CHRO Chronicles: Navigating People Leadership In These Challenging Times With Lori Winkler

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 Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof. Hey everybody, it's Adam

Markel. Hi, I'm Adam Markel, and welcome back to another episode of the Change Proof podcast. You're going to absolutely love my guest today. Her name is Lori Winkler, and she is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Zimmer Biomet. Zimmer Biomet is a Fortune 500 global leader in the design, development, manufacturing, and marketing of orthopedic reconstructive products, including knee and hip implants, sports medicine, biologics, extremities, and trauma products. In her role, Laurie leads all facets of the human resources function spanning total rewards, talent management, learning and development, talent acquisition, diversity, equity, and inclusion, M&A HR-related activities, and HR business partnering, which spans all business and functions. Laurie oversees a global employee population of more than 18,000 spanning more than 25 countries in 4 regions and leads a global HR organization of 300+ employees. She is also a member of the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors and is a Section 16 officer of the organization. Lori joined Zimmer Biomet in 2020 as Group Vice President HR for the Global Business Group, reporting directly to the Chief Operations Officer. I will also say this: she is a passionate advocate for the arts. Lori serves on the Advisory Board of the Creative Coalition, a nonprofit, nonpartisan social and political advocacy organization in the entertainment industry. The Creative Coalition educates and mobilizes leaders in the arts and business communities on issues of public importance, specifically in the areas of arts advocacy and public education. What I can tell you right now is that Laurie is going to be— well, she's a very insightful person. You're going to get that immediately, but she's also a really good human. So sit back and enjoy my conversation with Laurie Winkler. All right, Lori. So I've read a few bios in my day. A few different CVs have crossed my desk. I've heard mine read. I mean, you have an epic career history, and the trajectory of your career, I think, is super interesting, which is a big part of the reason why I wanted to have you on the show anyway. But what is one thing, just one singular thing, that's not part of that bio that you would love for people to know about you as we start?

Okay, well, that's a great question. I'm really happy to be here, Adam. I was very excited to have this opportunity to engage with you like this. Epic bio. Wow, I like that description. I don't know that's how I would describe it, but that's very nice to hear. I would say that what is not reflected in my bio is that I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a creative writer, a poet. I actually went to school. First college I went to was a liberal arts school, and I had a scholarship for writing. And that's really what I most enjoy. I actually love writing as part of my job now, but that's not clearly called out anywhere in my bio. But I am a passionate writer, and I do keep journals. I guess there's a little bit of a poet in me. She's still in there somewhere, but I am a published poet years ago. That, that's something that— Yeah. I don't always share, but it's not in the bio.

I love that. I did not know that about you. And my dad is a writer. Knock on wood. He's at 87, just finished another novel somehow. 400-page novel. It's crazy fiction. And I've been a nonfiction writer for about 10 years now. And I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I got to say, it is torturous for me. Probably because I'm still struggling with my own perfectionism and I could edit to death something until there's nothing left of it. It's sort of like you have to know when to take your pen off the page or your fingers off the keys and, and all that kind of stuff. So I've had to learn that. And hopefully with the books, we've gotten really good feedback about them. But I mean, I'll still look at them and tell you exactly what's wrong.

Well, I can relate to being a recovering perfectionist and They say acceptance is your best friend. Once I realized that I was a recovering perfectionist and accepted it, I was able to kind of move through that. So maybe I can help you with that at another time.

I would love the coaching. I'm still working on non-attachment. And so it's an interesting—

I get that too.

We might travel down that psychological path later. My first question to you is really in looking at business, and I've been a student of business for a long time, been So involved in business since I'm probably 15 years old. On a good day, and correct me if this is not accurate in your experience, on a good day, business is so difficult. On the best of days, it's filled with challenges, and you really got to be resilient is the word that I would use only because in large part, we find that that's a through line in so many success stories, personally, professionally, organizationally. So my first or second question really is about resilience for you. Is there a place in your career or personally speaking that you've had to be resilient? And Laurie, what did that look like for you at the time?

Yeah, resilience is something that I think you cultivate through experience. You get knocked around enough and that tests you and it's either sink or swim. And I learned that at a fairly young age. I would say that I've had a pretty— and continue to have a pretty good run. As you said, business can be challenging, but I'm a problem solver, so I actually enjoy those challenges. That's not to say I don't have bad days. We all do. But I enjoy the challenge of what comes across my desk or across my computer on a daily basis because I find it interesting and I do like to solve. I do like to look for solutions. I'm very oriented that way. In terms of resiliency, I would just say that on a personal level, I had a series of very challenging personal events take place a couple of years ago. One was the loss of a parent, very closely followed by the end of a long-term relationship, very closely followed by a relocation, and then a new job. So I had pretty much all the stressors You could ask for within, let's say, a, I don't know, a 60-day period. It all happened. It was a very condensed experience. And then the pandemic hit. So I would say that in the moment, I don't think, wow, I'm resilient and I'm going to get through this. What my attitude is, is that I will get through things one day at a time. Sometimes it's one hour at a time. Sometimes it's a minute at a time, but I know that as long as I don't overthink or overproject into the future, I know that if I just apply that thinking of one day at a time, let me just deal with what's right in front of me, I tend to manage through it well. And I think that's the foundation for resiliency. I mean, I'm not an expert, but I think it's the way I handle it.

That really resonates with me. I did a podcast at the end of the year, start of the year kind of thing, and I did it by myself as a solo cast. And I was sitting with the idea of, in a world that's as complicated as it is today, and it's always been complicated, but it feels— I think there's an energy of it just feeling really complicated and complex, and more so by the minute, I suppose. I was thinking about What's the advice being in resilient spaces I've been in helping in whatever ways I can? I thought, well, what's good advice for me at the same time as it might be for others? And it's really what you just said a moment ago. I was suggesting that maybe the only responsibility, if we think of just what this moment entails, what's our responsibility in this moment to get the moment right mentally? Right. Emotionally, whatever that might mean. We could play with that. We can experiment with that, working at that level in that micro manner. And I think that you just described that one day at a time, one minute at a time, even one moment at a time.

When it's really tough, I remember that the only way out is through. You can't go around. And I just say, okay, whatever's right in front of me, I'm going to just get through it and get through it The best way that I know how.

Can you repeat that? I know that phrase. It's one of the most impactful things that I've ever heard. I heard it some years ago when I was in Costa Rica in another story. We won't get into it in a moment, but the only way out is through. That's right. That's what you said. Right? How often it is you see that people, that we look away sometimes. We wanna bury our heads in the sand or resist, especially change. Right? You're involved in a business that's complex. Change is happening all the time. You're managing a lot of people, thousands of people, in fact. And my experience having written a book called Change Proof, the research tells us that people aren't that great with change, Laurie. They really just don't like it very much. Is that your experience as well? Could you share a little bit about how—

Yeah, sure. Certainly professionally, I don't think people like change because it's disruptive and it's fear of the unknown. And the interesting thing is that there's a sense of a lack of control, but when it really comes down to it, we don't control anything other than ourselves in any situation.

Really? Right?

Oh my God. That was a tough lesson for me to learn, but I learned it. So I would say change is something that is frightening, but I always encourage folks to do their very best to embrace the change because typically With change comes growth and learning. You get something out of the experience, whether it's a positive or not so positive experience. So I do see a great deal of resistance to change, particularly in corporate environments where we are changing all the time. It's the dynamics of business, and you have to be able to pivot. You got to be agile. You have to be able to kind of go with the flow. And Resistance is an interesting concept because, again, and I sound a little sort of philosophical here, but what I've also learned in life is that what you resist will absolutely persist. And I don't know who came up with that, but I love it.

Brilliant. Yeah.

And it's the truth. The more you resist something that's coming your way, the more it's just sort of like the physics of life or something, or the laws of the universe, it's going to continue. That's why I live with this motto: acceptance is your best friend. That doesn't mean you have to like it. It doesn't mean you have to agree with it. But if you're fighting it, you're only creating more issues for yourself. So when change is coming and you really can't control it because it may be something that's being done to you, in essence, it could be being done for you, if you could change that thinking with one word, I think it takes on a whole new meaning. That's not to say, listen, I've had a lot of changes in my life that I didn't want. I did not want the changes that occurred in my life. And what I learned through that experience was that the more I was resisting it, the more difficult things became. When I finally said, evidently, This is the path that I'm supposed to walk one day at a time. I'm just going to accept it and embrace it. And that made me feel a lot better.

Again, Laurie, you're just giving me chills, honestly, because embracing the unknown, embracing uncertainty. You said you're a recovering perfectionist. I'm like a recovering control freak.

Well, that's a tough one. Me too.

Yeah. I mean, because there's this realization. That what we control is so infinitesimally small. It's almost nonexistent, really. I mean, you can control how you think in this moment. When people are asking for what is the tactical and the tangible way that we deal with these things, you know, philosophy is helpful because philosophy to me is a foundation. I want to come back to philosophy in a second. But in the moment, the one control that we all have is what is our current thinking? What's our next thought gonna be?

And our reaction. We can control our reaction.

We can. Yeah. Especially if we breathe. Right? If we take that moment to take a breath, then we can be more responsive than reactive. And when you say acceptance, again, I'm just trying to put myself in the seat of somebody listening to this and going, you know, yeah, accept. That sounds like accepting defeat, especially in business. There's a lot of warriors out there that think that somehow or another, they have to constantly be in a mode of assertiveness or something even more aggressive, honestly. Right. When we say acceptance, we're not talking about resignation. That's not— We're

not talking about— yeah, that's a good point of clarification, Adam. I'm not talking about accepting circumstances that are unacceptable. And I'm not suggesting that persistence and assertiveness and Doing and giving all that you can to achieve something that's very important isn't the way that I believe folks should operate. I mean, I operate that way. Yeah. But when you've given everything and you're doing everything you're supposed to do and you're going after that deal or you're trying to put this team together, or, I mean, I can give a lot of different sort of anecdotal References here, but what I will say is that for whatever reason, if it's not working, I'm a firm believer that it's not supposed to happen. That deal is not supposed to happen. That team is maybe not supposed to come together right now. Maybe we don't have the right people or the right synergies, or there's a lot of different things that— I wouldn't say acceptance is passivity. I think it's more of a healthy way to deal with things that you cannot control.

I was just thinking the Serenity Prayer always comes to mind when I consider this.

It's all over here. I have it in 2 places on my desk.

Right. But it's so powerful that we have to be able to distinguish, to be able to discern between the things that we actually can change.

That's right.

And the things that we cannot, because the things that we cannot, we must accept. And if we have the wisdom, as that prayer goes, to discern between the 2, we don't In resiliency terms, we don't squander our energy because it's the one thing we actually have each day if we're lucky. You know, we wake up, we've got this amount of energy that we can put to whatever our creative endeavors are, whether that's to write, as we talked about, or it's to lead, it's to think, it's to decide, it's to speak, whatever it might be. And all of these things, like you said, you love problem solving. So do I. But you need energy, and you need energy to solve problems. And the greater the problem, the greater the energy that's required, creatively speaking, in some way, shape, or form to work through that problem. When you leak energy, the depletion that occurs is what leads to the anxiety that we're seeing around us, the burnout that's almost at its own sort of epidemic levels. Right?

Agreed.

So Tell me, what was that sigh about?

Well, I think that burnout, it's pervasive right now. And I have my own sort of thinking about that. I don't know that it's a data-centric point of view, but it's an observation. And I think it starts with the pandemic where everything became sort of blended into one. There was no such thing as work-life balance anymore. It was just sort of one fluid experience. I don't know what the experience was, but We were brought into people's homes. We really couldn't literally get out. We couldn't socialize to the extent that we had previously experienced, took for granted, frankly. And I think that in order— this is again my own thinking on this— I think in order to somehow overcompensate for the fact that we were working out of our homes for a protracted period of time, I think— we wanted to overcompensate by working, working, working because we had to demonstrate that we were still adding value even though we weren't in the confines of an office. So workdays, there's no such thing as a workday. It was just like one fluid working experience and then sort of interjected by the rest of our lives experiences, right? So the one thing about the pandemic is that for those of us that continue to work, It really gave us a lot of focus because there wasn't much else we could focus on. We couldn't focus on traveling and seeing family and friends and this sort of thing. And I was living in the Northeast during the pandemic. I lived in the Northeast for about 20 years, and it was very difficult, particularly in the wintertime. But the net of it is that I think this has been sort of the foundation for the kind of burnout that we're seeing now where People have left the workforce in all sort of dimensions of the workforce. It isn't just in corporations. You see it everywhere. I see it in my local Starbucks. So I really think that it absolutely shifted the dynamics of working, of how we work, and also created this sort of overworking approach that folks have taken because we weren't in an office. And you do have to feel like even though you're sitting in front of your computer, you may be in your ripped jeans and your flip-flops or whatever, that you're still creating a lot of value.

I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool. It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, And even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. That's an insight I haven't heard expressed in that way, Laurie. A lot of being a researcher myself and studying the burnout of so many people, you know, there's a lot of things that we can attribute it to. But the idea that there became a new habit formed of proving that you are still valuable, even if you can't be in and among the other people that are assessing you, right? We're all on some level feeling that we're assessing, we're being assessed. I mean, I'm not trying to say that that doesn't have its— isn't important because I think it is in our world in a lot of ways. But the proving itself It's exhausting all by itself. You talk about where we leak energy at times. Proving that we're of value starts early in our lives often, right? That we're good enough, that we're worthy, that all those kind of stuff. Yes. So when we were holed up wherever we were and feeling isolated and then wanting, as you say, to just keep our stake in the ground, keep our position, not lose ground.

As I said, this is not a data-centric statement. This is just an observation.

It is. But I'm curious about it, like, to me, because I've not heard that as part of the equation. So I'm going to look into that and I'll get back to you.

Let me know if there's any credibility to what I'm saying. It just—

I mean, anecdotal things are amazing in that respect because, first of all, we can ask people about it. We can survey it and dig into it and see where it it triggers and may bear where this is more pervasive than we would have thought. So I'll get back to you on that. That's amazing. I want to ask you about leadership. What do you value really in terms of leadership? I see leadership as the first domino. Like, our organization gets brought in often to other organizations to help them with the blind spots. And because it's so difficult when you're in the bowl— Yeah. like as a goldfish to see it, to feel it. Even the best of people, when you're in that environment, you just can't really see it objectively. So we have this great privilege and an honor to do that at times. And often what we have to start with in assessing how the culture is doing, for example, how people are feeling, what's the human experience like within this complex organism, we realize that Leaders are the first domino. What leaders do, how they speak, what they believe, what they think, you know, what their habits are, it impacts everybody. Well, we haven't covered your history so much. We'll come to that in a second. But what do you value in a leader is really what it is.

Yeah, it's going to sound a little bit— I don't know the right word, but sort of a standard answer, but I really feel this way. Authenticity. I, I relate to, and admire real people, whether they are nice real people or maybe not so nice real people. As long as they're real, I put a premium on that because what I have found is that folks that in leadership positions that aren't genuine, that don't come from a genuine place, from the heart, from a place of love, You can sort of like, like cats have whiskers that can sense things. I mean, you can just sort of, people know, people are not stupid. You put a leader in place that is direct, is clear, is honest, is maybe they don't have to be elegant speakers. I mean, that's a whole other story. I place a lot. This is a maybe a better way to say it. I over-index on substance versus style. So I like a leader who's real, authentic, and has substance to them. I don't care about how articulate they are or the kind of story they can tell, which it's nice to hear. I enjoy that. But I like to see the real person. I try to be that way. That's sort of my goal, that when I'm looking at leaders that have impacted me personally and professionally, it was those that were just the real deal, really authentic, real people, not showbiz, but real.

Right. I mean, this is an opportunity for a little bit of a shout out if you wanted to, and you could either use a person's name or not. It's up to you. But share maybe something about how you have been mentored in the past and what that looked like, how that person shared or showed their substance to you through their actions versus words.

Yeah, sure. I'm happy to do that. I'll probably use an example from the past, and that would be the many, many years I spent at Johnson& Johnson. And I worked with a lot of wonderful leaders that really helped to shape and inform how I operate as a leader. And I had the privilege of working for a very senior-level person at J&J. I was his head of HR for about 6 years, and he was very generous with his time and just a real nice, good, authentic person that had worked his way up throughout his career. I put a lot of premium on that too. I mean, nothing was handed to him. He grew up in Philadelphia and he worked his way up through finance. And was very, very successful, but also never really lost the essence of who he really, really was as a person. Very family-oriented, very, as I said, generous with his time. And also, I wasn't very strong in one particular area, and that has to do with numbers. I sort of have like this math anxiety that I've had since I'm a kid. We could talk about that offline too sometime. And he was always very considerate of that. He didn't say, oh, for crying out loud, can't you just get this down? And like, I have like dyslexia with numbers. I have a really hard time. He was very considerate of that and didn't make me feel less than. And just through experiential learning, I got so much from that experience. It changed the trajectory of my career. It changed a lot of things for me. It was a wonderful experience and somebody that I'm happy to say a couple of times a year I get to say hello. That's one example. I have many examples. I've been very, very fortunate.

That's so beautiful. I want to ask you as a follow-up to that, how is it that you translate, if you do, I'm assuming you do, but I'm asking you, how do you translate that experience and that example of mentorship And care because it felt like that's a person who put love into their work and how they literally nurtured your development. How do you mentor people to this day? So back now from there to the present time, how does that inform your way of leading others today?

Well, I try to lead from a place of caring and compassion. I care about the folks that I work with at all different levels, whether they're my peers or folks that work for me or folks that I mentor or any of our team members. I care about them as people. And I try to demonstrate that in how I speak to them and engage with them. I can't say I do it all the time because we've got to get stuff done. And that's what I'm sort of known for. I get stuff done and I like having people around me that get stuff done. And I'm very fortunate because I have an amazing team. But I happen to like my team a lot and I like them as people and I like to learn about them. And I try to bring some level of— I don't know. I don't think spirituality is a great way to describe it. But I try to bring some level of humanity into how I lead and how I engage with folks that I work with. I think it's really important. You got to care about the people first because they know when you don't.

I think it's a tough question. We'll see. You're going to find in your role, as you do, I know, that there are people that have weaknesses, meaning that There are parts of their— of the package that the second baseman might be really great at that and wins a Gold Glove every year, but they bat .200. Or in music, it could be the person that plays great, great rhythm guitar, but if asked to create a lead, a lick or something, they can't do it. It's not their thing.

Right.

So when you're looking at your team and you find that there's an area, like for example, numbers with you, Or math that's a weakness for them or just not optimized or whatever the right word is. How patient are you to this day with those things? What's your method?

Well, I've learned over the years because I've evolved over the years. I've been doing this for a long time. We don't have to get into how many years, but a long time. Okay? And what I've learned over the years is that you're better served as a leader to leverage the heck out of the strengths on your team, and then you'll find that there's complementary skills. So somebody might be really great at data analytics and really great at putting those projections together, and you have somebody else on your team who's really amazing at building relationships. So for me, as long as I have folks on the team that are really demonstrating and optimizing their strengths, I think we can mitigate those opportunities. That being said, we do do feedback. We do performance reviews, and we do give anecdotal feedback. And I try to do that in real time. And I'm pretty direct because I like it direct. I don't like anything sugarcoated. Just tell me. And I think I'm that way with my folks. And I don't know if they appreciate that or not, but My sense is they probably do because I don't play any games.

Yes. Well, your role is as a CHRO for Zimmer Biomet. And so I'd love to know what you think is the most important part of being an effective CHRO today. I mean, the world, as you said, you and I have been around the block a time or two, so we've seen a lot of change and there's more change on the horizon. In fact, I think the velocity of change is only increasing. So everybody out there, get used to it. It's not going anywhere, right? And Zimmer itself has been through change and transition as well as J&J and other companies that you've probably been around. I'd like to get a sense of what's the most important part of being an effective CHRO today?

Here's what I would say. I mean, there's a lot that comes with this role, a lot of responsibility, and a lot of what I would say it's a privilege to be in this role, but comes with a lot of responsibility. All of those responsibilities are important. I think what's critical is to fully understand and appreciate that we have to continue to drive engagement with our employees in the context of ongoing remote work. I realize that some companies have mandated return to office. We've been a little more flexible. In other words, we've said, It's at management's discretion. If you want to go into the office, you go into the office, but there's still that flexibility. It scores very, very high on our engagement surveys every year. But I would say really having an intentional, well-thought-out plan on how you're going to continue to drive engagement and productivity in the context of not necessarily being in an office 5 days a week. And we've been very successful at this. But it was a journey, and it continues to be a journey. But as a CHRO, you need to really, in my opinion, understand and appreciate that there is no new normal. We are just in the normal now. This is it. Maybe there'll be another shift in another couple years, but this is what it is right now. When we interview candidates for our positions, depending on the level, and we tell them. again, depending on the role and the level, you don't have to relocate. You just have to travel. It's a differentiator for us with our competitors because, in my experience, folks want that level of freedom and flexibility, and we offer that. I think to be sort of progressive in one's thinking around that and understanding that norms have changed and in embracing that and also creating not just engagement, but how we do Learning and development, right? Because how are we delivering that? We had to get very creative on our approach there. These are things that are really, really important. And I think being a CHRO, you need to have a good understanding of that. How is AI impacting your business? How is it going to impact your function? Are you building those capabilities that you're going to need for future states? Strategic workforce planning sounds like it's a very catchy phrase out that people like to throw around. But if you're doing it right, you're really planning to have the right capabilities for the future aligned with your business strategy. You need to be doing that. Really, in my mind, being a strong performing CHRO, you are focused on talent. You're focused on culture engagement. You're focused on change and you're coaching. But there's a lot that goes underneath those sort of headers right there, as you know. But I think it's really being cognizant of the new way that we're working and finding creative and innovative ways to drive that engagement, to make sure folks are getting development, to appreciate what the workforce is looking for now and meeting those needs, not resisting it.

So what the workforce is looking for now, that's Again, couldn't be any more meeting the moment, I would say. So from a learning and development standpoint, is there something that you hone in on at the moment? Are you keyed in on something? Are you sensing using your Spidey senses or your cat senses with regard to the learning development opportunities to meet the moment? Yeah.

So to be very frank, because I am very frank, I have a great team.

Should I just call you Frank? Maybe I just call you Frank.

Maybe. Why not? People have called me worse, so I'll take Frank. I would say I have a great team and I have a wonderful head of talent management, learning and development. And I think she was very proactive around the approach here. And we are delivering meaningful development programs that are done both remote and in person. And they're done globally where we're bringing cohorts to different parts of the world where we operate, where we manufacture, where we have big sales hubs. And I think that's been very, very effective. Some of our deliverables, like a new— we have a global new hire orientation that is all done virtually now, but it's best in class, and it was done with a lot of thought and a lot of, I would say, some research went into it. So it's situational, but we've adapted, and Andrea really led this. We adapted to the needs of our team members and didn't necessarily say adapt to the way we want to do it. We were very thoughtful about how we were going to approach this given the virtual work environment.

That just makes a world of sense. So often it is that the organization itself is culturally stuck. And because it's inflexible, then as you said, it requires everybody to sort of Adapt to it. And it's sort of the way we've done it around here kind

of thing,

as opposed to what you're saying, which is a much more creative—

By the way, none of this can happen without the right leadership at the very top of the house, right? So if you have a CEO— Let's talk about that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if you have a CEO that embraces this and supports it, and I do, then it makes things a lot easier, right? So it's a team effort. Everything that we do is a team effort. We're also, we're a Fortune 500, but what I love about our culture is that we are agile and we do move fast and we're not bureaucratic. And it's a very liberating experience to work at this company. And that's a big part of our story. So, and that starts at the very top of the house.

And at the top of the house is somebody that you've known for years. There's a little bit of backstory there, which you and I were just chatting about before we even hit record. So it's not so much a story, just a sort of a chronological history or whatever. I think it's important to come to a place— there's an understanding and even a wisdom, an insight that we— I think it would be good to share with folks. So yeah.

I'm happy to do that because I think also even folks at my company are unclear about how long we've known each other and what the circumstances were. But it's very, very simple. We were both working for a Johnson& Johnson operating company, cuz you know, J&J is like 300 operating companies, or they used to. And we were working down in Miami and Yvonne Tornos, who's our CEO, he was, I think, a VP of product marketing. If I don't get this right, it's not good, but I can't remember the exact— it was a long time ago. And in our neurological business, and I was a newly promoted director at HR. And I was his HR business partner, not just his, but for that particular organization. And we worked together for 2 years, for only 2 years. I think it was 2002 to 2004. And then I was relocated up to New Jersey and we lost touch. Yvonne stayed with the company. I think he went on to do a lot of great work, both at J&J and outside of J&J. I stayed with Johnson& Johnson for 23 years. Over that period of time, we were not in touch. He had a personal loss in his family that a mutual contact had told me about, and I reached out to him. That was probably 2008, 2009, just to express some condolences there. And then we were not in touch at all. And then I was working for another company. I'd left J&J and I went to another company, and we were looking at the time for a president of international, and the recruiting firm presented a shortlist and his name was on it. And I said, I know historically this is a very talented person and with tremendous global experience. Let's see if he'll interview with us. And the recruiter said, no, he's not interested. And I said, well, can you just tell him that Lori Winkler is at the company? He might give us a shot. Right. And he did. And we interviewed him and we offered him the job and he turned it down. And again, this was like in 2018. And a month later, I saw on LinkedIn that he had joined Zimmer Biomet and I didn't hear from him. And a year later, same month, October of 2019, he texted me and asked if I'd be interested in joining Zimmer Biomet as a group VP of HR. And it was completely unexpected. I was not actively looking. It was the beginning of that series of changes that I told you about earlier on that were very challenging. Eventually I did join the company, but we did know each other way back when, but we were not in touch for years and years and years. It was sort of very sporadic.

It's an interesting thing because in the world that we're living in right now, where, as you said, there's a lot of change in the workplace and the demographics of the workplace are changing as well, and it's skewing younger as it always is, but leadership is changing hands and will continue to do that coming out of a pandemic where people, as we were talking about earlier, have really experienced a great deal of sort of siloing and isolation. Yes. And there's been that ripple effect of that. One of the things that can be lost, especially when we're in more of a hybrid or even work-from-home environment for many, many people, is the sort of the connection that can happen, the really deep relationships that can form and that kind of thing. And so when I heard you share this, what came up for me was the idea that your career and even Yvonne's career in many ways has been impacted by those relationships. And you could call it synergy, you could call it synchronicity, you could call it coincidence, whatever you want. But the fact is that your being at Zimmer Biomet has something to do with the fact that you maintain a connection with Yvonne.

Yes.

And I'm sure he's got the people in his life where that's been the same thing, that your trajectory, the way you've moved in your career, has had everything to do with those connections. And I'm concerned that One thing I think it's just important that people know how important that is, that nobody gets to a role like the role you're in or the role he's in or any role really of import, meaning, and impact without a lot of other people being involved.

That's right.

You just don't do it on your own, right? Is that fair to say?

That is so true. It made me think too that when I left Johnson& Johnson, I went to work for another company because 2 people that worked with me at J&J before recruited me to that company too. So building relationships and maintaining those relationships is really, really important. You've got to build your network. Your network doesn't just have to be people that you've worked with in the past, but certainly folks that have had an influence on you, that have impacted you personally. You should have your own, what I call— and it's not a new concept— your own sort of board of directors, right? And sitting at that table are Your mentors, maybe family members, folks that have come in and out of your life that have had impact. And certainly, it will be folks that you've worked with before because business is about relationships. I mean, we know this. And relationship building is an important competency to have. I think I'd say certainly a leadership competency, but really at any level because things don't get done without those relationships.

The collaborations, right?

And collaboration.

I'm cognizant of time, so I've got a couple of quick questions here to wrap things up. But I do wanna ask you just as a follow-up to that. So in terms of getting things done, in terms of that collaboration, is there something on your mind when it comes to that virtual workforce, to the part of Zimmer? And this is not just Zimmer because we know it's everywhere and where there's a group of folks that are working remotely, exclusively remotely except during travel, etcetera. and some that are in hybrid situations. Is there a way that you're thinking about, for the future, creating more of those collision zones, the opportunity for people to actually collide in the best possible way, meaning that they connect and they start to develop those relationships that are so important?

Yes. And we do that very intentionally because we have different sites around the world. And we have— site engagement strategies that are specific to that site. And we will ensure that folks are coming in for either mission ceremonies or town halls or to do something for the community, community events. If it's just to have a collaboration meeting, we're very thoughtful about that. And we've been doing that for several years now. It isn't like a new concept. And I don't see that going away. And it's— The way we measured that success was in our engagement survey results, which were the highest they've ever been in years. We did the engagement survey in August, shortly after Yvonne became CEO, and the engagement survey results went up to top quartile. And we feel that there's a lot of contributing factors to that. And one would be the thoughtfulness that we put into engagement. So I would say that, look, I can't speak for the masses. I can't speak for the 18,000 employees that we have. We have employees that were always remote prior to COVID. I was— I've been remote since 2016, before I even came to Zimmer. So I would just say I can't speak for the masses, but I think we've done a really good, thoughtful job on bringing people together in person for the right reasons.

I don't think we take enough time to celebrate, frankly. And I'm speaking even personally about things that go well. We just sort of go, oh, that's amazing, yes, and then move on to the next thing that we're getting done and all that kind of thing. But since our organization had the great privilege of working with Zimmer in the last year on engagement, to hear you talk about that, Laurie, that's a little snippet that I know our team will be thrilled to hear.

That's wonderful. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for saying that. That's just beautiful. I wanna lastly ask you about what is hanging behind your head.

Yeah. I was waiting for that.

My wife is a Jersey— I married a Jersey girl. I'm from New York originally. She is too, but she won't admit that. She spent the first 7 years of her life in New York, but she's a Jersey girl. And as you spoke about J&J, they're a Jersey-based company, New Jersey. See, if you're from that area, you call it Jersey. You don't usually say New Jersey. Right. But in the town that we were raising our kids for 17 years, it's Freehold, New Jersey. And Freehold, New Jersey is special for a lot of reasons. But what's one of them, Laurie?

Well, there's only one. And that's where Bruce— other than the fact that you raised your children there and lived there. Thank you. Other than that, Bruce Springsteen, that's his hometown. And I've been to Freehold many times in hopes, just in hopes of catching a glimpse, but it's never happened.

Yeah, well, you got— you got to know where to go, Laurie. Federici's, or some people say Federici's, but we always said Federici's. in town, the local pizza place, that spot we used to see him at with a baseball cap pulled down over his head. Of course. But if he ever walked up, we would not do this. But people would come up to him. You know, he was always just so— just a regular. Talk about authenticity, used that word earlier. I want to tie that together because I first was introduced to Bruce probably right after Greetings from Asbury Park came out. I didn't find it, but my buddy, his older brother was a fan of Bruce and had all these bootleg tapes of his live performances. And it was just once I heard Growing Up, that whole album front and back, because it was back then was like 2 sides of the thing. It was an A-side and a B-side. Every song was just different than anything I'd ever experienced before. So what is it that you love about Bruce and Maybe you tie it to this concept of authenticity.

I will. I first heard Bruce Springsteen on a transistor radio, so I'm really dating myself, when Rosalita came out. And I was a kid. I was a young kid. I think I went right from The Partridge Family, which I'm really dating myself, to Bruce Springsteen. I heard Rosalita, and I said, what is that? I've never heard anything like that. It's a whole story. I feel like he's talking about these characters that— I grew up in Brooklyn. He's talking about characters that I've interacted with on the street or at school. It was just fascinating to me. And I have been a fan since I'm 11 years old. I am a huge fan. People have seen him hundreds of times. I'm on my 69th show. I'm probably going to see him again a few times when he starts up again later this year. But what I love about him is that— and I'm putting all, like, any political association aside because people sometimes want to go right there about his politics. I don't. I care about his music. That's it. What I love about him is that his writing is so authentic and his ability to relate to his audience is so real. And when you're in that venue and there's 70,000 people singing the same song and there's grown men crying in the front row that he can see, Yeah. I mean, it's a very emotional experience. Listen, there's a great article that you should read. It's older. I think it was in Wall Street Journal, Bruce Springsteen and the Art of Leadership. And it's an amazing little story. And it talks about a lot of different things that he's done really well, like succession planning on the band with Clarence and Danny out, what he did there and how he engages with his audience. But here's one thing I will say. In his Broadway show, which you should see if you haven't, you can watch it on Netflix.

I saw it live. To our audience, please, if you haven't seen this, you have to see this.

Oh, it's amazing. It is amazing. What I love about it is that he gets up there and he actually says, I'm from New Jersey. And there's a little bit from the Jersey Shore where there's always a little bit of— it's tinged with fraud. Not everything is on the up and up. And so am I. And he proceeds to say, I wrote about cars and girls, and I didn't learn how to drive a car till I was 25. I mean, it was almost like, I don't want to hear this. Like, I don't need to know this much authenticity is a little too much for me. I need to still see you as this romantic hero. But the fact that he can speak so genuinely about that just really resonates with me.

Yeah. Spirit in the Night was the other song on that album.

My dog is named Janie.

There you go. God, it just— yeah. You know what I haven't done that I— you and I talked a little too about books before, and I haven't read his— I guess it's an autobiography.

It is.

Talks a lot about his depression and other things that he's gone through. So that's on my list that I'm gonna have to read. You should.

600 pages. So get ready.

Hey, listen, 600 pages ain't nothing. I only say that jokingly because I just finished this thing called The Snowball, which is Warren Buffett's biography that was written some years ago. Alice Schroeder was the biographer. But this is, I don't know, 900 pages. And I know when you get into somebody's life like that, and it's so good, and the writing is excellent.

Yes,

you can't put it down. I mean, I literally read this in the hot tub. That's what it looks like. You

know, it's great.

It looks like a Jersey girl's hair.

There you go. I'm not gonna say much about that.

My wife's hair is to this day, she can get it up big if she wants. But listen, Laurie, I could literally talk to you for hours. And we've got a time constraint here. So I just wanna say thank you so much for everything you shared today. You know, these podcasts, always fascinating to me because I try to follow the breadcrumbs. I don't know where they're gonna lead. And frankly, sometimes they don't lead— they don't lead the greatest place. I mean, I like to think they often are really great, but, but I love where all of following our little threads today led us.

I enjoyed it too, Adam.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

A pleasure. To the audience, stay tuned for a bit of a recap. If you've got comments or questions, you know what to do: adamarkel.com/podcast. Leave those comments or questions. It won't be AI. It will not be a bot that answers them. I promise you. And of course, if there is friend, family member, colleague that would benefit from hearing some of the things that Lori shared, and I think so many of these insights are just—they're born of wisdom, so they're valuable in a way that I think we need more today than maybe we've ever needed before. So share. Share it with somebody. That's helpful to us, and I appreciate you doing that. Our community has grown exponentially, and it's grown mostly because you've all been willing to do that—share these things with other people. So thank you for that as well, and I'll just say ciao for now. Well, as promised, even to my own expectations, I feel like what Lori was able to share with us today just exceeded what I would have reasonably expected from a conversation that has to take place within a constrained period of time. And it can be artificial. But what I wanted and knew that would occur because of the person that Laurie is would be that we would just get after it. And there would be this instant opportunity for deep dive and collaborative conversation. I know that's what occurred for me. You know, it's my perspective, of course. But you'll be the great judge of that. You as the audience will determine whether or not this was valuable for you. I feel as though there's just— great value in the stories, in what are atypical ideas around leadership today, as well as insights around what's happened in our world and in our work world in particular. I love so much of what was shared, and we talked about authenticity, and then ultimately, we're able to kind of even come back and close the loop on that idea and that word in reference to something that is really very important in Laurie's life and has been to me. I'm a music lover from the time that I was really, really young, and I love it, and live music in particular, and being witness to something unique that happens on a stage with musicians in particular. And Laurie is as deeply committed, if not more committed, to that, and in particular to Bruce Springsteen and the live shows. I think she said she's seen 69 live shows and is going to see more. This coming year when Bruce is once again on tour. But we talked about how it is that we handle adversity. And often what causes our suffering is sort of the attachment that we have to things and perfectionism and, and proving often that we are good enough, or that we can get it done or get it done right, etc. This just all that pressure that comes along sometimes with those personality traits that also contribute to our success. But Laurie shared sort of a secret ingredient to her success, which is acceptance. And we unpacked what acceptance looks like, that it is not resignation, but something far more powerful than that. And I didn't know that Laurie is also a writer, and that's one of her passions. So I learned that about her. We talked about what it means to create something powerful in the moment. And that ultimately being resilient might boil down to embracing change even when it's unknown, as it most often is, and what embracing change can look like in order to contribute to our resiliency. And chunking it down even further to how you manage the day and how you manage the minute and even how you manage the moment. That was a particular part of our conversation that I absolutely loved. We also talked about engagement and the importance of creating plans to drive engagement with remote workers. And in the situation where we find ourselves, we're at so many hybrid work situations today, and how important it is that we create connections for the development of an individual. We have to recognize that individuals don't succeed by themselves. Nobody ever does. Nobody I have ever met who's really attained anything meaningful has done it by themselves. Done it in isolation. And yet, in many ways, coming out of the pandemic, we've dealt with a lot of isolation. We've seen what silos can produce, and often it can produce anxiety, sort of an environment where there's no separation between our work life and our not work life. And so that leads to depletion, it leads to exhaustion and even burnout. And we talked about some of those things today as well. This is one of my favorite conversations. I know that it's something that is worth sharing. So please take the time to do that with a friend, a colleague, family member even, that might just benefit from hearing some of the wisdom that Lori Winkler shared with all of us today. And of course, we'd love to get your comments and thoughts as well. Let us know how you feel about the episode. If you take the time, the moment to give it a rating on the platform where you consume it, whatever that platform might be, that helps the algorithm, helps us, and we appreciate your willingness to do that, to This community has grown exponentially over a very short period of time, I think, because the quality of these conversations and hopefully the ongoing value that they provide. So thank you for taking the time to give it your thoughtful rating. And of course, check out how resilient you are feeling in the moment. It's a snapshot in time. It only takes 3 minutes, and you can simply go to resiliencerank.com, resiliencerank.com. 3 minutes later, after answering 16 very simple questions, but Don't take it for granted that simple isn't profound. You will get insights as a result of your answering those questions in 3 minutes or less that will blow your mind, and resources and tools to increase productivity, increase your energy levels, to give you more capacity to do the things that you love and want to do and accomplish in your life. So with that, again, just wanna say thank you so much for being a part of the Change Proof community. Thank you for being a part of This whole experience, and I will say ciao for now.

Thanks for listening. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Remember to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you may be featured in an upcoming episode. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com to get your own free For your free resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com. Thank you.