A hidden cost of reciprocity
Whitney Johnson asks: If when we get, we are are socially obliged to give, then what gives? Her thoughts on the hidden cost of reciprocity in this post.
Independent Work May Be Inevitable
The allure of “the company man” has all but faded, Whitney Johnson says, and independent work may be the new frontier– one where you can actually put both food on the table and still have a life.
Why Innovators Love Constraints
Most of us hate constraints. But in this piece, Whitney Johnson explains why being caught in a tightly-lidded box can be a good thing.
Women, Finance the World You Want
So how do we explain the high investing anxiety of four out of ten women? I suspect because, deep down, they fear it will bankrupt their femininity. But if women don’t feel comfortable handling their own money, it’s unlikely that they’ll feel comfortable handling a P&L for their firm — and if you don’t feel comfortable with P&L responsibility, you’re not going to make it to the top ranks of management.
Whitney Johnson: Are you stuck in a girls’ club?
n my experience, women tend to look to other women to make connections for them. We may feel more comfortable proceeding that way, but in order to gain enough power to make real progress, we have to seek out male help as collaborators, mentors, and connectors. The empirical evidence is undeniable that men can offer women power and a leg-up in many ways that other women cannot. We need to leverage that reality.
Put Failure in Its Place
As I have grappled with my own this-just-may-break-me failures, I am increasingly convinced that dreaming must be a process, an engine of experimentation. As we practice innovating we are propelled up a personal learning curve — and we begin to accomplish our dreams. But implicit in daring to disrupt the status quo is daring to fail. As we learn by doing and do by learning something will eventually (and inevitably) not work. As former DARPA official Ken Gabriel said, “An important part of disruption is having the nerve to take on a really big failure.”
Whitney Johnson: Throw your life a curve
In complex systems like a business (or a brain), cause and effect may not always be as clear as the relationship between the light switch and the light bulb. There are time-delayed and time-dependent relationships in which huge effort may yield little in the near-term, or in which high output today may be the result of actions taken a long time ago. The S-curve decodes these systems by providing signposts along a path that, while frequently trod, is not always evident. Our hypothesis is that those who can successfully navigate, even harness, the successive cycles of learning and maxing out that resemble the S-curve will thrive in this era of personal disruption.
Bullying is a confidence game
In business, bullies are would-be leaders who, rather than use their talent for assessing strengths and weaknesses in the service of their team and their company, instead look to construct an uncontested fiefdom. There can be a very thin line between a bully and a leader.
