role, in this project, in my career?" and at the launch point of that S, we're making many predictions, most of which are inaccurate.  And because those predictions are inaccurate, our dopamine, which is the chemical messenger of delight, it drops; and we don't like our dopamine to drop, because then we're de-delighted.

The other thing that's happening at the launch point is we're mapping new territory, it's a place we've never been, so it's cognitively, emotionally taxing; so we have this experience of, it's thrilling but it's also terrifying.  It's also this sense of, "I'm overwhelmed and I'm discouraged and I'm impatient, and how come I'm not getting better faster?" and your identity is shifting, because you're no longer who you were, but you're not yet who you will be.  So, that's the launch point and the experience that people are having.  It's not that growth isn't happening, but it feels slow.  So, that's the launch point.

Then, sweet spot, and I'll go through sweet spot and mastery more quickly.  So, sweet spot, you're making predictions, they're increasingly accurate.  And as they're increasingly accurate, your dopamine starts to spike, so you're having these emotional upside surprises saying, "This works, this works", and so it's exhilarating, you feel like you're exactly where you're supposed to be; growth not only is fast, it feels fast.

Then in mastery, again thinking about a role, you're at the top of that mountain, you know exactly what you're doing, you've figured it all out, you're very good at it, you're an expert, you feel like you can no longer keep doing it though, because there's not much dopamine.  So, you look around and you say, "Yeah, I've seen everything there is to see, my growth is slow".  And so, you've got slow and then fast and then slow, as a model for how you grow, so now you can remember it; and once you understand you have this map in your mind, it increases your capacity to grow, and you can use it to start a conversation with your people about how to develop them, how to grow them.

David Green: Perfect, and I can immediately see how it can be applied to so many things, if you think about even your tenure with a company.  Once you reach that level of mastery and there's nowhere else to learn, then maybe that's where people start to move on; but maybe we could talk a bit about that later.  So, why don't we start by digging into this in a bit more detail, from the perspective of employees.  How should individuals think about S-curves in relation to their jobs and their careers?

Whitney Johnson: You might have already thought about this, but if you think about it, your life is an S-curve, your career is an S-curve, and I hope that as you're listening, you can be in your mind thinking, "Oh, yeah, that job was an S-curve.  And then within that job, I had two S-curves, and then the next job was an S-curve". 

So, the way that you can think about it in your career is say to yourself, "All right, well I'm in this job right now, where am I on the S-curve?"  And if I'm at the launch point of the S-curve, then I know that I probably need a lot of support, because it's feeling uncomfortable, because I'm doing this awkward new thing.  And so, what is support going to look like?  Well, I probably need to get some training.  It also allows me to have a conversation with my colleagues and with my boss and say, "Hey, this is feeling really uncomfortable right now.  I think I'm going to be good at this, but right now I feel awkward, and I'm sometimes feeling a little bit impatient.  So, can you just help me have that support that I need in order to gain that momentum off the launch point of the curve?"

For someone in the sweet spot, those are the times when people ask you how work's going and you're like, "It's going great!" and you don't have anything else to say, because you just feel exhilarated and you're enjoying the work that you're doing.  The challenge for you in the sweet spot is you want to make sure you're staying focused, because you're becoming increasingly competent, people are saying, "David, can you take on this project?  Hey, David, how about that project?" and before you know it, you've got ten new projects and you derail, because you're not staying focused on two or three projects.

Then, the thing that you can think about in mastery is that idea, and you just actually said this already, David, this notion of, "I'm really good at what I'm doing.  And, why is it that I feel like I can no longer keep doing it, because I actually like this company and I like my boss?"  Well, the S-curve helps you understand that you just need more dopamine, you're not learning.  And in fact, if you think about it, the entire S-curve is a dopamine management exercise, because you know at the launch point, you've got to get more dopamine because it's dropping; at the sweet spot, you've just got a lot and it's super-fun; and in mastery you know, "I need some more, so I've got to find a way to give myself a new challenge, so that I can go after, and get more dopamine".

Then I can basically, in my career, use this to understand where I am.  And once you orient, then you're going to be able to figure out what's next.

David Green: And of course, the level of support and type of support you need from your boss, from your colleagues, is different at each stage, isn't it?  As you said, at that early stage, at the launch stage, help with a mentor, identifying the right mentor, for example, that can help speed that momentum along; at that sweet spot, maybe if you're being inundated with requests, because you're an expert, maybe you want to be part of your job training others so they can help you with that workload, perhaps, I don't know, I'm just saying; and then mastery, it's about your boss in particular identifying that and saying, "I need to give Whitney new challenges, otherwise I'm at risk of losing Whitney".  Or, "Let's celebrate it" sometimes, "I need to accept the fact that Whitney's going to move on, and it's great, and she might come back one day".

Whitney Johnson: That's right.

David Green: So, there's lots of different support that you need there, really interesting.  And obviously, you're working with organisations and individuals presumably most of your time.  Have you seen any impact from the pandemic on how employees should think about S-curves?  I'd love to hear your thoughts on that; I know you've written something recently on it.  What are your thoughts on the Great Resignation and how some people's priorities have shifted in relation to how they're thinking about jobs and work?

Whitney Johnson: It's interesting, isn't it, because prior to the pandemic, we were all on an S-curve.  We might have loved it, we might have hated it, but we were on an S-curve.  One of the things that the pandemic did, is it pushed us off that curve.  So now, we found ourselves at the launch point, as a globe.  And that was one of the reasons, there were many reasons, but one of the reasons we were all so tired all of the time is that we were all at the launch point and all trying to figure it out, and there wasn't really anyone in mastery to kind of mentor us along, because we were figuring that out.

But as a consequence of us being at this launch point, whether it was figuring out how to do remote work, whether it was trying to figure out how to home-school your children, whether it was trying to figure out how to keep people safe from COVID, we developed a lot of new skills.  We discovered that we were more resilient than we thought we were.  And so, as we come out of the pandemic, as we went through that period, we've had this opportunity also to reflect and to think about, "What do I want with my life?  What are my priorities?  What matters to me?"

So, coming out now, psychologists have said that a period of severe stress, like a pandemic, is often followed by a period of tremendous growth.  So, people are coming back to work, however that looks like, coming back to work is not accurate; people are now, post-pandemic or at least pre-pandemic saying, "I can't go back to doing what I was doing.  I'm different than I was".  And so, if a company understands that, then they'll understand that people are not looking to resign, we're not quitting; we're more resilient than we thought we were.  What we're looking to do is we're aspiring to more.

If we can reframe this in our mind as an employer and say, "My people aren't resigning, they're not quitting, they're saying, 'I want more, I aspire to more'" for me, if we were to reframe this as the Great Aspiration, that would help us, not only in recruiting, but also in retention, of understanding people want to grow, they're ready to grow, they've learned a thing or two about growth, so how am I as an employer going to make that possible.

David Green: A much more positive way of looking at it.  I saw something you wrote.  I think you said, "The Great Resignation is a bit of a misnomer", I think that was how you described it, isn't it?

Whitney Johnson: That's correct.

David Green: As one of our previous guests said, "I'm not sure what's great about the Great Resignation anyway", even if it was as accurate as --

Whitney Johnson: Well said, well said, I love that!

David Green: So, what does all this mean for managers and organisations?  How should companies be thinking about S-curves when planning development for their employees, particularly given what you just said about the impact of the pandemic?

Whitney Johnson: So, one example -- so, if you're thinking about this as a manager, you think to yourself, "Okay, well I want people who are going to grow and develop, so I want people who are capable".  For me, peak performance is not just in the sweet spot, it's the ability to navigate an entire growth cycle.  So, they can navigate the uncertainty of the launch point, they can move through the sweet spot, they can get into mastery and bring other people along, but then jump to a brand new curve.  So, you want people who are capable of that kind of growth.  But then, that means that they're going to the top of the curve.  Now what?

Well, Patrick Pichette, he was an employee at Google, he was about to be hired by Google, and when he first interviewed for the job, he had been in operations two times previously.  So, Eric Schmidt, who was then the CEO, said to him, "Well, we've got a problem, Patrick, because basically what's going to happen is, in a year, year and a half, you're going to figure out our ecosystem and how to navigate and how to get stuff done and you're going to be bored and you're going to want to do something new, and I don't really want to lose you after 18 months.  So, here's what I need you to do.  When you start to feel like you're bored, when you feel like you're at the top of an S-curve", that's my language, not his, "you are there, I want you to come to me and tell me, 'Hey, I need something new'".

So, every 18 months or so, Patrick Pichette had that conversation with Eric Schmidt.  So, he started out as just a CFO but over time, he added people, he added some operations, he added Google Fiber, he added Real Estate, he added their Nonprofit, which allowed him to have that curve of being the CFO, but all these other curves within the curve.  So, he was able to stay in role at Google for seven years before he jumped to a new curve and became a philanthropist, and then started a venture firm out of London.

But that's how you can have that conversation, is say, "Okay, let's draw out this S-curve.  Where are you right now?  Where do I think you are?  When you get to the top, let's have a conversation; or, when you're approaching the top, let's have a conversation", and then you're able to develop your people and retain then, or as you said, amicably have them depart, because you're both very clear about where they are in their growth.  And when you think about growth, if you think that I'm in the sweet spot, that is not going to predict my behaviour.  What's going to predict my behaviour is where I think I am.

So, if I think I'm in mastery, that's going to predict my behaviour.  It's a good thing for you to know, because then if you don't want to keep me, well that's good, because I'll leave.  But if you do want to keep me, now we can have that conversation about, "What are we going to do to challenge you so that you can continue to be engaged?"

David Green: And as you say, particularly with thinking about really key talent within organisations, as you said with the example with Patrick, he's got one main S-curve that he's on, but there's a series of smaller S-curves.  So using Patrick's example, he might be a master at the main one that he's doing, but there might be two others where he's either at launch or at the sweet spot perhaps.  Can you do that, or does that then become a bit confusing?

Whitney Johnson: Oh, no, you raise a really good point, so I'm glad that you asked that question.  So, if you think about your career, or any given role, usually it's a portfolio of S-curves.  So, you can have two or three, maybe four, at any given time.  So, you can have different projects, and you don't want to be on the launch point on four different projects.  Preferably you want to look at optimising your portfolio of S-curves, 60% of your S-curves in the sweet spot.  So, two where you feel like, "Yeah, I've got this, I'm nailing it"; you've got one where you're in mastery; and then, you've got one where you're at the launch point.

Now, when you think about your role, and I think you reminded me of this, so I wanted to raise this, when you have a person who's brand new and you're saying, "Okay, I want you to think about where are you on this S-curve in relation to everything that is required of you in this role", meaning someone can come and say, "Well, I'm a domain expert".  You're like, "Okay, great, but is that it, everything that's required of you in this role?". 

If you're just an individual contributor, maybe, but if you're a manager, what's required of you is not only that you are capable of making it up the mountain to the top, it means that you are capable of making sure that everybody on your team is capable of making it up to the mountain; because, what you don't want to say is, "Hey, I made it up, but Ted, yeah, he's dead back down at the bottom of the mountain".

So you, as a manager, if you're moving up that curve, maybe part of your job is to create the weather patterns where other people can move along that curve as well.  So, you really want to think about this holistically as not just as a subject-matter expert, but what's everything that's required of you to be successful in this role, including possibly the weather patterns, and creating an ecosystem where others can be successful.

David Green: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.  Great example there of Patrick and Eric Schmidt, in terms of how Eric was proactively saying to Patrick, "When you start to feel bored, come and see me and we'll work out what the next S-curve is for you".  But typically, career conversations, how does the S-curve help managers with those career conversations that they should be having with their team on a regular basis; and, do you think this is a framework that can help companies build a culture of internal mobility within the organisation, and continuous learning?

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, let me actually give you a specific example to talk about this.  One of the companies that we work with, it's Chatbooks, and they turn Instagram photos into books, so hard, physical copy books.  It's a great company, people like to work there, and so people stay for extended periods of time.

Earlier this year, the CEO called me in and said, "We need you to come in and work with our team a bit more".  So, they all took the S-curve assessment, and what they found is most of their senior leaders were in fact in mastery.  So now, what do you do?  Well, there were three different conversations that took place, and they were very different conversations.  So, the first conversation, this is something you kind of hit on earlier, looked like this.

The Chief Marketing Officer said, "Oh, now I understand.  It's not that I don't like working here, it's not that I don't like working for you as my boss, it's just that I'm at the top of my curve and there's nothing else for me to do here.  I've done everything that I set out to do and that I think you wanted me to do".  That allowed her to have a conversation with her manager, who's the CEO, and say, "I need to go to a new curve and I need to go to a new company".

Because, though, it wasn't personal, her departure was amicable.  Everybody felt good about it, she was able to plan for her departure, prepare someone else to move up that curve, and that set the stage for potentially a boomerang, like you referred to earlier, because they had this very simple, visual model, and that's part of what makes it useful, is because it is so simple, to talk about her growth.  So, that was conversation number one.

Conversation number two that took place was, they had a President, he'd only been in the role for about a year, and he was presenting in mastery; what's going on?  Well, it turns out that the CEO who had delegated to him to be the President, delegated some of his roles, the CEO was still doing some of the President's job, he was still on his S-curve.  And so, for the President, he's like, "Well, I'm supposed to have the top of the mountain be 10,000 feet, but right now it looks like 5,000 feet, because I don't have enough to do".

So, that led to a conversation about roles and responsibilities, saying to the CEO, "Oh, yeah, I'm kind of in your way, aren't it?  I guess I'd better really actually jump to my new curve", and it wasn't on purpose, it's just habit.  That created headroom, so the mountain really was 10,000 for the President, and so he could then present in the sweet spot, which is where he should have been, having been in that role for a year.

The third conversation that took place, the CTO.  He's having the experience of, "I'm at the top of my curve, I want to stay here, I've hired someone to be the Dev Manager, but now I'm doing some new stuff and I'm at the launch point, and this is really uncomfortable, because everybody says, 'He's the CTO, he should know what he's doing'".  It gave him permission and a language to say to all of his colleagues, "I'm at the launch point".  And guess what happens when you're at the launch point?  You're experimenting, you're awkward, you're uncomfortable and this is normal. 

So, it gave him permission to be in that place of discomfort, and a way to describe it to his team; and then by definition, giving them permission to be uncomfortable as well.  So, that's how you can use it, this simple language.  The simple language of growth allows you as a manager, you as a person who's reporting into your manager, to have a conversation with very different outcomes.  But it starts with that simple little S.

David Green: And it almost provides that, as you said, if they hadn't done that assessment in the way you've explained it, they wouldn't have known any of this.  But this gave them some clarity and a means to drive the conversation for the right outcome for the individual, and for the organisation as well.  Very interesting.

Whitney Johnson: Yes.

David Green: Then, what about something like recruitment; is there an optimum way to think about how you can build a team, for example, based on where various members of the team are on the S-curve?

Whitney Johnson: Yes, there is.  So, there's a two-part answer to that.  We've been talking about the individual.  If you think about a team, and we talk about this idea of diversity of where people are in their growth, you can optimise your team for growth by thinking about a standard bell curve distribution.  So, if you say to yourself, "Okay, I probably need at least 60% of my people at any given time in the sweet spot, because these are people who are capable of asking, 'Why do we do it like this?'" or opening the door to innovation, but they're also capable of answering that question, because they've got enough skills in terms of not only domain expertise, but also knowing how to get stuff done within the organisation.

"I need at least 20%, or no more than 20% of my people in mastery, because these are the people who have the institutional memory, they know why we're doing it like this; but I also know that because they are in mastery, I'm going to need to continue to challenge them, and it might be a new curve, so I don't want too many people in mastery.  But they can ask the, 'This is why we do it like this'.  Then, I don't want more than 20% of my people at the launch point, because on the one hand they're able to say, 'Yeah, I don't understand why you're doing it like this', because they've got that fresh perspective, they're not blind through familiarity.  But also, when you're at the launch point, it's a big lift.  You need training, you need support, you need encouragement."

So, as a starting point, as you're thinking about configuring your team or your organisation for growth, you can use that 20/60/20.  Now, if you're a start-up versus a 10,000-person company, it's going to be different; or, depending on what you're trying to do, it could be different.  But you could use that mental model as a starting point.

Now, to your question about recruiting, here's one way that you can use it.  So, there's a basketball team in the United States, the Philadelphia Sixers, they're in the NBA; and the former President of that team, his name is Scott O'Neill, or CEO of that team, and he needed a person to run guest services.  He also wanted a person who could grow.  So, he looked around the industry and he found a woman by the name of Brittanie Boyd.  And Brittanie, he said, "She looks like she is almost to the top of her S-curve in guest services", she'd done it two times and another guest services inside of an arena, "She looks like she's almost at the top, if not at the top.  I need a person in guest services, but I know that if I hire her to do guest services or if I offer that to her, she's probably going to say no, because she wants to grow".

So, he goes to her and he says, "Brittanie, how about if you come over to the Sixers, to the Prudential Arena, I will hire you, and I do need to hire you in at the top of the curve as guest services; but my commitment to you is that in short order, I will give you an opportunity.  You get a start, I'll give you an opportunity to jump to a new curve in business operations, because I think you can be a superstar there."  So that was the promise he made and he kept it.  So, she comes to the Sixers, she starts out in guest services.  Within a short time, she moves to business operations.  She moves up the curve in business operations and then, even truer to his word, he promoted her to be the Chief Marketing Officer.

Now, some people said, "What does she know about being a Chief Marketing Officer?" and his response was, "It doesn't matter, because she knows how to do two things: number one, she knows how to grow; and number two, she knows how to hire a great team.  By knowing how to do those two things, she can put together a team that allows her to not only grow, but allows people to grow and therefore grow the organisation".  So, that's how you can use it in recruiting is, "I know you're here.  I'll give you an opportunity if you'll come in here to be here and you can grow with our organisation".

David Green: Yeah, makes a lot of sense.  And actually, interesting question, because you talked about when you outlined the team, the 20/60/20 mix, and you said the difference between a start-up versus a bigger company, or something like that.  One of the reasons for that, is it the disruptors, for example, which you might want more in a start-up tend to sit, I don't know, at the start of that process or at the end?

Whitney Johnson: Yeah.  So for example, if you've got a really large company, you've got scale, and so you've got an infrastructure that can bring in a lot of people and put them into rotation programmes and do development and training at scale in a way that you can't do it at start-up.  Whereas, at a start-up, let's say you've got an idea, something you've got to get done and you're expert in that one idea.  But if you've got five people, you can't necessarily have anyone at the launch point, because you yourself as a founder are at the launch point.

So, what you want to do in those instances is, because you, the founder, at the launch point looking for those fresh perspectives, you're probably going to synthetically create that curve of bringing in a consultant for three months that can help you get started in marketing, for example, or who can help you think about accounting and finance, for example.  So, you might have a few people who are in mastery who aren't even actually full-time employees, but are helping you personally get up that curve.  So, that's how you think about it; it's depending on what you're trying to get done on a specific project, or the size of your organisation you're going to configure differently.

David Green: You've obviously shared some examples, from Chatbooks and the Sixers, it is the Sixers, isn't it, Philadelphia Sixers?

Whitney Johnson: The Sixers, yes it is the Sixers.

David Green: Showing my British roots here!  I do like a lot of American sport, but I don't know the Sixers, I must admit; apologies for those in Philadelphia.  And obviously, the example around Patrick and Eric at Google.  Are there any other examples that you can share with listeners on how companies have used the S-curve framework?

Whitney Johnson: Yeah, I have one more that I can share, and this is in India.  So, a fellow by the name of Sumeet Shetty, he is a mid-level manager at SAP in India, and what he does is when he hires someone into his team, he says, "Okay, well let's look at where you are on the S-curve.  Are you in the launch point, are you in the sweet spot, are you in mastery?"  He also looks at the configuration of his team.  And then he says, "All right, well if I can make sure that everybody's building momentum along that curve, regardless of where they are, the other pieces are going to fit into place".

So, he'll have the conversation, "Where are you?" and then he'll put in place a development plan.  On the technical side, he'll have them read something technical, because he actually also runs the largest corporate book club in India, so he's big into reading.  And then he'll have them read something on the development side like, "I think you could be very entrepreneurial", so he had them read Adam Grant's Originals.

He uses that S-curve as a starting point language to help people orient themselves of where they are in their growth, and then gives them tools that they need to build momentum along that curve, again regardless of where they are.  He also sometimes says -- one example is a person who was a technical expert and he said, "I actually think they'd be really good at managing people" and so he said, "Have you ever thought about doing that?"  So, he brokered an opportunity for this person to move to a curve of managing people, and that person came back and said, "I had no idea I would be good at it".  It turns out that person is.

So again, using that to help people have this mental model or map to navigate the growth and change in their career, and in this specific instance, orienting the people on his team on what their development plan looks like.

David Green: Great, yeah, so really powerful examples.  Thanks for sharing those with listeners throughout our conversation so far.  So, what do you believe to be the two to three things that HR will need to do to really add business value, as we hopefully come out of the pandemic in the coming months and year?

Whitney Johnson: You know, David, it's a great question.  I think one of the gifts of the pandemic, I would say, is that HR has had a seat at the table in a way that it hadn't previously.  And, it's not that it couldn't have a seat, but you've probably had Leena Nair on your podcast at some point.  I had her on the podcast as well, and you probably remember her saying something like, "Stop thinking you don't have a seat at the table.  You do have a seat at the table, but you have to take your seat at the table".

I think one of the gifts of the pandemic is that HR leaders realise, "Oh, they need me!  I am the emotional first responder inside this company.  I'd better step up.  I have to figure out how to keep people safe physically, I have to figure out how to keep people safe emotionally and mentally, I have to figure out how we're going to orchestrate the work".  So, I think coming out of the pandemic, obviously one of the big challenges is figuring out this whole hybrid remote work thing.  It's a huge opportunity and a huge Tetris challenge.  But to me, the biggest piece of it is, now that you've experienced having a seat at the table, take that initiative, be that partner.

I also interviewed, and you probably have had him on as well, is Johnny C Taylor from SHRM, and he formerly was Head of HR and now he's the CEO of SHRM.  What he said is, "Be a partner, show up, take that initiative and make yourself useful and thinking through, 'Hey, I know you're trying to get this stuff done on the business.  Let me talk to you about our people strategy in order to get that stuff done'", which goes back to what I said earlier.  We're trying to grow our business, but we all know, and let me say one more thing on this, because I think this is important; in order to grow our business, we have to grow ourselves and grow our people, and I'm going to give you this statistic, because I think this is so powerful for any HR leader to convey to any CEO they are working with anywhere.

Egon Zehnder did a study.  They asked the CEOs, 1,000 CEOs, "Do you strongly agree that you need to transform yourself as well as your organisation?"  Prior to the pandemic, 26% strongly agreed.  Post-pandemic, 80% strongly agreed.  So what that means now, it's people, people, people; as in, HR leader, if you can help your CEO transform, that's going to create a space for your people to transform; and if your people transform, your organisation will transform.  Okay, am I pounding the table hard enough, David?

David Green: No, you are, and it's great.  It's a huge opportunity for HR as a profession, and CHROs as leaders within the business to grasp, isn't it?  And it can't be any coincidence that Leena, who was obviously advocating this long ago, is now the CEO at Chanel; she's moved from CHRO to CEO, so yeah, very interesting indeed.

Whitney, loved hearing from you and loved hearing that passion at the end as well.  It's always good to get some passion out on the podcast!  Thanks for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast.  How can listeners stay in touch with you, follow you on social media, listen to your podcast, by the sounds of it, and find out more about your work?

Whitney Johnson: Well, I think the two easiest ways, or I'll say three, so number one is you can listen to the podcast.  It's the Disrupt Yourself podcast, and maybe you link to that episode, my episode with Leena and your episode with Leena; that would be kind of fun to do the parallel play of those episodes!  That's probably the easiest way.  And then, if you want to connect with me, I'm on LinkedIn.  And if you want to email me and tell me something you learnt today, I'm at wj@whitneyjohnson.com.

David Green: Well, Whitney, it's been wonderful speaking to you.  Thanks very much for sharing your expertise and time with our listeners, and yeah, look forward to hearing about listeners' S-curves in the coming months.

Whitney Johnson: Thank you, David.