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Failure isn't the Problem. Skipping the Evaluation Is. · Church Staff Book Club

• Jonathan Malm: Not all experiences lead to wisdom. Hey, welcome back to the Church Staff Book Club. My name is Jonathan Mall. And I'm Jason Young. We are now on chapter six of our book, How to Get a Return on Failure. If this is your first time tuning in to the Church Staff Book Club, our goal is that we would learn together. It's literally what you would have if you're on church staff, if you're doing a book together. Each episode we pick a book. We do one chapter of that ep of that book throughout. nine, twelve, however many episodes it's gonna take us to get through the book. And our hope is that we can kind of summarize the content. So whether you're reading the book, whether you're not reading the book, you'll get something from this episode. But also bring our own context, maybe apply it a little bit better, especially for this book, which is not for church staff necessarily. It's more of a leadership book. It's really more of a personal development book for leaders, ⁓ that we can really contextualize it for churches. So this chapter, chapter six, Really, for me, it was it was about getting out of your comfort zone. That was kind of what how John Maxwell introduced the chapter. But what did what did you feel like this chapter was really about, Jason? Well, and maybe clarifying something that we've talked about but haven't said. And if you've listened along, and if you haven't, totally fine. You're like, ⁓ you're talking about failure. Like it's it's this goal. And and really, I don't, I don't think that's what Maxwell's teaching. Failure isn't the goal. I think what Maxwell is saying, and even in the title of the book, return. How to get a return on failure, the goal is improvement. And in this chapter, ⁓ it's a tangible piece of how you can use a tool, and he calls it the cycle of success, I think is his language. But this improvement cycle to literally kind of step your way through ⁓ failure to improvement. So a lot of words, but I would say the goal, we're not talking about. The goal being failure, we're talking about improvement. And this chapter is a tool that can help you step your way through it. Well, and I really got that this chapter is more about putting yourself in a situation where you can fail. So some of it is he talks about what type of situations to put yourself in. Yeah. But then how do you navigate? Because the reality is, and we talked about this in the chapter, that most things you try for the first time, you're going to be bad at. He talked about, and I thought this was a horrible idea that he had a friend in Nashville that wanted him to write songs based on some of the principles in his book. Yeah. I'm like, the preachyest songs in the world. It seems like such a bad idea, but I respect the idea that John was like, okay, I'm gonna try to write a song based on my books. And yeah, his first product was really bad, apparently. That makes sense. Because he's not a songwriter. Yeah. They I I'll tell you, there is a phrase, ⁓ The very first, I mean, probably within the first, you know, 10 sentences. There's a phrase in there, and and like you can't, you know, probably see it on my end, but growth demands temporary surrender of security. You know, and so he's quoting a a journalist. And I thought, man, like, so the question is, do I want to grow? And if I do, it's not optional. It demands. Temporary surrender. So it's not this forever surrender of, but what is it that I'm surrendering? Some of the something that all of us want, security. And so it's like, am I willing to put myself, am I willing to put it, whatever it is, ⁓ out there? And I I love how he references one of the ⁓ the professors of in a class of titled Failure 101. And it was interesting, you know, these students, ⁓ we're gonna build a kite that can work. in a hurricane or you know, we're just ridiculous examples. But it's like, I think this happens from childhood into adulthood for many people. Is childhood, we live in this wonder, right? And we don't think about all the limitations. We don't think about, we don't measure failure. But then something happens when we step into adulthood that now our risk-averse score increases, you know, some more than others. But I love the invitation, it's what you just said, the invitation of, okay, what if you had a step-by-step way to step into failure, you know, or or test something. And then what if you could just kind of work your way through it so it could be better? Would that lower that risk averse score? That you might be more inclined to say, you know what? Okay, I have a plan of the cycle of how I can improve whatever it is I'm doing to make something, to make something better. And that's what the chapter really shows us is yeah, there, there is a tool. And so, anyways, it just I think that a tool can help you because then you don't feel like you're figuring out on the fly, like, I'm gonna build this plane as a fly, but you've got something that you can step in with. And that you can use to help you navigate through. Yeah. I I've been in a season right now where I'm learning a lot. I've embraced this AI coding stuff. And I'm I'm regularly experimenting with new things. I and i i he talks about in the chapter the idea that we need to learn, unlearn, and relearn things, right? Yeah. So I'm very much in that learning, unlearning, and relearning where I am It feels like play, honestly, for me. It feels it almost feels like I'm doing a video game. Like I'm playing a video game. And I made a video game with Claude Code recently. Like, but like it's I'm I'm I'm experimenting, testing the boundaries. I'm I'm really rapidly learning and rapidly failing even. I yeah, I tried to build this, ⁓ I work in a co-working space and I tried to build this display that has like a slideshow and it has questions that asks everyone in the group room to answer the questions, then it kind of like has like live our answers up there that we can like talk about. And it's like it's it's this big thing. And I failed probably 15, 20 times on getting it up and running. Like I bought the wrong technology. I bought the wrong and then finally I got it up. It's it's run I got it up yesterday and I'm so excited. It was finally running. Right. But like it was it's such a great experience because I'm learning, I'm failing, and I'm testing my capacity so that I can use that knowledge that I'm learning from doing this thing to apply to something to a bigger goal that I have. Yeah. I have I have bigger goals to use Claude code with. And so I'm testing right now in small, you know, ultimately it's not gonna matter if this fails, right? Like, okay, I wasted a hundred dollars on technology and it's it's a bummer and I wasted a lot of time on it, but I learned a lot from it. And that's really what I feel like this chapter is about is getting in that learning zone, out of that comfort zone, in that situation where you can fail, and then learning, unlearning, relearning every single day. And that's what gets us to the success cycle. And I want to talk about that. Well, you first. Yeah. Well, well, you just said something that it it's maybe just a reminder. We've talked about like how we how we think or feel maybe around failure in previous episodes. But one thing just to remind ourselves, which is crazy to think about, is sometimes we can think about failure as a threat to us. And when we think about whatever is a threat to us, the the one part of the brain, the amygdala. Is this threat detector, right? Well, what's interesting is the same part of the brain that feels physical pain is the same part of the brain from a threatened perspective that can feel this social or rejection pain. And so, like threat, rejection, failure, like it's very, very real thing. And I think as we step into it, another part that's encouraging is what you just said. I've heard forever, like. Experience is the best teacher. And you know, I'm like, I I used to think, ⁓ yeah, that makes sense. You know, as I've gotten older and I've gotten experience and have met people with experience, I'm like, wait a minute, what if experience isn't the best teacher? What if the way we evaluate the experiences we have? And again, this chapter gives us a cycle to use, a cycle of improvement. What if evaluated experience? is the best teacher. And so like you just said, you tried and, you know, you evaluated it. Next one. Tried, evaluated it, learned, tried and and so that's exactly what you did. And then you got to a place that just took a lot of that. So if you're listening, you're watching right now and you're like, man, I got a lot of experience. Cool. And how do you evaluate those experiences? And what if that is your leadership accelerator? So just something to ponder. I think there's an important tension here, and this is a tension that I felt reading the book, is that not all experiences lead to wisdom. Meaning, I mean, I think about this with a podcast. For the longest time, I tried to launch a podcast, maybe in my 20s, and I was like, that's it. Podcasts are of no value to me. Obviously, they're of value. I see everyone launching a podcast. Like podcasts are like in their heyday still, right? But The lesson that I needed to learn from my failure was not that podcasts have no value. It was that podcasts without a strategy of content are not going to work well. And so that was something that I needed to unlearn that false, that false learning that I had from a failed podcast. And I needed to relearn the correct lesson. I think about that with relationships, you know, like you get into a relationship and this person is just abusive to you. And so you say all men or all women are abusive. You learn the wrong information, right? And you can we can very much there's there's this book that I read a long time ago. It's called How to Think Like Einstein. And the one thing that stuck with me more than anything is that the majority of huge scientific breakthroughs that are discovered often happen when people are the youngest in their career. And the reason is this: they don't know what doesn't work yet. ⁓ Meaning they test things that shouldn't work. Or have been proven not to work and they find that they do work, but they they didn't bring the wrong assumptions into it because they didn't even know those assumptions in the first place. And so I think that's I think that's that's this really this this tension we have to live in, the idea that like, yes, as a 40, 50, 60 year old, we have a lot of experiences and a lot of wisdom, but at the same time we have to be willing to dismantle those things we've learned. If they aren't serving us, if they aren't true, if they were errant in the first place. Yeah. And and just to parenthetically add, I was always taught that older people, and older it depends on what how old you are to determine what is older. Heck, a thirty year old is older to a fifteen year old, right? So yeah. But I remember growing up always thought like, well, the older you get, the wiser you become. And something now that I'm Sometimes, but now that I'm forty eight, I'm like, time doesn't automatically produce wisdom. I know a lot of foolish fifty year olds. One I know foolish and unwise sixty year olds, right? So time doesn't automatically equal and produce wisdom. And I think what we're talking about in this chapter, what Maxwell writes about, is that very thing. And so anyways, I know we're we'll talk through some of these elements, but I think what you said is is right on. And like how we can actually be wise as leaders. What is something, what's a thing that we can do to get there? Yeah. So I mean we can go through real quickly the success cycle, ⁓ which is test, fail, evaluate, learn, ⁓ improve, and then re-enter the race. I think was the six. Did I get all six right? Yep. Test, fail, evaluate, learn, improve, re-enter. Yep. Yeah. So for me, The first one where he's he he he talks about tests. So you A, test a new method and then B let go of an old method. So testing a new method. I I think about we worked at a church, I worked at church, and you know, this was this was whenever online marketing was pretty in its infancy, like Facebook ads were just starting. And one day we were going to renew our Yellow Pages ad. We just evaluated. We, I don't know, someone, someone, either me or my br my brother who worked with me, I don't know. Someone was like, How many people find us by the yellow pages? And we just evaluated that like it wasn't what people were using anymore as the internet was becoming on becoming the bigger portion, right? Like people were like, people were Googling us, people were finding us. So we got rid of our yellow pages ad, which was the industry standard. You always have a yellow pages ad for everything. You show your service times. Like this is like a this is a non negotiable. And we got rid of a lot of our marketing ⁓ budget and we were able to put it more toward Facebook ads. And we found a bigger return because we tried a new technique, which was I didn't know anything about Facebook ads. That's this was the first time that I'd done a Facebook ad. Now I'm like, now I'm spending, you know, five, six thousand, seven thousand dollars on online ads, right? Every month. It's not a big deal. But But then it was scary to spend $400 on Facebook marketing because like it was it was a new untested quantity, but it's a change that we made. It put us in a position for failure, but we learned a lot through it. And so we let go of a new method and we ⁓ or let go of an old method, embrace a new method. And I think there's a lot of times we're living in an AI world, right? Like the internet was this w this one bubble this one bubble, social media was another bubble, and now we're in this AI bubble. What are some things you need to try as a church? In that bubble that are terrifying and that put you in a position of failure. ⁓ I don't know. That's that's something that's a kind of a challenge that I want to present to people. But in that test a new method, what new methods are going are you going to test? And and to add, ⁓ the senior leader, the senior pastor, executive pastor, if you're not willing to do this, then you're saying intentionally or unintentionally to if you have other people on your staff or key volunteers that it's not okay for them to do that. And so really you're saying, hey, here's here's what we're gonna do. This we're gonna normalize testing, right? We're gonna normalize in essence failure. Yeah. And then we're gonna learn, you know, we're gonna evaluate it, blah, blah, blah. We'll we'll get there in a second. But I think to your point, this very Thing is you, the leader, you're you're the thermostat setting the temperature of are you willing to test? I'm I'm in a season that there are typical ways, typical learning experiences for, you know, church staff, executives in, you know, business world. And I'm like, do we have to do it this way? And so I'm working on some new ideas to roll out that's really the antithesis of the traditional way. And people are like, you know, you do know that's not going to work. I'm like, Have you tried it and then you know that? Well, no, no, just when I compare it to, you know, X, it it doesn't work. I'm like, actually that fuels me. Cause w what if it will work? And what if it's the very thing that unlocks whatever it is that we need to unlock in the life of a leader? And so to your point, it's you know what? Let's test and know that it may or may not work, but we're gonna end it, we'll talk through the cycle. So I'm I'm with you on the testing. I'm in a season of that as well. And ⁓ is it sometimes uncomfortable? Yeah. And and an important detail in that testing is that environments and situations change. So in the next in the next part, he talks about fail. He says, unfortunately, a lot of the times whenever you work in a corporation, high level leaders, you are trying to create a new product in a vacuum. To succeed at all costs because your measurement, your value as a person that's launching a new product is not necessarily how the market does. It's how it performs in this little test bubble, in this little like pre-launch bubble. Like, is this going to work? Is he producing a good- did he did he create a good pr ⁓ presentation to explain what he wants to do? Right. Like, so we we kind of create this bubble that we're not aware of outside factors. I remember in economics, you know, there, there was this like. idea that you had to create, you know, like the the study of economics is basically like, if nothing changes ever, this is how things work. But it's just like that's not that's not how the world works, right? Like so podcasts, hey, that podcast didn't work. Well, because the environment was different then. Or hey, that podcast did work, but now it's not going to work for us. And I think so often we forget changing mentalities, changing environments, changing technologies. And so the things that served us in the past Or didn't serve us in the past, it might change. And we have to be aware of the external forces. And that kind of leads to like constantly testing, even an idea that didn't work two or three years ago. Maybe you test it again because things might have changed. And we can't control those. We can't fully evaluate external factors. We don't know. I'm planning something, you know, right now that three months from now, the technology might make it obsolete or might make it not work. And so we have to still just try and still test. And be willing to fail when the market or when the external factors or whenever the congregation, whatever whatever it is that we have no control over, whenever they don't act the way that we thought they would act. Yeah. So if you're testing and you're failing, I think in that cycle that that Maxwell gives us, the evaluate aspect ⁓ might be the part we either avoid, we might undervalue. And or we rush past. Yeah. And when I think about the evaluation, it means, and we're some of us aren't good at this, me too. It means I gotta slow down, not move on so fast to the next thing, but intentionally ava evaluate it. And and look, hey, I bet you watching, listening right now, Jonathan, you, me, ⁓ we've all experienced failure. But I think my question is, how many of us have ever paused long enough without rushing past? To like study it, to evaluate it. Right. So to increase our awareness, to maybe give us some some wisdom from it. ⁓ so I I I love this part. And if Maxwell was here today, he might highlight the fact that like this is really, really critical. Don't zoom past it. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, that's go ahead. That's ultimately the thing I think he's talking about the most in the book is the evaluation process. I think Especially when it comes to things that are relational in nature, we tend to and maybe this is a a white person thing, I don't know, like it might be different culturally, but we tend to pretend it never happened or not address the elephant in the room. I know in i in a lot of interpersonal situations, like once once the like the heat of the argument or once the heat of the conflict is done, we just pretend it didn't happen. And there's no evaluation like in a good relationship, you're like, hey, we had a really big argument just now. What was that about? What was underlying that made that a failure in our relationship just now? And let's address that. But a lot of times, and this is what counseling does really well, couples counseling, is that you present to the counselor this big argument that you both had, and the counselor helps you dismantle the mess of it and say, what was They help you evaluate that failure in your relationship to say what was underneath all of that? What was the dysfunction that we can tweak to fix for next time? So we do that, you know, we should be doing that hopefully in our relationships. A lot of times we don't, and that leads to very unhealthy and toxic relationships. But that same sort of thing needs to be applied toward we almost, I mean, you almost need on staff like a ⁓ like a a failure counselor on staff, like, hey guys, let's evaluate what just happened. What what made that not work? There should almost be I I don't I I always loved whenever I was on staff at a church. I was my role was the devil's advocate. ⁓ it hated me. Anytime an idea was presented, like, hey, we should do this. I'd be like, why? I would just poke holes in every single thing that came up. It's like they wish they had a little button of a trapdoor that like dropped Jonathan the bottom of the floor. Okay, enough of Jonathan today. He's done. That's right. That's right. But it led to some really good Things. It led to a lot of failures too, because sometimes I said why on things that, like, hey, there was a good reason that that that thing that we didn't do was not done. But sometimes I think we came up with some really innovative ideas. So I don't know if this is helpful or not to you listening, watching right now. ⁓ we're gonna put up on the website ⁓ a tool for you, a da ⁓ a download, free download. ⁓ and it fits here between church staffbook club.com between, you know, evaluate and learn. It's it's a tool that you can use for yourself, by yourself, for you, and a tool, same tool but applied to your team. It's called a failure debrief loop. So think about it as a simple, practical, non-complicated ⁓ way to help you and your team like slow down long enough, evaluate, you know, whatever it is before you move on. And so it just kind of You know, it'll be a free download. It's a tool, lets you debrief, which we're not great at doing, but it fits nicely here just to mention it between evaluate and learn. So we'll make sure we get that up on the site for you to download. Yeah. And that that is the fourth right? Yeah, the fourth thing in the success cycle is learned. That's right. And he he talks John Maxwell talks about in this book that a lot of us fail to learn. We maybe evaluate, but we fail to actually incorporate it into So I wonder what are some practical ways that we could actually learn this? I he didn't really talk about this, but like what are some ways that we can I mean, is it s as simple as like writing a a sticky note on the mirror and saying, you know, hey, this is why something didn't work? Is that is that a simple way to do it? Like just to kind of remind yourself. So as you're approaching the next thing, like how how can you how can you make sure that this lesson is not lost? I guess is what the question is. Yeah. ⁓ there could be a variety of things to think about. I think there's a temptation as leaders, and this is the w really this is the whole kind of impetus of of this podcast, is sometimes I think we try to learn alone and we have try to evaluate alone and we try to, you know, learn whatever it is on the valuation and implement alone. And sometimes doing it solo isn't as effective as you think. And you're like, man, I just wish I had others. So one way to learn is to not do it alone. Maybe there's a person on staff or a key volunteer or somebody in your church you can trust. Or if you're listening right now and you're in the business world, maybe there's somebody, you know, that you have. So one, it's removing the pressure to evaluate and learn alone. The second is a posture that, hey, I am open and I am teachable. And I think that's a huge part. And it comes down to, and this has been a this language has been around for years. Having a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Carol Dweck did a lot of work, and many of you may have read her book on, you know, growth versus fixed mindset. And this is one of those moments where it comes into play that you can really determine which mindset you have. Fixed being, it's immovable. It is what it is. I am who I am. Things are going to change. That's the way people are. It's the way I am. Versus I can learn new things. I can implement new things. I can grow in this, you know, things of that nature. So part of it is. you know, posture, mindset, curiosity. I think another part is not falling in love with knowledge, but falling in love with learning. Knowledge is simply information given to you. Learning. It's kind of a static static thing, right? It yeah. And it is it it it's overwhelming. I I I say today about this generation, younger generation, I mean I have two kids, you know, I'm referencing They don't need help with more knowledge. Yeah. Right. They don't need help with knowledge to come by. Bro, it's like it's, it's, it's in our on our finger at our fingertips. What they need help with, and I think this is where learning comes in, they need help with the interpretation of the information that is coming them at breakneck speech. So for you, that's why I say don't do this alone. Interpretation. So those would just be like super quick. Tips, don't do it alone. Have a posture of curiosity. Have a ⁓ a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. You know, ⁓ don't fall in love with learning or excuse me, don't fall in love with knowledge slash information. Fall in love with learning, which is learning's actually what transforms you. It's putting it's putting the knowledge into the places that the knowledge needs to be in your life, right? Yeah, which is really where he takes us next. Is okay, so what you evaluated, so what you learned. What do you do with that? And then I love that he leads us back into, okay, well, let's improve this thing. And and I think I want to make a comment here because this is something I am so guilty of, and it has hurt me, is when I have attempted to make improvements, I have tempted to make improvements like all at the same time in all of these different areas. And it didn't go well. And so I wonder if improvements don't have to be overwhelming, but they could be adjustments or tweaks or adjusting levers, you know, small changes and allow those small improvements, kind of like our investments. Let them compound because better can beat bigger. He talks about whenever he met the Kathy, ⁓ truck Kathy, right? ⁓ Chick-fil-A. They the the board was we we need to grow, we need to grow, we need to grow. And Truitt's approach was no, we need to get better. We want our customers to demand that we grow because we're so good. That's it. And I think about that so much when it comes to churches. I think so many churches are focused on growth. Yep. We need to spend more marketing dollars. We need to print more invites. We need to print more but And I think that's one of the misconceptions people have of mega churches is that like that church is only worried about growth. Maybe that's the truth. And that can be an accurate, you know, an accurate accusation of some megachurches, right? But the reality is the best ones, if a church is excellent, meaning, man, that ministry was directly pointed at my life, at my children, at whatever, whatever it it it it Equipped me for the work of the ministry, right? Is the is the way that scripture says it, right? Like the yeah it is supposed to equip us, right? Church is supposed to equip us. So if the church is excellent at equipping, churches will grow. Like a church that is excellent will grow. You don't even need to focus much on marketing because that's when people will invite their friends. This church, that that sermon that Pastor gave, or that, you know, that kids' ministry My kids asking about God is talking about God during the week, right? Like I I need you to go here too, because it's been ch changing my life, right? Like the excellence is so much what we need to focus, improving more than growing, because the improvement, like you said, will lead to growth. Improve in such a way that people demand you grow, right? Like that's that's that's the goal. And I loved the way he said that. Like, I mean, Chick-fil-A is the model of excellence, right? Like the fact that a fast food restaurant is like, considered a model of excellence is insane to me. When I think about McDonald's, I'm like, do not do what McDonald's does. But Chick-fil-A, I'm like, yeah, do what Chick-fil-A does because they focused on improvement over growth. And then the growth was demanded, which I think is such a what if we approached our churches like that? Like, hey, don't try to grow your ministry. Just make it stinking amazing and then the growth will happen. Yeah, which which is a great transition, just as he wraps up this cycle, there's a temptation Typical language would be, ⁓ improve, right? Learn and improve. Yeah. But I've never heard of the idea that of a word that he uses. He says re-enter, you know, and and aka get your butt back in there, man. Let's keep doing this thing. Because if you are evaluating and you're learning and you're improving, but you don't re-enter, you don't jump back in there, then all of that means nothing. And it's going to take. Courage from you doesn't mean you're not afraid, but get your butt back in there, jump back in there, ⁓ and just and just keep doing this thing over you. That's why it's called a cycle. Test it again and just repeat all of these things. And so I just love the language of reenter, because for many of us, when failure happens, we exit. Those that are successful might quote, exit temporarily, but maybe they're over here exiting. To the evaluation and learn and approving. And then you just jump back in. And you go right back into that test a new method. Like, okay, now we learned. What do we test next? Yeah. They don't permanently exit and they're like, well, you know, that's that. ⁓ so I love the language of re-entering. And so I think that's the invitation is where are you potentially stuck in this cycle? You know, are you stuck on testing something, failing? Spending time evaluating, ⁓ learning from the evaluation, what do we improve? And then re-entering and figuring out where you're stuck can be helpful because the failure itself isn't what makes you better. It's the evaluative effort, which is a discipline but cons and consistent discipline that leads to making you better. But just the reflection alone doesn't make you better. Yeah. Learning doesn't even make you better, but it's Taking all of that with you on the journey in the cycle and re-entering, jumping back in ⁓ to do it all over again. And listen, don't do it alone. You don't have to do it alone. There's somebody, there's a team, there's a group that wants to join you in the effort. And again, we're going to post ⁓ the resource that we created, that failure debrief loop for you to use, for you to use with your team as well. And we hope that you feel like as you step into the world of leading people, That you don't step in the world alone, that you got two guys, if nobody else. Yeah. You got us in your corner saying, Hey, we're on the journey with you. We've got your back. Yeah, it's so good. Hey, we hope this episode was helpful. ⁓ we will be jumping on chapter seven next episode, but read, don't read, whatever you want to do. But we'll just hope you join us. ⁓ make sure and subscribe if you haven't already. Find us on social media, but we'll see you next episode.