Jim McCormick - Intelligent Risk Taking

Is live. Once again, We're talking about intelligent risk taking. Risk taking. Not just foolhardy Russian roulette, but intelligent risk taking right for a purpose. And that's the subject of our conversation today with a world record holding skydiver. Hey everybody, I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach, host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. Our show comes to you every week with a new topic, something to do with scaling your business or the leadership required to get you there. So all the things you do on the business and in the business and then all the things you deal with with yourself. And this is a great topic that blends the two hundreds of shows and more. Wherever you're getting this now, Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. Or at our own website, scalingcoach.com all right, we're joined now by Jim McCormick. He's founding president of the research institute and author of a bunch of books, four books now including the Power of Risk. And he's a former COO and served in government and he's a world class skydiver, hall of fame parachuter, 5200 and change skydives to his credit. 87 hours of free fall jumps from super high jumps. Right? High altitude jumps, 31,000ft, 15 skydiving world records. Member of a skydiving expedition to the North Pole hole. And on his 40th birthday he did 40 jumps and in one day and on his 45th he did 45 all in a day. It's gonna be tough when you hit 80. Welcome to the show, Jim.

Thank you, Bill.

I have, I was telling us we get ready, I've done 15 jumps and, and Jim said, oh, that puts you like at all other group because most people never do a second jump after they do their first. But I didn't do it. I've never done a tandem jump. I started off just learning how to, you know, free fall skydive.

Same here. Tandem didn't appeal to me. It's a great way to do an initial jump. But probably like you, I kind of wanted the full experience and I didn't feel like, I feel like the tandem was a portion of the experience.

I've also done, I'm sure you've done a ton of this where you're in one of these indoor ifly or that kind of thing. You're doing a vertical wind tunnel and, and the first time I did that was really humbling because it's way harder in many respects because all your position is so much more obvious in the confines of the wall there.

Yeah. Vertical. Vertical simulators are an excellent training device and they become critically important in the competitive component of our sport. You cannot really be successful in a competitive environment without investing in a substantial amount of what we call tunnel time. It's also exciting that there's now going to be in the United States, a wingsuit wind tunnel, and that will be in Orlando, Florida, next to the International Skydiving Museum and Hall of Fame. There's only one in the world right now. It's in Sweden. And this will be the first one in North America, second one in the world. And that's going to be hugely popular too, partly because it will allow non skydivers to use it. It will even allow children as young as eight to go in and be able to wingsuit. So it's going to be a big hit.

That's. Well, better to do that than down a canyon or next to a building in wingsuit your first time.

Keep in mind that's not skydiving, and I don't have any issue with that. It's called proximity flying. And the distinction I make is you're not leaving from an aircraft, you're leaving from a fixed object. It's spectacular. And if it wasn't for GoPro and YouTube, it probably wouldn't exist. But it's a pretty dicey proposition.

There's no room for.

I try to avoid fixed objects while in free fall.

Yeah. I wonder, though, is wingsuit flying as interesting away from objects where you. Can you tell as much how you're flying when you're not in proximity?

Well, I'm not a huge expert. I've only done a handful of wingsuit jumps. Wingsuiting is like a lot of other sub disciplines of skydiving. There's all sorts of different expertise developed. Now the only fixed object you have while skydiving is of cloud, and we need to keep a certain distance from them. But wingsuiters tend to enjoy flying with one another and doing things that are more acrobatic in nature. So there's a variety of things to do. There's no two ways about it. When you encounter a fixed object, which in this case would be a cloud, it does reinforce the fact that you're experiencing a certain amount of speed.

Yeah. One of my most favorite things as a pilot or a passenger is when you. When you just exit or enter a cloud deck. If you've got a nice horizontal cloud deck as you drop into it or pull out of it, it's so cool.

For the benefit of our friends at The Federal Aviation Administration, we don't do that as skydivers. It's against the federal aviation regulations and it's something we do not do. Sometimes we'll see the clouds, but we don't make contact with them.

And as a pilot, you're only doing it under instrument flight rules, Right? There you go.

Good job, Bill. We've both covered ourselves.

You would never do that.

Exactly. Just how wild. Consider it.

All right, so let's talk. How did you get started skydiving? And you know what drew you to this? A little bit of your background?

Well, skydiving interest started from a. My comment to your listeners and your viewers is be careful what books you give your kids because it has a potential to have a long time influence. When I was in grade school, one of my summer reading lists was a book about commando training. The part about parachuting I found absolutely intriguing. Read it, read the chapter twice. And I now know that's where the seed was planted. So now you're dealing with, you know, I was like 9 or 10 years old, so be careful what you put in front of your kids. When I was 18 years old, had a speaker come to my high school and talk about goal setting. And completely I was enamored of the whole concept and speaker and the thing. So I went and set a list of life goals before I went to college. And one was to do a skydive. So that was the genesis of it. And it just took time to be able to get around to it and figure out how to go about it. I wasn't really keen back then. There was no Internet. I wasn't really keen on opening the yellow pages and just going to Acme Skydiving. I kind of wanted to find somebody that could tell me where it would be a good idea to go. So I didn't get my first job Till I was 32 and did my second jump the same day. And I've never done fewer than 100 jumps a year. And it's become a lifelong passion. So that was how the skydiving all started. That then led to being an engineer and an mba. I kind of want to figure out, why do people do this? Because, let's get real, nothing in you says it's a good idea to jump out of a plane when it's not on the ground. I mean, it is at a cellular level. You're saying this is not a good idea because we are born with a natural fear of falling. So it negates that we're up against that fear. So but it's so powerful, Bill, because it's like so many other things in life. And I'm not encouraging people to skydive. I mean, just encourage people to stretch their comfort zone. Anything we do that we're fearful of, if we proceed successfully, it will bolster our confidence. Skydiving is very much the same. So I was curious, why do people do this? And so it was easier to look at other people instead of myself. And I looked at the research that had been conducted on the skydiving community and demographic components, psychographic components, all that stuff. But interesting to note is there's a lot of high achievers, a lot of highly educated individuals, lots of advanced degrees, lots of entrepreneurs in the skydiving industry or skydiving community. That probably doesn't surprise you. A lot of people who are first responders in an emergency health environment, so forth, not only physicians, but the physicians are disproportionately emergency room physicians. That probably wouldn't surprise you. The attorneys are oftentimes litigators. That probably doesn't surprise you. They like the challenge of going to court and performing. So that then led to posing the question and doing the research on how important is risk taking in our lives? How important is risk inclination and risk aversion? Is it indicative of what we can achieve? And then translating that, going beyond to risk postures within organizations, and is there an ideal or an optimum risk posture for an organization to achieve and maintain? And so that was from the very beginning, from that first jump. I just want to do this as a personal development device to now over 5,200 skydives. That's the genesis.

It's an interesting thing. I would imagine that a lot of people take a skydive or a tandem jump or something like that early on, or they do it as part of military training and. And then they decide it's something that they want to do more of. But I would bet a lot of people just do it for that initial rush of. And they get that experience and. And then they've done it.

Yeah, Bill, I think for most people it's a bucket list item. They do it once and then they're done, and that's fine. And it's still a memorable, probably indelibly memorable experience. And hopefully they're, they're, you know, it bolsters their confidence a little bit and they can go forward with a little longer stride. That's a beautiful thing for your listeners and for your entrepreneurs. The important thing to understand is most people are risk averse. Most People see risk as something to avoid. And oftentimes entrepreneurs are a little more comfortable with what we call the risk equation than others are. The risk equation is being able to identify the risks that need to be taken and then implement them effectively. There's two components, identify the risks and implement them. As simple as that sounds and as intuitive and innate, that is for a lot of people who are entrepreneurial, it is not something that comes naturally to a lot of people. Second thing I want to point out is the following. I'll pose the question to you. Are entrepreneurs risk takers? Are they naturally risk inclined?

I would say it's probably mix, right? They have maybe more than the average person's risk comfort level, but they have clear boundaries in areas where they're terrified of screwing up.

That's well stated and it correlates to our observation here at the Research Institute for Risk Intelligence, which is entrepreneurs are risk takers of necessity and not of choice. The point is they don't get up in the morning and say, I really want to take a risk. They get in the morning and say, I want to be successful. And they know that a risk is a means to that end. Risk is not an outcome. It's simply a tool to lead to an outcome. It leads to increased organizational agility, which is an increased ability to respond to changes in the marketplace, changes in the competitive environment. It leads to increased levels of initiative, so there's less, fewer of those decisions unnecessarily. Escalated. Organizations can respond more promptly and effectively. And finally, it leads to increased levels of innovation. And there's not an organization that exists that doesn't have to continually innovate if they want to remain competitive. So that's where risk takes you. But the important thing I want to come back to is for people who have ascended to the top of an organization are oftentimes for entrepreneurs, their comfort level with balancing the risk equation exceeds the people in their organization. And that variance is something that it's important that they be aware of.

So say a little bit more about that variance. What is that variance again? Describe the variance.

The fact is that most people who ascend to a high level within an organization have a superior ability to manage the risk equation than a lot of the people within the structure. Okay? And because they're more comfortable with that risk being able to take that risk, it's oftentimes there's a very. There's a. They leave the people they're leading behind, which leads to something that. A point that we make continually with our clients, which it's important to close the gap between a perceived risk and the actual risk. Well, think about that. You and I might look at something we don't have a lot of knowledge about, and we might say, I don't know. Let's choose an example. Going down in a deep sea submersible. Have you ever done that? No. No, I haven't either. So to me, there's the fact that there's going to be a million atmospheres of pressure on this thing suggests to me that there's some challenges involved. Obviously, that's an overstatement, but my point is it's a pretty challenging environment, so I don't know much about it. So as such, I have a perceived. Now if I sat down with somebody who knows what they're talking about, they could close the gap between the perceived risk and the actual risk. And now I would see it differently. So my lack of knowledge, my ignorance, leads me to see it as a greater risk than it is. Same thing when you're leading your people. And the point is, it's your job to close that gap. And how do you close that gap? You close it with information. Okay? By keeping, by helping, bringing your people along. Say, here's the risk. I realize it looks a little frightening. Now let's talk about all of the risk mitigation factors that we've taken into account and that we're going to implement. And here's the information you may not have been aware of. So then it seems less threatening because what it all comes down to is this, Bill. As humans, we don't like to feel. We don't like to be vulnerable. We don't like to be vulnerable, and risk makes us vulnerable, and that's why we're naturally opposed to it.

So I, I like to try and apply this. Then I, I went skydiving at a very early age. I probably was 19 or something like that. And I, I did it entirely for the thrill. I'm like, this is exciting, dangerous, different, unusual, high energy. I, I want to go do this. But I didn't. And I thought, well, it is dangerous on some level, but lots of people do it thousands of times. It's probably manageable. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm going to go figure that out. And so I did it to go into a risky environment to learn and grow. And then I continued to do it because I'm like, I want to master being in this risky environment as a way to feel powerful, effective, successful, like that. Right. So then I pursued it to get like, in my case, just basic competency of being able to open the shoe without killing myself.

Yeah. And that's perfectly reasonable. You probably wanted to prove yourself you could do it and do it alone, do it on a solo basis and face all of your fears and succeed. That's why I don't know a lot of people who get serious about doing like a hundred bungee jumps. Bungee jumping is kind of fun. I've done it. But there's not a lot of skill to develop. Skydiving, whole nother matter, you know, you've got a ton of variables that you need to deal with. So yeah, it's a great way to bolster both your competence and your confidence.

Yeah.

Because you're, you're confronted with having to make some very significant decisions in an extremely high stress environment and that I've long contended, Bill, that if you're thoughtful, you can learn something from every skydive that you can apply in the rest of your life.

Yeah, I think, yeah. A couple of things really stand out for me. One of them was how thrilling and amazing it is to be in an unusual position. So like hanging on the outside of an airplane or a strut or something like that, where you're not supposed to be normally and, and like taking that in really cool. Like just falling through the air, staring at the ground, realizing this is not a normal place to be for human beings is also really cool. And then the other thing is fascinating to me about it is the perception, like awareness, time dilation. So when you first do something like, I can't really tell you much of anything that happened in that first jump, but by the last jump that I did, my awareness and the amount of like ability to comprehend what was going on expanded dramatically over those few jumps.

Would say that your first jump, you're experiencing sensory overload. It's just like every one of your senses is being activated, except perhaps taste. And so, and so as a result, it's like the, it's like a computer. If you could getting so much input into the cpu, some of it shuts down. So that's why, you know, sometimes people will close their eyes or hold their breath because they feel threatened. And so that's a natural response. During the course of your jumping career, as you progressed past 10 and 15 jumps, then you were able to relax enough to where you could start to take in the beauty of what you're experiencing. One of the great joys of skydiving and other aviation activities is that it allows us to engage the Third dimension of life. You think about it, Bill, most people function in a two dimensional environment. Nothing wrong with that. But that's the reality. We don't tend to engage the vertical component unless we're flying, we're in a tall building or we're pursuing just for aviation activities, aviation related activities like skydiving. We're functioning in a two dimensional environment. Rock climbing would give us some of that benefit, but for the most part we're in two dimensions. But beyond that, you think about it, skydiving, one of the true joys of it. Before I did skydiving, I tried hot air ballooning, which I really enjoyed. I tried going up in gliders, which wasn't as much as wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be because it was loud and I thought it would be quiet. But you think about in skydiving, you're experiencing third dimensional life with no, with no constraints, with no limitations, no filters around you. That's a pretty unique experience.

So the variance between perceived risk and the actual risk. Right. Becoming informed, working on understanding the mitigation, all of that I think is really, really useful and interesting, especially as we pursue new business ventures, launch products, things like that. You also talked in prep about 3, 50 meetings. Can you tell us about that?

Sure. One of the things we work with our clients on is helping them to evaluate the innovation signals they're sending within their organizations. As I said at the beginning, every organization needs to be innovative if they're going to remain competitive. It all comes down to whether they're going to be predator or prey. And things are moving quickly and if they're not predatory, they're going to be prey. That means they have to innovate. The problem is we tend to think as leaders of organization, we think we do innovation better than we do. So we need to get very, very factual about what we're doing. One of the components of that is how you respond to risk and innovation issues when they don't work. Everybody will be happy when innovation works out. The real test is what happens when it doesn't work because innovation is non linear, it's messy and there's no certainty that will yield the desired results. When an organization can say, can genuinely send the message we are okay with, we're okay with innovation not working because we know that we have to have those experiences if we're going to be successful. They will get more innovation. So here's the concept of the 350 meeting. This came from a CEO and he said, well, we do that really well, we respond effectively when innovation doesn't work. I said, really? What do you do? He said, every month we have a failure party. So what's a failure party? He said, we knock off an hour early, we open a keg of beer, and we talk about what didn't work in the last 30 days. And the reason they do that is twofold. One is they want to make light of it. They wanted to clearly send the message with executive sponsorship that they understand that everything is not going to work the first time, and you can't expect it to if you want to be competitive. The other reason they do it is so that that information of what was attempted makes its way into the, into the organizational knowledge base. So there's an awareness of it. The 350 idea is. One of my clients took that idea and advanced it even further. They're big baseball fans. And so what they said is if you hit.350 in the major leagues, you're going to go to a Hall of Fame. The message is you can't hit it out of the park every time and you're going to strike out. So what they do is they, they extend the baseball metaphor because there's nine innings in a baseball game. They have nine meetings a year where they get their team together and they do exactly that. They said, okay, where's our, where's our home runs? Where's our strikeouts? Where's our, where's. Where's our doubles and our singles? And they talk of it metaphorically. They even got hats made up, baseball hats that say 350 on them. So that they continually send a message. Don't expect everything to work. If you do, you're not gonna, we're not gonna be successful and you're not gonna be successful. And we're gonna embrace all of those. The 65% of the time it doesn't work.

So I. Thanks for clarifying the source of that. I think it's really great. Like, all of our companies that we work with will do a quarterly review and many of them will do other kinds of after action review. Fighter pilots will do this after a mission or training and debrief and go in. And that's where, you know, the rank is off. The attention is really just on. Let's understand what happened. Let's learn from the situation. And it's not like you're going to review a skydive after you do especially something particularly complex. Right. You're going to review it. Think about it.

Absolutely. And after every jump, we'll gather together we'll also usually have a video and we'll evaluate what worked, what didn't, so that we can do better the next time. Same thing with all sorts of initiatives. The question is yes, and you're 100% right. You want to learn from it, both the positives and the negatives. The question is, have you established a culture, what we call a culture of permission? Culture of permission says we embrace the fact that not everything works and we're going to even reward you for having done it effectively, even if it wasn't a commercial success, as long as the reason it wasn't a commercial success was beyond your control.

Yeah. Embracing that giving room and permission to fail at things and learn from them is not normal. I remember once in a corporate job, early on we were, we had some things not go well and the desire to lop off heads was pretty significant.

As simple as it sounds, it's amazing how many people don't think of this. If only thing you reward and applaud are the successful initiatives, what are you going to get? You're only going to get people waiting to make sure that they're part of something they know is going to be successful. That's not going to keep you competitive.

Playing it safe, ass covering, hiding errors, and which is even worse because then we can't learn from them collectively. Right.

And this very much applies to senior executives. It's easy to find yourself just wanting to satisfy your existing stakeholders, not pursuing the stuff that has no guarantee of a return, not pursuing the stuff that has an initial low return. And as a result, all you're doing is you're getting into a refinement mode and you're going to miss the innovation opportunities. The people who are willing to take the bigger risks and implement them effectively are going to overtake you.

Yeah. I think for me the key is, is bringing curiosity to it. Right. Everybody's good at some expression of unhappiness. Oh, God damn it. Like I'm going to tell them what's what. And, but, but if you get curious, right. There's an access to something there. Huh. That's interesting.

That's an interesting comment, Bill. I have never thought of it in those terms, and that's something I'll give some thought to. I think there, some people are innately more curious than others. I guess it's a question of what we do with our curiosity. Do we suppress it or we utilize it? If you create a culture of permission, you're gonna, you're gonna utilize the core message. The core message that we bring forward at the institute is to make the transition from seeing risk as something to minimize instead of as soon as something utilize. As simple as that sounds, that's really profound. From minimizing to utilizing. And that is, that takes a lot of effort because we are so. And we are so innately fearful of risk, in part because we are socialized to see risk as negative from a very young age.

Yeah, totally get that.

We start out, we started this grand adventure very risk inclined. Right. What's the first word every child learns? No. Got it. And why is that? Well, because we start so risk inclined, we have zero judgment with which to balance it. As a result, for the first 25 years of our life, that natural risk inclination gets suppressed of necessity by the authority figures in our lives. So now what happens? We get to mid-20s where we finally get enough brain maturity that we have some degree of judgment. And now that risk inclination, that has been, Some of it has been drained out of us that we would do well to reclaim.

Yeah, yeah, that like in the beginning, a two year old is like fascinated by the empty space ahead of them and they'll run off a cliff if you don't stop them and say we all the way down to the last minute.

And that's part of why risk has a bad name, because sadly, we're all aware of catastrophic outcomes of children and adolescents who took risks that had horrible outcomes. And it's like, don't you be like Johnny. You know, you see what happened to him? And then there comes the message.

So last thing you shared with us in preparation was the founding of Harry's. Tell us about that.

Well, actually, that's a fascinating story. Harry's, the people that sell razor blades, and it seems like a simple concept, but they basically sell a $5 razor blade for a buck fifty. Now, as simple as that sounds, it was really profound achievement when they came to market, partly because the major companies had monopolized all the shelf space in the retail outlet. So that was not a distribution channel they could utilize. So they needed to use it. They developed an Internet distribution channel, which at the time was fairly innovative. But the interesting insight is that the guy who founded Harry's, when asked where'd the idea come from, he said, well, I went out to buy razor blades and I went to the shelf of the corner drugstore and they didn't have any. So I asked the clerk, I need some help or I need some razor blades. He said, well, sir, let us get with you in a minute because we've got to get the manager, he has the key to the box, the lockbox, behind the gas register where we keep the razor blades because they're so ridiculously overpriced, we have to keep them locked away because people will steal them. And his comment was, his observation was, somewhere in this there's an opportunity. So that is to me is really intriguing. If we're mindful of things that don't make sense or where there's a variance like that, it creates an opportunity for innovation and business opportunities. And one of the things we continually tell our clients is your opportunities for innovation, similar to Harry's, are in your customers grievances, what upsets your customers that you're well suited to address. And therein lies your innovation opportunities.

And how is that connected to risk?

That's connected to risk because first you have to identify the risks that you're going to take. Then you're going to need to implement them effectively. That's a process that we take our clients through where they develop something called posums. Once they've identified the initiative, they have to develop possums. Possums are simply an acronym. Possibility of success enhancement measures, possibly success enhancement measures. These are the smart things that they can do that entrepreneurs often do innately, but other people perhaps don't. That will help them to increase the chances of a positive outcome and decrease the chances of a negative outcome. Okay. And it is amazingly powerful when you go through a very intentional process of engaging people and develop the possums. How much, how significantly you can increase the chances of the desired outcome. It's all a risk. But see, the point of that, Bill, is it relates to risk because we serve ourselves well when we can reduce the emotional component of the risk process as much as possible. What we call de. Emotionalizing risk. You can't eliminate it. It's never going to entirely go away. But you can make it a more intellectual process and a less emotional process.

You said in preparation that risk is like fire.

Sure.

What do you mean by that?

Fire is a fabulous metaphor for risk. Because you think about it, risk is profound. Fire is profoundly powerful. It can do very constructive things. It can heat our house. It can cook a beautiful meal. It can create a beautiful sight in the fireplace. It also can burn down the house. Because it can burn down the house. A lot of people metaphorically eat cold food, okay. Because they see the negative and they are not comfortable engaging. The positive risk is very much the same risk and result in a catastrophic outcome as a result. Some people's mindset is, I Just want to avoid risk entirely. I want to take the risk out of my life. It is amazing how much effort people will put into trying to take the risk out of their lives.

Yeah. I think it's useful to probably consider where are you being cautious thoughtlessly, where you just reflexively, automatically being too cautious in areas where you're committed to something, you're interested in something, and you're playing it safe without even thinking about, how could I manage the risk?

I think the word you used was perfect, Bill, which is reflexively cautious. Cautious without even thinking about it. Just because it's like automatically.

Right. I'm just doing that because it's your.

Default posture to just go to the. To try to avoid risk. And I'm not suggesting. And please understand, there's a difference between a risk taker and a daredevil. Daredevils do absurdly foolish things, which I would not encourage. Risk takers go about it in a much more thoughtful way. That's an important distinction. And it's because people will do things like, you know, Evel Knievel taking a jet powered motorcycle across the Grand Canyon, which is kind of a pretty whacked out idea. People go, well, why would I want to take risks like that? That's not the example of the kind of risks that we're promoting. Let me put it this way. Last year, there were 3.67 million skydives made in the United States. 3.67 million. There were 10 fatalities. Now, each one of those tragic. Many of them were avoidable. But I can tell you, statistically, there's more fatalities per participant from bicycling than skydiving. I'm not promoting skydiving. I'm just saying our perception of. Of risk and the actual risk oftentimes vary.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting. When I first pursued it, I thought it was thrilling and it felt a bit dangerous. But I also, like, instinctively knew that this was entirely manageable, that millions of people did this, that people didn't die every day. And in the process, I went to learn what level of risk there was and what to mitigate and, you know, how shoots are folded and how the backup shoot works and what to do. And I learned all the things that you would learn, but I didn't really think that I was rolling the dice on my life in any huge way.

Most fatalities in skydiving are due to operator error. So it just depends on how you go about it. Mean, if you talk about closing the gap between actual perceived risk, it would be reasonable for A person to think skydiving involves nothing more than hurling yourself out of the plane, hoping the parachute opens, hoping you can land without being hurt. And that would be perfectly understandable. That's a perceived risk. Now let's close the gap, which you and I can both do, because we've done skydiving to the actual risk. Most people. Some people will know you never leave a plane in the United States by law, without two parachutes. Okay, that's interesting. I didn't know you had two parachutes. That second parachute has to be removed, inspected, and repacked every 180 days or less by an FAA licensed parachute rigger. Okay, that's interesting. They have to have certain credentials to do that. 90% of skydivers worldwide have automatic activating devices. If they're still in free fall at an altitude where they shouldn't be, it will automatically open the reserve parachute. Wow. Didn't know that. We commonly have audible altimeters in our full face helmets that give us an indication of our altitude at three different points with three distinct tones. We oftentimes will have a digital or digital analog. Electronic analog altimeter on our wrist. Mine will give me my distance above the ground within 100ft while I'm in free fall, which is pretty impressive. You think? I'm traveling about 120 miles an hour. It will give me my altitude above the ground within 10ft once my parachute is open. I'm thoughtful about the size of my parachute where I jump because that influences the flight, the pilot training program, and the aircraft maintenance. And I'm thoughtful about who I jump with because arguably the greatest risk I take is jumping with other people, because they all have the ability to hurt you or kill you if you're not thoughtful about how you interact with them. I mean, because they're a moving object also. So those are all of the things that we do to reduce the chances of having a negative outcome. That's an example of closing the gap between the perceived and the actual risk. Now, most people, if they heard that litany of preventative and mitigation steps that we take, they say, oh, okay, I guess maybe skydiving is a little bit safer than I realized.

Yes, like we said, we're not promoting skydiving.

It just works metaphorically well for. For the. All the things that we do. The reality is, can you be in business without taking risks?

Absolutely not. Right.

People will seek to do so. You have to be able to do it. So, you know, leadership oftentimes has a higher risk tolerance than the people within the organization. That doesn't mean you can't bring it along.

Yeah, it's a great conversation. Hey, if you want to know more about Jim and his work at the Risk Risks Institute, we'll put the the URL right there on the screen and we'll put it in the show. Notes risks-institute.com and you can read more. And he's got books there and like all that there's the book on the.

Screen covers much of what we've been talking about today.

Awesome. And so go read more and go check them out. Read the book and and so on. Thanks, Jim, for coming on the show. Thanks list viewers for joining us. We bring our shows to you every week, like I said, and there's hundreds of them. And if we can help you find a resource, a coach or you want to give us some feedback or suggest somebody for the show. Info scalingcoach.com is our email. The email again info scalingcoach.com to give us to get in touch with us about anything you heard on the show. Like it? We love that. If you like it info, it helps promote. It helps other people discover it. If you subscribe, you won't miss one. You'll get them every week. So wherever you're watching it, subscribe to it. If you give us a comment, that's a sweet thing that you can do for us. Give us a positive review and say some nice things about us. I want to give big thanks to Vern Harnish, author and creator of Scaling up and the Rockefeller Habits, all the work that we use in our growth of companies. Big thanks to Wanda Mitchell, producer of the show, and to the folks at Podfly Productions who are getting our show out, out and distributed every week. That's Albert Burge, Anna Kadina and Tim McGowan. Thanks guys for keeping our show going. Thanks everyone for watching, for listening. We'll talk to you again next time. Keep scaling up.