GA 406 | Reflecting on 2021 with Ron Pereira

What I believe might be the right answer doesn't really matter. Just like what you believe might be the answer doesn't really matter. What matters is how are we going to get to the truth? And that's typically going to be through experimentation. Hey, everyone, this is Ron Perera, and I'm actually recording this. I don't often say the actual date of when we're recording, but I am recording this on January 3rd. And obviously this will be released a few weeks after that's been recorded. But I wanted to give the date just kind of set the context for sort of what's going through my mind here at the. At the beginning of every year. Well, towards the end of every year, and then definitely at the right at the beginning is when I often really try to look back on the previous year. I know some people do their hindsight or their reflection, you know, every quarter, every. At the end of every year. I don't know. For some reason, I really like at the beginning of every year to look back right before I look forward. And so what I wanted to do today is to share some random thoughts that I've got. I've actually been taking some notes as I've. I've reflected on 2021 and some of the things that. That I have personally learned, at least for myself. I'm not saying everything I'm going to share here is, is what you should be believe or what you, you know, or how you should go about your life, but I thought maybe it might be helpful for me to maybe articulate some of the things that are going on in my mind, and then I would to do a similar exercise for yourself. You know, look back on 2021, if you haven't already, and definitely, hopefully everybody's going to kind of look Forward here to 2022 and what you want to accomplish as an individual and you're part of a company, what you want to do as part of your company. But before we get into any of that, I want to definitely thank everybody that listens to this podcast. I know we've got a lot of people who literally listen to every single episode and wow, I'm just deeply, deeply appreciative of that. And even if you just listen from time to time, thank you for that as well. I know a lot of people share our podcasts, and that's. That's honestly how things spread. And word of mouth has really always been Gemba Academy's best marketing tool is just other people kind of talking about the things that we're up to. So, so thank you for that. And then finally for those that I, I know we have many Gemba Academy subscribers, those that actually, you know, pay to, to subscribe to Gemba Academy's core product, which is obviously videos and coaching and certification, that sort of thing over@gemba academy.com. well, obviously thank you for your business. Without that, we wouldn't exist. So very, very, as I look back, just very appreciative of, of all of our customers and our fans and our listeners. And without you guys, obviously we wouldn't exist now. So, yeah, I got this list here in front of me that I just want to sort of work through and I've, I've kind of organized them a little bit, but some of them are, they, they definitely stand on their own. And so this is not meant to be like your top 10 things to do to be a great person or anything like that. But I want to start with something that, you know, we've all heard many, many times I've said on the podcast many times and I try my best to do myself, but I don't always succeed. But it is really important to identify your why. You know, like, you know, obviously Simon Sinek and these guys popularized this many years back. Find your why, like what's your purpose? What's your cause? And I feel like this is very important to do two ways. You first, you definitely need to do it at an individual level. Okay. And so like for yourself, like you yourself, like what is your why right now? And it's going to evolve. You know, for um, you know, my teenage daughter, you know, her why is, is, is very different than what it'll be probably when she's a 35 year old person. Right? And so our whys are going to evolve. And so that's why looking at these sometimes on a year to year basis is important. Depending on, you know, the phase of life that you're in, if you get a family, your why may orient more towards your family. Okay? So that's at a personal level, it's really important and I would encourage you to, to write, type it into a text document on your phone or put a label on it, you know, and just, and really try to own that why and try to understand, deeply understand what that why is. And then you have to revisit it from time to time and then make sure it's still accurate. And if you might need to update your why. And that's okay because again, as things in our lives change, our priorities, our purposes might change a little bit. Now I Think it's also important when we think about continuous improvement from an organizational level. This is one of the things when we're coaching companies who are getting started with our lean journey or even not getting started, they've been on it for a while and, and they're trying to get better. It's always important to understand like, why do you want to practice continuous improvement? Like really, you know, what's your purpose? What's the cause? Like what, what are you trying to accomplish? And it really, that one is a little bit tough because it can't just be. Well, our mission statement says that we are going to be the pursue excellence. Yeah, whatever. Everybody's pursuing excellence. Okay, that's not a why. Okay, so, but really think about like when you're trying to roll out some new concept to a bunch of people who are uncertain about what it is this lean stuff's all about. You've got to be able to fall back on your why. And as an organization, this is the reason that we're doing it. We know it's going to be hard, but this is why we believe it's worth it. Now obviously other things get involved there quickly, like visual management, like keeping score. Are we winning? Are we losing? And so there's, this is where you get into lean daily management and all that kind of stuff, which is obviously a topic for another podcast. But all these things really are intertwined. So your personal why, your organizational's why, and even, you know, if you have a family, you know, I think it's a useful exercise to entertain that with your family. What's your, your family's why? You know, like what are you guys all about and what are you fighting for? What's your purpose as a family, as a unit? And so that can be a really interesting exercise. Even if you have young kids, you'll be surprised on the things that they'll, they'll, they'll say, the insights that they'll, that they'll have. Okay, so that was really the first thing I want to talk about. Now this next thing is not related at all to the why, but it's something that I've really, really tried to practice. I've known about this for many, many years. I've written about it, I've talked about it. But you know, in this hyper connected world that we're in and it's only going to get more connected, you know, with as technology advances and social media advances and all the rest of it, it's so easy to get overwhelmed by the world, by the news by the social media, by someone who you don't agree with, and you read their Facebook posts and they annoy you, right? And so it's really easy to get fired up. And so what I've really tried to practice, and I would encourage you to try. And it's practice because we're never, ever going to be perfect at it, because we're all imperfect human beings. But it is to control what you can control. And what I like to say, especially for folks that are in my life and people that I'm coaching professionally, but also, like, I coach youth sports, and I try to teach the young athletes that I'm working with that the only thing that they can control is their effort and then the way that they react to a stimulus. So, like in sports, the analogy is when you have a great play, it's okay to get, you know, celebrate a little bit with your teammates, but don't go overboard. And then when something terrible happens, you make a horrible play. You know, it's okay to kind of feel a little bit bad, but you got to get over it. You got to play in the middle. That's what I say when we're. When I'm coaching sports, play in the middle. Don't get too high, don't get too low. But it's really the same in life, you know, if we are constantly scouring the news looking for a reason to get upset, or you get on Twitter and you get all crazy, right, Reading about this or that, and next thing you know, you're just all fired up. And if you are one of those folks that engage and start arguing and debating, my goodness, that's a whole nother level. Level of issue. Okay. But I would really encourage everybody to try to do their best to practice what Marcus Aurelius actually said. He is a one of my favorite quotes. I just love this. And he says, choose not to be harmed, and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed, and you haven't been, okay? So it's as simple as that. Choose not to be harmed, and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed, and you haven't been okay. So, you know, one analogy I use again, my kids, they're all two of them are driving, and I have another one who's learning to drive. And, you know, I say, hey, you know, somebody cuts you off one day, there's a couple reactions. You can get all mad and honk your horn and, you know, give them some hand signal, which you shouldn't do, but you could. You get all mad, basically. So that's one option, right? Get all mad. What's going to happen if you get all mad? Well, you're probably going to drive like an idiot because your cortisol's through the roof and you're all aggressive yourself, Yourself. And so you're going to be a worse driver out there. So it's not good. Okay, that, that, that option's not good. The second option is be like, whoa, boy, that person just cut me off. I hope everything's okay. Maybe they're rushing to the hospital, be with their dying child or something like that. You don't know. Right. And so in that situation, you can choose not to be harmed by that person that just cut you off. And when you choose to not be harmed, you haven't been. Okay. So I don't know, I feel like, again, and this, it just feels like it's just getting worse and worse and worse. Again, the way the news works, you know, it doesn't matter if you're on the right side or the left side of the news. You pick your poison, right? I mean, they're, they're both feeding a message that's. It's meant to fire you up. Why? Because they want you to come back and read. Okay. And so that's. They're in the game, right? Both the right, the left, the middle. Everybody's in the, in the game for eyeballs. So I don't know. I feel like in this time it's especially important for us to just really control our emotions and try to. Try to stay calm. Right. Stay calm and carry on. That used to be a popular button, didn't it? Okay. So, yeah, control what you can control. The next one is kind of related to that first one or to the one that I just mentioned. And it. But it has to be. This one is more about our being aware of our own bias. Okay. And we've. We're all biased. I shouldn't say we're all. That's. I don't know if you're biased or not. Okay. But I think the probability that you're biased, like I am biased, is very, very high. Okay. And so our belief, Our beliefs. And this might go back to our why, you know, so we might have a belief structure that, that forms a certain narrative in a way that we want to operate and navigate through life. And so that is going to bias us in a certain direction. And that's not always bad. I mean, you know, if you're biased towards helping people, that's good, right? If you're biased towards stealing from people. That's bad, I would say, I think it's easy to say, okay, but what can happen is we can get so dug into our own bias that we can't see anything else, okay? So for example, I mean, you know, politics or something like that is the easiest example. So you've got one team on one side saying one thing and let's say you agree with them, generally speaking, again, because of your belief structure or whatever it might be. And then you got this other team on the other side and they have a completely different narrative, okay? And so what do you tend to do, you tend due to confirmation bias to go read the articles that have to do with your belief structure, with your bias, okay? And I suppose that's natural, okay, because you're getting your news and you're trying understand what's going on and, and with, with like minded people. But it can be taken too far and it can be a trap because sometimes the people on your side that believe what you believe, they may not always be right, okay? Chances are very good they're not always right. In fact, they might be wrong quite a lot, okay? Which means to say is the people on the other side, they might be wrong about a lot of things as well, but they're going to be right about some things as well. So the truth in life probably lies somewhere in the middle, okay? So I personally tend to be drawn towards people who, who like to understand both sides and maybe they'll be critical of, of both sides of a, of a topic, okay? And so they're not so entrenched in one. So anyhow, what I guess I'm not trying to say is what you should, what news agency you should go read or listen to. But what I'm saying is if you tend to look at one source of news, do yourself a favor and try, and I try to do this myself, try to go to the complete opposite of the narrative that you appreciate and that you agree with and try with your best to go read the other perspective, okay? And try to at least understand where they're coming from, understand why they believe what they believe. And it's not always comfortable because sometimes you might even kind of say, oh, maybe they do have a good point. And you know, I don't agree with everything that they're saying, but a couple of the points that they're making do make some sense. And so that's when I feel like we might be at our best as a society is when we're able to listen to one Another and, and really converse. But it's hard, right, because again, the news is, is wired to make us angry, right? And make us not listen to one another. So I don't feel like that's going to move us forward. And you know, even in business, when you're thinking about continuous improvement and you're thinking about, I've got ideas for how to make something better, and you might be pretty confident in your ideas, so you go into the meeting and then that other person over there, you know, they might have completely different ideas, okay? And so this is where this whole thing, which is kind of leading into some of my future points here, where this whole idea of scientific thinking comes in and why it's so powerful, okay. Is because what I believe might be the right answer doesn't really matter. Just like what you believe might be the answer doesn't really matter. What matters is how are we going to get to the truth? And that's typically going to be through experimentation, trying things, measuring them and seeing what actually happens. Okay? And so that's, that's a way through another countermeasure, if you will, to bias. It's just, it's okay to be biased and own your bias. Go into the meeting with your own bias of, here's what I think, you know, because I'm going to make a prediction. Here's what I think. But that's why it's called a prediction for a reason, because we're not sure. What do you think? Oh, you think something completely different that's cool doesn't make you a bad person. Okay? In fact, you might be a great person because you might be right? Okay, so let's together form an experiment and then agree that, hey, if we do these things and we measure them, that, hey, can we maybe come to consensus at the end of this? We're both involved in creating the experiment. And so that's, I think that's a way forward. I wish the world would do that, you know, I wish politics would do that. I wish that the health organizations in the world would all do that, you know, and all come together and just genuinely experiment and see what actually happens and see what we learn. Okay? So, yeah, biases are tough. In fact, if you want to learn more, just Google cognitive biases or something like that. And my gosh, there's so many confirmation bias, obviously the biggest one, right? Where you just go, try to the echo chamber, right? Go to the echo chamber that agrees with you. But there's many, many more recency bias and all different types of bias out there. So being aware of what those biases are is super important because then you can sort of recognize when you're falling into them. And you will, just like I do all the time. Okay, now I want to kind of shift gears a little bit and talk about again, another topic that I've, that I've talked about over the years and we've taught about here at Gemba Academy, and that is the importance of, of habits, of good virtuous habits. And we're going to link to episode 261. I'll ask Jessica to link that up in the show. Notes 261 with James Clear. So James Clear, if you're not familiar, wrote the book Atomic Habits. Now, there's lots of habits books, Charles Duhigg and B.J. fogg, and there's lots of folks who have written about habits over the years. And but I'm a big fan of James Clear, not just because he came on the podcast, but I just feel like he does a really, really good job of articulating his approach. And so I don't want to get into the whole idea of, of habit formation and, or how to change a bad habit. But here in the, in the new year of 2022, I feel like it's important for you to really look at your life as I'm doing my own life, and look at your organization as well. Like, what kind of habits do you, what kind of habits does your organization have? What are good habits? Maybe make a list. Good habits on one side, bad habits on the other side, or you're not sure if they're good or bad habits, you know, in a third column and just list them all out. And then take a, take an assessment on how well you're doing and whether or not you need to make a change. And I think all of us would do well to, to probably increase some positive habits. And if we've got some bad habits or even some habits might not be bad. But, you know, maybe you do spend too much time. Pull out. If you have an iPhone, here's a scary thing. Pull out your screen time and go look over the last, you know, seven days or the last month or whatever on how much time you've been spending on various, you know, apps, whatever those apps might be on your phone and ask yourself, is that what you want? You know, are you on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever? Or maybe it's none of those. Maybe it's you're addicted to some other app, some news website or something like that. You know, and just really take an assessment on, you know, is this how I want to operate in 2022? But yeah, I would, I would encourage, if you don't read the book Atomic Habits, go listen to the episode 261 because I, you know, I'm a little bit biased because Gamba Academy's podcast, but I feel like it's like, it's literally the best interview he's ever done, in my opinion, because I really got him to walk through the entire book. It's almost like an audiobook of Atomic Habits. And James was super gracious to do it. I mean, he spills the beans basically on the whole thing in a less than an hour podcast. So go check that one out. I feel like it's a really important one here at the beginning of the year. Okay, so the next one that I want to talk about is the importance of being intentional. Now we lean thinkers talk about this. Katie Anderson actually talks a lot about the power of intention. And she does a great job in her writing and some of the podcasts and whatnot that she's done over the years on the importance of intention. But what I want to kind of talk about, when I talk about being intentional, I don't get all warm and fuzzy about all your heart and purpose and all that. And that's great. I mean, I agree with all that. But for me, it's like being intentional is sort of like the difference between wanting something and deciding that you're going to do something. Okay. And so many of us want things, you know, we dream about things and we're, you know, constantly looking at some, whatever, whatever that thing is that you want. We're dreaming about it. We want it, we desire it. Okay? What I'm going to say is do something about it. Take a practical step towards that. That is being intentional. Okay? So wanting something is never going to make it happen. The things that we decide to do end up happening. Let me say that again. The things that you and I decide to do end up happening. My, my 15 year old son, he's, he aspires to be a really good football player and he's a good little football player already. And you know, and he wants to be the varsity quarterback as a sophomore next year. And, and he might be able to do it, I don't know. But, but my, my, my, my message to him is that you want that great. What are you going to do to make it happen? So, you know, he's working out a lot more. He's going, working out with a bunch of his football friends and all that, you know, in the off season and, and he's got some plans for how he's going to go. But that's a difference between, you know, he could want to be the varsity quarterback, but is he going to do something about it to make it happen? Okay. And so that's what being intentional is all about. So I feel like, especially for us in continuous improvement, it's really, really critical that we are intentional. And I would argue being intentional about experimentation and about learning. So that's why we always come back to scientific thinking. You know, nobody really knows the answer to all the problems that we have an organization, but we can come up with ideas, we can come up with hypotheses, and we can run experiments and we can try things and see what we learn and short learning cycles. Pdca. So it's nothing new, right? Scientific thinking, all these things, it's been around forever. But I feel like what we've really been able to wrap our arms around, at least I have over the last few years, is just the whole idea of taking the pressure off of like, oh my gosh, what do I do next? I don't know, but I figure out, what's the next experiment? What's the next thing that we can do that gets us a little bit closer to where we want to be? Okay. And it takes being intentional for that to happen. Okay. Because you can sit around and this is where some of my Six Sigma friends will fall into traps. And I have over the years myself, where we get a little bit lost in our minitab and we get, oh my gosh, and all these amazing graphs and analysis and we're trying to make sense of what's happened in the past to predict the future when, ah, we can't always do that. Right. So what we've got to be able to do is maybe learn a little bit from what we've seen, some behaviors of the past, seeing if we can figure out, hey, we had a signal or a special cause back then. What happened that day? Do we know? And if so, you know, trying to set up a better process or a better experiment down the road to make sure that things like that don't ever happen again. Okay? So that's being intentional. Something that's closely related, I think, to being intentional or sort of like a spider web where these things almost are all you pull on one little piece of the spider web, the whole web moves. And that is the importance of. And this, I would say this is for sure, on a personal level, and this is my personal experience here. So again, might not be exactly the same for you, but I want to share my personal experience because it's been life changing. Really it's been life changing for me. And that is the importance of having a, like a support group or battle buddies or whatever. Maybe ladies listening. You might have battle ladies. Sounds weird, but, but having a group of people that, a small group. You know, I have a group of friends from kind of my church community and some, they're guys, there's, there's four of them and we all, we all kind of band together and we go through different kind of exercises together as a group, but we're constantly meeting with one another. Like in fact we go, we will go through like a 90 day period, I've talked about it before, called Exodus 90. And, and we actually meet every week and we talk about. And it, and the meetings aren't like life altering or anything like that, but it's just like, it starts with like, hey, how's it going? You know, that's really all you had to do. And then, and then you say how's it going? And then you shut up and then they tell you how it's going. And just having that communication on a weekly basis with other men for me has been very, very life changing. Okay, now it doesn't have to be men. I mean it could be ladies as well. So I think it's just, it's having other people and you should be doing this obviously with your, your family and your spouse or your significant other, something like that. But I feel like it's, there's something powerful there just having a peer group now, especially this networking. Even in, in the business world, this is very, very similar. You know, if you have like a cohort of folks that of like minded le or something like that that you can kind of stay connected to. And I don't just mean like comment on their LinkedIn post every few weeks or whatever, but like really trying to be again intentional about getting a group of people together and saying hey, how about if you all live close together, you could meet in person or if you don't, you could jump on a zoom call or something like that. But get connected with people and try to connect. Every week every, you know, run an experiment, try it for 30 days, try it for 60 days, try it for 90 days and just say hey, every Saturday we'll go to get a cup of coffee and just check in with each other and see how things are going. Or let's say one of your resolutions is to get in shape or something like that. We'll find four or five other people who want to do that as well and then communicate with each other and support each other. Because part of that support group should also be. What I would say is it's good to have three or four other folks that you can kind of connect with as a group. But then what's been helpful for me and the friends that I, that I do life with, if you will, is that we'll have like, say for 30 or 60 or 90 days, we'll have like an accountability partner if we're trying to do certain things. And we check in with that accountability partner every day. Okay. And sometimes it's just a text message like, hey, how's your day? Or whatever, you know, or if you're having a bad day and you got in a fight with your significant other or something like that and you're feeling awful or whatever about how you acted, you know, well, go ahead and say you're sorry to your significant other. But then, you know, check in with your accountability partner and be like, man, I blew it. And, you know, this and that. And they probably aren't going to have any magical words, but other women, like, hang in there. Something like that. And, but just that, that, that connection with other people is very, very important. Okay. Especially, you know, in this time when we're not always out and about like we have been over the years. So being able to connect with other people is very, very important. Okay? So, yeah, seek out a group of folks. And back in the day, we used to call them masterminds. I don't care what you call it, but just get a group of people and that, that are sort of, you know, you know, on the, on the same path as you and, and see how you can, how you can move forward as a group instead of as an individual. Let's see, the last one I want to talk about is just sort of a random thought. I, I had a LinkedIn post on this, I don't know, a few weeks ago, and something that, that has always driven me a little bit nuts is email and text messaging. And especially when we are trying to solve problems over email or you're maybe in some sort of conflict or an argument or maybe a disagreement, anything. And next thing you know, you start texting with that person back and forth, back and forth, texting, texting. I just don't, I'm no psychologist or anything. I'm not an expert on this, but I just don't think it's Effective. It's not effective for me. I can tell you that what's effective for me. And it's not always the comfortable thing because it's kind of scary. But the best thing is to pick up the phone or jump on a zoom call or whatever it might be. Or if you can meet in person, meet in person, but just to go talk with that person one on one. Again, if you can do zoom and put on a camera, that's probably even better because you can at least see each other, okay, and just communicate human to human. But there's something about these keyboards and the phone, with our little fingers going a million miles a minute, typing these messages, like our brains just don't seem to work. Right. Or you read their reply over email and you take it completely different than what they intended, and then you fire off some message that you probably wouldn't have sent if you would have not perceived it the way you perceived it. You know what I'm saying? And so these things are far more easy to pick up on and not totally botch when you communicate person to person, voice to voice, you know, zoom call to zoom call or teams or whatever you use. Okay? So, yeah, pick up the phone, connect with people, you know, person to person, face to face, if you can. Yeah, maybe that's how I want to wrap things up. Which is ironic because you're listening to this over a podcast, Right? But. And listen, I'm not like, anti email. I sent a lot of emails. I feel like email is fantastic. In fact, email, like, when you're working through a problem and you have some great brainstorming phone call or whatever it might be, you can say, you know, listen, I'm going to summarize what we just talked about on email and send it out. And then, you know, make sure I didn't miss anything. And so that's where email really shines, because then you can have a record of what was said and what you thought and what you all learned throughout that. That phone call. Okay, that's the weakness of a phone call, is you can't always remember exactly what was. What was said and all the rest of it. And so, like, following that up with an email can be very helpful. Or a Google document or whatever it might be. Okay, all right, well, I think I'll wrap this one up. So this is just a kind of a. An odd solo show that I don't do all the time, but I just had some things on my mind. I wanted to share them with you. And especially here at the beginning of 2. 2022. I'm really, really hoping that this is a great year for everyone. I have a lot of hope, I really do. I, I'm very optimistic for 2022 and I know that Gimba Academy is excited to, to work with all of you that, that are listening and especially our, our customers. You know, we want to, we want you to be successful because when you're successful, we're successful, obviously. So, yeah, that's all I got. Hey, listen, also, if we're not connected on LinkedIn, please look me up. Ron Pereira. I don't think we normally put my stuff in the show notes, but I'd love to connect with people over LinkedIn and shoot me a message. And also, if you've listened to this far, you're into our podcast and so I need something from you. I don't often ask a lot of you listeners, but I need something from you. And it's not a five star rating, although you can do that if you want. But I want to know, like, what do you like about this podcast? And then also, what can we do better? You know, this podcast, we've been doing it the same way for hundreds of episodes. I mean, we've made a few tweaks here and there, but generally speaking, it's pretty much the same. And I was looking at our statistics the other day and it's great. Everything's fine. You know, we're, we're, you know, have a very consistent listenership, if you will, and so no complaints or anything, but we're, you know, we do want to practice continuous improvement ourselves. So if you have ideas for how we could make this even better and you might listen to other podcasts and they might do things that are, that are really fun, I'm not proud at all. I'll steal from anybody, you know, anybody's podcast if they have a cool segment that they do or something like that. So, so shoot me an email. Ronimbaacademy.com that's my email address. So. G E M B A A c a d ronbaacademy.com with just any thoughts that you have on the podcast because that would be super, super helpful. Okay, Next week we'll go back to our regular show with a good guest and yeah, thanks for listening. Whether you've been on the continuous improvement journey for many years or perhaps you're just getting started, Gemba Academy is here to support you. And while we're best known for our Most more than 1500 Lean and Six Sigma teaching and virtual tour videos, we also have a team of experienced Lean and Six Sigma practitioners available for one on one coaching, as well as a variety of Lean and Six Sigma certification options. To learn more and to schedule a demo, head on over to gembaacademy.com.