Overcoming Challenges In Times Of Uncertainty By Building Resilience With Garry Ridge - REPLAY

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 Markell 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 Markell. And in this Replay episode of the Change Proof podcast, I'm going to be speaking with Gary Ridge. Now, Gary was the chairman of the board and the CEO of a company that we are all familiar with, I believe, and that is WD40, the WD40 company. It's a publicly traded company, just happens to be headquartered in my hometown of San Diego. Now, Gary is a special guy, a leader's leader, if you will, somebody that knows probably more about management and organizational structures than, than many, many people that are alive and walking the earth to this day. He's probably forgotten, as the old saying goes, more about organizations, structural components of organizational development, how it is that you, you create a transformational culture within an organization that is something that is rarefied error, highly skilled and sophisticated experience required to take on roles where that's what will be required. And that is Gary's forte. That was his, his calling, I suppose, when, when he started at WD40 in 1987, he worked there for, right up until just a few years ago. In fact, I think he retired last year after many, many, many years in service, where he also mentored and prepared to pass the baton to the next next generation of leaders and leadership. Gary is somebody that, that I got to know pretty well personally before I had him on the show. In fact, I got to visit. He, he was kind enough to invite me to come down to the headquarters, which was a brand new building that they had designed in San Diego to, to have many of their people, their, their most senior leadership folks, as well as other individual contributors and managers housed in San Diego before the pandemic, of course. And I remember when I visited that office and looked at, at how it was constructed, I thought it was kind of unique and different and, and Gary kind of educated me on, on how that went down, architecturally speaking, because he wanted to create by design areas where people would just sort of randomly run into each other and he called these things, interestingly enough, collision zones. So he, he crafted a plan for the design of this building, this headquarters, this HQ for the company where they would, by design, by intention, people would collide, would run into each other, people from all different departments, so that, you know, from somebody from accounting might run into somebody from, from marketing or sales or HR and, and, and the like. And in those unexpected, you could call them random run ins or collisions to use his term. People would be able to speak to one another, get to know one another, would be able to connect and, and, and feel a part of, of something greater than themselves that all of that he called being a part of the tribe. It's this concept of creating a culture where people feel and really understand that they belong to something bigger than themselves, that tribe. And where there was tremendous what I would call psychological safety baked into the design so that people could feel a part of, of, of something and be willing to speak up, be willing to share their thoughts and ideas, sometimes push back or question things or question the status quo, offer up ideas and suggestions. And that's how innovation occurs. And WD40 is a, an innovation company. You know, something, something that, that they made popular through their multi use product, the three in one oil and the patents around that. They're really an innovator, have been an innovator for many, many, many years. And innovation isn't guaranteed. It's not something that you're, you're always going to be able to just say hey, we, we can, we can innovate when we want to. You have to, you have to create the environment for innovation to occur. And often that innovation occurs by accident on some level. I'm not saying that it, that it doesn't require skill or talent or, or, or having all the right pieces in place to do it to, for that those things to happen. But for sure the, the greatest innovations that I've ever read about or, or been informed of, you know, happen in an environment where, where people had these sort of accidental collaborations or where it was that, that people from, with diverse ideas and diverse backgrounds and diverse opinions were put together, were brought together. And it was through that diversity of thought, of expression, of ideas, of experience that those innovations occurred. And you could call that the mastermind principle, you could call it lots of different things. But I thought how amazing that Gary Ridge, in his role as, as chairman, as CEO, was thinking about how this company's legacy would continue to expand if, if even just the structure, the design of the physical premises where people were working when we were all going to work, when WD40 in fact was, was going to work in a physical location that was common to all every single day that you could design for innovation in that way. There's a great study from the early 70s that talks about weak tie connections that again, is, is one of these concepts where, based on, on people that don't necessarily work together in the same function or have the same managers or the same responsibilities that when they have conversations, whether in the break room or at the water cooler or in, in collisions that happen in the hallway, that interesting conversations ensue and often innovations are the result of that. So that's just some of what I was able to glean from my experience in meeting Gary Ridge and then having him on the podcast. We got to also explore the importance of humility and leadership. How he faced uncertainty during COVID and the lessons that it taught him what why it is so important to separate worry from fear. We talked about the way WD40 kept their employee engagement high and why that matters so much. How leaders can help employees working from home to be more productive. And why he loves the pause, ask, choose method that actually came from my book Change Proof, Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long Term Resilience. So of course we talked about that as well. I hope you absolutely love this conversation with someone who is a seminal business leader, a mentor, mentor to CEOs. This, this guy just has the whole, the whole package and he's still out there creating content, sharing his thoughts and ideas and teaching. He's. I think he's just got the heart and the soul of, of a teacher and, and I think there's nothing that could be possibly better when you're in a role of leadership of others. So enjoy this episode with Gary Ridge. And of course, as always, let us know your fe back. We will answer those comments personally so there won't be any kind of a chat bot that will answer those things for us. You'll get the direct response from me or from Gary and we look forward to getting your comments. You can go to AdamMarkel.com forward/podcast to leave that comment or that question for me or for Gary. So again, sit back and enjoy this replay of my conversation with Gary Rich. Gary, it's just a pleasure as always to get together with you. Thanks for being a guest on the show.

Thank you. G', day, Adam. It's absolutely a delight to be here. And I have to, as I said before, my real introduction is, hi, I'm Gary Ridge. I'm the consciously incompetent, probably wrong and roughly right chairman and CEO of WD40 company.

Well, as you can already tell folks, if you don't know Gary, and I hope you will get to know him not just through this podcast, but in following him on LinkedIn and other places you will see he is a man with humility. And it's not a thing you always find in somebody at the level of leadership that he's at. So I so appreciate that about you, Gary. You know what? Let's just dive in right there. How important do you think humility is if you think it's important in a leader?

Oh, today more than ever, Adam. You know, I often say that leadership fails when ego eats empathy instead of empathy eating ego. And particularly in the last couple of years when, you know, our job as leaders has been to bring people together as the world has pushed them apart. And that's been a wonderful opportunity for us at WD40. You know, we have a promise, a tribal promise, which is a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other. And this journey is as disappointing as it's been to the world, has been one of tremendous learning, and I think we're better for it. And maybe, maybe we were gifted this awful experience to really wake us up in a number of ways.

Indeed, you've had to be resilient. Is that fair to say?

Yes, absolutely. I think resilience is. You know, I found a really interesting definition that I like about uncertainty, and it became more and more real to me going through Covid. And it is a series of future events that may or may not occur, and in fact, most of them don't occur. So I think part of the resilience has been really understanding what it is that we need to focus on during these times, because we could get disrupted very easily.

Isn't that the truth? I mean, I think disruption is more the norm than it is the exception. I think it's always been the case, but more these days than ever before. So do you have a personal definition or even a corporate definition for resilience that you. You can share with us?

I don't know that we have an absolute definition, but I would. I would suggest that it's. It's us, you know, really being able to understand the situation we're in and make conscious decisions around what we need to do. You know, I was lucky enough you sent me an early copy of your new book and congratulations on Change Proof. And I'm a big fan of Winston Churchill. And I love this quote that's in there you wrote when I. And this is a Churchill quote. When I look back on all the worries, I remember the story of an old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which it had never happened. And to me, it's like, you know, well, there's a lot of resilience in thinking about that as well. But I just thought that was a. A great reflection on, you know, making sure that we. We get rid of the clutter. We, as you say, you pause, ask and choose.

Worry is, you know, it's so interesting you think about resilience. We can define it. We'll define it, of course. And my experience is, as many people, as you ask that question, how do you define it? Resilience, that is, you'll get that many independent, different definitions of it, of course. But one thing that we also, I think it's important to talk about is what defeats or gets in the way of resilience. And you brought something up, I think, right out of the gate, which is important, important, and that is worry. So you've got a lot on your plate. You know, you're. You have a long history with this company. This company is. Has been a model of longevity and resilience and has done quite well and certainly has done very well under your. Under your stewardship. How important. With everything that's always been going on in that. In that arena, how important has worry been to you or has it gotten in the way, do you think?

Well, you know, I'd like to separate worry from fear, because I think that fear is something that really fuels worry. And, you know, what is worry? And people often ask me what keeps me awake at night. And I think that's a really interesting question, because if it's keeping you awake at night, I don't think you've thought it through. I mean, the world's not perfect. And one of the things that became really clear to me during COVID is in times of real and great need, people can pivot around fear. Oh, there's that word, pivot. People can pivot around fear. And I'll give you an example of that. You know, before COVID hit and you know, March last, in March 2020, when Covid hit, it was like, turn off the light switch. There were so many things that were once optional that are now became compulsory. And one of them was working virtually. And we had, you know, installed and equipped our tribe to have the virtual tools they needed, but they were fearful of using them because it wasn't the norm. You know, they worried about how people would see them. They worried whether they would look good. They worried about all this stuff that didn't really matter. It became compulsory. And suddenly we had to pivot around that fear and not worry about the Dog walking in or barking or, you know, something going on, and we became competent around that. So I think if we can work out how do we work out what's making us afraid, that's making us worry, and if we can move that, we become much more competent and actually much more resilient in what we do.

Yeah. Wow, that. That's fascinating. My history is I spent 18 years in the legal profession before I pivoted. And, and in much of that time, I used to say things like, you can't win without worry. I used to actually tell my clients that I worried. I was a professional worrier. I worried for them. That was part of my, you know, what I got paid to do is take on their worries and all. I really don't. In this, at this juncture in my life and over many, many years and now thinking about it in writing and researching on it too, I feel like worrying in many ways is. Is energy wasted. It's energy depleting, and it is, as you say, rooted in fear. So if we pivot around that fear, what ends up happening is that those worries don't have to keep us up at night, it seems. So.

Yeah, well, you know, we know what our, you know, world blue. Tracy Fenton, who says, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And that's. That's an interesting question. I've used that a number of times with some of our leaders where they're. They're, you know, stalling on. On making a decision or so. Well, what are you afraid of? And what would you do if you weren't afraid? And now what would you. What will you do? So, again, just bringing these things down. It's amazing how many things we're not afraid of if we really face them and go, well, you know, okay, do I have the right to be afraid about that?

Do I have.

Is worry. Going to. Worry doesn't do anything. It's such a negative place to be. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be concerned. That's a difference between worry and concern. You know, as we went through Covid, I was concerned. I was concerned because there was uncertainty. This series of future events that may or may not occur, most of which don't. And I spent a lot of time really, if, you know, sorting out the possibilities of these events happening or not happening, and then where does your energy go against the ones that, well, there's a chance that this could happen. How are we going to protect ourselves? How are we going to work around this? That may happen, indeed.

And that's that Winston Churchill quote, which I think is also based on Mark Twain's sort of take the tongue in cheek take on that as well. Is there is this ever present uncertainty? I'm curious, how has uncertainty impacted WD40? Obviously you brought us back to the start of COVID and that that was just the beginning. I think what I hear when I'm speaking with organizations, I get this great honor of keynoting and getting invited like you do to speak to organizations on a regular basis. Uncertainty is something I hear constantly that people are, and I think people just were waiting and were anticipating that somehow the uncertainty would come to some sort of a head or would end or we'd be going back to something that resembled the past. So I'm curious, inside of WD40, what has uncertainty looked like and how has the company been dealing with that?

Well, yeah, you know, when this first broke back in March 2020, you know, in fact, I was in Italy at the time on my way to our half yearly meeting in Europe. And I felt a bit like Indiana Jones having this, this, you know, Boulder chasing me with COVID And, and I'm, I, I think when it broke and would really got serious, I didn't think any of us thought it would have the longevity that it had because there was a lot that we didn't know. And so I think initially it was, whoa, okay, what do we do? I'm uncertain. You know, we went through a process of, you know, secure reset, revive and thrive were kind of what we looked at. So the first thing we did was we need to secure the business, you know. And so we came out and we said we have three clear objectives from day one. We activated our global issue response leadership team. We said, here are three things we're going to focus on. The safety and the well being of our tribe, taking care of our customers and securing our business to thrive in the future. But as we went through, I think the uncertainty got worse because suddenly it was becoming real. We're going to be in this. You know, this was at that stage we thought, well, maybe it's a sprint. Then it became a marathon and then it turned into multiple marathons along the way. Fortunately, you know, we got, we got to learn as we went and being a global company, as you know, things were pinging all around the world. You know, it's interesting to talk to people just in the United States who didn't understand what was going on in other places around the world. You know, we have a subsidiary in mainland China. It hit there first so we were seeing what happened and then as it went through other geographic locations, so the uncertainty was real. However, I think then we got comfortable, a little bit comfortable with it and saying, okay, the world's probably not going to come to an end. What do we need to do? How do we need to focus on? And that was really the. And coming back is interesting too, because as we've sort of coming out of this little bit, you can't turn that light switch back on again. It's like a dimmer switch. We've got to turn it up and actually we turn it back a little bit because if we turn the switch back on again, people get blindsided. It's like, ah, what's, you know, bright light in my eyes. So it's certainly been a journey. And the other thing is people have been going through their own hero's journey. The person we said see you Monday morning to back in March 2020 is not the same person we're getting to personally interact with again in October and November of 2021. And as leaders, we have to invest in making sure that we get that little catch up done. So we got to be asking, how are you personally? You know, we kept connected a lot virtually, but we got to keep asking, how are you and what's going on in your life? And you know, are you okay? I mean, just asking, are you okay?

That is such a powerful point that you, you just brought up, Gary, because the. In, in the discussions that I've been having, even with the Marines, I was privileged to deliver a workshop to group of young Marines. And then in the morning a couple of weeks ago, and then in the afternoon the same day to their senior leaders. The are you okay? Is not culturally sort of a thing in many branches of the U.S. military. And it's becoming the case because they are as to use your word, more conscious of the long term and even the short term impact of stress and of exhaustion and, you know, burnout, dare I say it, in, in their ranks as well. So I'd love to. And from, from our standpoint, we look at resilience as, as the, a way to become stronger, as a way to actually use leverage, even the uncertainty itself, as a catalyst for growth, individual growth, organizational growth. And, and that, that requires a sort of understanding of what resilience is and what contributes to greater resilience and what actually gets in the way. And one of the things that get in the way in the military is this sort of not feeling permission to speak honestly and transparently about where you are so for a leader to actually ask the people in the organization, how you doing? And. And not the gratuitous how you doing? Because, you know, if you ask somebody on the street, right, how you doing? They're gonna say, good. You know, hanging in there. You know, how you doing? And. And there isn't a depth to that inquiry. So it sounds to me like that's what you did. You. You were asking your people, how are you actually doing in your personal life as well as just, you know, fulfilling your business role.

Yeah. You know, as, you know, you know, we've got a very high employee engagement, or what I call the will of the people. And during COVID there was some research done by the ADP research group that showed that employee engagement globally dropped down to 16%. Now ours is 93. So halfway through Covid, you know, we were doing everything we could to ensure that we kept that cultural equity high by a whole lot of fun things that we would do and connecting things that we would do. And halfway through Covid, I said, you know, we need to go out and just do a midterm employee feedback survey and see if we can capture any areas where we're failing our people. Are we not connecting? So we went out and we redid our employee engagement survey. You know, we do it in seven languages, and, you know, across the world, it's confidential. Anyhow, the numbers came back, and they were as good as or better than they were before COVID which we just done a survey in March 2020. But one of the numbers that changed that I had to dig into was a question we ask, and it is. I am excited about the company's future. And it came back as 98% of our tribe globally, they said they were excited about the company's future. Now, Adam, here we were in the middle of COVID right? We. There was not signs yet of us being able to see a new world. So we did a little digging, and we wanted to find out why. And what came back very clearly was we are living our tribal promise of a group of people that come together and to protect each other. We feel safe in this environment, and if we can get through this together, we can get through anything together.

Yes.

And. And it was like, okay, I. And I thought, my God, I would just hate to be trying to lead an organization through this that entered with a very low employee engagement. Because there's a lot of talk right.

Now, Adam, about, you know, great resignation.

Yeah, I've renamed it. It's not the great Resignation. Here's what it is. It's the great escape. Yeah. People are escaping from organizations where they don't feel they belong. They're not treated with respect and dignity. They don't go to work each day knowing they're making a contribution to something bigger than themselves. They're not learning. They're not being protected and set free by a compelling set of values, and they're not going home happy. So it's not the great resignation. Anybody I talk to who's moving from one organization to other says, I've had it. I just can't put up with this toxic environment anymore. And this has proven to me there must be something better. So this is the great escape. That's what it is.

It's interesting, do you think, Gary, that in the time that people had at home, because I went through a period in my career where I used to commute and commuting, living in and around New York, and my office was in the city, was in Manhattan. And so living in the suburbs, commute was an hour and a half or two hours each way each day. So that's three, four, four hours more likely each day, 20 hours a week of just being in the car and commuting. And. And so, you know, the, the being home, while that was new and different and a challenge for folks at the beginning, do you think that people just were able to kind of come back to themselves, as my dad would say? They, they had the time to contemplate, the time to recognize that they actually enjoyed that time at home, maybe time with their kids, maybe they were able to be at the dinner table. They were able to see how. How they could, in fact, integrate work and, and. And home life. I know that presents its own challenges where there's no boundaries between the two. But you think that that's part of this great escape, that people have just realized that they can have more of what's important to them in life?

Well, particularly about the working from home, I think it depends on. I think it depends what their environment is at home. You know, if you're in United States and you've got, you know, room in your house to be able to find a place to work. But, you know, we've got people living in places like London and Shanghai and, you know, there's no where to put a desk and nowhere to put a computer and nowhere to work. And one of the things that we became clear to us real early is we had to find out how we could help people find a place to be able to work if they had to work. From home. Sure. So, you know, I think it depends.

And whether great escape a thing that you're seeing elsewhere in the world. Because at least at this point I've been reading. It's mostly, I mean I'm hearing it mostly in the context of, of the U.S. but are you seeing some similar things happening elsewhere too?

Not so much. Not so much in more of the relationship driven cultures like you know, in Europe, Italy, France, Spain, where they, you know, relationships are so important and they work on them so hard versus the US which is a more of a direct type culture. I think it's more dominant here than anywhere else right now. So I think that more so people said it's not that I'm not at the office, but now that I'm not there, look at the way they're treating me. Look at the way I could. At least when I went there I was able to find some belonging. And this really gets back to this thing about belonging to, you know, as human beings, one of the most dominant things we have is the desire to belong. Right. And I know that some people missed going to the office because they didn't like being at home. They wanted to belong to their people and their tribe. And it's interesting right now I was just reading some, some stuff the other day from the Society of Human Resource Management and they're all talking about the power of the importance of belonging now. Well, you know, Maslow in his hierarchy of self actualization has it as the third rung and it's been there for many years. Organizations provide safety, security and a means to feed your family. Most of them do that. The next one is belonging. And when you, when an organization actually provides that belonging, that's when you really start to get a high engagement, a high will of the people.

Indeed the connection. And that's so enlightening to me to just hear that because when the connection piece or that, that the tribe, that the family piece of it was taken out, you're right. People go, well, what exactly am I getting out of this? If, if I don't, you know, feel that and all I'm, you know, but I'm feeling other things. Things that are not necessarily.

Yeah.

You know, share is showing me or, or I'm not, I'm not feeling taken care of.

That's interesting. I've been observing, you know, we just, after labor day in the U.S. we opened the TP, you know, we call out, because we're a tribe, we call it. You've been to visit, you know what it's like yes. And we said. And I said, we are going to make our place as safe or safer than anywhere else you would choose to go. So if you want to come back in, it's totally your decision. If you're vaccinated, you know, you don't have to wear a mask. If you're not, you have to wear a mask. You know, we had all the protocols in place to meet everything that has to happen. And, you know, we've had people. And then we also. We're really challenging ourselves around people saying we have to. Not internally, externally. People say, you have to have a work from home policy. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not going to have a work from home policy. We're going to have a work from where philosophy, because people are not just working from home. What became very clear to me, they were working from anywhere. Anywhere, anywhere. And so we said, we're going to let people make their own decisions where they work from. We're not going to have them have to go and crack up the hierarchy to their boss or their leader to get permission. We want them to use our values to make a decision of where they should be working at the time. So anyhow, I've been going in to the office probably three days a week. I'd be there all the time. But I want to. I want to set the example. I want to say, okay, you can be flexible. And I tell you, Adam, I got goosebumps just observing our tribe members come together in some of our collision zone areas that you're aware of. And they were just so happy to see each other. And they sit and talk and. And they left. And I see them leaving the building with a smile because they've. They've reconnected with the people they. They love and they care about.

Right.

Which was just amazing.

Makes the job so much more than. Than the money or even. Even the responsibility or even the other fulfilling things that they do in a day. It's. It's. It's more holistic than that. We're more. We're holistic. So. So it's never sort of just one thing. You know, it's funny, I was thinking about you a couple of weeks ago, Gary, because when I went to visit the office and I heard that term for the first time, the collision zones, and I saw it, didn't just hear it. I saw it in the. In the architecture, because you guys designed that building for that purpose in many ways. For people that don't know what we mean, it literally means areas where people can come together without sort of planning it or, you know, just it happening spontaneously that you kind of run into somebody. And. And I was doing a bit of research on this concept of weak ties, which you probably have heard of. And know what this is, this idea that right now that whole water cooler connection has been lost. And where innovation often occurs that you can't plan for. I mean, you can plan in the way that you plan for it, but you can't sort of predict it or measure it in some ways, is that people will run into each other in there. They don't have strong ties to one another because they don't work in the same department. You know, somebody from accounting is meeting, running into somebody from hr, from operations or what have you, and they collide, you know, not physically, but they're in the same proximity to one another and have a conversation about something, and then all of a sudden there's some idea that is birthed out of that there's some innovation that occurs.

Yeah, yeah, you have those. Oh, what about. What if. Have you thought of, you know, kind of conversations? But it's really interesting because as we're talking about this, the slide that's up behind you, this is resilience is how we. You recharge.

Yes.

And what we're talking about now is actually people personally recharging.

Indeed. Yeah.

It's so needed.

Well, resilience for so many people, I think. And I'll put it up another slide. This is kind of funny, but, you know, I think folks define it more often than not as this capacity to bounce back. That's what we hear. That's what the book, you know, Change Proof, I think, is debunking a little bit of this myth that it's. It's about bouncing back. It really is more about the process by which we. We recharge more than it is the process of endurance or enduring, as you say. If what we're doing is running a single marathon, yeah, we could create the perfect environment for training for that task. But it's not one marathon. It's like saying at the beginning, as you did, that, you know, that there's one disruption or that this is the greatest disruption that any of us in our personal or professional lives will ever face. I mean, this is a day in the norm, and tomorrow will be, you know, be another day in the. In a year from now. So, you know, to. To know that since the race has no end, so to speak, it's one endless, beautiful marathon. What the research is clear on is that to be to have longevity and performance capacity at high levels over time. We have to have rituals for our reset. The word you used earlier.

Yeah, yeah. And it's so clear that. So the other thing that was really clear to us too is not talking about what we're going to do but talking about why we are doing it. And I think that was when we were, you know, in having times of rapid sort of changing times during COVID it's not like this is what we're going to do. It's a no. This is why we're doing what we're doing. Is everybody understand the why. You know, you know how much I, I admire Simon Sinek. It's you know, why how what so, you know, it's not what we're going to do, it's why we're doing it now. This is how we think we're going to do it. And then asking our teams and tribes do you think this is the how that we should do or is there a better way or what have you learned with this? Which I think is really important.

You know, it's interesting when you said that I'm going to be self serving here for a moment but I'm really, truly observing this in the moment. I just want to enthusiastically say it out loud. I love Simon's book and I love that the way he, he describes those three things you brought up pause, ask, choose earlier that comes from, from change proof. It's that concept of what do you do with the pause. You pause is its own reset in many ways it's its own benefit to just pause like before you hit send on an email or you react to something. As a father of four, I can say pausing has, has held me, you know, in good stead for a long time. But the ask, the asking, the why as you pointed out, to pause to ask why why are we doing what we're doing before we choose that next, that next step. I'm just observing the, the way those two things overlaid nicely.

They do And I, you know, I, as I said I was fortunate enough. Thank you. You sent me a pre PDS to, to kind of review and I love the pause, ask, choose. I mean that makes so much sense. So many times we don't pause, we rush in. So many times we don't ask is there a better way? And so many times we don't realize we have a choice. And I think it's so powerful and I can't wait for the book to get out there so others can, can benefit from it. It's just really exciting.

You assessed your. Thank. Thank you so much. I want to go back to the assessment that you. That you sent out that survey too. Was there anything in the survey that you noticed that you thought you had some concern about or, you know, you tilted your head, went. That's interesting. Was there anything that came up like that? Did you recall?

Yeah. The other thing that was that I thought was really interesting was that we have one question that talks about communication between our coaches and our tribe members. And again, it was a pleasing thing because I thought that being virtual, that opportunity of communication in its intensity may have dropped, but it actually went up. And I think for two reasons. I can't prove this. This is just Rejohnian theory right now, but I think the receivers were more tuned in than ever before. I mean, the people that we wanted our tribe were more tuned in. You know, I sometimes think about communication as here's a radio station that's sending out a signal and here's a receiver that's receiving it and there's a lot of interference in the middle. And if you don't have the radio finely tuned, you won't get the big, you know, the clarity of the. Of the message. And I think during this time people were more tuned in to receiving the messages that we were sending because there was so much going on that was uncertain that they had a deeper interest in, you know, like in any change. In any change. The first two things people think about are personal concerns and information concerns. So how is this personally going to affect. Affect me and what information do I need to give me a sense of security? And I think that we're more tuned in than ever before, for sure.

And there's no question that certainly in times of uncertainty or change, there's. If people feel stressed and we know that to be able to think, quote, outside the box or just be strategic in your thinking is never the strategy or thinking strategically and reacting out of stress are things that are almost mutually exclusive. So, you know, I'd love to find out more about how the. How you're approaching the. That that check in phase or what it is that. That you are recommending for. For people inside the company for their. Their dealing with that stress, dealing with this ever present. I mean, it's. It seems like faring if I say it better than a lot, a lot of companies. I mean, we've presented for the likes of Home Depot on one side and a company called Vogue Tire. It's been around for 107 years, based in Chicago on The others are small but successful company, very large, successful enterprise and everything in between. The SAP's, the equitables, whoever it is, everybody seems to be exhausted. And when asked often the exhaustion is bordering on burnout. In some places it's not because the company is struggling. Most of these companies are doing better than they've ever done before. Kraft Foods. I mean, I have a friend that's been working there forever. More people buying food than there's ever been. I mean, so the numbers are great. Companies are doing phenomenally well. And yet I kind of liken it in some ways to like in Formula one racing where, you know, you can't, you cannot drive one of those high performance cars quickly, fast, win a race on bald tires. And so there's this element of maybe there's some folks that are feeling like their tires are getting bald in the process of keeping up with, you know, the supply chain issues and other changes and other disruptions and things that are there. So is there some intentional work that you are considering or already engaged in to help people in the company be more resilient, mentally, emotionally, physically, even, even spiritually? And by that I mean just, you know, more in terms of their alignment between what's really important, their values and what they do at work as well. Is there something like that that's kind of an initiative within the company already?

Well, you know, as you know, Adam, we, when we talk about the spiritual, emotional, that's been a big part of us going in. So I think a lot of companies, as I said earlier, if they went in with low employee engagement, which really means that there are no values protecting them. They're not having a feeling of belonging. They're not, you know, they don't have ball tires, they got no tires. They're running on rims, they're running on rims. But on the, on the other side of it, you know, we've, we've through the whole year done a lot of work around ensuring people and setting the example with people to say, okay, let's prioritize. We, you know, we can't do it all, so what's important, what's less important? And then really saying, take your time off, you know, please. You know, we've had a number of workshops in the organization. We had Chester Elton and Adrian Gosnik come along and do a couple of sessions on gratitude and anxiety at work. Really facing the things that are facing people, giving them tools to be able to try and understand what's really affecting them is really important. So we gave everybody in the company a subscription to the. The app. Oh, calm.

The com app or com app.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Love it, love it. So we, we gave everybody a subscription to that and did workshops on how may you use this and, and what should you do. So I don't think other than turning up the volume around the things that were important to us, that's what's carried us through. And you're right, we just had the best year in 68 year history of the company. Our revenues were up 19%, our profits were up 16%. We've just paid out the largest growth reward to our people. Our employee engagement is higher than ever before. They're more excited about the future than ever before. However, they, there's a lot of, there is a lot of pressure, particularly as you say in supply chain. That hasn't been easy. So. But I think again, you know, empathy is important, you know, showing people we care. As you know, I send out a daily message every morning to the tribe, one of inspiration and encouragement. Yeah, yeah, every day. Every morning. It's for today from unfortunately it's been for today from Poway too often in the last two years. But, you know, it's wherever I am in the world. We were sending, you know, weekly updates and video updates to our tribe, just, you know, transparency, you know, telling them the truth loudly, this is where we are. You don't. I love. You know when Brene Brown says in the absence of facts and data, people make up stories.

Yes.

And that, that is something that's on my mind all the time. And, and then asking yourself as a leader, am I being the person I want to be right now? And I ask myself that many times a day and you know, I ask myself what. And so what do I want to be? I want to be caring. I want to be empathetic. I want to be reasonable. I want to be a listener. I want to be fact based. I want to be balanced. I want to be a curious learner. And I have to ask myself that more during COVID because the COVID hook would have pulled me off that road very easily and I had, I found myself keeping, I had to keep coming back. Coming back. No, you don't want to be out there. This is where you feel comfortable and doing this with all our leadership group as well. So awareness of where you are, I.

Think that's a bit of the way you're baked, if I might say that too because you're a teacher, you're an adjunct professor and it feels to me like you are more bought into the value of constant never ending improvement of learning of for individual develop personal development as well as business development than maybe some folks are. You're teaching your. Are you still teaching your class now virtually?

Well, no, we actually we taught it in person just a month or two ago. One of the first things we did in our, in our tepee, we held the class at the teepee. So but the year before we did it virtually which was another wonderful experience. We know we had to with my co teacher, Dr. Janice Thompson, we had to take our syllabus and turn it into a virtual program which was a great learning experience. I tell you, I was pretty scared. Yeah I was pretty scared at the beginning. But it worked out pretty well.

Yeah. As we wrap up. I so appreciate this conversation. Uncertainty isn't going anywhere. And our response to uncertainty I think is really in part what we're talking about. But I think there is more. The uncertainty and the lack of a lot of clarity I think in the world is just on a macro level I think is taking a toll on people in a way that we have not seen before. This has been a truly global, a global event. And I think that being the case making, making it for other leaders like yourself, making an impact in terms of the. The organization is more important than it's, than it's ever been. It can't be lip service. I put something up on the, on the screen. Not, not everybody is going to be watching this on YouTube. Some folks are just listening to it. But there's sort of three things that, that I pulled out of a recent case study of a business that was dealing with this uncertainty. And the three things were that first things have to be tangible. It's great to talk about stuff, but if they're not put into motion. You could have talked about collision zones till you were blue in the face. But if you didn't redesign your offices to create that it wouldn't, it wouldn't be living and breathing in the culture that. So you go okay, so there's it's tangible. Not, not just something that's get, you know, gets written put in a frame and, and put in, you know, put in the break room or something that break room people aren't in now that two, we have to try stuff. And that means failing often failing to find out. And I'm sure you've had your. Your share of fail to find out along the way. In fact, I might ask you to share one of those just before we depart because I think it's always important to get a Sense of how people who are in successful enterprises have dealt with even a small or modest failure or something larger too. So failing to find out. And lastly, taking the time, which is what you said earlier, to check in with people and to genuinely care, which is then, you know, having those uncomfortable conversations and uncomfortable in that you, you keep asking questions beyond the point of it being sort of just politeness. You're so curious. You want to know, like, how, how are things? How are you feeling? But how are you know, how things at home? What are you doing? What are you doing with your time? Are you actually taking time away? Are you doing things for your body, for your mental reset, for example? On the resilience side of things, we believe in a recovery map, a simple process where people in those four areas, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, can do something several times a day that could be as little as 30 seconds or a minute on up to sort of 25 or 30 minutes the longest to create a recovery zone for themselves. And, and so again, exploring and asking questions about what people, what their person's rituals are, what their habits are so that you get a greater sense of whether they're. They are in fact riding on, on good tires or whether the tires are bald. And they either don't, you know, maybe they know it or maybe they, you don't know it. Right. So, you know, Gary, I'd love to get a sense of. First of all, is, is there a, a recent sort of challenge that you, that you faced? And I'd love to get a sense of how you dealt with it. And then lastly, what are, what are some of the, or even one ritual that you have for your own personal recovery, given the fact that you're, you're taking. Looking after a global organization, that's no easy.

Yeah, thanks. Well, you know, the willingness to fail, as you can find out, as you know, we've never made a mistake ever. At our company, we took the word failure out and we replaced it with learning moments, as you might recall. So we don't make mistakes. We have learning moments. And a learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation that has to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people. So I think just that simple change in definition of failure has paid off so, so well for us. And you know, I, we'd be here for months if I was to tell you all the learning moments I've had over time. One of the, one of the things that I was born with, I'll thank my parents for is I don't remember bad very well, which, you know, I often think, do what you think is right, do your best and then make peace with it. Let it go, because if you don't. And I think that was one of the big learnings that I had during COVID is, you know, look at our values, do what we think is right, do your best and let it go and move on. Because if you don't, you'll get bogged down, which I think is something that is where you don't want to be. Right.

So feedback is vital and the recovery. So last thing. Is there something that you do on a ritual basis, even on a daily basis, that helps you?

I have my daily questions and I ask myself, did I do my best to. Did I do my best to make clear goals, achieve those goals? Did I do my best to find meaning? Did I do my best to walk my 10,000 steps? Did I do my best to listen? Did I do my best to reach out to family? Did I do my best. So I asked myself these questions. Not whatever, but did I do my best to. And I grade myself, you know, yes or no. And if I didn't, then, you know, well, then I need to refocus again. So. I love the daily questions.

Yeah, they are. I have a code of conduct that resembles that in a different way. It seems like we all have very similar things that. That are in this, you know, a signpost for how you. For how you're doing in a particular day. Yeah. So that you can. You can again take the feedback and pivot, recalibrate as. As needed.

Well, because the world will rip us out if. When. If we let. Will absolutely rip us out. We've got to. We've got to recenter ourselves so.

And everyone is well with you and your family?

Yes. I just became a granddad again. My daughter in Australia had a little baby girl and I haven't seen her yet. But I tell you what, I'll be on an aircraft on December 15, flying south to meet my new granddaughter.

Oh my goodness. That is just. Nothing in the world could be better. I can really relate to you now, sir, because we. That is. I'm gonna pull. You guys are gonna have to go on YouTube to watch this so you can see our little grandbaby.

What's her name, boy?

Yeah, yeah. It's Nakoa. Named after my. My late grant father in law and. And Nakoa, which in Hawaiian translates to brave one.

Beautiful.

So it is beautiful. It's good to one.

You won't be able to see this, but I've gotta. I Gotta show you mine as well.

Gorgeous. Oh, I love that dress.

My God, that's my. That's my little granddaughter. That's Chloe.

Oh, that's so beautiful.

Yeah.

Gary, nothing could be better, right? Really, it's been a blessing to have you on the show. I want to just say publicly your support for the book Change Proof is so appreciated. And again, I know how much you got going on in your world, so to take time to. To read. But I know you're also a lifelong learner, so I hope the book also provided some insights for you. That would be my. My highest hope. And again, thank you for being on the show today.

I love the pause, ask, choose. So I'm looking forward to getting my real copy.

I'm looking forward to it, too. All right, it's been a pleasure, and as always, we welcome your comments. You can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast to leave a comment. And again, have a blessed day. I hope wherever you are and whatever you're doing in this moment that you love your life, every bit of it, all of it, no matter what. That, I think is the key. So I'm grateful in this moment as well. Ciao for now, everyone.

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 resilience assessment, go to rankmyresilience.com.