Gemba Academy Podcast: Lean Six Sigma | Toyota Kata | Productivity | Leadership

 

Confidence and arrogance can look identical from the outside. George Barrios has spent a career in rooms where the difference mattered, from running a semiconductor division at 29 to co-leading a $20 billion merger between WWE and UFC. His book, Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt, started as a phrase buried in a performance review and grew into a full operating philosophy about where real conviction comes from. The answer is less inspiring than most people want to hear, and more actionable than most people expect.

In this episode you’ll learn:

What “chip on shoulder equals chips in pocket” means to founders (2:29)

How early circumstances shape a lifelong drive to prove something (3:38)

How a career spanning Praxair, WWE, and global sports investment came together (5:45)

Where the title “Sometimes Wrong, But Never in Doubt” actually came from (8:47)

The difference between confidence earned through deep work and false bravado (13:18)

What conviction looks like in practice when pressure hits (17:09)

How to treat failure as a signal rather than a verdict (20:27)

What separates smart risk from recklessness (24:24)

Why doing work you are naturally good at changes everything (27:31)

“To get through that, you need to do the work that drives the conviction to push through.” – George Barrios

Keep Learning

If George’s point about deep work as the foundation of leadership conviction resonated, the School of Leadership offers structured ways to build that same discipline in yourself and your team.

Learn More About School of Leadership at https://www.gembaacademy.com/leadership

Podcast Resources

George’s Website

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What Do You Think?

When you look at the leaders around you who project strong conviction, can you tell whether it comes from deep preparation or from something else entirely?

Most organizations have the systems. They have the processes, the KPIs, the structured meetings, the strategic plans. And they are still stuck. Norman Wolfe has spent decades helping leadership teams understand why, and the answer keeps coming back to something the org chart cannot capture. The beliefs, priorities, and unspoken assumptions that shape how departments actually behave are running the show, often invisibly.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Why a quote about paradigms became the lens for Norman’s entire career (3:03)

Why strong systems alone are not enough to fix execution problems (11:39)

How departments behave like people and why that changes everything (15:00)

What it actually looks like to surface and resolve a context conflict between departments (19:21)

Three lenses leaders can use to see what is really blocking performance (24:50)

What Norman would tell his younger self about building a lasting career (28:19)

Why developing organizational maturity matters as much as optimizing processes (30:33)

“Change the paradigm and what was difficult and almost impossible in one becomes easy and simple in another.” – Norman Wolfe

Keep Learning

If the gap between your organization’s systems and its actual execution sounds familiar, the School of Leadership can help you build the skills to work on both the visible and invisible forces shaping your team’s behavior.

Learn More About School of Leadership at gembaacademy.com/leadership

Podcast Resources

Norman on LinkedIn

Norman’s Website

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What Do You Think?

When you look at the persistent friction between departments in your organization, does it look more like a process problem or a context problem?

Most people trying to improve their lives are doing it without a clear picture of what they are building toward. For Joel Steele, a near-miss with prison forced him to start making different choices. His book “Life Switch” grows out of that turning point, and the framework he describes maps surprisingly well onto the tools that continuous improvement professionals use every day.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Why progress builds momentum faster than motivation alone (0:02)

The quote Joel likes (3:19)

How focus shapes the direction of everything you do (4:09)

What a near-death experience reveals about wasted potential (6:06)

How the puzzle analogy reframes goal-setting for real life (8:58)

Why believing in the process separates progress from stagnation (13:22)

How failure functions as fuel rather than a stop sign (14:47)

The difference between living on and merely surviving each day (18:46)

How understanding your wiring unlocks the right role for you (21:27)

Why fulfillment is the only scorecard that actually matters (24:13)

How buying one book becomes part of a million-dollar donation (27:27)

“It’s simple in theory, but it’s hard to execute. But when you understand that, hey, this is going to work and you believe in that process and you don’t have doubt in yourself, you make so much more progress.” – Joel Steele

Keep Learning

If Joel’s point about believing in the process resonated, the School of Leadership is a natural next step for anyone who wants to build the kind of clarity and conviction that sustains continuous improvement over time. Learn More About the Gemba Academy School of Leadership.

Podcast Resources

Joel on LinkedIn

Joel’s Website

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What Do You Think?

When you think about your own work in continuous improvement, do you have a clear enough picture of the finished puzzle to know where the next piece belongs?

Most continuous improvement practitioners are trained to prize logic and treat emotion as noise in the system. D. Earl Johnston spent nine years and thousands of research hours across twelve disciplines discovering that framing is backward. His book, “Choosing Emotions,” grew out of a father-daughter moment involving depression, post-it notes, and a single powerful text message. What came out of that work challenges something most leaders have never stopped to question.

In this episode you’ll learn:

What Winston Churchill’s 8 words reveal about how emotions work (3:14)

How a father-daughter dinner became a 9-year research project on emotions (3:57)

The three most common misunderstandings people have about emotions (11:40)

Why doom scrolling is an emotionally driven navigation, not a bad habit (16:56)

What ego actually is and why most high-performers misunderstand it (19:12)

Why trauma persists until you find the words to describe it (22:00)

How naming an emotion releases its grip on your behavior (26:11)

What neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett says about emotional vocabulary (28:05)

How an emotionary differs from an ordinary dictionary (31:13)

Why making friends with your emotions makes life easier (32:13)

Keep Learning

If the idea that naming an emotion is the first step to solving a problem resonates with how you think about coaching and people development, the School of Leadership builds on exactly that kind of human-centered foundation.

Podcast Resources

“Choosing Emotions”

Choosing Emotions Website

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What Do You Think?

Where in your work do you see emotional vocabulary, or the lack of it, affecting how problems get solved?

This week’s guest is Ben Hansen. Ron and Ben discussed how Ben helps companies improve their profit margins, dealing with “profititis,” shifting your focus from revenue to profitability, and more. An MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Ben’s quote (2:23)

His background (3:59)

How Ben helps companies double their profits (6:57)

The most common “profit leaks” (9:28)

An example using a manufacturing facility (20:17)

About “profititis” (23:29)

How you address it (26:05)

Shifting the focus from revenue to profitability (27:38)

Ben’s thoughts on accounting (32:05)

Separating the signal from the noise (36:09)

Ben’s parting thoughts (37:24)

Podcast Resources

Right Click to Download this Podcast as an MP3

Ben on LinkedIn

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What Do You Think?

Has your business ever suffered from profit leaks or profititis? How did you know?