welcome to new beginnings with karen dell i am so pleased to have with me doug sondheim who is an author and executive coach and we're going to be talking about his book which the title of his book is taking smart risks how sharp leaders win when the stakes are high so doug welcome thank you very much it's great to be here and i should explain to the audience that we're doing a skype interview so you know you're not here in the studio with me but the technology allows us to do that and i am grateful that we could do that yeah rock yeah so tell us a little bit about how did you come up with the concept for the book i love the book title how did you come up with the concept you know it seems a lot of people have asked me that question in reality i have not been a long term risk taker i wasn't a guy jumping off of cliffs or doing any sort of crazy stuff which i think in fact is one of the reasons why i was interested in it how does the lay person get better at tak risks because i think to a degree all of us we realize if we want to get forward in life whether personally professionally we've got to put ourselves out we've got to take some risks after but interestingly i kind of stumbled into the book because i was working very early in my career with a client and he had said something strange to me i didn't know how to deal with that he had said after we were going through some business planning sessions he said you know i don't really feel alive eating ear to ear after he had really reconnected with so it's going to that i probably passed tens of thousands question because i saw the energy him the theme i see throughout nearly everyone's answer whether the heart of it is about feeling alive and how do we do that we get better take some risks so that's the essence of great in your book is aimed at anyone right they don't have to be in corporate america they could be lay people as you referred anyone it as it is it's aimed at anyone down there about thirty seven cases and it most of them pertain to the business world in some way shape or form so i think the cases will speak a little bit more to business people but a lot of people not in business have read it and found extremely valuable as well that's great that's great now in the book you talk about getting started even when you don't know where to start which i love that title and as executive coaches i know that you've probably encountered this where sometimes we're coaching people they have an idea and they're kind of stuck because they don't know where to begin so tell us a little bit more about what you mean you know getting started even when you don't know where to start so i think this insight early in my coaching career that everyone has a vision for where they want to get to and for the most part when people don't take action towards that vision is big because they have some sort of doubts whether maybe my vision is not clear enough maybe it's not the right  is but i won't be able to get there and the one i always make to readers to clients to really to anyone as whatever that vision is the seed of something really important to us and they're  so well but that's fine that's part of it and it's the act of just starting the act of walking starts to put into action so many other things we need and it's that it's that that keeps us from starting that once we're starting is the same inertia that keeps us move or so i always make a point just get into action to see that vision that you have start moving better plans will be found along the way just get moving now so even if you haven't been flushed everything out your point is just moved towards it because just that action alone keeps the momentum yeah that's right  it's really i think the best way to think about it is like getting rid of cycles you're constantly learning and one of the whole sections of the book is called act fast learn fast and that's where this chapter start before you know start is from if i act fast and i learn and i act and i learn and act and learn it's false or because they get bigger and bigger as we grow and it's that moment of not ever starting that if we look back in twenty years thirty years we we would really regret the most is we never just jumped in and started moving towards that towards that vision that you know often times i say to people who get about sixty five percent clarity that like you're moving in the right direction and then start moving you know if you don't have that much chance as are you not done enough reflection if you're waiting for seventy five or eighty five percent surety that you're going the right direction you're going to be waiting a long time because you really can't get that level of  wife found a space they got their grandmother's old card to people they set it up they had no idea what they were doing and he's now got four or five spas in new york city area and you know i mean i still remember him saying if i had if i knew all the places that i would have failed before i started i probably never started and i think that that's you know it's overwhelming it becomes extremely overwhelming when you think of all the stuff you don't know so it's almost better it's almost like the world wants us to not all the failures before we start because if we did we ever start the first place yeah and you know you have touched on this in the book about failing fast and failing forward and i think what prevents people from taking risks is sometimes they're thinking of all the ways they could fail instead of thinking of all the positives that could come you know fourth but talk a little bit about failing fast and failing forward but i think a lot of comes down to our relationship with failure i think the word conjures up all sorts of fear and all of us and i think i think there's a moment where people who start taking risks and really find it valuable begin to realize that failure is actually just an important part of learning and it's almost a mental switch that really goes off in their mind you know kind fail nine times stand up ten is you know is a common acronym a lot of businesses i know in hollywood for example and so i think more than anything it comes down to our relationship with failure that we quickly and i'm going to eminem i'm going to learn through the scars and the and the errors that i make and it'll always keep me moving moving forward so it's a it's a really a relationship with failure and again it goes back to start before you know what start it isn't til we start moving that we can really reorient ourselves towards failure begin to realize this is a great learning up on an ongoing basis yeah i  agree you know there's there's a ton of stories obviously thomas alva edison you know took i don't know over a thousand experiments until he came out on the light bulb but the solution that is used in households today which is four zero nine four zero nine is a cleaning solution and the reason it's named for zero nine is because four hundred eight times it wasn't you know what it needed to be but the four zero ninth time it was a marketable product and that's what they called it for oh no i don't know that that's a great story yeah so that when you can use but that's an example of you know the iteration and keep working at it until you get it the way you want it to be yeah that's right i give you one other quick quick story about that which is one of the gentlemen i read about the book was from procter and gamble and he worked in the hair care division he was a researcher and he talks about now i don't do hair coloring my itself but from what i understand it's an extremely messy process and it's always been a tough thing to do at home he had the idea that he'd get this clam shell where he put the chemicals on either side of the clam shell and it would be self containing and you could do it at home very quickly without a lot of mess this is something i didn't know until i wrote this book to get a consumer product on the shelf in a drugstore is that often for a five year process conception because it's got to go through lots of different iterations a lot of the stuff die in the laboratory they never make it out and he had this vision for doing hair care and that and it did come out and this is maybe twenty i think twenty ten twenty levon as a clerical product if you told me to can eight years from conception to the end and he got barbecue tongs crafted the thing in itself and brought people in and show them out of he went over and over and over ways that it didn't work that it didn't work and you know he's a researcher at procter and gamble and i often think if if we all thought of ourselves as just researchers like the people for rona i'm or thomas edison that we probably have less of a stigma around failure because researchers are just constantly trying to think over and over again what if we thought of our lives that way what if he thought of everything that we're doing is just another attempt at this way or that way and then at some point we stop i doubt what works and all those years or whatever it is of quote unquote failures were really just our research  no i love that story now you know this all sounds good us talking about it on television and then you know failing forward and failing fast but we know there are people who don't take risks you opened by saying hey you were more curious about it because it's not kind of you jumping out of planes so how do you two questions one is what are some of the common obstacles that you see people face they intellectually hear what you say and they may sign up but in the end you know they don't move forward so what are some of those common obstacles and then what what would you say to them to move forward yeah i think you know every and some of i think you're right it becomes a lot of platitudes you know go towards your fears or just take a step  and one of the things i think that people often don't do that is very specific and just because it's the easiest to use the case of the business plan is first thing get to paper people write it down what are you trying to actually it was like to do this i'd like it to look like this kid put pen to paper and there's an old adage been consulting expression which is get to paper fast as you get your ideas down on paper and write them out oftentimes the first thing you'll see is wow these are the ideas aren't as formed as i thought they were and that gives you a little bit of data right there which as i've got to think a little bit more this then you get your plan down and what do you do with it w with people i talk to people here's what i'm thinking people who you know will be supportive but be critical and give you some feedback there's a point in the book i talk about mapping your fail and what i mean by that is figure out where it's going to fail so box matrix i talk about which is degree of control you have over that they and degree of concern that if you have a high degree of trolling a high degree of concern but those four or five things in this box these things i can i can address then we stop and really think about it we realized you know that that's not likely happened now that i see it on paper as i've actually written down to get it on the paper have others critique it get your political board of directors around you often fail to take yeah i am a big proponent for writing things down because i agree there is distance that you can put between what's swirling around in your head getting it down on paper kind of fleshing out the ideas seeing where the gaps are and the worry sometimes people just just swirl in the worry as opposed to taking steps to move forward and to get rid of the worry or at least to say ok i've captured it i've put it down on paper there it is i don't need it swirling in my head anymore i can now take in other information i think is is an important step to take and one that i think does help move people forward absolutely so you talked about failing fast and my curiosity around this is sometimes you think you're going along on the right path and you don't know your family how can you get clarity because i could see you know just moving along thinking i've got it all ironed out and then suddenly be surprised that i actually have gone fifty miles in the wrong direction how can you fail fa how can you recognize that do you yeah i mean i think so i mean you know there's related to writing things down point there's the point around really clarifying your goals  mean what is success actually look like to to you and some of those will be end success i want to have built this business that looks like this for example if we talk about a business or when i have achieved this very measurable all for instance and and i think you know i don't think out of it this is you always know did i do everything right a lot of times you know that at the same time i think if you have an end goal can start to get a sense that you're moving in the right direction and i can't stress enough this have happened a board of directors around your set of people who can give you fairly objective feedback on a regular basis if you're big enough company that could be  oftentimes you still want external people to be able to give you that outsider's point of view a perspective but not in my experience it's got tight all set up and you've got your interest  and you're moving it rarely becomes an issue that you're failing direction you're constantly shelved correcting in the direction i want to go and i feel like people they develop a six x you're moving haven't had that is because they're constantly seeking ways to improve their involving others they're collecting data they're measuring all of those steps help them to know that they're headed in the right direction exactly yeah so that's that's an important that's an important nuance that helps she would stay on the path and if you do get a detour of some sort you can either say well you know what this is a great opportunity we're going to it or you know this is not the right time we're headed in this direction and go from there because i think what i was thinking is sometimes you have many many opportunities or you think their opportunities and either you don't vet them well or you know and so you do expend energy time money that probably had you vetted this further you would have known it wasn't a good idea or something else would have happened to let you know that it wasn't a good idea so that's what i was thinking how do you do it fast yeah and the fast part i think is less about choosing directions that it is going in any direction as long as you've set up that you know sixty five percent surety just gone and figuring it out on the way i think so much about risk taking becomes about pattern recognition you know this thing looks like the right direction you tried doesn't work somehow years later you get fooled into it again and again i find out it doesn't work and that it's six years later and say you know what i've seen this and that path doesn't work i'm not going to do it and i think every successful  surprises that you found either with you know your research on the book or in talking to clients what have been some of the surprises for you in developing the book or hearing people stories that you didn't really know or were aware of you know kind of going  in you know i've always personally better where of the idea that playing it safe you staying interests like that something that's always stuck you know stuck with me i think after i started  having all these conversations asking people about you know what was a time in your life that you felt most alive and i think i realized just how much everyone is dealing with that same tension in their life at once realizing that playing it safe is dangerous almost on a day to day basis big cognizant of the fact that the more they play it safe the last their life is going to be enjoyable the less they're going to feel a sense of  peace and yet and yet continually doing it that you know just as a human being you have a sense that that's the case but as you start talking to people and start to hear the stories you read you you really begin to understand that that is a tension that everyone is dealing with and that's really one of the reasons why i try to write the book is success accessibly as possible because i recognize that is a pain that everyone every human being deals with and how can you get past that how can you find ways to get past that so you know it was kind of the things i knew going in but when she hear all those stories it added a lot more appreciation i think for the fact that that's a real human tension  yeah and i think that the more not that it's a youth versus an experience or mature person but youth usually have less invested their free or they may not have family obligations you know the the more you have more a good car payment you know if you're paid to wish and i can see playing it safe you just want this you know to ride this puppy because you've got all these other things riding on it  but you can become dead inside it can become routine monotonous so you want every day that when your feet hit the floor that you're excited so you have to take like you said those incremental steps to be more energized knowing that you do still have the mortgage spend that car payment or maybe you know school tuition or whatever it is that you are you know you have those financial obligations so it is there it's a delicate balance and very delicate and i would doubt i would allow up on that by saying it's you know so there's a there's a becomes what's the relationship which is out of risk i take on the amount of growth that i have it's not a linear straight relationship it's not the more risk i take on the board it's it's it's a curve it's a bell curve up to a point really i think what the key is no that's great in the minute we have left tell us what is your new beginning for twenty eight i've been thinking a lot is going to be off the radar other but i've been thinking a lot about eastern thought buddhism and i've been wondering a lot about how to bring that more into the boardroom so buddhism in the border because i think that there's an element of  know the thing i love body is your thought is not about forcing issues it's about being present really understanding what's going on for people what's going on for my tea i think there's a connection there with risk the more present we can be let's say as an executive team the more we can present where we should or should be taking risks without forcing things and that's something i've been thinking a lot about and i'm thinking about how to bring that into the boardroom for in the coming years because it's not a traditional conversation board thank you again for being a guest and sharing how to take smart risks you know and when you've had great insight in our conversation and i look forward to having you back how you bring buddhism into the boardroom thank you karen i appreciate it thank you for tuning in to new beginnings with karen del