Speaker 1: From executive search to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and
Speaker 1: succession planning. Corn Fairy can help you realize the full
Speaker 1: potential of your people so you can take your business
Speaker 1: where it wants to go up. Learn more at corn
Speaker 1: Ferry dot com slash up. For the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: failing has been cool. We've heard it out of Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: Facebook's motto was moved fast, break things. But recently from
Speaker 1: the election, we've been reminded of the real consequences of
Speaker 1: failure and when failure doesn't feel so good. This week
Speaker 1: on game Plan, we're talking about losing. I'm Rebecca Greenfield,
Speaker 1: a reporter at Bloomberger. I cover the workplace, and I
Speaker 1: am Sam Grobart, a writer at Bloomberg business Week magazine.
Speaker 1: So for anyone who's been following Silicon Valley or I
Speaker 1: used to cover technology a lot more closely, and I
Speaker 1: think you did. To Sam, we heard so much talk
Speaker 1: about the benefits of failure. Oh, you have to fail,
Speaker 1: You're not a real person if you haven't failed, was
Speaker 1: the sort of mantra out of Silicon Valley. It was
Speaker 1: a place where failure is embraced, It's lauded. It makes
Speaker 1: you into a smarter, better entrepreneur, better person. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was on a small scale, so when you're building
Speaker 1: your products, move fast, big things. As I mentioned before,
Speaker 1: that refers to coding and building things. But then on
Speaker 1: a larger scale, as a startup founder, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: have a failing company. Then that's because most startups do
Speaker 1: fail absolutely. What is it something like some overwhelming percentage,
Speaker 1: And so it becomes sort of a mark of experience
Speaker 1: that you've failed. If you haven't failed, I think people
Speaker 1: may look a bit askance at you because you haven't
Speaker 1: been truly tested by failure. But of course there is
Speaker 1: something to all this talk of losing and failure when
Speaker 1: it pertains to Silicon Valley, which is that they can
Speaker 1: afford to fail. Yeah. So there was a great up
Speaker 1: ed by Kate Loss in The New York Times about
Speaker 1: people who have the privilege to fail, where she points
Speaker 1: the example of Bradford shell Hammer who founded fab dot com,
Speaker 1: which had a spectacular failure. They got a ton of
Speaker 1: funding and you know, it was a big failure. He
Speaker 1: lost a ton of people, lost their jobs, they lost
Speaker 1: a ton of money. And then Bradford went to start
Speaker 1: another company and he got funding. Right, So failure but
Speaker 1: without real consequence, at least not for the founder. All
Speaker 1: the people who lost their jobs might feel a little differently.
Speaker 1: I'm sure would take issue with that. But that's the
Speaker 1: problem with the Silicon Valley philosophy of failure. It's not
Speaker 1: actual failure, it's academic failure. Right. And she brings up
Speaker 1: the point that Silicon Valley and its investors pick the
Speaker 1: people it allows to even fail, that people of color
Speaker 1: and women don't even get funding. They fail way earlier on,
Speaker 1: and that's not seen really as a mark of success.
Speaker 1: That's seen as your idea isn't even good enough to
Speaker 1: get some funding exactly. So what we want to talk
Speaker 1: about today, I think, is more about what it means
Speaker 1: to lose and what can we take from it. What
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to be able to take something
Speaker 1: from it, otherwise you'll just be caught in some terrible
Speaker 1: cycle of disappointment and doubt. Yeah. I feel that way
Speaker 1: a little bit these days. I felt that way my
Speaker 1: entire life. Come on, well, you and I were trying
Speaker 1: to rack our brains for times we'd failed. Not that
Speaker 1: we haven't failed, no, but we have. I don't think
Speaker 1: anything really haunts us, right. I think starting a company
Speaker 1: and losing all the money and losing people's jobs is
Speaker 1: something that will be a mark on your your life
Speaker 1: story for a while, more than yes, not writing a
Speaker 1: good story in our case, or doing poorly on a presentation,
Speaker 1: or losing a big sale, or exactly micro failures. And
Speaker 1: the truth is, you know, failure is a function of risk.
Speaker 1: And I think we were talking a little bit about
Speaker 1: this earlier. I think we're both comparatively risk averse, yes,
Speaker 1: which I think people would say, you need to risk
Speaker 1: things to do great things. But this notion of risk,
Speaker 1: if you want to now turn it towards recent current
Speaker 1: events in the form of the presidential election, and you
Speaker 1: were saying earlier that to some degree, this notion of
Speaker 1: the election of Donald Trump is that risk taking impulse
Speaker 1: among the American people. Let's try this. We've never done
Speaker 1: this before, yea, what wasn't working before, So we need
Speaker 1: to try something new, and even if it breaks everything
Speaker 1: that came before, it that inherently something good will come
Speaker 1: out of that. Yes, although millions upon millions of voters
Speaker 1: might disagree with that, right, and they're dealing with their
Speaker 1: own feelings of failure. And losing themselves too, and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to deal with that in a
Speaker 1: way that is hopefully as productive as possible. Well, and
Speaker 1: right now you're seeing sort of two different expressions of
Speaker 1: that dealing with failure, aren't you, Because you have some
Speaker 1: people who are saying, if you allow yourself with the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, let's say, people saying, Okay, we've clearly made
Speaker 1: some serious mistakes here. We weren't seeing things that we
Speaker 1: should have been seeing. How should we look for this
Speaker 1: in the future, what kinds of candidates are going to
Speaker 1: appeal to the right group of people? And then you
Speaker 1: have the other group, which right now is trying to
Speaker 1: initiate recounts of votes. Now that's not to say that
Speaker 1: is in a valid pursuit, but you could make the
Speaker 1: argument that one group is sort of going, okay, like
Speaker 1: what should I learn from this, and the other one's
Speaker 1: going like, no, no, you know, like, it wasn't a mistake.
Speaker 1: We got all the votes, We got more votes, go
Speaker 1: back and count them again. Yeah, one group is admitting
Speaker 1: failure and loss and trying to deal with it, and
Speaker 1: the other hasn't quite gotten there, and barring a revelation
Speaker 1: about vote talies in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio. They're going
Speaker 1: to have to come around to that same point of
Speaker 1: view that already some people are grappling with, right, And
Speaker 1: then it's like, okay, what do you do? How do
Speaker 1: you deal with it? And I think for a lot
Speaker 1: of us, like you and I, you don't deal with
Speaker 1: failure in such a large scale generally, right, So we
Speaker 1: don't really know how to deal with it. But fortunately
Speaker 1: our guest does and we have with us, Sam Wineman.
Speaker 1: He has a book coming out December twenty. It's called
Speaker 1: When It Losing, How our biggest setbacks lead to our
Speaker 1: greatest gains? And he's going to tell us how to
Speaker 1: lose better. Thanks for coming and talking to us, sam
Speaker 1: My Pleasures, thanks for having me. So I guess we
Speaker 1: can start with a simple question, how can our biggest
Speaker 1: setbacks lead to our greatest gains? The simplest way is
Speaker 1: that losing is a window into our weaknesses and it
Speaker 1: forces us to address whatever area is improvement we need.
Speaker 1: Whereas when we win, we sort of gloss over the
Speaker 1: things that we need to work on, but losing sort
Speaker 1: of brings that stuff front and center. So the first
Speaker 1: thing it does is it. I call it the ultimate
Speaker 1: truth serum, which is that it makes you deal head
Speaker 1: on with flaws, weaknesses, you know, various areas of improvement,
Speaker 1: and more times than not, it's the one thing you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to correct to win next time. Sam, quick
Speaker 1: question here, what if you say, don't have any flaws
Speaker 1: or then I had the same questions? Right, Yes, Well
Speaker 1: you're you're very fortunate and this might not be the
Speaker 1: book for you. Well, I wish you all the very best. Um,
Speaker 1: I do want to ask you a question. In your book,
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about the sort of two
Speaker 1: minds that that encounter failure and the different reactions they have.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about that. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there's a famous sort of distinction that was made
Speaker 1: not by me, but by Stanford psychology professor named Carol Dweck,
Speaker 1: and she calls it growth mindsets and fixed mindsets. A
Speaker 1: growth mindset is someone who accepts failures and challenges and
Speaker 1: wants to tackle and wants to improve, realizes that everything
Speaker 1: is a bit of a process and that there's grounds
Speaker 1: to be made over the course of whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: The fixed mindset is of the belief that you have acceptabilities.
Speaker 1: This is who you are. You're born with them more
Speaker 1: or less, and when you fail or you lose, it
Speaker 1: is a sort of statement about who you are. And
Speaker 1: so the healthier way is to have a growth mindset,
Speaker 1: and everything you do, whether it's sports or business or relationships,
Speaker 1: is to kind of have this belief that anything we
Speaker 1: endeavor to do is part of a process, and when
Speaker 1: there are setbacks of some sort, you embrace the challenges
Speaker 1: that are there and hopefully build upon it. The fixed
Speaker 1: one sounds a little bit like Calvinists, like you were
Speaker 1: born this way and this has happened because you're wicked now. Confession,
Speaker 1: h that was a really bad religion joke by all
Speaker 1: of us. Um So on reading that, I related definitely
Speaker 1: to the fixed mindset, which I guess is bad. But
Speaker 1: then thinking back, I think immediately most of us must
Speaker 1: have that fixed mindset where you fail at something, and immediately,
Speaker 1: of course they're going to take it as some sort
Speaker 1: of character flaw. Of course, I mean, at first of all,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to note that no one is
Speaker 1: all one thing or you know, all the other, and
Speaker 1: we all have fixed mindset tendencies within and you know,
Speaker 1: some days we're fighting it more than others, and I'm
Speaker 1: definitely an example of that. So when you and anything
Speaker 1: you do, when you lose, if I'm you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of this has to do with sports, and I
Speaker 1: lose an a tennis match, my inclination say I suck
Speaker 1: on the worst, right. So it's just part of our
Speaker 1: nature to think of it as some sort of commentary
Speaker 1: on our set of abilities. And so when you do
Speaker 1: take a step back, that's when you take a larger
Speaker 1: look and say, well, actually, no, I can you know,
Speaker 1: I can get better, I can build upon this, and
Speaker 1: you're able to certainly see that there are ways to
Speaker 1: improve in whatever you're doing. You are an editor at
Speaker 1: Golf Digest, you have been a sports reporter. It would
Speaker 1: seem that you know professional athletes who are playing at
Speaker 1: the highest level of their games still encounter a significant
Speaker 1: amount of failure. I mean, nobody goes effectively, you know,
Speaker 1: with a perfect season. I mean teams might, but even
Speaker 1: individuals screw up here and there. Do you find in
Speaker 1: your experience that athletes have sort of a better way
Speaker 1: of handling the inevitable failure game to game that's going
Speaker 1: to happen. Yes and no, which is I realized an
Speaker 1: evasive answer. First of all, I think that one of
Speaker 1: the points I make in the book is that sports,
Speaker 1: as small a microcosm as it is, is a great
Speaker 1: training ground for dealing with failure because everyone deals with
Speaker 1: it in an athletic context from a young age. You're
Speaker 1: going to have failures, are losing, and you have to
Speaker 1: learn how to deal with it and address whatever is
Speaker 1: go on. So and that at that standpoint, every athlete
Speaker 1: has confronted it. But when you talk about the highest
Speaker 1: level of sports, professional athletes, these are guys who are
Speaker 1: often told how great they are, they're the best, and
Speaker 1: have huge egos, and with ego comes the complications of
Speaker 1: not wanting to have anything that counters their ego. So
Speaker 1: when you're you know, ex. Professional basketball player, and you're
Speaker 1: told how wonderful you are and you have an off night,
Speaker 1: there can be a temptation to blame that or look
Speaker 1: elsewhere beyond within and looking at their mistakes. So there
Speaker 1: are some there are a lot of fixed mindset tendencies
Speaker 1: within professional athletes. So your book is a lot about sports,
Speaker 1: and you said you started writing it because of a
Speaker 1: sports incident with your son. But we are show about
Speaker 1: our lives at work. So I have to ask, how
Speaker 1: do you think that this plays out in the day
Speaker 1: to day lives of people at work or in business.
Speaker 1: I think it plays at a hundred different ways. I
Speaker 1: think one of the big things is that when we're
Speaker 1: at work, of course they're we're going to have various setbacks.
Speaker 1: So you people lose their jobs, or people you lose
Speaker 1: out an account, or you have some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: you don't get the promotion you wanted. Again, there's this
Speaker 1: whole tendency to first look at as a commentary on you,
Speaker 1: on your worth, and in some cases it is sometimes
Speaker 1: you need to have that moment of truth where he says,
Speaker 1: I didn't get the job because I didn't have skills X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z, and I need to develop those skills, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't the right guy. Or I botched the presentation
Speaker 1: at work, and I did because I wasn't prepared, And
Speaker 1: those are all sort of failures that you can learn from.
Speaker 1: I do think the other part I talked about is
Speaker 1: it sometimes there are failures and there are losses, and
Speaker 1: without getting too much on the weeds on this, sometimes
Speaker 1: the losses outside your control. Sometimes things happen. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: company downsizes and they eliminate jobs, and people who are
Speaker 1: perfectly good at their jobs have these quote unquote setbacks.
Speaker 1: There's the moment you have to have where you realize
Speaker 1: was it me or was it something else? And sort
Speaker 1: of the starting point with all of this is this
Speaker 1: sort of moment of honesty, which is what was it?
Speaker 1: Was it me? And if it was me, what did
Speaker 1: I do? What can I do better? How can I
Speaker 1: learn from this and move on? But another way to
Speaker 1: kind of soften the blow is maybe it wasn't me.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was something that it was just outside of
Speaker 1: my control, And there is some solace to be taken
Speaker 1: in that as well. You've already identified a few of these,
Speaker 1: but I was wondering if you could tell us, do
Speaker 1: you have a playbook of sorts when encountering a failure
Speaker 1: of your own that you sort of remember to think
Speaker 1: about it this way, take these steps, something practical that
Speaker 1: people can be adopt ive. Been forced to sort of
Speaker 1: think about that recently. Yeah, No, so I do think
Speaker 1: that sort of inventory. I hate to use all these
Speaker 1: sort of self help buzz words, but there is a
Speaker 1: little bit of a sort of inventory of what happened
Speaker 1: and being honest with yourself, wasn't me with something I did?
Speaker 1: How did this all play out? What were you get
Speaker 1: all the facts on the table? Is someone said to me.
Speaker 1: So that's the first part. And then you kind of
Speaker 1: do this analysis of what happened and you sift through
Speaker 1: the things that are we're not your fault and that
Speaker 1: you can sort of insulate yourself from and say that
Speaker 1: was just something outside my control. But then there's all
Speaker 1: these areas that I can work on. And I think
Speaker 1: that the next part is a looking at what you
Speaker 1: can improve upon, where our skills that you needed to
Speaker 1: be developed, or things that you needed to prepare better
Speaker 1: or whatnot. And then there's also just sort of fortifying
Speaker 1: yourself for the next endeavor that you're going into and
Speaker 1: using that into whatever it is. And also I think
Speaker 1: another part of this is when you do that at
Speaker 1: and you've had a failure, a loss of some sort,
Speaker 1: is taking some strength from that, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: I had this thing happened to me, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: you know, I allowed myself to be bummed out about it,
Speaker 1: but you know from that came small victories from it
Speaker 1: that I can point to, whatever they are I mean
Speaker 1: I'm talking real generalities here, but um, you know, there's
Speaker 1: probably some things that you did go well, and then
Speaker 1: I think that's important identify those things as well so
Speaker 1: you can build on those. Up happens when the power
Speaker 1: and potential of every employee and leader in your workforce
Speaker 1: is released, and corn Ferry can get you there by
Speaker 1: aligning your people to your strategy, attracting, developing, engaging, and
Speaker 1: rewarding them to reach new heights. With corn Ferry, you
Speaker 1: get a partner who truly understands people, leadership and the
Speaker 1: new landscape of work, a partner who knows how to
Speaker 1: take your business up. Learn more at corn Ferry dot
Speaker 1: com slash up. You alluded to something recently that happened
Speaker 1: that you had to deal with a loss. We're talking
Speaker 1: about November eight. Well, I thought you said that you've
Speaker 1: had to deal with that recently, So I do think
Speaker 1: a good example is how people look at the election.
Speaker 1: You know, regardless of your politics, but certainly for the
Speaker 1: people who ended up on the side where the outcome
Speaker 1: did not go, they wanted it to go. Even though
Speaker 1: only one person ran for president loss, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who had a lot of invest a lot
Speaker 1: invested in that election, and it was a loss for them,
Speaker 1: man exactly. And so but there's this sort of feeling
Speaker 1: of devastation and and uh someone hopelessness. And in my
Speaker 1: own small way, I've tried to look at it, what
Speaker 1: did I miss about this? You know, what did I
Speaker 1: what did I not see that other people see? I
Speaker 1: have no intention of running for political office, but at
Speaker 1: least in helping me myself cope with the new dynamic
Speaker 1: of this country is trying to understand what I miss
Speaker 1: what people are saying that I don't see how I
Speaker 1: can possibly learn from it and grow from it. And
Speaker 1: then I think that's like on my small personal level,
Speaker 1: but if you look at the Democratic Party, you know
Speaker 1: they're they're gonna have it to do a huge sort
Speaker 1: of inventory. I talked about about what they missed, what
Speaker 1: they're doing wrong, where they've missed the mark, and how
Speaker 1: they can sort of take this and and build on it.
Speaker 1: That process that you describe, and particularly on the personal level,
Speaker 1: you've already identified the sort of the ego of the
Speaker 1: professional athlete. Let's say, are some professional athletes who immediately
Speaker 1: might blame others, come up with excuses, other reasons on
Speaker 1: the other side of that spectrum is perhaps the kind
Speaker 1: of person who almost unduly puts blame on themselves, and
Speaker 1: so you have to make sure you're sort of in
Speaker 1: between those two. And you know, I've definitely been in
Speaker 1: this situation and people have said to me, look at
Speaker 1: the facts, you know, did you do that? And I'll
Speaker 1: be like, no, I didn't have anything to do with that.
Speaker 1: Then that wasn't you. You shouldn't feel badly about that
Speaker 1: part of it, you know, let that go. And getting
Speaker 1: back for a minute, I know this is a little
Speaker 1: bit circular, but back to the election. We now have
Speaker 1: a president elect for whom losing, oh what could be worse?
Speaker 1: But he never has lost in his own mind, and
Speaker 1: if he's lost, it's not his fault. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: not to get into, but there's definitely this talk about ego.
Speaker 1: You know, when people people of great ego, when they lose,
Speaker 1: are unwilling to look at their own role in that
Speaker 1: loss um And the opposite of that is people of
Speaker 1: humility will identify their role in any of these things.
Speaker 1: And so I'm a big believer again politics aside that
Speaker 1: a huge way to cope with losing is this humility
Speaker 1: of kind of identifying what you can do, what you
Speaker 1: could have done better, but also not just piling on
Speaker 1: yourself for the sake of just beating yourself up. I mean,
Speaker 1: at some point you do have to make that distinction
Speaker 1: of and it wasn't me. Actually, that was something that
Speaker 1: was outside my control, and I did the best I
Speaker 1: could for X, Y, and Z. So it's a very
Speaker 1: tricky balance, and I hopefully articulated uh and sort of
Speaker 1: how to make the distinction in the book in terms
Speaker 1: of being honest with yourself and I identifying the areas
Speaker 1: that where it is you and where it's not you,
Speaker 1: and hopefully um building off of both again to be
Speaker 1: the one to say we have to bring it back
Speaker 1: to work. You also have a chapter on Silicon Valot
Speaker 1: and their obsession with failure. Well, they love losing over
Speaker 1: Oh you lose all the way to the bank, and
Speaker 1: you seem to be on the side of that. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's been proven that a lot of the
Speaker 1: great successes in Silicon Valley and just innovation in general
Speaker 1: are the byproduct of some sort of failure. I mean,
Speaker 1: Twitter started as another company that sort of didn't go anywhere,
Speaker 1: and then uh, they iterated, and they came up with
Speaker 1: this other idea that happened to be Now there are
Speaker 1: another company that might but it's just part. It's very
Speaker 1: much ingrained in the culture there that you iterate and
Speaker 1: you constantly are throwing things against the wall, and you
Speaker 1: accept the idea that some are not going to a
Speaker 1: lot are not gonna work. There's the you've heard the
Speaker 1: buzzword pivot, you know, being able to pivot is a
Speaker 1: huge part of Silicon Valley, which is, um, you have
Speaker 1: an idea and it doesn't work and doesn't make a
Speaker 1: lot of sense, but that one percent is something that
Speaker 1: maybe we can work with, So let's see what we
Speaker 1: can do with that. And it's a very nimble culture
Speaker 1: out there, and it's all based on the idea that
Speaker 1: a lot of the things you're gonna do are not
Speaker 1: gonna work, and there's no shame in that. Bringing it
Speaker 1: back to sports, and I'm really not a sports person,
Speaker 1: but I often do think about the idea that an
Speaker 1: amazing hitter in baseball is still going to strike two
Speaker 1: out of three times or more. And that's significant. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot more losing there than winning. But the
Speaker 1: right winds can make a big thing. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a sort of analogy I make in that chapter, which
Speaker 1: is this whole idea of sort of a micro failure,
Speaker 1: which is that you know everyone's gonna have micro failures.
Speaker 1: But in baseball, like you said, I mean, the best
Speaker 1: baseball hitters are unsuccessful two thirds of the time. And
Speaker 1: so rather than look at those occasions as you know,
Speaker 1: a commentary on how inept they are, they look at
Speaker 1: it that's just kind of part of the deal. And
Speaker 1: it's gonna obviously, you know, your your value has proven
Speaker 1: over a much wider sample size than you know that
Speaker 1: one at bad. And so it's the same thing with
Speaker 1: ideas in the in the tech world, which is you're
Speaker 1: going to try a lot of things and most of
Speaker 1: them are not gonna work, but there's gonna be something
Speaker 1: that you're gonn to be able to build on from there.
Speaker 1: I often have this conversation with my brother and I
Speaker 1: would like to get your guys two cents on it.
Speaker 1: I think a similar thing should be applied to people
Speaker 1: in creative fields, where you should not judge someone based
Speaker 1: on every single creative thing that they do, but like
Speaker 1: they're going to put out a lot of bad things
Speaker 1: and if they have one or two really great things,
Speaker 1: then they deserve our praise. And yet there is that
Speaker 1: sort of notion of your only as good as your
Speaker 1: last article movie, I say, what have you? And that
Speaker 1: certainly prevails around here. It's really hard to do a
Speaker 1: good thing, for sure a lot. Yeah, Well, I look
Speaker 1: at me, you know, writers, I mean, you know you're
Speaker 1: handing that first draft and make this allusion to it
Speaker 1: is like you're handing that first draftic, this is great,
Speaker 1: I'm turning it, and then it gets handed back to you,
Speaker 1: and then you handed it again, and it's also has
Speaker 1: red ink all over it. So it just that's part
Speaker 1: of the deal, is any The creative process is filled
Speaker 1: with all these little failures along the way, which hopefully
Speaker 1: feeds something large, Like going back to that whole idea
Speaker 1: of growth mindsets and fixed mindsets. If you turn in
Speaker 1: the first draft and as any right ink on it,
Speaker 1: you look at yourself as a terrible writer, as a failure,
Speaker 1: if you have a fixed mindset, whereas you realize this
Speaker 1: is sort of part of this process of making it
Speaker 1: better and embracing that a whole idea, And I think also,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe this is cynical. But when you're responsible
Speaker 1: for producing, you know, whatever it is you do, um,
Speaker 1: if there's a large volume of it, then you have
Speaker 1: to accept that some things are going to be done frankly,
Speaker 1: to be done right and not to be terrible right,
Speaker 1: but like they might have you may not spend that
Speaker 1: much time on it. It's satisfied the goal of whatever
Speaker 1: it was that you were attempting to achieve. And that's
Speaker 1: okay as long as you are also keeping your eye
Speaker 1: on higher value output targets that you really want to
Speaker 1: put a lot of time and effort into. And if
Speaker 1: you know you have let's say, over the course of
Speaker 1: a year, you know three or four six of those,
Speaker 1: well that can be totally a worthwhile, you know, use
Speaker 1: of your time. If you also have fifty other things, fine.
Speaker 1: It goes at the idea of like you know, all
Speaker 1: innovation or great greatness is somewhat tied to risk, right,
Speaker 1: and so with risk comes to very strong potential that
Speaker 1: you're gonna come out of this looking stupid, and so
Speaker 1: you have to be willing to do that to to
Speaker 1: produce something great. I mean, it's escaping me now, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure we could probably rattle off twenty you know
Speaker 1: Oscar winning film directors who produced some real duds along
Speaker 1: the way, and because they were trying, they were trying
Speaker 1: to do something unique or great and it missed the
Speaker 1: mark for whatever reason. But then they came back and
Speaker 1: produced something exceptional. I'm standing of the writers and musicians
Speaker 1: and etcetera, etcetera, and that there was probably value in
Speaker 1: the mistake that informed their later successful and they picked
Speaker 1: something out of it and said, ah, now I know
Speaker 1: what you mean. There's a psychologist who I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: talking to, this guy named fran Parisola, who's a big
Speaker 1: believer in the not this but that sort of philosophy,
Speaker 1: which is, in order to have the great the greatness
Speaker 1: whatever you're producing, you have to go through the not
Speaker 1: this part. You know, you have to sort of eliminate
Speaker 1: all the bad ideas and the bad things you do
Speaker 1: in his time, he's talking about, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what it is like if you're in, if you're
Speaker 1: a CEO, you're gonna produce all these bad ideas, but
Speaker 1: it's going to help you identify the one idea that's
Speaker 1: really it's really worth something. Great clich is that Thomas Edison,
Speaker 1: uh you know, I have not failed. I've just found
Speaker 1: ten thousand ways that don't work. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: mentality you need to have. So I'm taking away from
Speaker 1: this is that the biggest losers are people who don't
Speaker 1: try at all. Exactly, That's exactly there it is, you
Speaker 1: know what nice way to put it. Well, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for coming in talking to us. This is
Speaker 1: a really interesting conversation. Thank you for having me. So
Speaker 1: did that make you feel any better about all the
Speaker 1: times you've been a big loser, Sam, Well, you know
Speaker 1: the one or two times that that's happened, But I
Speaker 1: know you never lose. Um, Yeah, no it did. I
Speaker 1: thought that there was some helpful practical You have to
Speaker 1: basically divorce yourself from the emotion of failure, and that
Speaker 1: was what I took away from the conversation is that
Speaker 1: you have to really get very sort of analytical and
Speaker 1: just look at the situation for what it is and
Speaker 1: what it was, and tried from that to understand what
Speaker 1: you could have done better the next time. Basically you
Speaker 1: have to be a robot, yes, with no emotions in
Speaker 1: that circumstance. Maybe. So, Yeah, it's really hard. As I
Speaker 1: said when we were talking to him, I did relate
Speaker 1: to the kids who when they fail, they see it
Speaker 1: as a personal failing and just are like, no, that
Speaker 1: sounded kind of familiar. But yeah, I think what else
Speaker 1: are you supposed to do? I mean, in the phase
Speaker 1: of a lass or a failure, you have to move on.
Speaker 1: Otherwise forget it. You may as well just go to
Speaker 1: bed and never emerge from your bedroom ever again. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean you have to accept your reality
Speaker 1: is changing. You had one reality before the failure, you
Speaker 1: have a new reality after the failure. So, since we've
Speaker 1: been talking about losing, Becca, you are from the great
Speaker 1: city of Buffalo, New York. Yes, a city that so
Speaker 1: I am told has a number of losing sports teams,
Speaker 1: namely the Buffalo Bills. So after the Cubs broke their curse,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of articles in newspapers arguing what
Speaker 1: the next worst sports team was in Buffalo top the
Speaker 1: list in multiple different places. And our teams always lose.
Speaker 1: I am used to losing. I'm used to rooting for
Speaker 1: teams that lose, and I don't. I don't feel better
Speaker 1: for it. I feel like it's really worn me down.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the Bills famously lost four Super Bowls in
Speaker 1: a row when I was a young lass, and the
Speaker 1: Savers when I became a hockey fan, lost unjustly in
Speaker 1: the Stanley Cup Finals. Have either of those teams ever
Speaker 1: gone on to actually win their respective championship? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: still still not winning. Okay, Yeah, so Buffalo is a
Speaker 1: city of sports losers, right, So I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: I'm primed to lose a lot like the teams I
Speaker 1: root for tend to lose. I'm sorry if I've rooted
Speaker 1: for your team because it's just probably Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that it's character building, but maybe now I should
Speaker 1: see it that way, right, Maybe you've learned something from it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So for the losing team like me, And now it's
Speaker 1: time for half big takes, half fake takes. For this
Speaker 1: week's half thought out opinions, I'm going to pose a
Speaker 1: question to both of us. How far is too far
Speaker 1: for personal hygiene at work? Sam Well Becca? I would
Speaker 1: say that the height of my personal hygiene or depth,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it, has been to
Speaker 1: shave my face at work. Maybe I didn't shave my
Speaker 1: face in the morning and then discover that there's some
Speaker 1: reason I'm going to need to be clean shaven. So
Speaker 1: I do have a drawer full of like shaving cream
Speaker 1: and after shave and razor blades all that stuff, but
Speaker 1: I always make sure to do all of that in
Speaker 1: one of the handicap stalls, which has its own sink,
Speaker 1: so nobody is seeing me actually do this. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, that's way too far, okay, And okay, kudos
Speaker 1: to you for using the handicap stall for your shaving meats.
Speaker 1: I mean I use it to everybody uses the handicap stall,
Speaker 1: come on, but yeah, I'm opposite. I go pretty far
Speaker 1: out of my way to not do any personal hygia
Speaker 1: network and I don't know what, but I've put on
Speaker 1: makeup once in the handicap stall for a day. Okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I've seen people brush their teeth, and I've
Speaker 1: seen people put makeup on, and I've seen even changing
Speaker 1: into workout clothing. I just it's too much of my
Speaker 1: human self for my coworkers to see. I once worked
Speaker 1: at an office that was brilliant in that it had showers,
Speaker 1: but they were with their own changing room. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you just like open the door and you went
Speaker 1: inside and like that was it. Nobody ever saw you
Speaker 1: again until you came out. And during that time, if
Speaker 1: you had showered and put new clothes on and put
Speaker 1: on makeup or whatever, it was your own private bathroom, Okay,
Speaker 1: I would do that. Yes, And this has been half
Speaker 1: big takes, half baked takes. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: game Plan. If you want to find me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: I'm at rs Greenfield and i am at Sam Grobart.
Speaker 1: Our show today was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson,
Speaker 1: and the head of Bloomberg Podcasts is Alec McCabe. And
Speaker 1: if you like us, please head on over to iTunes
Speaker 1: and rate, subscribe, and review and I'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Get the most from your people and
Speaker 1: send your business soaring with corn Ferry. From executive search
Speaker 1: to talent strategy, leadership development, rewards and succession planning. Corn
Speaker 1: Ferry knows up is more than a direction your future.
Speaker 1: Learn more at corn ferry dot com. Slash up losing
Speaker 1: sports teams, namely the Buffalo Bills so after the Chicago
Speaker 1: baseball team after the Cubs got rid of their curse,