Errol: 0:06

Welcome back to another episode of transformative change. Great to have you back and if you are a first-time listener, welcome, and I'll hope you enjoy this podcast. Today's topic is going to be around mindset. The primary reason for this is I just finished the book Mindsets the new psychology of success by Carol Dweck. It's a great book and I got really inspired on applying some of that thinking into my everyday life and I've been reflecting on my own career and some of the setbacks interactions I've had with people. So let's get started. Welcome to transformative change, the podcast where we give you the tools to successfully drive transformative change in our society. We're a cross-cutting podcast. That means we mix technology with social, behavioral psychologists, anything that we find interesting, anything that can help spur your personal growth and inspire you to create a better society and, in all premises, a better world for all of us. So back into today's topic.

Errol: 1:21

Have you ever been in one of these dialogues and you get that profound feeling that the mindset is not invented here. I'd like to underline that not invented here Basically means we are executors of someone else's idea. We're going to keep on doing what somebody tells us to do. I'm not sure how many meetings of that kind I've been in and it's always been extremely frustrating to me. And also what I take with me in many of these dialogues is around the fear of failure.

Errol: 2:01

I think fear of failure is you see it in large organizations, in particularly when it comes to deployment, Given that I work quite a lot in the technology field there's always this fear of failure. What happens if we do something wrong? Yes, that might be a valid point if our product is the difference between life and death, but in the majority of cases it is not. In the majority of cases there is just a big fear of failure. I see this quite commonly. We see the difference between people and organizations. In that case and I guess that's expansion I'm doing on the interpretation that organizations in a sense is just a collection of individuals and the sum of that organization, the trait of that organizational mindset, is then the sum of the majority of those individuals or the individuals running the show. So if the C-suite in an organization has this fixed mindset, this fixed mindset really believed that their intelligence and abilities are fixed traits and they are unchangeable through effort, they tend to avoid challenges, fear failure and see setbacks as confirmation of their limits. And from an organizational perspective. What I think is so interesting that we tend to see quite many of these organizations. They don't reinvent themselves, we don't hear about their failures and there are so many limitations that they outline. Thank you In a sense also limit their ability to grow, except organically the same way they have. All is done.

Errol: 3:51

The other way of the course is to build new businesses, try new ideas, and we tend to see this much more in the startup world because you have to fail. In the larger enterprises you don't have to fail because you've already discovered something, but you can also see a decline in that over time. It is so hard, for instance, in some car manufacturers to put up the same model year of the year, but what they really need to do and we saw that as a great example in Carol's book is we saw that many of the Asian manufacturers of cars. They were becoming much more innovative in pricing features of the cars and they were outrunning many of the traditional brands because they didn't really innovate. There was a lot of fear of ability, a lot of fixed mindset. You need somebody and this expression I think has gone on for too long is outside of the box. You try new things and when it comes to technology development, the way of doing that is failing more, but you don't do it in such a big scale.

Errol: 5:03

So when I think about this in terms of, like technology development or product development in general, what I like thinking about is that, okay, how can we break down complexity so we don't have to create a large monolithic application? This large monolithic application has too many points of contact, too many points of failure, which basically means that if you have a failure, it's catastrophical. We want to fail in small increments so we can course direct more easily. We need to break down complexity and minimize the contact efforts constantly, and that's how you go from perceiving that there's only one way of doing things and managing complexity is general, and I think this is where the fixed mindset in organizations come from. It is so complex. That's what I've learned.

Errol: 5:59

Large organization it starts somewhere, with a couple of hundred people when you can't oversee things, and thousands and tens of thousands and in some cases, like when I worked for H&M hundreds of thousands of employees. It is so big, it is so complex and it's very hard to guide that ship into the right direction, away from the iceberg. But what you have to do is basically break that complexity down into small, small, small components, and traditional development paradigms didn't really support that. So, of course, in schools and in engineering, there was a lot of focus on how you manage complexity, and you still see today that many of these outdated practices is around creating large programs, large projects, spans over several years, but that's not really how you manage complexity. You manage complexity by failing in increments or succeeding, but you, course, direct in increments towards what it is that you want to achieve faster and quicker iteration.

Errol: 7:08

And these takes us in then towards the growth mindset, which is completely opposite towards the fixed mindset, because the growth mindsets are really these individuals which view their intelligence and abilities as valuable, capable of development, true dedication and perseverance, embracing challenges and learning from setbacks, and believing that hard work can lead to growth, which in a sense, is also an oversimplification, because really it boils down to it's okay to be wrong. It boils down to an inner ability to stand and being wrong to fail, because it's so hard to know exactly what you need to do in order to succeed. We all have role models. We look on sports athletes, we look on businessmen and women and we say, oh, they have the recipe, but many of them didn't have the recipe, and there are thousands of people that didn't reach that fame or that world, whatever it is that they did, to become role models. But what we tend to see it is the amount of time you failure with failure and you're comfortable with it and you're starting over. That gets you there, because we're all out there, and I think when we stop to learn, that is when we die. I believe in a constant development of the mind, because the mind is everything for me. So the only way to grow is to push your own limits. There's one way of putting a lot of theoretical knowledge into your brain, but then there's the other part where you put it into practice. And putting it into practice is what it's really about.

Errol: 9:10

I've been working with AI now for quite many years and one of the key things that I why I got stuck in the field of AI was because, first of all, it was extremely complex and I just felt overwhelmed with the complexity of the math, the statistics, the technology landscape, the pace that the field was moving in. But at one point I also realized that everybody is just talking. There are so many theoretical exercises in this Organizations, the academic world. They spend a lot of time of doing research to perfect the algorithms, but what I realized was the majority of these algorithms never see the light of the day. They are theoretical exercises that end up on PowerPoints to prove in backtesting that they are good. They have an accuracy of 90%. They have extremely good values when they test it towards historical data, and then they it really boils down to when rubber hits the road.

Errol: 10:13

And rubber hits the road when it comes to AI development. Sometimes, when there is a value realization part of things. That means customers using the recommendation in the recommendation engine you have built, or when you are correctly predicting who will churn, or you are correctly identifying if that was cancer or not. Those are some of the examples. When rubber hits the road, what we realized was that you could backtest forever, but all models are wrong, but some are useful and it's really about the problem solving. It's about how you apply the algorithm, how do you work with the data, and the only way to actually get to a real conclusion in all of that was to test it, to test it, to test it, to test it towards real interactions in small bulk, get that feedback, improve and grow, and I believe that that was a key part for me in my own development.

Errol: 11:13

When I got that realization, I felt like we need to do this with everything, because the learning that you get from that is so valuable, because you take those insights and you learn something. But the scenario, for instance on forecasting, is that what works for one company might not work for another company. The market shifts, data points are different, so it's a trial and error constantly. That's why everything should be a test in life. We learn, we test, we learn, we test in an iterative cycle. But if we have this, mindset of our intelligence is fixed. We can't grow from here. Abilities are fixed rates. We can't change who we are. Then we're fixed in that thinking and I'm totally opposed to that. I believe that everyone can change some easy to others, of course, and we learn our ways, and this book also really pinpoints that these traits are visible early on.

Errol: 12:13

Which kind of approach you have to life? It's about growth and we really see that the mindset shape our perception of ourself, our abilities and our potential. People with low self-esteem, for instance, they have a low picture of themselves. That might also get them into a fixed mindset. So I think a lot we have to work with is all connected, and when it's all connected, that means that we need to strengthen kids' perception of ourself, we need to teach them that everything is possible and we need to work on ourself constantly. It's a journey to have this growth mindset and we have to see that it's not just about engineering disciplines or social science disciplines. There's a cross-pollination between different areas, because all learning is growth and we need to acknowledge that a fixed mindset can hinder personal growth and achievement and what we see is also growth mindset encourages learning, resilience and success, and this is really highlighted in this particular book, and I think we need to cultivate the growth mindset much more in society. I'm having these dialogues almost on a daily basis, even not on the line growth mindset as the key point for those discussions.

Errol: 13:40

But one of the reasons for driving this podcast is that I believe that sharing knowledge, being inspired, is a key success factor of changing society into something more positive. We need to get people to embrace challenges. We need to teach our kids, we need to teach society that persistence through setbacks it's okay, it's okay that you fail, it's okay that you lost everything, and we as a society need to work in providing a safety net so people can bounce back faster from failure, because we want to see more failures, because that leads to more successes. If we have one unicorn company coming out of a thousand failures, that one unicorn will pay for all the others in terms of progress in society. And we need to value learning over proving ourselves and this. I think this is just mind blowing, because valuing learning means that is the success of you get from learning. I know it's a bit contradictory, but so many times we see, for instance, on linking people hyping themselves over something that might not even be that good.

Errol: 14:56

It's about sharing failures and I think in many of my presentations, I think a key point that I like highlighting is all the failures that I had, because I had quite many of them. Let me tell you. Let me tell you about the years I spent playing around with technology without pushing a single model out to production as a data scientist. All the fancy PowerPoints that I did that hopefully inspired some, but today are collecting dust. All the times I had to do administration that didn't lead to anything. There are just some of many of my failures.

Errol: 15:32

It's easy to look on someone. I'm not saying you should look at me and see my successes when I'm saying. It's easy to look at someone that's successful and only see the positive sides, because we don't talk about the setbacks and the learning that's happened in between and create an unrealistic picture of that person. Everyone has had failure, both personal and professional ones. I guarantee you that An interesting topic to ask if you're ever in the room with a very successful person is can you tell me about some of the failures you had in your career and what did you learn from them?

Errol: 16:07

Mindsets are not fixed. We, as human, can believe they are. They can be changed through awareness, effort and a willingness to embrace new perspective. If you are one of those that believe that mindset is fixed, I can't grow my abilities. There are other people that are so much better than me at this particular topic. Well, guess what you can change. But it all starts with you being aware that your effort might feel that you're becoming worse in the beginning, and that's also proven through several studies, that you're worse in the beginning when you start a journey. But you will slowly start seeing effort. But it takes time and you need to be willing to embrace new perspectives.

Errol: 16:56

Our mindset influences everything. It influences our approach to education. Is education really linear, and especially now in the times of shut, gpt, llms, etc. Is just getting all the knowledge in your brain what's really crucial in a linear way, or should we learn how to have more critical thinking into our education? For instance, how we handle relationship, are we growing together, how you handle your kids, the parenting style and all different aspects of life. And it's all about praising intelligence. We want to praise efforts that promote a growth mindset constantly and pointing out when people are thinking differently, when they are failing, and give the credit for the process, because it's about the process Sometimes. It's not just about the end result. It's about creating this learning loop constantly and just face it. Failure is an inevitable part of learning and growth. It should not be feared, but embraced as an opportunity to improve. Surround yourself with growth-minded individuals and you will be reinforced in your own growth mindset. Push other people that want to learn, get them closer to you and create a positive feedback cycle and get them to push you and you can push them as well. And if there is no people like that around you, be the one that drives this change, because this really is a transformative tool and people that are interested and want to proceed, they will find you.

Errol: 18:39

Mindsets are not solely about intelligence. They extend the various aspects of our lives, including how we handle sports, how creativity is fostered and leadership skill as a leader in particular because I think that's quite close to this podcast. Leadership is real about the flexibility, understanding people. We want to be leaders all of us, regardless if we are officially leading people or not. You can be a leader without a title and that's another good book, by the way and a growth mindset.

Errol: 19:18

It is not about being perfect. Let's face it. None of us are perfect, even though our partners sometimes think so, or we might believe so ourselves. It all depends on you. We are not. Let me just face that. You're not perfect. I'm not perfect, end of the day. It's about embracing challenges, learning from mistakes and, boy, if you're anything like me, you made a few, and so have I, and so have everyone around us, our parents as well, our teachers, all of us and the growth mindset is continuously striving to improve. I can be better constantly, and when you settle, that's when you stop growing and people are going to outgrow you. And even though it might sound like it, by the way I talk sometimes. This is not a sprint or a marathon that you perform as a sprint. This truly is a marathon, so you need to pick your pace and it's okay to go up and down in your own efforts.

Errol: 20:26

Our mindsets are not destiny in any way. We have the power to change them and shape our own paths to success. And it boils down to what do you want? I mean, growth mindset is supposed to take you to the place you want to be. For me, it's about happiness. For me, it's about cultivating a good life. For me, life is about enjoying the journey. I know that my destination is going to be my own debt, so I'll try to enjoy and be as happy as I can throughout this process. The growth mindset exists anywhere. I've already mentioned organizations, but organizations, schools, communities to promote the collective success. An organization is the sum of the individuals and the leaders in that organization.

Errol: 21:17

I think, as we're coming towards the end in this episode, the growth mindset is essential for lifelong learning and adaptability in a rapidly changing world. We know that the world is moving faster than any time before. All the studies show it. Mit Economics had an innovation cycle study they published a few years back, where you can see that innovation and the pace of change has significantly gone up the last couple of hundreds of years and everything that's happening with AI, technology, data requires us to be flexible and have a growth mindset, to adopt it to these new changes, to have a natural part in these changes that affects the world. By adopting a growth mindset, we open ourselves to a world of possibilities and the potential to achieve our full potential.

Errol: 22:12

What I want you to take with you is that our mindset matters much more than you think. They shape our perceptions, behaviors and, ultimately, our outcomes. We have the power to choose our own mindset. By cultivating a growth mindset, we embrace challenges, learn from setbacks and believe in our ability to grow and succeed. A growth mindset is not about being perfect. It's about embracing the journey of learning and improvement. Sharing the principle of a growth mindset will most definitely create a ripple effect, foster a culture of learning, resilience and success in ourselves, our communities and the world around us. Thank you so much for listening in today. I hope you've got some golden nuggets to take with you and I'll see you in the next episode. Take care.