GA 143 | Embracing the Fear of Failure with Ron Pereira

You're listening to episode 143 with Ron Perera.

Welcome to the Gemba Academy Podcast, the show that's focused on helping individuals and companies achieve breakthrough results using the same continuous improvement principles leveraged by companies such as Toyota Del Monte and the U.S. department of Defense. And now, here's your host, Ron Pereira.

Hey there. This is Ron Pereira, and I'd like to welcome you to this final episode of 2016 here on the Gemba Academy Academy podcast. Like we always say each week, thank you for taking time out of your day, in your week to listen to the show and for watching our Lean and Six Sigma training videos over@gembaacademy.com now, today, I'm going to take a different approach to the show. I'm going to fly solo. We've got a ton of guests coming up. Matter of fact, we've got a bunch of them already recorded, edited, and kind of queued up and ready to release. But I wanted to just take this opportunity here on the last. Really, it's just a few days here before 2020, 2017 comes. And just to thank you all and share a topic that's kind of near and dear to my heart, I want to talk a little bit today about failure and I want to talk about the fear of failure and I want to talk about how it can really wreak havoc on businesses and really in lives of people just in general outside of business. A soccer mom, anybody can have a fear of failure and that can really, really negatively impact them. So we're gonna spend some time talking about that and but before that is, again, want to thank everybody for an amazing 2016 Gemba Academy. You know, we had another great year, so we definitely are so humbled and so thankful for all of our customers. So thankful for all of our listeners to the podcast. I've mentioned it before, but this podcast has just really become an integral part of our business. We don't actually make any money or anything from the podcast. It' free. But it's just an amazing way for us to kind of share the message of what we believe Lean's all about. Of course, it's great marketing for us. More people hear about Gemba Academy, so that also that's good for Gemba Academy, but for me, it's just such a fun part of my work. I just enjoy talking to all the guests. So if you were a guest this past year or really just you've been a guest since we've started the podcast, thank you. It takes a lot of time on their Part to kind of carve out thought into what they're going to say takes a lot of time preparing. And, you know, it can be nerve wracking for some folks who don't normally get on and ramble into a microphone. So thank you to all of our guests. So let's get into the main topic here. And that's really failure. And the reason this is so such a, I don't know, important topic for me is that it's really played an important part, part of my personal Life here in 2016. Well, the story goes, it was November of 2015. I was sitting in my car. It was a Saturday morning. It's a really cold morning here in November. My daughter had an early morning soccer game, so she has to be there an hour before the games, which is kind of crazy. But anyhow, it's the rules. We abide by them. And so I pull up to the soccer fields and I look at the temperature gauge of my car. It's a about 35 degrees. I'm like, oh, love you, girl. Go out there and warm up. I'm gonna sit here in the car and watch you. And luckily I had a nice big Venti Caramel Macchiato in my hands, which is about, I don't know, 42 grams of sugar for anybody counting. And I decided to let the seat warmer kind of go and just kind of stay in there in my warm, comfy car and watch my daughter warm up. I was planning to go out and watch the actual game, but for the warm up, I was just going to sit there. Well, a few minutes later, I started getting a little bit bored and distracted. And so I picked up my iPhone and I remember that Paul Akers had sent me a copy of his book Lean Health. And so I thought, well, I'll just give it, I'll start giving it a read. What's Paul up to these days? And I knew he was all fit and buff and all that kind of stuff. And so I started reading this book and honestly, it changed my life in just a few chapters. Just, you know, people that know who Paul is, they know how passionate he is and so forth. And I'll link to the show Notes where you can hear this whole Lean Health audiobook if you'd like, like to listen to it. But yeah, Paul rocked my world that morning. And I decided then and there that, you know, I wanted to change my life. In particular, I wanted to change how I was taking care of myself. And I had definitely gained weight over the years and I wasn't in shape. And my father, you know, a few years ago, died of a stroke, and he had had heart disease all his life, and cancer in my family and so forth. So I really felt like I was a walking heart attack, you know, waiting to happen. And so I committed that day to change my life. And long story short, over this past year, I have definitely gotten into the best shape of my life. And I used to be pretty fit as a young man. I was a high school wrestler. And. But I promise you, I'm 43 right now, and I'm the best shape of my life. And I've embraced kind of the whole CrossFit community. And that way of working out, it works for me. And my. And my. One of my. Actually, one of my daughters works out with me every morning. So it's been a special change to my life. I've been eating clean. I really cut sugar out of my life. That was the main thing. And also I've really relaxed on processed foods and stuff like that. And so with clean eating and working out, I've gotten into the best shape of my life. And that's really because I feared failure in that perspective. And failure in that perspective was dying, my wife being a widow and my kids not having a dad. And so that really drove me to action. So with that in mind, let's talk a little bit about failure in general. And what does it really mean to fail? I mean, so if you look at. I pulled up some definitions on Merriam Webster, who defines failure as an omission of occurrence or performance, a state of inability to perform a normal function, lack of success, a falling short. So these are just kind of some formal definitions of failure. Now, one thing that I really wish that they would have shared in the definition is that, at least for me, failure means quitting. It means you lost the willingness to learn. It means that you lost hope and you stop trying. To me, that's true failure. Now, a lean concept that we talk a lot about, in particular, the lean startup movement is really talked a lot about. This is the idea of pivoting. And I think it's just closely related to failure. So, you know, sometimes in business and life, things change and we need to adapt. So, you know, classic example is companies that used to make their money selling VHS videotapes. Obviously, the world has changed, and so for them to continue to try to make the best vhs, VHS tapes in the world wasn't going to help, right? Instead, they needed to pivot and realize that things like DVDs and now online streaming are the way the world is trending. And so failure doesn't. When we say you got to be careful, when we say don't quit, don't stop. Well, you do need to quit making VHS tapes if that's your business, because you're probably going to go out of business because people aren't going to buy them anymore. So you need to pivot. So that's a, I don't know, that's a really complicated aspect of failure that we got to be really bit careful of. So, so that's a little bit about the idea of failure. Now let's talk a little bit about the fear of failure and how it plays a critical role in business and really life in general. Obviously, fear of failure can cause folks to not take action. You know, the classic example of this and continuous improvement is when we fall into what we call analysis paralysis. My six sigma brethren, which I'm one of them, so I, and I've been done this myself, we're especially guilty of falling into analysis paralysis as we just, we got to get our R square just a little bit higher before we, we have the courage to go out and see if the model actually works. Or perhaps we, we want to make. Just get a few more data points on that control chart before we can feel good about making a conclusion. Of course, data is good and the more data is, the better. But eventually we got to go out and we got to try. We got to take action. And so fear of failure, if theory failure keeps you action, that's extremely, extremely bad. You know, I've told my kids over the years when they're playing sports, and one of my daughters is a pretty, pretty serious soccer player. And I've always told her she's a lot of times will play forward, so she needs to score, you know, for her team. And I've told her that, you know, really the only way that you're ever going to score is if you have the courage to shoot. You know, sometimes kids don't want to shoot because they don't want to miss. And it feels bad when the goalie swallows it up or they kick it over the goal post or whatever it is, or they don't want to take that penalty kick because, gosh, there's so much pressure and are afraid they may miss and let their teammates down. Well, you got to wipe all that out and you got to have the courage to take the shot. Okay? So again, not taking action is bad, and we mustn't let fear of failure keep us from trying. Now with all this Said, a few weeks ago, I actually stumbled across a pretty powerful video from a gentleman named Jocko Willink. Now, Mr. Willink is a former Navy SEAL, and he is an extremely intense individual. He's big and giant and strong. He's got, like, just. He just looks tough and mean. But he's got such great messages in his podcast. So we're. I'll link to it in the show notes. Go to GembaPodcast.com and look for episode 143. And definitely encourage you to watch as many Jocko Willink videos as you can. In particular, this first one that I would encourage you to watch where he addresses the fear of failure. And so I thought, well, what's he going to talk about? He's going to talk about how to fight through failure and don't let it stop you and this and that. And he does, at the very beginning, he does talk about the same things that I just discussed, namely, that we shouldn't let fear of failure keep us from taking action. But then he takes a totally different approach to the idea of fearing failure, and it really rocked my world. So what I want to do now is I'm just going to actually play the video, the audio version, obviously, of the video. Again, we'll link to the actual video in the show notes page. But here's. Here's what Mr. Willick had to say about how to overcome fear of failure.

Fear of failure. So obviously, fear of failure can. Can keep you from taking risk, and it can leave you just sitting there paralyzed into not taking any action at all. And obviously that's bad. But I don't actually want you to overcome the fear of failure. I want. I want you to be afraid of failure. Fear of failure is good. Fear of failure will keep you up at night planning and rehearsing and going over contingencies. Fear of failure will keep you training hard. It'll stop you from cutting corners. Fear. Fear. Fear of failure will keep you working and thinking and striving and relentlessly trying to be more prepared for battle. So I want you to be afraid of failing. I fear failure. But more important, I want you to be horrified. I want you to be terrified of sitting on your ass and doing nothing. That is what I want you to be afraid of. Of waking up in six days or six weeks or six years or 60 years in being no closer to your goal. You've made no progress. That is the horror. That is the nightmare. That is what you need to be truly afraid of. Being stagnant. So get up and go Take the risk, take the gamble, take the first step, take action, and don't let another day slip. Bye.

So, yeah, pretty intense individual. And it's even more intense when you watch the video because he's sitting there right by the microphone. So I really encourage you to check it out. Go to GembaPodcast.com look for episode 143. But now, as he says at the very beginning, and I really want to repeat it, we can't let the fear of failure keep us from trying, because when it keeps us from trying, we stop learning. That's bad. But we can embrace the fear of failure and let it drive us and motivate us to be better people, to be better business people, to be better fathers and wives and husbands and brothers. And whatever we are in life, whatever our calling is, we can embrace it. So for me, failure at its most severe level means dying of a disease or an illness that I could have prevented by taking better care of myself. Now, you know what? I may drop dead of a heart attack or some crazy thing that just happens, and there's just nothing I can do about it. And you know what? Go back and listen to this episode and say that, you know what? You know, it got you, Ron. But you know what? I'm doing everything that I possibly can to make sure that doesn't happen. I'm working out, I'm eating clean, I'm getting good sleep, so I'm doing everything that I can. I'm letting that fear of dying before it's really my time to drive me now from an even more personal level. Failure for me means not keeping God in the center of my life and my family's life, since I personally believe, and I'm not asking anybody else to believe it. This is a Gemba Academy podcast, so we're not trying to put our beliefs on anyone here. I personally believe not keeping God in the center of my life and my family's life could have eternal consequences. So this is obviously extremely important part, and I fear that failure, and from a business perspective, failure for me means losing sight of why Gemba Academy exists, which is pretty simple. We hope to positively impact the world by spreading this message of lean and continuous improvement, because we truly believe it can and it will change the world when it's fully embrace. So losing sight of that, to me, is failure. And so I do fear that. So I do embrace these failures. I do embrace messing up and not doing the best that I. That I can do. I don't want to die of something that I can control. And I don't ever want to lose sight of God for myself or those I love. And I don't ever want to forget the reason Gemba Academy was created. So, as 2016 comes to an end, I'd encourage you to seek out whether fear has kept you from taking action. If so, I'd encourage you to seek out the root cause of that issue. Share your story with others and get encouragement. Ask for help. Heck, shoot me an email ronanbayacademy.com and I'll be happy to offer my 2 cents for whatever that's worth. Join a mastermind group. You know, get a group of folks, you know, professionally. Maybe there's a bunch of lean thinkers that you meet at a conference and you stay in touch with, or maybe it's a group of friends from your community, whether that's a community center or church or something like that. Just come together with some folks and support one another. Of course, if you're married, you can lean on your spouse, and you should. But this is a really important aspect that we need to really need to address those issues that are keeping us from taking action. But once you've embraced that idea, then like you to consider what is real failure look like for you. Everyone's different, right? Everyone has different dreams, they have different issues, they have different belief systems, and that's totally fine. But identify what that failure is for you and then embrace it. You know, wrap your arms around that fear of that failure and let it drive you, as Jocko says in the video, you know, be horrified of that failure and don't settle. And so the next time you do want to cut corners, whether it's taking care of yourself or something related to your business, and you want to cut corners because it's too hard or you don't like it, don't. Don't cut corners. Fight through it and do everything that you can to be the very best that you can. And so I think if we allow this fear of failure to drive us in a positive way, we can achieve so much more than if we simply just kind of sit back and let that fear overcome us and keep us from doing anything. So with that, I'd like to, I guess, wrap this final episode of 2016 up with a final thank you. You know, we say it on every episode. Thank you for listening. Thank you for telling others about this podcast and about Gemba Academy in general. I mean, I think, you know, our best marketing is you listening and telling others about us, and so thank you for that. We have so much in the works for 2017. We've got some amazing new content that we're going to be developing and we've got some pretty wicked technology stuff coming down the road that I am as soon as extremely excited to get out there. So hang tight. We've got a lot in store and I'm really hoping that 2017 is the best year of your life. Obviously, from a selfish perspective, hope it's the best year for Gemba Academy and for me and my family. But there's only really one way that that's ever going to happen, and that's if we get out there. We hustle, we work together, we come together, we help one another, we collaborate with one another and really just never stop learning. If that's my dream and my wish for you is that 2017 would be the year of learning. It would be the year of perseverance, and ultimately it'll be the year of massive success for each and every one of you. So next week we'll get back on our regular schedule again. We've got some really good guests. Amy Mirvak's gonna be coming up, Edward Jimin and some other folks that we've already got in the can and ready to release. So thank you again for 2016, and we look forward to serving you to the very best of our ability in 2017.

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