Growth Mindset: Thriving In The Face Of Change With Andy Clement - Replay

Hey, Change Proof community. Adam Markel here, your guide to embracing change and becoming change-proof. I hope this episode finds you in great spirits and ready for some valuable insights. Before we dive into today's replay, I wanna remind you that life is an unpredictable journey, and sometimes the best lessons come from revisiting past conversations. Today's episode is one of those gems. A replay featuring an incredible expert guest that we've had the pleasure of hosting before. As always, thank you for being a part of the Change Proof Podcast community. Your commitment to growth and resilience inspires us every day. So without further ado, let's rewind the clock and dive into this incredible replay episode. Get ready to be inspired, motivated, and of course, become even more change-proof. 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.

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. Today on the Change Proof Podcast, I'm joined by Andy Clement. a name maybe you don't recognize, but he's been an executive with an epic company called Kimberly-Clark for the last 30 years. He's had 18 different roles, including sales, marketing, strategy, innovation, manufacturing, and general management. He's currently the Chief Customer Officer, and he's been in that role since 2019. And of course, you know, talking with him today about the pandemic and how Kimberly-Clark and his teams have been resilient in the face of so much change and so much disruption is really something I'm looking forward to, to put it mildly. So just please give it up in your space for this amazing interview that I feel really honored to have with Andy Clement. So Andy, I know it's always a strange thing, I think, when you hear somebody else read or say your bio and your introduction. And maybe I kind of— I don't know if I twisted your arm to get on the show because with all the years that you've been with Kimberly-Clark and all the different roles, I mean, 18 different roles actually. Interesting. I didn't see sort of speaker trainer as one of those roles. So maybe today is gonna be the beginning of like a 19th role for you.

I'll have to update the bio. Sounds good. Yeah.

Update the bio. So my question is, what's something that's not a part of your bio that you would love for people to know about you at the outset?

Yeah, I mean, I think the bio has lots of information about my career at Kimberly-Clark, which is all great, but it's kind of probably more of the personal stuff that it's not in there, right? My 20-year-old daughter, she turns 20 this week, was diagnosed with diabetes on her first birthday. You want to talk about resilience and what I've witnessed her have to go through over the past 19 years and being with her. My wife and I have been heavily involved in JDRF, in Camp Kudzu, which is a diabetes children's camp, City of Hope, which does a lot of fundraising and research for type 1 diabetes. So that's something I'm really passionate about. And then, I mean, the other thing that's not in the bio is just what we've done at North Point Church over the past 10, 12 years leading small groups there. That's Andy Stanley's church here in Alpharetta, Georgia. You may have heard of Charles Stanley. I've always kind of found that that's a way to get away from it all and get away from kind of the day-to-day at work and make sure that you're thinking about things that are bigger and rebuilding yourself for Monday morning when you have to go back to work.

Yeah, I think a really good segue where you started there in asking you if you've got your own personal definition of resilience. What does resilience look like to Andy Clement?

Yeah, I mean, to me it's kind of quite simply the ability to recover quickly from challenges, right? Day in and day out. And those, they happen at work, they happen at home, but that's in simplistic terms kind of how I think about it.

Indeed. Yeah, it was interesting, I thought, in our work together and my asking that question to group of your leaders, how everybody has their own definition, right? Everybody defines resilience a little differently, which is curious. I'm curious, does Kimberly-Clark have a definition, or do you see in the culture, in sort of the value statements or mission statements, that resilience is something that organization that has been around for what now, 150 years? Do they actually define resilience, do you think?

You know, not that I know of, but our culture purpose is purpose-led, performance-driven. Okay. And I think that that somewhat does tie to resiliency, that if you are purpose-led, you are, I believe, going to be more resilient in the ability to get through the day-to-day challenges. Right. I mean, you talk in your book about the growth mindset. Right. And that's actually something we've been promoting a lot in Kimberly-Clark the past couple of months, which is As you know, really accepting challenges, right? And not running away from them, learning from them, being okay to fail, right? And as I think about the history of Kimberly-Clark and myself, I think that growth mindset has really helped us be around for a while and does tie to our culture. Does that make sense to you?

It totally does. And it has me thinking the concept of a growth mindset. I think people get that. They get it on a philosophical level, I want to go maybe get a little more granular even to get— so what does it look like? What does it mean to have a growth mindset to you?

I mean, to me, if you're going to have challenges, it's when you get them, how you act. And you view them as opportunities for business improvement, for self-improvement, versus shutting down and saying, hey, I've been successful. We're just going to do it my way. And then, I mean, there's lots of examples of this growth mindset through Kimberly-Clark's history and even the past couple of years at Kimberly-Clark, the pandemic of how we've gotta have adapt and kind of overcome challenges.

So let's take a scenario, like maybe a common scenario, like there's somebody in the sales area. I don't know. I'm just picking sales, for example, because often salespeople, they're getting yeses and they're getting nos. And when somebody, you know, I love winning business. I am a huge fan of that. Nothing more fun than that really. But when you lose business or meaning you, you lose a client, lose a customer. Or when you just don't get one that you think you can, you ought to, you want to, et cetera. You know, in that moment it can really be depleting. People can really get caught up in the emotion of the rejection, et cetera. So if you're applying a growth mindset, looking at what Kimberly-Clark has no doubt been able to do over, I mean, gosh, 15 decades, say it that way. What do you say to somebody who's in sales and they lose a client? Customer?

Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. Salespeople hate to lose. We're very passionate, right? But I think figuring out what you're going to do differently and how you're going to approach that similar type customer in the future so you don't lose. We do have a process here at KEC where we look at the big deals we lost and kind of step back and say, now what happened? How could we have done this differently, right? Sometimes it was the relationship our national account manager didn't have with that end user. Sometimes it was the selling method. Sometimes it was maybe a product we didn't have that we can then build into our R&D funnel to make sure that our team is developing that. But, you know, these types of losses or problems can be gold if they're not ignored. And it also means like, hey, okay, you missed your quota, you didn't get these 4 or 5 sales that we expected you to, that's okay. But how do we make sure that we make you better in the future? That's kind of a growth mindset from a sales manager perspective versus a, hey, I'm gonna have to put you on a plan.

So— Yeah, that's the worst words you can hear is, hey, I'm gonna have to put you on the plan. I mean, there's worse words, obviously, we know the one that comes after that.

Exactly. But that's typically how we try to handle it.

I mean, I think the value of feedback cannot really be overstated in my experience, and that often feedback, while so valuable on the one hand— I've worked with a lot of organizations and I've been running or part of senior leadership in organizations that I was more integral in its getting started kind of thing— but we say feedback is great, and yet often there aren't systems For giving and receiving valuable feedback. Like you said, there's a golden nugget. It's like, are we looking to find it? Are we— do we have the capacity even to find it? So the 3 things that we came up with some years ago that I'll share just for folks that haven't heard this model are 3 questions that we will often ask. And I'm curious if Casey does something similar to this. One is the question, what's working for me? What worked in this situation? Followed by the question, well, what didn't work in this situation that we're talking about? And then finally, what could be done differently? And I think what's been valuable in my— just having used this for a long time now— is starting first of all with what actually did go right. What are the things that you'd say, yeah, that really did work? Followed— because it's starting in a positive place for one thing. And we often, when we're talking about criticism, critique, or feedback, you know, right? It's like—

Yeah.

You immediately go to, this is why this should never happen again, or whatever it might be. But starting in that place of what didn't work, get very direct and specific about that. And then ultimately, what's the— as you said, the growth. What's the growth opportunity? What could be done differently? We don't know if it's going to be done better or worse, right? That's the thing. We never know. Nobody's got a crystal ball, but we know one thing, we could do it differently and get a different result. Do you guys have a kind of a formalized system to provide feedback?

Well, yeah, it's a great point. And I would tell you, KC in general across the company does a very good job of asking for and providing feedback. It was a big cultural change about 12 years ago that we trained everybody on. It felt very uncomfortable at first, but we've gotten pretty good at it. Specifically in sales, the 3 questions you talked about, I mean, we have a very structured process around pipeline reviews that starts with me to my, my leaders, my leaders, their middle managers, the sales managers, then to our reps, where you look at all the accounts that are in the pipeline. And you look at the ones that have closed and say, what can we learn from that? What did we do right? You look at the ones that maybe we lost, then that fell out of the pipeline. And that's back to then the, okay, what happened? And what can we do differently? That happens at a very senior level. And it happens at a very junior level. And when you get in that routine of doing it, I think you begin to Build that growth mindset that we talked about.

The one thing too that we've heard in doing this in a kind of a formalized way, try not to have it be mechanical because then people are just like, well, we're going through the motions on that thing as opposed to something else, right? Yeah. What we found is that when they see that the feedback is actually a thing that fills them up, I like to say that feedback should be something that's additive, not subtractive. So you can steal somebody's dignity very easily. You can steal their self-esteem. You can steal A win from somebody. You can steal so much with the way that you provide that feedback, or you can really plus them in some way. And that's what I've heard a lot, that just that being so open to getting it and to giving the feedback in an environment like that, you know, you feel like people really have your backs. It's something that we talked about with your group, right? Is that you ultimately want to know that people are there. They've got your back, right?

Well, and I think a lot of that ties to why Kimberly-Clark has been around for 150 years. A lot of it is the culture, right? Okay, it is a very supportive culture, not out to get you, not backstabbing, but just, hey, we want to win together. How can I lift you up? How can I give you the feedback to help you grow? And that's why people like myself stay at Kimberly-Clark for 30 years, is because of the culture. And I've just had Whether it's bosses, whether it's mentors or peers or people that work for me, I feel like they've just done that to me. And like you said, it's how you give the feedback, whether it's pipeline review or somewhere else, to pass it along.

So what do you think gets in the way of resilience? I mean, I think you're bought into the idea that today, in a world of constant and never-ending change, right? We wrote this book, Change Proof: How to Leverage Uncertainty. to build our long-term growth, resilience is this unsung hero in that, that ultimately, if we're resilient, we're going to figure stuff out. You're going to make a bunch of mistakes along the way, but if you've been around 150 years, you figured out more than you didn't figure out. What gets in the way of resilience, do you think? And how important is resilience in your opinion?

Yeah. I mean, it's really important. I think One thing that gets in the way, and you talk about this in the Change Proof book, is the deposits and the withdrawals, right? You know, is that if you're pulling too much out, we all have a breaking point where we withdraw or we get stressed and we get to burnout. So you've got to make those deposits, right? You've got to find the time to exercise, to get away, to have breakfast with your wife, to meditate, whatever it is that helps you, right? Because if you take too much on, Eventually, you will break. For example, we had a guy that works for me that is a top-notch leader that just was burning out a couple of weeks ago. It was a Thursday night and he called me and I just said, hey, take the next day off. Take the weekend off. I didn't tell him that this is about a deposit withdrawal, but that's basically what it was looking back. He called me the following Monday and said, I feel so much better. Thank you for letting me do that. Sometimes it's on us as leaders to be able to recognize when people are kind of at that breaking point. So does that make sense to you?

I mean, it really does, because the idea of this bank account is like a resilience bank account, but it's like any other bank account. Like, if you withdraw more than you put in, you get a love letter from the bank, right? I was an attorney for a bunch of years, so that's the way we used to refer to those little letters, those nice little letters you send out. It's a love letter, and you get dinged $25 or whatever it might be. But when we're depleted, when we're withdrawing from our resilience bank account mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually more than we're depositing, then that overdraft or that state of being overdrawn shows up in other ways. And it sounds like you met a key person in your team that was showing those signs of being overdrawn.

Yes. That was it exactly. Luckily, they made some deposits over the weekend and didn't have to get any more nasty letters, the penalties from the bank.

I want to talk about uncertainty for a second, which is, if you can give us an idea, how has uncertainty impacted the business?

It's been a challenge. There's been a lot of uncertainty the past 2 years since the pandemic hit. I think we took for granted a much more certain world before 2020. I mean, just thinking about selling, it was very easy and very certain in the model that all of us had grown up in, in KC and in our industry, right? Face-to-face selling, leveraging pretty good relationships, of course, strong negotiating. Then all of a sudden, everybody had to do it digitally. Everybody had to do it virtually. You had to have a camera on you versus doing it in person. A lot of it had to be done using digital assets for the first time, which was very different. That was a lot of uncertainty and a big pivot that we had to make, not just my sales organization, all sales organizations. It was hard, but I was proud of how the team adapted over a couple of years.

I'll say this, Andy, without naming any companies. I get this privilege of getting embedded on some level in organizations because they bring me in to speak on resilience and some other strategies for developing individual, more individual and organizational resilience, I get to ask the question, what are your challenges and what are the things that are exhausting your people? So that's when it becomes a very interesting moment of transparency. I get a lot of, I think, quite real information. And one of those things has to do with the sales teams, that the challenge you just brought up, the uncertainty about how we do this in a world that we used to do it very differently. And as we know, I'll say this is what I've heard. Tell me if this is the case. Things have not gone back. I don't know that they'll maybe ever go back to the way they were because the customers are also pretty okay with it being instead of face-to-face, eye-to-eye over lunch or a handshake or something, that they're doing it virtually. And so those same salespeople thinking that the pandemic was going to end and things would go back to some thing that was more familiar to them. No, it has not happened. Has that—

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right.

And how have your salespeople continued to pivot? What does that look like for you guys?

Yeah, I mean, your selling organization starts with your buyers, right? You have to build your selling organization around the buyers. And like you said, it was slowly changing this way between 2015 and 2020. It accelerated significantly when all the buyers were sitting in their basements instead of in an office, right? Yeah. And they started experiencing the fact that I can get most of my information on B2B products like I do my at-home products digitally. I can buy 'em this way. And yes, I do need to interact with a salesperson, but it can be done virtually or it can be done occasionally in person, but not 3 to 4 times for a purchase. So it was a big transition. Some people, I would tell you, that were more resilient, had a growth mindset, like, hey, I got it. And others kind of struggled, you know, at times. Part of the reason we wanted you to speak to our team earlier in the year is to just kind of build that resiliency muscle up, right? But within our team, we have really trained everybody on this idea of hybrid selling, is that you got to look at your buyer, you got to look at their stage to where they are. They want to have a digital interaction, great. If they want a face-to-face interaction, great. But really think about your selling method. and model based on what the buyers want. Does that make sense?

Totally does. You guys pivoted like a lot of folks did in that time. And man, I wish— since I wrote a book called Pivot a few years back, I wish I got sort of a dime for every time people have used that word in the last, in the last few years, man. I was a little ahead of the curve with Pivot. I think Change Proof really more met the moment timing-wise, but I'll use the word now. So And this is a broad question, so anything in particular, but what have you learned from the pivoting? What's that been like? And you personally, or just within the teams that you've seen?

Yeah, I mean, I have definitely learned that whole idea of look at your buyer and adjust your selling method and organization accordingly. And just don't think about one selling method. It's going to be continuous improvement based on your buyers. I've been amazed at how certain people in our organization have been able to pivot and be successful with it. Quite frankly, certain people that I maybe would not have thought of initially.

Right.

And then other people that maybe were outstanding sellers in a previous model have taken more time to get there, that kind of weren't as change-proof, kind of thought that they would all go back to the way it was. And as you said, it's not going back to the way it is. And it's hard to predict necessarily how people are going to react to that. And whether they've got that growth mindset or not.

Yeah, indeed. Now, I know that one of the things that we did talk about was how it is that if resilience is something that we have to have, and the time to create it is now before you'll need it next, that was sort of the first level. But the second level was developing resilience is about ritualizing your recovery. It's not about trying to outrun the pandemic or outsmart You know, or see somehow, see into the future like you've got a crystal ball. Like, maybe you could do it, but like probability-wise, not likely. But ritualizing our recovery means that we're not depleted. And when we're not depleted, we have the resources mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually to deal with almost anything. I mean, that's the one truism about not just Kimberly Clark, but about the human species is that we are incredibly adaptive and we can deal with a lot more than we think often that we can and do it even elegantly, do it in a really positive and productive way. So I'd be curious to know, what are some of the rituals that you have for your own recovery? If you could share a couple of those personally with us, and maybe what are some things that you've worked on that maybe didn't pan out, like you stopped doing because it didn't work, or things that you're even experimenting with in this moment?

Yeah. I mean, certainly making sure that you take time for yourself, exercising, sleep, eating right. Those are very obvious, right? But still easier said than done sometimes, right? Spending time with my family, my wife. The nice thing about the last couple of years is I haven't had to travel as much. And so we can have breakfast every day, connect away from work before the phones start ringing. Spending time spiritually, certainly at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day, really important. I mean, one of the things I got from your book was writing down your code of conduct each day, which I have done, and I keep it by my home office and my work office. I'm at my work office now, right?

Beautiful.

Looking at that every day, there's 6 or 7 things on here, right? But one of them is just making sure that I, as the Chief Customer Officer, are doing all I can to put the customer first every day within Kimberly-Clark, right? That's a sales type thing that I try to do, right? But I have found, and you said this in your book, if you don't do that and look at it every day, guess what? Certain things start to fall off. And so thank you for that. I have swiped it with gratitude.

Yay.

It's

there for you to take. Yeah, exactly. That's one of the things we won't talk about what the specifics around that are. Maybe it's a little teaser for people to go get the book or what have you. But the code of conduct is in essence a way to start your day. With the end in mind. So like reverse engineering, go at the end of this day, which we're blessed, we'll get to the end of the day safe and sound and all that. How did you want to experience the day? What would you have liked to have experienced during the day, or even experienced how you were being, the way you experience yourself during the day? So my theory is that if you start with that in mind, this greater likelihood that that's actually what you end up with. And that's just proven out. I only have anecdotal what people say about having used it and my own personal use of it to go on there. But it's great to know that that's something that you've adopted and that it's clearly paying a dividend of sorts.

It works. It really does. I thought it was a little corny to print it out and read it every morning and every night, but I was like, yeah, give it a shot. And sure enough, it keeps you focused. And hey, I can be my own harshest critic at times. And sometimes I'm like, Andy, you did not do all the things on here. Right. So what are you going to do differently tomorrow?

I love it. Yeah. I mean, the other thing too, you took a resilience assessment. Like, we've got this resilience assessment that we've been using for a bunch of years with a lot of— I gosh, I don't know, it's hundreds of organizations now, thousands of leaders. And I don't remember what your score was, the rank in those 4 different resilient zones. I should have sent this to you even before we started our podcast today, but if you've not yet taken it again, it would be kind of cool to have you do it again. And by the way, people who are listening, you won't take the same exact one as Andy because we did something specific for the Kimberly-Clark folks. But you can go to rankmyresilience.com or resiliencerank.com and get your own. It takes about 3 minutes. It's 16 questions. But Andy, it'd be really cool if you did that, if you haven't already, and see what the before and after scores look like.

I need to do that. And I took it the first time. I have it printed out at home, but I don't actually remember off the top of my head what the scores were. But I definitely had room for improvement. And I think A lot of the KC people did. As you may recall, we had even done just a sales test even before we engaged you last year, ranking and looking at where the Kimberly-Clark sales team was strong and where we had room for improvement. And we were good at negotiating and selling with insights and closing deals, but it was this idea of resiliency, especially in certain functions where we were not as good, and me included, as we would like to be. And that was kind of what prompted us to head down this path with you. And it'd be good actually for everybody to kind of retake the test as I think about it, in case it's possible.

Thinking about it too. That's cool. Well, listen, Andy, I've so enjoyed the conversation and the insights, and congrats to not only the company being around so long, but you've been with the company the equivalent of, I think, what, 1/5 of the time that the— I'm making you feel old right now. I'm so sorry.

You are.

But I mean, 30 years with a company these days is really unheard of. And I think that in part it's because companies aren't around that long. That's obvious. But then there's also this other thing where The culture of those organizations doesn't really support the longevity of someone like yourself. So I think it's a definite pat on the back to Casey that they've got a culture that would nurture someone like you so that you could be around and be continuing your growth. I see it in your eyes. I've heard it in your voice and everything. There's no end in sight at the moment. So you are being able to influence in a positive way all these other young leaders, these new leaders, and helping them to have even just some of the resilience that you've had and the career with a great company, I think is just remarkable. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Adam. Enjoyed the conversation for sure. So congratulations on the book. It seems just to be great.

Fantastic. Folks, we love that you provide us with your feedback. So please feel free to do that. You can subscribe to the podcast on any of the formats that you dig, and you can go to adamarkel.com/podcast if you'd like to leave a comment there. You can leave A review on iTunes. And of course, if you've not yet taken the resilience assessment, you can do that at resiliencerank.com. That's simple. And if you want to find out more about Change Proof, get the book, and you can also get the assessment there as well. You can go to changeproof.com. Very simple place to get more of what we've been talking about today with Andy Clement. We'll see you soon, and thank you so much. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation with Andy Clement. Man, I tell you, working in a company that's been around for 150 years like Kimberly-Clark is special. To be with that organization for 30 years in 18 different roles, talk about serial pivoting. I mean, just amazing. And I love the conversation, especially since we were able to get into really nitty-gritty detailed conversation around things like feedback and how it is that feedback is such an important tool to be able to make those pivots, to see what's been working, what's not been working, and what in fact could be done differently. I love the fact that we got to really dig into Andy's personal definition of resilience, as well as how resilience is operationalized within an organization such as Kimberly-Clark, and how it is that even big companies like that, not only do they have to be resilient, but They have to deal with this ever-present uncertainty that all of us deal with, of course. And within a company that's got so many thousands of people that are performing so many different roles where things are uncertain, could really have a devastating ripple effect across many, many different channels. So I love the fact that we got to talk specifically about this uncertainty, especially in the arena of sales and the fact that in so many ways when the pandemic hit, People really have to relearn how to sell. I mean, this is a function that is almost— you can't do without it in a business. There's some things that are a bit optional, but every business has to be able to sell. There's no money, nothing being sold, there is no business. I mean, we get that. It's so vitally important. And when you're on the ground, your boots-on-the-ground sales team don't know how to sell because everything that has been the way, the standard operating procedure for selling is no longer operative, is no longer relevant, as happened when all in-person meetings to discuss and to enroll disappeared, stopped entirely. And to this point, even 2 years beyond the beginning of the pandemic, much of that has not been restored. People have had to learn how to sell virtually, be online, be on a Zoom or some other face-to-face digital meeting and had to create digital assets to present the story of the product and be able to continue to develop that relationship and that enrollment conversation in ways that had never been done for most of these sales folks before. So that was really, I thought, quite interesting to hear Andy talk about where his team was at the beginning, the struggles and challenges that they had along the way, the pivots they made, and ultimately where they are now, a more resilient organization, a more resilient selling system and sales team. I thought that also really powerful and it's lessons for all of us that are whether we're sort of a solopreneur act or we're running or part of a larger organization. So being change-proof is the name of the game right now, folks. We've got to learn how to navigate constant, never-ending change. And the way that we do that is by creating resilience, resilient systems, resilient individuals, and resilient organizations. Because then we don't have to worry about weathering a storm. We use the storm, we utilize the storm, whatever the storm might be, as a catalyst for our growth, which is something that Andy and I talked about as well, how it is that we more and more are able to model and produce greater growth mindset within the groups that we find ourselves a part of. So change is constant. Change is not going anywhere anytime soon. And none of us have a crystal ball. The uncertainty is going to be there. What we can count on is being resilient and being able to, well, not know what the unknowns will be or know what the uncertainty will be, we know that we can plan for how we perform in that state of unknown or uncertainty. And if we're performing in a resilient way, if we're performing in a way that is growth-centered, then ultimately the change, regardless of what it might be, is net positive to us. And I think that's just what we're looking for personally and professionally. So Love the interview. Love the conversation with Andy Clement today.

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 at adammarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for For building change-proof teams, visit adammarkel.com/becomechangeproof.