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 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 and In this replay episode of the Change Proof podcast, I'm gonna 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 WD-40, the WD-40 company. It's a publicly traded company. It 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, organizational structures than many, many people 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 create a transformational culture within an organization That is something that is rarefied air, 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 calling, I suppose, when he started at WD-40 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 generation of leaders and leadership. Gary is somebody that I got to know pretty well personally before I had him on the show. In fact, I got to visit. 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 have many of their people, 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 how it was constructed, I thought it was kind of unique and different. And Gary kind of educated me 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. He crafted a plan for the design of this building, this headquarters, this HQ for the company, where they would, by design and by intention, people would collide, would run into each other, people from all different departments so that somebody from accounting might run into somebody from marketing or sales or HR. 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 feel a part 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 tremendous, what I would call psychological safety baked into the design so that people could feel a part 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. That's how innovation occurs. WD-40 is an innovation company, something that they made popular through their multi-use product, the 3-in-1 oil and the patents around that. They have been an innovator for many, many, many years. And innovation isn't guaranteed. It's not something that you're always going to be able to just say, hey, we can innovate when we want 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 doesn't require skill or talent or having all the right pieces in place to do it for those things to happen. But for sure, the greatest innovations that I've ever read about or been informed of happened in an environment where people had these sort of accidental collaborations or where it was 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. 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 even just the structure, the design of the physical premises where people were working when we were all going to work, when WD-40, in fact, 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 one of these concepts where, based on people that don't necessarily work together in the same function or have the same managers or the same responsibilities, when they have conversations, whether in the break room or at the water cooler or in collisions that happen in the hallway, that interesting conversations ensue. Often, innovations are the result of that. 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, why it is so important to separate worry from fear. We talked about the way WD-40 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's mentor, a mentor to CEOs. This guy just has 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 a teacher. And I think there's nothing that could be possibly better when you're in a role of leadership of others. Enjoy this episode with Gary Ridge. And of course, as always, let us know your feedback. We will answer those comments personally, so there won't be any kind of a chatbot that will answer those things for us. You'll get The direct response from me or from Gary. We look forward to getting your comments. You can go to adamarkel.com/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. 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 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. Gary, it's just a pleasure as always to get together with you. Thanks for being a guest on the show.

Yeah. G'day, Adam. It's, it's absolutely a delight to be here. And 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 WD-40 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'll 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. And 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. I often say that leadership fails when ego eats empathy instead of empathy eating ego. And particularly in the last couple of years when 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 WD-40. 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, 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 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. 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 can share with us?

I don't know that we have an absolute definition, but I would suggest that it's us really being able to understand the situation we're in and make conscious decisions around what we need to do. 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. 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 had never happened. And to me, it's like, well, there's a lot of resilience in thinking about that as well. But I just thought that was a great reflection on making sure that we get rid of the clutter. As you say, you pause, ask, and choose.

Worry is— 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've brought something up, I think, right out of the gate, which is important. And that is worry. You've got a lot on your plate. You have a long history with this company. This company has been a model of longevity and resilience and has done quite well and certainly has done very well under your stewardship. How important, with everything that's always been going on in that arena, how important has worry been to you or has it gotten in the way, do you think?

I'd like to separate worry from fear because I think that fear is something that really fuels worry. And what is worry? People often ask me what keeps me awake at night. 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. And I'll give you an example of that. Before COVID hit in March 2020, COVID hit, it was like turn off the light switch. There were so many things that were once optional that became compulsory. And one of them was working virtually. And we had 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. 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 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.

My history is I spent 18 years in the legal profession before I pivoted. 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 was a professional worrier. I worried for them. That was part of my— what I got paid to do is take on their worries and all. At this juncture in my life, and over many, many years of now thinking about it and writing and researching on it too, I feel like worry in many ways 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.

Yeah. We know what World Blue, Tracy Fenton, who says, what would you do if you weren't afraid? And that's an interesting question. I've used that a number of times with some of our leaders where they're stalling on making a decision or so. I said, well, what are you afraid of? And what would you do if you weren't afraid? And now 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? Worry doesn't do anything. It's such a negative place to be. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be concerned. That's the difference between worry and concern. You know, as we went through COVID, I was concerned because there was uncertainty, this series of future events that may or may not occur, most of which don't. I spent a lot of time really sorting out the possibilities of these events happening or not happening. 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. 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 ever-present uncertainty. I'm curious, how has uncertainty impacted WD-40? You know, obviously you brought us back to the start of COVID and 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. 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, be going back to something that resembled the past. So I'm curious, inside of WD-40, what has uncertainty looked like and how's the company been dealing with that?

Well, yeah, when this first broke back in March 2020, 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 boulder chasing me with COVID And I think when it broke and it 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. We went through a process of 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. And so we came out and we said, we have 3 clear objectives from day one. We activated our global issue response leadership team. We said, here are our 3 things we're going to focus on: the safety and the wellbeing 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. 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 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, The uncertainty was real. However, I think then we got 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? And coming back is interesting too, because as we're sort of coming out of this a 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 turned it back a little bit because if we turn the switch back on again, people get blindsided. It's like, ah, 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 gone on in your life? And are you okay? I mean, just asking, are you okay?

That is such a powerful point that you just brought up, Gary, because in the discussions that I've been having, even with the Marines, I was privileged to deliver a workshop to a group of young Marines in the morning, a couple of weeks ago. And then in the afternoon of the same day to their senior leaders. The, are you okay, is not culturally sort of a thing in many branches of the US 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 burnout, dare I say it, in their ranks as well. And from our standpoint, we look at resilience as 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 that requires 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 not feeling permission to speak honestly and transparently about where you are. For a leader to actually ask the people in the organization, how you doing? And not the gratuitous, how you doing? Because if you ask somebody on the street, Right? How you doing? They're gonna say, eh, good, you know, hanging in there. How you doing? And there isn't a depth to that inquiry. So it sounds to me like that's what you did. You were asking your people, how are you actually doing in your personal life as well as just fulfilling your business role?

Yeah. You know, as 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. We do it in 7 languages and 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'd just done a survey in March 2020. But one of the numbers that changed that I had to dig into was a question we asked, and it is, I am excited about the company's future. And it came back as 98% of our tribe globally that said they were excited about the company's future. Now, Adam, here we were in the middle of COVID 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 it was like, okay. 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—

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 another said, 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.

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. So living in the suburbs, commute was an hour and a half or 2 hours each way, each day. So that's 3, 4 hours more likely each day, 20 hours a week of just being in the car and commuting. And so 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 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 they could in fact integrate work and home life. I know that presents its own challenges where there's no boundaries between the two, but do 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 what their environment is at home. If you're in the United States and you've got room in your house to be able to find a place to work. But we've got people living in places like London and Shanghai. There's nowhere to put a desk and nowhere to put a computer and nowhere to work. And one of the things that 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 I think it depends.

Is the 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's mostly in the context of the US, but are you seeing some similar things happening elsewhere too?

Not so much. In more of the relationship-driven cultures, like in Europe, Italy, France, Spain, where relationships are so important and they work on them so hard, Versus the US, which is more of a direct type of culture. I think it's more dominant here than anywhere else right now. 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. 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.

Yes.

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 stuff the other day from the Society of Human Resource Management, and they're all talking about the importance of belonging now. Well, Maslow in his hierarchy of self-actualization, has it as the 3rd 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. When an organization actually provides that belonging, that's when you really start to get a high engagement, a high will of the people.

The connection— that's so enlightening to me to just hear that, because when the connection piece or that tribe, the family piece of it was taken out, You're right. What exactly am I getting out of this if I don't feel that, but I'm feeling other things, things that are not necessarily showing me, or I'm not feeling taken care of?

That's interesting. I've been observing just after Labor Day in the US, we opened the TP, you know, we call out because we're a tribe, we call it a T, you've been to visit, you know what it's like.

Yes.

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 don't have to wear a mask. If you're not, you have to wear a mask. We had all the protocols in place to meet everything that has to happen. And then we also were 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. We're 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. 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 into the office probably 3 days a week. I'd be there all the time, but 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 I see them leaving the building with a smile because they reconnected with the people they love and they care about. Right. Amazing.

Which makes the job so much more than the money or even the responsibility or even the other fulfilling things that they do in a day. It's more holistic than that. We're holistic. 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 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 just it happening spontaneously, that you kind of run into somebody. 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 and they don't have strong ties to one another because they don't work in the same department. You know, somebody from accounting is 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 slide that's up behind you, there's resilience is how you recharge.

Yes.

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

Indeed. Yeah. Well, resilience for so many people, I think, and I'll put up another slide, this is kind of funny, but define it more often than not as this capacity to bounce back. That's what we hear. That's what the book Change Proof, I think, is debunking a little bit of this myth that it's about Bouncing back. It really is more about the process by which we recharge more than it is the process of endurance or enduring.

Mm-hmm.

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. No. 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.

Right.

And tomorrow will be another day and a year from now. So to know that since the race has no end, so to speak, it's, it's one endless beautiful marathon. What the research is clear on is that 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. 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 having times of rapid sort of changing times during COVID It's not like, this is what we're going to do. It's, no, this is why we're doing what we're doing. Does everybody understand the why? You know how much I admire Simon Sinek. It's why, how, what.

Yes.

So 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.

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 the way he describes those 3 things. You brought up pause, ask, choose earlier that comes from Change Proof. It's that concept of what do you do with the pause? Pause is its own reset in many ways, its own benefit to just pause. Like before you hit send on an email or you react to something. As a father of 4, I can say pausing has held me in good stead for a long time. But 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 step? I'm just observing the way those 2 things overlaid nicely.

They do. As I said, I was fortunate enough. Thank you. You sent me a pre- PDF 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 benefit from it. It's just really exciting.

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

Yeah, the other thing 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 2 reasons. I can't prove this. This is just Riggioni 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 clarity 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. Like in any change, the first 2 things people think about are personal concerns and information concerns. So how is this personally going to affect me? Yes. And what information do I need to give me a sense of security. And I think they were more tuned in than ever before.

For sure. And there's no question that certainly in times of uncertainty or change, people feel stressed. And we know that to be able to think 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 I'd love to find more about how you are approaching That check-in phase or what it is that you are recommending for people inside the company for their dealing with that stress. I mean, it seems like the company is faring better than a lot, a lot of companies. I mean, we've presented for the likes of Home Depot on one side and company called Vogue Tire. It's been around for 107 years based in Chicago on the other. So small but successful company, very large successful enterprise and everything in between the SAPs, 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 1 racing, where 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 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 spiritually. And by that, I mean, just in terms of their alignment between, you know, 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, when we talk about the spiritual and 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 don't have ball tires. They got no tires. They're running on rims. But on the other side of it, 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 can't do it all. So what's important? What's less important? And then really saying, take your time off, please. We've had a number of workshops in the organization. We had Chester Elton and Adrian Gosnick 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 Calm app? The

Calm app, yes.

Yeah, yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it.

So we gave everybody a subscription to that and did workshops on how may you use this 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 rewards to our people. Our employee engagement is higher than ever before. They're more excited about the future than ever before. However, there is a lot of pressure, particularly as you say, in supply chain. That hasn't been easy. But I think again, empathy is important, showing people we care. As you know, I send out a daily message every morning to the tribe, one of inspiration and encouragement.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. Every morning it's for today from. Unfortunately, it's been for today from Poway too often in the last 2 years, but it's wherever I am in the world. We were sending weekly updates and video updates to our tribe, just transparency. Telling them the truth loudly. This is where we are. Brené Brown says, in the absence of facts and data, people make up stories.

Yes.

And that is something that's on my mind all the time. And 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, 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've pulled me off that road very easily. I found myself, I had to keep 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 personal development, as well as business development than maybe some folks are. Are you still teaching your class now virtually? Yeah.

Well, no, we actually taught it in person just a month or two ago. One of the first things we did in our teepee, we held the class at the teepees, but the year before we did it virtually, which was another wonderful experience 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 You know, 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 just on a macro level, I think has taken a toll on people in a way that we have not seen before.

Yeah.

This has been a truly global event. That being the case for other leaders like yourself, making an impact in terms of the organization is more important than it's ever been. It can't be lip service. I put something up on the screen. Not everybody is going to be watching this on YouTube. Some folks are just listening to it. There's sort There's sort of 3 things that I pulled out of a recent case study of a business that was dealing with this uncertainty. And the 3 things were, 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 be living and breathing in the culture. It's tangible, not just something that gets written, put in a frame and put in the break room or something that break room people aren't in now. 2, we have to try stuff. And that means often failing to find out. And I'm sure you've had your share of fail to find outs along the way. In fact, I might ask you to share one of those 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 having those uncomfortable conversations. Uncomfortable in that you keep asking questions beyond the point of it being sort of just politeness. You're so curious. You want to know, how are you feeling? How are 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? So for example, on the resilience side of things, We believe in a recovery map, a simple process where people in those 4 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 at the longest to create a recovery zone for themselves. Again, exploring and asking questions about what a person's rituals are, what their habits are, so that you get a greater sense of whether they're in fact riding on good tires or whether the tires are bald and You know, maybe they know it or maybe they don't know it, right? So first of all, is there a recent challenge that you faced? I'd love to get a sense of how you dealt with it. And then lastly, one ritual that you have for your own personal recovery, given the fact that you're taking— looking after a global organization, that's no easy feat. 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. I think just that simple change in definition of failure has paid off so well for us. We'd be here for months if I was to tell you all the learning moments I've had over time, one of the things that I was born with, I'll thank my parents for, is I don't remember bad very well, which 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 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 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? Yeah.

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 ask myself these questions, 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. I have a code of conduct that resembles that in a different way. It seems like we all have very similar things, a signpost for how you're doing in a particular day.

Yeah.

So that you can again, take the feedback and pivot, recalibrate as needed. Well,

because the world will rip us out if we let it. It will absolutely rip us out. We've got to recenter ourselves.

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 15th flying south. To meet my new granddaughter.

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

What's her name? Boy?

Yeah, yeah. It's Nakoa, named after my late grandfather-in-law, and Nakoa, which in Hawaiian translates to brave one.

Beautiful.

So it is beautiful. It's good to— You

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

Gorgeous. Oh, I love that dress. My God.

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 wanna 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 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 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. 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, 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 To get your own free resilience assessment, go to RankMyResilience.com. Thank you.