Building Resilience In Times Of Uncertainty With Larry Hitchcock

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day, we face change, stress, and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Barkel and his inspiring guest explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change.

Proof. On today's episode of the Change Proof podcast, I have my friend Larry Hitchcock, who's a partner with Deloitte with more than 20 years experience serving Fortune 50 clients who pursue growth and profit improvement through mergers, acquisitions, and strategic transformations. I so enjoyed this conversation, and I know you will as well. All right, Larry, so you have a. A very. It's a succinct bio. Not. Not everybody I interview. It seems like we all throw the kitchen sink into our bios. You are very minimalist, I think, in. In that more. More summarizing what you do in the world, which I think is really elegant and, and I'm really appreciative that you did that, but I'm going to ask you a question nonetheless, which is. And this might be even more difficult for you to choose, but what's one thing that's not a part of your bio that you would love for people to know about you at the outset of our. Of our discussion today?

So I might give you two quickly. So one thing that I think provides a bit of backdrop is I was a distance runner in high school. I was an avid sprint, distance, triathlon, triathlete. Sorry. So you could say, in a way, I was trained for resilience. The thing that most people are really surprised by when they see my actual resume is, is I'm also a avid Harley Davidson motorcycle rider. And no one expects that.

Yeah, I'm, I'm. I mean, you and I, we got to have dinner together. We had a. We had a. A common client that we were working. All right? I was there delivering a keynote speech. You were actually speaking at that event as well. We had dinner together. We spent a little time afterwards. I would not, if you'd asked me a thousand guesses, would I say, oh, yeah, that guy is. Is a. An avid Harley rider. I don't think I would have said that. So give it. I need to go a little deeper then. So where did that love of the. Of the hog come from? And what's the origin story there?

So I've ridden motorcycles since I was a kid. I married my high school sweetheart who owned a motorcycle dealership that was not the right company, let's just say. And so for 16 or 20 years, of being loyal to another brand. When our daughter went off to college, my wife decided then I wasn't sending any bad signals about what acceptable behavior was and that riding a motorcycle is safe for good. And at that point I bought the Harley. I love it. So, no, no ink, but a big bike.

Yeah. It's so interesting in, in you and I and I don't think we covered this ground when we last spoke either. But I'm also married, my high school sweetheart, which is, you know, I think that story. There's lots of people who've done that, but not a lot of people who are still married to that same person. So you and I are in a different, you know, we're in a different and very, very, very fortunate for sure. You, you are you. Our roads diverge there just a little bit. I mean, I don't. How many kids did you. Do you guys have one daughter?

Yes.

One amazing daughter. That's, that's amazing. I, we didn't stop after the first amazing kid. And we're not, we weren't the greatest planners. We weren't thinking too far ahead. So in the end we ended up with, with more kids. They, they ended up outnumbering us for sure. And so the, the idea that all the things that we did were the things they actually paid attention to didn't even dawn on us until they were like 14, 15 or thereabouts and weren't necessarily listening as much as we could just tell they were observing. So yeah, probably, probably we were all thinking, you know, what, what are we modeling good and bad and, and, and what would that mean to them? But at some point you're, you're in your relationship, you were allowed to get on a motorcycle again and, and I am absolutely forbidden. Forbidden. So I mean, I'm just saying it because it's the truth. I am forbidden. But I get on surfboards and.

Okay.

And in fact I did that yesterday. I got really beaten up in the surf. So when we're, when we're, you and I are recording this right now. You're in LA on a client engagement. I'm back in San Diego. I'm often on the road. I think you spent a bit of time there too. And, and so I got in the water with my son in law yesterday and the waves were overhead and I got, I got worked is the, is the term that is sometimes used. I got worked pretty good yesterday, so I'm just happy to be sitting in the seat with all my body parts.

Glad to see you working.

Well. Well, yeah, I want to talk today about resilience, because you actually, in your answer to that question, you brought that up. And I'm wearing, you know, the classic shirt today that says resilience on it. So I want to get a sense of what resilience means to you personally, and then I want to also get a sense of how you feel it means, or know it means within the context of the organizations that you and your firm Deloitte are. Are engaged with, that you serve. Because I think there's. There's something in that word that is both understood and some misunderstandings about it. I love to explore it further with you.

Yeah, I guess. I mean, I. I think about it in three ways. Two, what you mentioned, which. Which is me personally. A second would be, you know, professionally as a leader of practices within the firm, and third, as an advisor to executives. And so I guess my definition in simplest form would be that resilience is readiness and the outlook to thrive when you're faced with something that's unexpected. And I think, as I said, whether that's me personally being prepared or, you know, if you have uncertainty in a client project or uncertainty in the economy that impacts our firm or our clients, you have to be prepared in those circumstances.

Indeed. And do you see it as a soft skill or as a hard skill or as something that isn't defined by either of those terms?

I'm not sure how you're defining hard or soft. It's certainly a soft skill in a sense that it's hard to, like, measure resilience, you know, one through five, you're a five resilient or a three resilient empirically. So in that way, I would say it's soft, but it's hard in a sense that it's important. Like, you know, some of the difficulties that we've lived through over the last few years, the pandemic, rising interest rates, uncertainty about the economy. I think there's a hardness to that. You have to be resilient in the face of things that are going on. And as a leader and in our case, as advisors to clients.

Yeah. And again, I think it's. This is a perfect opportunity for us. We can agree about things, but we can also see the. See the, you know, our worldview can be a little different. Having been a researcher in. In this area for some time, I probably would have opted for the, you know, just based on my own life experience to say, well, some people are more resilient than others. And sometimes people are resilient because they've dealt With a lot more. Oddly and interestingly enough, you know that the more sort of early life adversity or even trauma, often the case is that those folks are more resilient later in life. There's also lots of studies like the ACEs study, which is adverse childhood experiences, which comes up with sort of 10 things that ultimately determine whether or not you've got predisposition to certain physical issues in your life. Whether it's high blood pressure, diabetes or heart, or issues involving cardiovascular health or anything like that can be sometimes related back to those early experiences. I would have opted to say it's more of a soft skill and you defined it perfectly. Because if you can't define it, if you can't measure it, then it's sort of in. Falls in that soft category. Not that it's not important, but you just can't sort of empirically measure it. But we've, we've now been able to research about 5,000 leaders across the globe. And we find more than just a raw score is that some people are, are very adept at what you said earlier, which is to, to be able to be ready, more ready in the face of change or in the face of disruption and that they have an outlook to thrive, which the word outlook is a great languaging. I just feel like that's mindset. So it's, it's mental, it's emotional, it's physical and, and on, on a certain level, it has to do with our alignment, which we would call spirit, but not like, you know, in terms of any, any spirituality concept, but just more alignment with the organizations right now that you're, you're with. Are you seeing that they're, that they're preparing for the headwinds that appear to be already here and maybe greater headwinds that are facing us in the way of recession or other things. Are those organizations focused on how they can build their, their workforce up, build them up in terms of their resiliency? Or is that, do you see, is that on the, on the radar as, as focus on well being or other things, or is it not really there as far as you can tell?

I think with the clients that I serve, it's a mix, but certainly within our firm, I don't think it is as mixed. In other words, I think we've learned from the pandemic and we're much more flexible about the way that we go about work, working hours, the location of the work. I think we've done a lot to invest in people like redoubling our efforts to Train folks, making sure that there's the capacity, even when you're working remotely, to meet with people that you're connected to or want to be connected with in informal gatherings, whether it's dinners or gatherings in the office. So, you know, a way to sort of surround people, make that connectivity happen at the same time that you're providing the flexibility to, you know, not be on the road five days a week. There's a bit of challenging convention that's happened over the last few years. Many of us grew up in a consulting environment where you went to the, Some of us went to the airport on Sunday night, came home on Friday night, you know, that morphed to leave on Monday morning, come home on Thursday. And now I think we're a little more flexible in defining what makes sense. Like, is the work getting done, are the needs that the clients face being addressed? And then secondarily, like, you know, were you at the client location? Well, it almost doesn't matter as long as the work's getting done and the client's getting the outcome they want. That's a very big mind shift that I think makes people more resilient not having to go through that Monday through Friday or Monday through Thursday drill of traveling every week. And that's just accepted as the norm.

Yeah, I mean, it really is fascinating, right, because I came out of not, not so much a similar profession, but one that certainly integrates in the consulting arena as well. And that was the legal industry. I was a lawyer for 18 years and worked on in a variety of different ways within organizations. And, and the, the hours that lawyers put in, similar to the hours that partners or others within consulting firms put in, are pretty extreme. We were not necessarily a model. We talked earlier about modeling for our kids. Right. We're not necessarily a model for good work, life harmony or even boundaries, let's say, not balanced, but more boundaries and things of that sort. And the, the, the fruits of that would be seen in the law, in the legal profession. For me, in my experience, with just high degree of misery, substance abuse, physical problems, people that weren't physically healthy and, and, and then some mental health challenges that we didn' but you just knew about. And then there were always the cautionary tales of lawyers that ran astray, you know, that would dip into their trust account or committing malpractice and that kind of thing. And the pandemic certainly, I think has changed, changed the attitude, the, you know, that mind, that mindset greatly in the, in the legal profession. But yet I think people are, are Starting to, you know, also fall back on some of those other worn warning grooves in the record. Right. I'm curious what you think in terms of what you're seeing within, within your firm. Does it feel like there's a long, a longer term commitment, not just sort of a bridge commitment at the moment to changing, changing sort of the way business is done? Because it sounds like that's what you were saying earlier.

I think there is. I mean, we're in a unique circumstance in the services industry, just like you were as a lawyer. We're highly dependent on attracting people who are highly committed, resilient people who want to work sometimes in very difficult circumstances. So in order to attract and retain those sorts of people, I think we've got to do things that make the environment suitable and attractive to them. Something that we talk about a lot and I think we have done a great job over the last couple of years, is asking leaders to kind of show leadership in this area, to talk about how they personally deal with adversity, how they're keeping themselves physically fit, mentally fit, you know, making it okay to recognize. Look, you don't have to just set it aside and ignore the challenges that you face or, you know, feel just because you're, you know, a new consultant. Here's a partner who's been doing this for 20 years that, you know, has faced these challenges and can point to ways that they've thrived in the face of adversity. Other things that we do is like, as with a law firm, there's certain forums where you get people together directly or virtually, and they tend to be formulaic, like, here's a great new client that we landed. Here's some great work that we're doing. Here's some investment that we're making that's going to make us all better in the future. And that's all well and good, but we've also made it a point to find time to profile. Like, here's a fabulous outing that a team did just to get away from the client work. Monday through Friday, they took an afternoon off and went and did something together as a team. Or featuring people with photographs of their family and things that they've done on vacation that are enjoyable, that make them balanced and re energized, ready to come back and contribute the way we need and expect them to. So those are changes that are small and they're subtle. They send a signal like, we're looking at this, you know, in a way that we're trying to be accommodating. And understand that consulting is a demanding profession, but there's ways to make it more accommodating. It's not always, you know, the routine that I described to you, fly out on Monday, fly back on Friday, and, you know, work 20 hours a day every day and go to dinner with the client one night. So, like, it doesn't have to be that way. There's, there's ways you can work around it, especially if you talk about it as a team and have leaders that set the right tone.

Sure. It. For me, it begs the question, what are the ways that you measure things? Because I love that we began with this conversation about a little bit. What's. How do you, how do we distinguish soft from hard in terms of skill? Because there, there is a lot of. It would seem there's, there's a lot of transition in, across industries. And modeling, I think, is, is, is one element of it. I think when a consulting, when the actual firm is, is focused on those things, it's easier for them to share even those successes with their clients. And I, I would imagine there's some of that that's happening too. So, so I'd love to get a sense of, you know, maybe even what, what does this look like? Does this, does this. Is there a ripple effect that you see that's kind of going out beyond Deloitte in connection with how you work with organizations in regard to that?

For sure. I mean, we field inquiries from clients all the time who remark, you deploy teams every week, every month that are energetic solving some of my most difficult problems, show high levels of commitment to the task at hand. And they ask us, what is it that you guys are doing in terms of this virtual work environment where we have people in the offices, sometimes at clients, you know, sometimes working at home, sometimes working at our university down in Texas. Like, how do you make all of that work and how could we adapt it if you're, you know, more traditional company whose model is built on people showing up in an office, sitting in a cubicle, doing work, like, what are the elements of flexibility that we've tried to put in place that could be applied by clients? So it's been curious to see things, those types of inquiries come in. Obviously, clients see something and observe something in our folks that they realize there's something that we should maybe consider and model and take what we can and apply it in our circumstances.

Love that. How do we measure it? Because you brought that up earlier too. And I think that is a really valid point. If these things are important and I think, you know, it's unmistakable that this is, this has gotten on the actual radar screen now, you know, I'm hoping that it stays on the radar screen, that it's not just a blip, you know, till, till. Till the. The world is sort of different. I don't think. I don't think it's ever going to be the way it was. So it's just going to continue to be different. But how do we measure, do you think some of this.

I'm actually concerned about something that, which is the opposite of what you're asking about, which is that we get overly focused on measurement. I mean, I could go into our intranet site and look at my health and wellness dashboard. It will tell you the number of days I've stayed in a hotel. It'll tell you the number of flights I've taken this year. There's no shortage of measurements, but I think if you get too focused on the measurements and not the outcome, then you can get yourself off in the wrong place. If we have historically low turnover and, and people that are delivering really good results for clients that are satisfied with Deloitte, those are outcomes. And you can look at the inputs that drive to those outcomes. But I think you're better off focusing on the outcomes. I don't think you can overlook the inputs. And I think my own opinion is that they only matter at the extremes. If somebody is utilized at a client location seven days a week, 20 hours a day, they're traveling seven days a week away from their families and friends, you know, they're not doing anything healthy for themselves as a person, all of that data is available and you can see, like, that's somebody who's probably not in a good place. And we need to, like, reach out to them and understand, like, is it just a client situation that it's like that for a matter of weeks, or is it something that's going to continue and we have to intervene in some way to help them once at the extreme, I think it matters, but I'm more like concerned about making sure the outcomes are there. There's no shortage of ways to measure the inputs.

Yeah, and I, and I actually think it. There's a, and I'm so glad you put it that way, because I feel like there's a. There's a good medium between the quantitative and qualitative because the outcomes being engagement, you know, less absenteeism or fewer accidents on the job, other measures of productivity. I mean, there's so many ways to, to look at the KPI or those things and saying, okay, well, they're the. Our engagement survey, for example, this year is better. Our attrition rate has, Has. You know, we've closed the gap on that. And I think that's, that's super important. But you're right, if, if somebody is, is just, you know, if we were an. Analyzing a stock, you know, or a company by way of. Of its chart as a public, a publicly traded entity, we might say, well, you know, what, what, what is, what are these? The blips on the screen tell us, you know, is the trend positive or negative? And it may well be that just some of that dashboard can be utilized in that way to say, hey, listen, it could just be this is the time of year, like classic, you know, accountant stuff. Well, my account was always miserable between February and, and May. You know, that. That's just. I knew, I knew I couldn't even ask him a question then. So we would set up all of our, our strategic planning and stuff, like in October, you know, or November after the other was miserable, which was usually between September and the end of October. Right. So you just go, okay. You know, there, there are times a year when it's just certain things maybe are. Are just seasonal or what have you. But I think if we can look at people for, for the signs, for the trends of their going down a path that wouldn't ultimately be good for them, good for their families, their kids, or their other loved ones, you know, that, that those things would ultimately translate into how they showed up in their work. For sure. I think that's proactive.

We're doing both. But like I said, I'm not worried about our ability to measure the details. I'm more worried, like you said, is their engagement score up? Is our retention rate high? Like the results that we get for clients, the satisfaction data that we get, are they showing up and delivering the results that clients want? That's what I really want to focus on, personally.

Got it. Yeah, that makes a world of sense. I'd love to get a sense just because you defined it really well. Readiness and outlook to thrive. Is there a place in your life that you could pinpoint a pivot point, if you will, where you. Larry said, or you look back now and you go, that was a pivotal time for me. I learned something about my readiness or I developed greater readiness or greater outlook, outlook to thrive in that experience, or has it just been like, you know, you're filling a bucket one. One drop at a time kind of thing?

If I had to pinpoint One, I think I would have to say it was going to graduate school. So look, I'd spent a lot of my life and a lot of my early career being told that I was a top performer. And then you go to graduate school and in my particular case, you go many, many months without any feedback whatsoever. And so you live in this period of anxiety where you don't know what your performance is and you're surrounded by people that are smarter than anybody you've ever met. And then all of a sudden it raises a lot of questions about who you're competing against, who's in your class, who's in your section, all those sort of things. And then I think you find out when you get out, everybody's by and large unbelievably successful. But it was a period of time, you know, a two year period of time that was incredibly intense. And you know, you're. I feel like I was put to a test and stronger because of it.

Yeah, you know what, I want to use that as a. I'd love to take that example and apply it, layer it on the time that we're living in right now because. And I want to get your take on this. It just feels like anxiety levels are at sort of all time highs for many, many people. And given the place we are in the economic cyc, it feels like there's more anxiety and more unknown now and will be, you know, ongoingly for some time in that, in that space. So what in your experience as a grad student can you look at and go, this is applicable to how people might. If you are teaching a course in how to, in how to be develop readiness and an outlook to thrive in the midst of uncertainty, unknowns and anxiety, you know, what would people be able to do that you did?

I would think about a couple of things. I see when there's uncertainty or like even adversity, people tend to focus on the adversity as opposed to what options that situation creates. I mean, professionally, I'm in mergers, acquisitions and restructuring practice and I've been through six bankruptcies. I think you could be in a position and that's the worst, probably the worst possible position for a company to be in, both in terms of the morale of the workforce, the leaders, their position is in a bankruptcy. But at the same time, as you would know as an attorney, it gives you a chance to basically shred your contracts, reevaluate your assets, your people. So it really is a chance, even in the most adverse professional circumstances, to rethink what are the possibilities and to think about it that way as opposed to being downtrodden and thinking that the only place we could go is down further in even a bad situation like that. I think another thing that I see is both people and sometimes our clients, they fail to recognize that you personally are better because of the adversity you face. Like I always tell our consultants who kind of wring their hands about, oh, my gosh, you know, we're in this economic downturn and clients are even more discriminating about whether they're going to hire consultants or not because we're the ultimate, you know, discretionary expense. Like, well, think about it like when you go through whatever it turns out to be 16 or 18 months, you're going to be a stronger consultant because of that. Because you had to, like, face the scrutiny of clients and demonstrate the value that you add during a tough time when it was tough for them to scrape up the money to pay us. And I guess the third thing that I feel about those situations where you're either uncertain or in a tough spot is you need to have naysayers who are balanced by somebody who's a positive influence. You're not a Pollyanna or you're just ignoring the facts and the circumstances, but somebody who's got to like, you know, in the midst of that uncertainty, kind of point out, like, wait a minute, like, let's look at this another way, or like, suggest, like, alternatives.

I love that. And I'd say, just as you did before, I'd even go the flip the script on that and balance the positive people. I know it sounds strange, but balance the folks that are always seeing the glasses half full with some people that see the glass differently because I, and you must have known this intuitively, I started my practice in law, was in bankruptcy, so I handled a lot of Chapter 11 work, reorganization work at the outset of my career, which was really interesting because I really got to see where, where things went sideways. I mean, I cut my teeth in business learning how businesses went bust, which was fascinating and devastating in so many respects. And, and yet coming on the, coming out of that, seeing those, those organizations and leaders emerge from those really, really tough times was actually, you know, in fact, maybe high water marks in my career, in my law career, because I would come out of meetings, meeting of creditors or something like that, or sometimes adversary proceedings with, you know, people at senior levels in, in corporate leadership and organization. And sometimes they come out of that room and they just give me a hug, like, because the. And I just sound strange. I hug your lawyer. Just the whole concept, hugging a lawyer is weird, right? But there was such relief. The sense that the relief from what, what new start was created, what new opportunity? In fact, you know, there's three. There's, well, numerous chapters of the bankruptcy code. But, you know, the chapter seven is the liquidation. It's the complete fresh start, you know, and the 11 is the reorgan. That's a different kind of a fresh start. But, but there is, I think, this wonderful interplay within, with where you have people that can, if they see the world as two, one way or the other, there's a, there's an issue there because you have blind spots. Because right now we know there are layoffs. There's layoffs that have already been announced. There's more layoffs that are coming. So I want. And maybe we're going to wind this up in just a second here, but you're mentoring. Put you in a scenario. You're mentoring some young, young folks that are coming into the consultancy, and they're saying to you, hey, Larry, you know, all we're hearing is we're just getting all this pushback, you know, when we talk about the services that. And, and the need that we see for the services, you know, but we're, we're just. People are tightening their belt. We're like you say, you know, that first level of discretionary, you know, cut that out kind of thing. What do you. How do you coach or mentor those, those, those individuals and, you know, even from the standpoint of how you market or sell that service, because a lot of people other than your people are hearing those very same things or have that concern, let's say, right now.

Sure. I mean, I guess my counseling would be number one. Like, don't extrapolate from your circumstances to the entire realm of consulting or even our firm.

So don't project.

Don't project. Like, even in a downturn, like, there are plenty of, like, services that clients do buy. And, you know, some things that we've had to do because of the circumstance over the past few years is to really substantially invest in innovation. So there's a conventional model where you bill a certain number of hours for a certain amount of services. And we've looked beyond that to sort of build solutions that clients will buy over time, you know, and we've looked at new and innovative services as well. So from your perspective, it might look that way. But if you look more broadly across our firm or others that are doing the same sorts of things, I think that then you Start to get a different vantage point and a different perspective on the downturn. Another thing that I think is a curious thing that I would counsel, folks, is it is odd that in the face of all the uncertainty we've had the pandemic, these consulting firms continue to grow and be unbelievably resilient. So in a way, there's stability in the situation that you're in. And it also teaches you important lessons, as I said earlier, like if you're dealing with clients that are going through difficult times, you know, if you're at the client and you're one of the client executives, you're going to go through that three or four times during your career. But if you're a consultant and you're going, you know, three, four projects per year into difficult circumstances as a client, you're developing a bit of, you know, acumen and perspective on, you know, what is, what does challenging look like. And you have that ability to show your ability to, like, be positive and to see the possibilities even in tough situations. So, so they're actually putting themselves in a firm like ours where they're getting good experiences to build that resilience that clients really value.

Yeah, I mean, I think it may have been the author of, of, Of Good to Great. Was that, was that Jim Collins? Is that who that was?

I'm sure, yeah.

I mean, I think in an interview I read about him, he said, you know, the funny thing is that chaos is, this is the rule. And, and whatever the opposite of chaos is, calm, peace, you know, the, the, the quiet, you know, calm seas, that's the exception to the rule. And I, I think that's a thing that people don't often really get. You know, if you look at any point in time in history, just go back in 5 year increments or 10 year increments, and we could do it very easily. You know, we were thinking that the world was falling apart in 2008 when Lehman Brothers goes bust. And at the, you know, 2005, there was a dot, there was a, there was a NASDAQ bust that was the end of the world. In 2000, there was the dot com bust and that was the end of the world. I mean, you just go back and so chaos is the norm and it's similar. And this is a funny little thing here. I'm going to just, I'm amusing myself, but there's a J.L. collins who wrote a book, I believe, called A Simple Path to Wealth. And everybody should get this book. I think it's a brilliant book for your kids to have or anybody at any age, honestly. But the whole concept here is that if you simply invest in, in an asset class like stocks, for example, over a period of time, 30 to 40 years, this is what it looks like. Up, up and to the right, that's what it looks like. But if you look at it in five or ten year increments, it's going to be one, you know, one world ending event after another. Right. The sky will be falling four or five or six times in your work life, you know, and so in your investment life, if every time you're trying to avoid getting, getting crushed by the world falling on you, what you will end up doing is, is not having very much of an investment nest egg at the end. But if you simply, you know, were to recognize that that's the norm as, as Jim Collins said, and not get wigged out by it every time, or try to and you know, move ahead or, or react in, you know, in the face of, then you get the long term ROI from that sort of steady approach to it. So I think what you're saying makes a world of sense. There's opportunities in every scenario. If you can learn or be led to see those things, to innovate, as you said, then not only does the firm that's providing those services have a very sort of, you know, change proof way of dealing with that disruption, but the people and the organizations that that organization serves also gets to benefit from that, that change proof approach. So I was able to throw in the title of my book there, buddy. I'm sorry about that.

I do think, you know, what you said is something that I would offer as advice as well, which is you do need to have perspective. Like there's plenty of consultants and plenty of clients that we work with that they didn't live through the Great Depression. Many of them would not have lived through the, you know, the dot com bust in the 2000s. There's even a few that wouldn't remember 2007, 2008, all that well. And you have to remember when you're in rooms with these people, whether they're like consultants or clients, all of that history that we remember, the oil shocks of 1970s, that's not in their frame of reference. So of course the world looks like it's, you know, going to fall apart today because you don't have that perspective.

Right.

That would be the last piece of advice I would give them, like take a breath, take a breath. It's actually been worse than you can imagine. In this case.

Right. Take a beat because, you know, it's. We're. We'll get, we're going to get through this. But it's how you get through it makes a big difference. And, and I don't think you need to get through it. Sort of white knuckling, the whole pro, the whole experience. Maybe that's because you, you and I have. I have gray hair when I let it, when I let it run.

So that could be it.

Yeah, that could be it. Larry, I've so, I've so loved getting together with you again, man. It was, you know, we enjoyed each other's company that, that time we, we were together on that gig. So it's, it's just terrific to be able to reconvene the meeting, so to speak.

Yeah. Thank you. It's good to reconnect as well. And in this format. No for dinner.

So my last question is usually just about your own personal rituals for your, you know, your personal resilience. Is there one thing that you do on a ritual basis that is kind of a go to reset for you?

I would say some form of physical activity. So in the summer, like long distance bicycling, it's a chance to really reflect, you know, to get some quiet time to think about what's important. And you know, back to this theme of resilience and being change proof. You're physically preparing yourself for whatever you face and whatever circumstances you're in. So it's probably that for me, beautiful for me.

And for me, it's getting in the ocean or in the pool even, you know, but not, and not getting.

Not as attractive to do that in Chicago, no matter the season. No, I don't think we can match your waves and we certainly can't match your weather.

That's, that's. Yeah, that's why we, we made our big move. But, you know, we, we have other things which we won't get into. I'll just say for those of you out there that have enjoyed this conversation and, you know, someone that could benefit from it, maybe there is somebody right now that's, that is white knuckling. The, the world, the environment we're living in, they have just, you know, healthy concern about what the road ahead looks like and, and where. Where it might be that there's opportunity and they want to be thinking opportunistically. This might be a great conversation to share with them. We'd love to get your feedback as well. You can drop any comment in for us@adammarkel.com podcast. I tend to answer all those myself. So there's no bot there. It's going to be, it's going to be me. And if it's not me, then it'll be an announced member of the team, that kind of thing as well. And of course, we are all, you know, when you think about resilience, it's a snapshot for us. That's just what our experience tells us. That, you know, in a moment, if you're measuring it mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually, there'll be a sort of a raw score. And it's, it's really a curious thing to check out just what your, your current state of resilience looks like. You can go to rankmyresilience.com and get an assessment of that in the moment, and you can take that as often as you want just to see and track exactly how resilient you are. That's rankmyresilience.com and you can get your own scores there. Larry, again, thanks so much for being a guest on the show today. Of course, there'll be show notes, so if you want to find out more about Larry's practice and the consultancy that, that he is involved with at Deloitte, you can click on the links that are in the show notes, get more information right there. I, I can tell you that in the organizations that I've run, we've, we've always made great use of consultants because they, and I think use the word I, I would choose to, to, to use in this instance, Larry, it's perspective. You know, we are so often inside of an organization, we don't even realize to what degree we're operating within these four walls. Sometimes they're pretty narrow and sometimes they're expansive, but often we just can't see what we can't see. So bringing in others that have been around the block, have seen, you know, a cycle or two and have the perspective on what the opportunities might be in the current environment, I think is absolutely vital. And I know that that's the work that you're committed to doing. So thank you for that, Larry.

Sure. Thank you.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Larry Hitchcock today. He brings a very different perspective in some respects. Being a consultant, being somebody that's routinely being deployed in organizations to problem solve, to create and find creative solutions to situations such as in times of great challenge and disruption, like the times that we are clearly living in, not just because we're, we're in a time of change, but because the winds of change are Blowing ever more strongly. I think we're, we're feeling it more, more than perhaps I've ever noticed us feeling it. And I say us because it's not just me, it's the members of our team as well as the organizations that I have the great pleasure and blessing of serving on a, on a routine basis. I mean, I'm frequently a keynote speaker at different industry organization association meetings, as well as within, within the companies themselves that are looking to develop deeper levels of resilience within their teams. And so I, I have this great honor of, of being embedded in, in situations where I get access to how people are really feeling and how they're thinking. Often I have that pleasure because as part of being a resilience keynote speaker or a mental health keynote speaker or Work Life Balance keynote speaker, any, any of those kind of topics that I routinely am brought in to address, we deploy a resilience assessment tool. And that's pretty remarkable because a great percentage of the folks that I'm going to have this meeting with will take this assessment a couple of weeks ahead of time, sometimes just a few days ahead of time. And we then are able to collect that data and aggregate information, present that information when I'm with them, which is something that is, calls for transparency. It calls for a certain level of vulnerability on the part of the people who are doing that. The good news is the assessment is only three minutes. That's probably the best news. It's just a short assessment, 16 questions, but ultimately lead us to be able to see where people are strong and where there are gaps in their resiliency, mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually. Of course, I invite all of you to take your own resilience assessment. Get your own baseline score in those four areas. It is a very much a snapshot of this moment in time. If you'd like to do that, you can go to rank my resilience.com rank my resilience.com get your own assessment. Larry and I got to talk about that today, starting with how he defines resilience from his perspective as a consultant, a partner with Deloitte, somebody that is just like me, dropped into organizations routinely to talk about what's challenging them, what opportunities exist for their own transformation, their own growth, how it is that things have been working and where they haven't been working. And I loved the definition that he started out with. He said that resilience for him is readiness, readiness and an outlook to thrive. And I hadn't heard it phrased that way before, and I was able to dig into that with him today to get his answers on things like, should we be measuring our resilience? What does it look like? And he pushed back to say that not all things should be quantitative, that we should be looking at it from a qualitative standpoint, that we should be focusing on the outcomes. And some of the outcomes that we're both interested in is higher levels of engagement, less absenteeism, less injury on the job, less attrition, less turnover, you know, keeping your talent, attracting additional talent and engaging that talent to be productive. Those are the kind of outcomes that determine in many ways or are a signpost, let's say, of whether an organization is resilient. And obviously there's a lot more detail in that when we look at individually, how people are actually faring, how they're doing in times of great anxiousness, like the times we're living in right now, where there are so many unknowns, there's so many things that are uncertain, and how that often shows up in the workplace. And so I think it was really key to me today to hear Larry talk about how he encourages and mentors others around him to be thinking about the opportunities and seeing the opportunities and to be innovative, especially when there are headwinds, especially when we're seeing more signs of recession and more signs that things might get tougher in the, in the next little bit here before they might get less tough. I suppose one of the things he said, which I thought was really interesting, was that he thought that we've got to balance out the naysayers in inside organizations with people who are more positive, people who are, are able to see more clearly that the things that there's always tremendous opportunity when there's, when there's fear, when there's inefficiency, when there's inefficiency that's caused by our reaction to living with uncertainty or living in that fear space. And I countered what he said to talk about how we sometimes have to balance the, the positivity, the people in our organizations that just see things as always positive. They're always the half, you know, full glass people. And sometimes, sometimes that positivity can even be toxic in, in a workforce as well. And we've got to balance that with people who are more pragmatic at times or more realistic at times, or are the people who are, are willing to be truth tellers sometimes, even if that truth telling is. Feels as though we're focused on, on what's not working and what the challenges are. That equation I think is really valuable. I love the fact that, that we were able to untangle that together. We were able to dig into that a bit. I love the conversation. I hope you do as well. If there's somebody that you think would really benefit from listening to this, hearing what we had to to noodle on and dig into, chew on today, please feel free to share this episode with somebody that you know that could benefit. We love the reviews and and you can leave a comment of course@adammarkel.com forward/podcast and if you would be kind enough to leave a review, those five star reviews are really helpful and you'd be doing us a great favor in doing that as well. If you, if you're, if you feel called to it, you could make the time. We'd so appreciate it. I love this conversation. I hope you did as well. And again, I look forward to seeing you in the next episode of the Change Proof podcast. Thank you again.

Thanks for listening everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcast for more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com BecomeChangeproof.