Resilience Lessons From A Long Leadership Career With Andy Clement

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, welcome back to another Change Proof podcast episode. I'm Adam Markel. I'm your host, as, uh, as you may know, and I got a great guest today. You're gonna absolutely love this guy, and I'm so looking forward to the conversation. His name is Andy Clement. This is part 2. We actually have a first podcast that we did about a year ago, and this is the second part of that. And well, you're gonna love it. First of all, he just finished up a 33-year career at Kimberly-Clark. where he held roles in sales, marketing operations, corporate strategy, and general management. He most recently was a chief sales officer for the company where he led a team through many go-to-market changes as buyer behaviors have changed. He is also married to a wonderful woman, Diana, and they have 2 grown kids, Jackson and Gracie. Uh, sit back and enjoy this conversation. I know you're gonna love it. I'm gonna love it as well. Andy, this is a round 2 for you and I, so I don't know if you even recall this from round 1, but your bio is impressive. You've done a lot. You've had a really, I don't want to throw this word around lightly, but I mean, you've had a great career, an illustrious career. So all that's clear from the CV and all that good stuff. But what's one thing that is actually not a part of your bio that you would love for people to know about you at the start of our conversation?

Yeah, no, I don't think this is in my bio, Adam, but it is. It's kind of lost probably, but just, I have been very passionate on nonprofit work, especially around areas around diabetes. My daughter is type 1 diabetic. Gracie is her name. And so my wife and I have been involved in JDRF, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, for many years. We had 18 years of walks. In fact, some of the t-shirts on my wall are winning walk t-shirts from the Atlanta JDRF walk from years ago. And then more recently, the past 5 or 6 years, we're involved in City of Hope, which is a great cancer and type 1 diabetes research group out of California. They've recently done some acquisitions and expanded. And so we actually did a lot of corporate fundraising at Kimberly-Clark my last— the last 5 years for City of Hope and actually got inducted into the City of Hope Fundraising Hall of Fame a month or two ago, which you probably didn't even know existed. But that's some of the stuff I'm really proud of that we've done.

Yeah. You know, it's funny, this hasn't really come up in too many of our shows a few times, but I actually think I'm going to lean more into this going forward because there's a lot of people who get involved in these things that we don't always talk about. And in part, I think because it's something we're not trying to point a spotlight on, you know, for obvious reasons, right? I was able to participate in Swim Across America, which was a really— is an amazing charity. And, you know, you get dropped off in the middle of cold water, you know, like in various places, and you got to swim to the shore. And it's much less brutal than it sounds, although— Yeah, it absolutely had its moments. But to do something that way, to be involved in an effort, a joint effort, a truly team effort to raise awareness, to raise money, to do things like that, there's just, you gotta find time. And, and there's a lot of people probably listening to this right now go, you know, I so wish I had the time to get involved in some of those things. And when we're in our research studying what creates resilience and what depletes and erodes resilience, often it is that people don't feel like they're making a big enough difference in the world. And that's one of those areas where you just, it gives you, there's no question. You tell me if this is wrong or not. It gives you so much more than you give to it.

It absolutely does. And I think stepping away from the challenges of being a business leader, it helps you reflect and put life in perspective. And as I finish my chapter with Kimberly Clark, I look back and I'm very proud of some of the things that I was able to accomplish from a nonprofit perspective, quite frankly, probably more important at the end of the day than some of the accomplishments I had within the business.

I mean, it sounds like KC, they gave you either the space or actually encouraged you and others to get involved in these kind of things. Is that right? I'm not so dialed into the innards of KC, but I have you today, so that's— we'll get there.

No, totally. Yeah, I would say giving back has always been part of Kimberly-Clark's values, right, which have been great. We've, we've always been heavily involved in United Way. And it was some of the City of Hope that I brought forward with the team that Kimberly-Clark also embraced and did a lot of matching and supported some of the fundraising and team building we did at our sales meetings that continued with that way of working that's just so important at KC.

That's just beautiful. And do you know what the origin story of that is? Is there something that goes way— I mean, it's a company that's been around a long time, so I don't know if If there are founder stories or those kind of things where somebody on the board that just said, hey, we need to make a bigger difference in the world or something like that. I don't know.

Yeah. Sadly, I don't know, Adam, what the background is there. I mean, a 152-year-old company and I was there for 30 years of it, but it was just always the way it was. It was just kind of assumed that you were going to give back and you're going to support. And it really tied to the culture, not only giving to charities, but just supporting other employees and folks too. It was just kind of the way of working at Kimberly-Clark. And I'm sure we'll continue.

Yeah. I really hope you're enjoying this episode of the Change Proof Podcast. If you've not yet gone out and gotten your own copy of Change Proof, it's not too late. You can get your copy right now by going to changeproof.com and not only getting the book and all the bonuses there, but getting access to our proprietary resilience assessment tool It'll just take you 3 minutes to do, and it's something that will really help you to utilize the book even more effectively to create practices and rituals and habits that will increase your mental, emotional, physical, and even spiritual resilience for the long term. Again, go to changeproof.com to get your copy today. Well, let's start. I think for today, in my mind, the sort of the through line will be life in perspective. Feels like what you said earlier just really rings. So it just resonates with me. Let's start at the beginning. Let's go back to you as an early individual contributor, just getting going. What was that like for you? What did you learn through that phase and stage of your career?

Yeah, probably like the first 10 years of my career, Adam, was, as you said, an individual contributor, which is where most people start in their careers. Right? Right. And for me, it was being a sales rep in Nashville, Tennessee at first, and then eventually becoming a marketer within Kimberly-Clark Professional, our B2B business. But early on, I learned how to deal with customers, how to deal with distributors, how to be a self-starter each and every day, and really learning how buyers think, which I think was a very good lesson for me, even when I was in non-sales and marketing roles at Kimberly-Clark. To always understand how buyers buy, I just always found incredibly valuable. And then as I moved into marketing, it was more broader around how do you market to those folks as well. As I look back, I mean, I had some wonderful mentors in those 10 or 12 years that I would encourage folks to make sure you have, right? Who can really point you in the right direction. Don't have to be formal mentors, right? I mean, these could be people you grab lunch with occasionally, you have a call with, you swing by their office in the old days and just kind of advise you on how to get through things. I also was very fortunate that many times when I was early in my career, somebody tapped me on the shoulder within Kimberly-Clark to have me try a very different role that I wasn't expecting as an individual contributor. And I see a lot of people today sometimes turn those opportunities down because they're not a promotion always, or the money's not as good. But I was so fortunate to have those experiences in my career because it just made me that much more valuable as I moved up in my career and became more of a senior leader. And once again, just the ability to really understand the customer, I just think was so critical. For me as I, as I moved on. I know I already mentioned that, but just wanna encourage that as well.

Yeah. And when you say, you know, the mentors that, that arrived or that you sought out, I feel like there's no formula for that. So funny. You know, I mean, you can obviously construct things within organizations to have to be one-on-one mentorship type. Well, just to, to create a structure around it. And that's always a good thing. I know in my own career, it's like you said, there were some that just arrived. I don't know. They just were there. Funny enough. I kind of feel like that was more than just a little bit of grace, that there were people at different phases that were just sort of there, that I ended up asking questions, that seemed to be willing to answer them. And not just that, but they would seek me out to sort of check in, see how I was doing. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's it exactly. I think you just kind of have to use your gut feel on this person feels like a person I want to, I think I can learn from, right? A good person that wants to help me. And if you use your gut, you're going to be right probably 4 to 5 times. And some of those people, even though they haven't been mentoring me maybe for 10, 15 years, we still connected. And as I left KC, it was amazing how many reached out and said, hey, it was great getting to know you. I knew you'd be a success, or I knew you were valuable, somebody that I could provide value to earlier in your career. So it's been special to kind of get those comments as well here at the end of my career.

Yeah. I want to sort of just create a little parenthetical in the conversation about that and actually sort of dive in on a psychological level, perhaps. Why? And get your thoughts on why do you think people at early stages of their careers, maybe today at the first 10 years. Now there's some folks that are listening to this go, that's not, that's not what I'm after. I want to be way up the ladder or doing some pretty big things, important things long before the end of a 10-year period. Yeah. But let's just say back to to an earlier paradigm, I think that was reasonable. You know, you start in your early 20s, by your early 30s, there were some changes happening. Whatever the timeframe is, why do you think people sometimes don't find those mentors? Those mentors don't find them even. Any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I think some aren't looking for them. Some people just want to figure it out on their own, I think, and be self-starters, which can work. But man, I think it's just a miss. Maybe it's the American spirit, just like, I will do it myself type thing. Right. But And I don't want to lie. I'm sure parts of my career I did some of the same thing. But looking back now, I really was very thankful for a lot of those mentors. Does that make sense to you? I mean, what do you think?

Andy, you're— we're sharing a brain here because we're something. I feel that there's maybe the thought that if you are more rugged and individualist and you can create stuff on your own, that people will think better of you. And in the end, that's a sign that you are more of a leader. Maybe you're tapped sooner because you're not showing signs of vulnerability or any— I think it's just what you said. It's this idea perhaps that somehow it's a faster road to the top alone. And I have found out myself that that's definitely not the case through difficult experience, but also had, again, that looking back, these mentors that were there in part because I guess I was looking for, but more likely I think it was that If there's a certain humility, and I, I come searching for a word in my head right now, but that's the word that comes up for me. This idea that if you are not seeming to be like, you know it all, you have all the answers. I mean, so for me it was in the legal profession. I was an attorney. And, and so coming outta that and being in an office with a bunch of very seasoned attorneys, I had to walk around not so much like a guppy because in that arena you can really get eaten up pretty quickly. And by your adversaries, Or by a paralegal or whoever, certainly by judges, you know? So there's an element of putting on a bit of an air or, you know, wearing that armor, et cetera. But I think there was also a part of me that was coachable, that the outside people could see that I was willing to listen and learn. And because of that, this one particular guy whose name is Ed, he just stepped forward and he was probably the most gruff of every attorney there. He'd been practicing 40 years in a proverbial down the hall, had to walk a mile to get to his corner office, walk into his office, And half the time he was there with a putter. That guy, he would poke his head into my office. Like he would say something I probably wouldn't even say on, you know, like now, right? He would just say, how you doing? I think he would call me Momo. He'd say, how you doing, Momo? And besides from laughing at it and wanting to say, I'm good, I'm great. Thank you. Thank you so much for checking on me. I would say, yeah, you know?

Yeah.

He would say, come on down to my office when you get a minute today. And then I would take the long walk down to his office, sit in the chair, and he would pontificate sometimes, or he would tell me about a case that was going on. And then one day, I know I'm going on here, I'll end this in a second. One day after sitting through one of those stories, he literally took a file, you know, big red well was sitting on the end of his desk and he just pushed it at me and said, I got something I want you to handle for me. And that's how that sort of unfolded. Do you have a story like that kind of mentoring along the path for you early on? Similar?

Yeah. I mean, I can think of a mentor named John at KC. Very similar, actually. He would pull me in or I'd see him in the hallway and he'd say, hey, Andy, how's your business? At first I would just, oh, it's really good, corporate speak. And he'd say, no, no, no, no, Andy, how's your business? Like, talk to me. What's good? What's bad? And we built up a trust that way, right? Where I would say, hey, here's what's good, but here's what I'm really challenged with. This wasn't a boss. This was a guy in a different department, a more senior person than me, but not the president of the company or anything. And we had some really good conversations. And I'm pretty sure behind the scenes over time, he also became kind of an advocate for me. Right. Say, hey, I think it's time for Andy to move on to something different. Right? And that certainly wasn't how I had expected it to be, but I was glad that, as you say, I was humble enough to kind of accept the need that I would need mentors like John. And it paid off.

Beautiful. So at some point it does pay off and you move on. Tell us about that transition into—

Yeah. Yeah. So probably like the next, I don't know, 7 or 8 years of my career was moving into middle management where I was actually going to be managing people. And this is not the way it is just at Kimberly-Clark. I think it's safe to say this happens in all industry, is that great individual contributors are thrown into middle management and you have to learn how to swim typically on your own. Okay? There's very little training for you. And typically your first instinct is, well, I was a great individual contributor, so I'm going to do individual roles for the 8 people that work for me to make sure the team succeeds. And thankfully it did not take me long to realize that that was going to be the quickest way to failure. So instead I had to really focus on my team and I found that you have to really Pick your people effectively. Sometimes that can be hard. I mean, it's heavy lifting to have to change your team or to coach somebody who's maybe more senior than you or potentially more experienced in the function than you are. But if you don't do that, you're going to have a challenge as a middle manager, I learned. And then once you have the right team, empower them, right? Unleash them, let them go. You've chosen them. And that may at times mean they stub their toe and have to be resilient and learn resilience, right? But it pays off in the end is really what I learned.

So back to the idea that an individual contributor comes in and they're good at their thing, and that's why they got promoted. And we get that, but they're not given a lot of support at that moment, not just to continue doing what they've been doing well, but now they're working with other people. They're in charge of a team's effort and a team's result. So I want to cover 2 things. One is, why doesn't it work? to have everybody just hit home runs the way you were able to hit home runs. If I can do it, everybody in this group can do it. If everybody in this group does it, we're 8 times better and all that kind of stuff. Why does that philosophy just fail in your experience?

I just think managing a team is a different skillset than managing yourself, right? I mean, kind of easy to manage yourself, right? You're in control of what you do, right? Whereas when you're managing a team, Especially in today's workforce. It's a diverse team. We want diverse teams because they produce better results, but you're going to be managing probably 8 to 10 people that are not exactly like you, right? And you've got to kind of learn what makes them tick, how they're different, and how you can get the most out of them and really coach them up. And that's just a different skillset that it, that most people don't quite understand when they're thrown in to be a team leader.

Right. And this is more of a, it's not so much a rhetorical question, but it's an enigma that we don't have a solution to at the moment, right? It's more the prevalent experience that people in those middle-level roles are not provided the kind of training and development opportunities that people that are more senior are offered. So what's your theory on that? I mean, after 30-plus years in a prolific organization, why does that still proliferate elsewhere? What do you think?

It's a great question. I just don't think people make it a priority to invest there. I mean, after years of having challenges with this more in a senior leader role, we did decide to prioritize a team that actually helped onboard and coach managers, a capability team to do that. Because in sales, it's critically important, right? I mean, the sales manager is arguably much more important than the head of sales for making sure things get done. So we did add a role there that would coach these folks, not only the brand new people, but the veterans who in many cases had been doing it wrong for many years. But I don't think a lot of companies do that. It's an additional expense and they'd rather To what extent

do you think that that is a mistake? And I'm not asking you to be critical of Kimberly-Clark. I just think philosophically speaking, is this a miss, do you think, for the sort of organizations generally speaking?

I think it is. And this is by no means a Kimberly-Clark only issue. I mean, I think most companies deal with this. Certainly many of the ones I've talked to have been in similar positions, right? And you talk to any consultant when you take over a senior they're always going to say your middle managers are the folks you got to get the most out of, right? So it's a common opportunity for improvement, I would say.

Yeah. In my experience, what I also see is that the number one reason why people are dissatisfied with their jobs, with their roles, especially early in their career, is tied to who their manager is, tied to the— so when you get so much feedback that people are unhappy with who manages them. You go, okay, so losing people, is that efficient? I mean, it's really costly to have a turnover, right? Isn't it?

Big time, especially in sales. You have an open territory for 6, 12 months. If you don't get this right, it can cost the company a lot of business, a lot of opportunities. So absolutely is just a critical opportunity for, I think, most companies to continue to focus on.

And so you were in that role for almost like another decade, is that right?

Yeah, I did maybe 3 or 4 different roles in middle management. I actually started running a product development team and I knew nothing about product development. So that was interesting, managing product developers for 10 years. I couldn't do their job. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise. I had to learn how to coach and teach versus go and develop products because I was a sales and marketing guy. But I also held middle management roles in supply chain, in strategy, and then in general management. within the business too.

Yeah. So again, people that are listening to this that are managing their own career at this moment, they may be asked to do something that's clearly outside of, not just outside of their comfort zone, that could be for sure, but outside of their expertise, outside of their core competencies even. So you were asked to do that. Tell us what that situation was like for you and how you ultimately came to say yes to that, even though potentially The pitfall was, I'll suck at this, I'll fail, and then I'll have stalled my career because I made this wrong decision.

Yeah. I had a really good boss at the, my last individual contributor role, and she was like, Andy, you can do this. This would be great. And I had had a career progression where the next thing had to be a middle management job. I was ready for that. And it was just something that was badly missing from my resume. So I took kind of a leap of faith with discussions with my boss and her boss, as well as just knowing this was the thing I needed to do. And I was nervous, right? I guess it was an early career pivot, dare I say, Adam, you know, but I had to learn new things, create new rituals, but I was happy I did it and it paid off.

Yeah. Now it almost tracks, not quite identically, but you're about to celebrate 30 years of marriage, right?

I am. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Later this year.

So you, so you were at Kimberly-Clark a couple of years, 2, 3 years before you got married. Is that right? Yeah.

Yes, I was.

Okay. So at this point, In taking that leap of faith, I'm asking you a personal question, clearly. What was that like with your spouse at the time? You know, like, did that idea that, you know, this is a bit of a pivot right here, was that a conversation you recall having?

Oh, we probably had about 30 conversations. Year and a half, 2 years worth, right? But no, I mean, obviously, but I think you say this in the book, I mean, that you have to have people like your family and your spouse on your side if you're going to make a pivot like that, right? And my wife Diana was incredibly supportive. listened to me, gave me confidence to make the pivot as well as just, I knew she'd be on my side and she has been through that. So critically important, as you say in your book.

So let's go right into now senior, senior level stuff like that transition into a senior leader. Give us the gist of that transition and then some things that you've learned along that path because you're getting into the problem solving is much more complex. Is that fair to say?

Definitely. Definitely. So yeah, I mean, you're basically moving from first is managing yourself, then it's managing teams, then it's managing managers, right? So you got several layers then involved. And so one of the things that I learned through the years is that you have to really clearly and frequently communicate with a large organization when you're a senior leader, right? And it needs to be a combination of things because people don't grasp things the first time. Right? You send an email, you're like, ah, everybody's got it. Haha. Right? I mean, there ain't nobody got it. Right? So you have a conference call or video call, maybe a few more get it. So you just— the importance of communicating, especially during turbulent times and change, which is pretty much always, I learned was really, really important. And for us at Kimberly-Clark Professional, especially during the pandemic when so much changed quickly, the ability to communicate and really be clear and genuine was critical. And I've had so many people as I've left KC say, Andy, this is really a strength of yours. We really appreciate all you did there. So that was certainly one thing I learned. I mean, the importance of talent does not go away. We talked about really needing to get middle managers on your side, and that I think becomes more and more critical as you become a senior leader, is making sure you're really picking and training those right people. And then as a senior leader, I mean, you can't work on everything. You've got to pick a couple things that are big for the business on your strategy or implementing the strategy. that you're gonna focus on and you gotta really empower your team to do the other things that are sort of important, right? But not as important. Because if you don't do that, I mean, you're gonna work yourself to death, right? So every year I tried to pick the top 2 or 3 things that could improve, in my case, our global sales organization that I really wanted to lean in on, and I was gonna let my team manage the rest. So those are a few things that come to mind. Do those make sense?

They do. And I want to be redundant and repeat and reiterate. So I got it right and everybody else gets it right too. The importance of communicating and communicating redundantly, meaning I think it is a mistake when you think that to repeat something or say it in some different way or check in with people to see that they've got it, that somehow or another that might even be demeaning or a waste of time to do those things. And I agree with you. I think you're setting people up for success. By repeating what's important and then checking in and making sure people are reading from the same page of music that you are. So that was one. Exactly. The second one I heard was focusing on talent, which is, I think, again, this really important band in the middle of really thinking about how you support those managers that are managing others, whether it's through training or it's through mentorship or it's through just being on a listening tour. Again, just trying to hear what's really there to And then the last thing I heard from you was, you know, picking 2 or 3 things, but picking just a few wildly important goals. I think from The 4 Disciplines of Execution, which is a wonderful book, they talk about the WIG. We talk about that a lot at our company too. What are those 2 or 3 things that you focus on so that there is focus and there, it isn't just trying to sort of shot like a spray of things that are all equally vital?

Totally. Totally. And that's another thing to really communicate. Hey, this is going to be the 3 things. We used to put out a growth agenda every year that said, these are the things that we're really going to focus on this year. This is where Andy's going to lean in. And so nobody's trying to guess what I'm focused on. And often if it wasn't on that list, I'd say, hey, appreciate it. You can work on that, but that is not something that Andy Klamet has the time or bandwidth to do this year. Yeah.

This may be a tough question, but if you could think of one thing that was the hardest thing that didn't happen just once? I'm not looking for like one pivot story in essence, but in the role as a member of a senior leadership team, is there one thing that is the hardest part of that role? Not every day, but just throughout a 10-year period in that role, this thing showed up a number of times. What was that?

Yeah, I think, I mean, over the course of 10 years, buyers have changed a lot. We all know that. Think about how we buy stuff today at home versus where we were 10 years ago. And in B2B, it was the same way. I mean, buyers were buying from different customers, buying in different ways. And so we had to make some organizational changes several times through the years, not because we wanted to be bad people, but because buyers were changing. And for the future of our business, we needed to do that. And those are always just so hard. You have to make changes to an organization, whether it's moving people in roles or cutting roles. I mean, it was just extremely painful to do, but just something that a lot of companies have to do, especially if there's a lot of change like there has been in B2B buying over the past decade. So that's what comes to mind.

Workforce reduction is something I just finished a book that I recommend. I'm going to recommend everybody listening to this. And Andy, I don't know if you've read this thing. It's called Shoe Dog and it's the memoir, sort of the business memoir of Phil Knight, who's the founder of Blue Ribbon I think it was Blue Ribbon Industries or something like that, but better known today as Nike. And so it was sort of like, I don't know, 10, 12 years or something. It was Blue Ribbon. I'm not giving anything away, but it's a fascinating story of how it starts and all of it. And Phil is a very charismatic leader and an entrepreneur and business owner, et cetera. In reading that book, I feel like at the end of all the things that he looks back on, With some element of regret, because I think it's what the actual word he uses. It's the fact that he, and I love that he said this. Now, I trust that these were truly his feelings when this ended up in the book, that he felt like at a certain point, at points, he wasn't a good enough operator. He wasn't a good enough manager himself to have avoided this, these inevitable changes to the organization that resulted in people losing their jobs. And that's a humble statement. It can ring hollow for anybody that's ever lost their job and think, well, it's easy for somebody else to say, you know, I'm so sorry and wish this hadn't happened. And it's really on me. It's really about you, or it's on us. It's not really about— but I felt it was genuine. And that's why I'm saying it now. I thought it was a credit to say that and to acknowledge that along the way, along the path to billions and billions of dollars of success, that there are also these other stories of people have been left on the side of the road. Yeah. Their pivot stories are different and hopefully those, when they look back 10 years hence from those moments, they're going to say, that was the greatest thing that could have happened to me. And I only say that because in the worst of the pivots in my life, from a business or a financial standpoint, I look back on those, say those were the best moments. Those are the most important moments in my development. But you can't know that or feel that when you're in the middle of it. It's tough.

So well said. So well said. I mean, most cases when people change jobs or leave a company, I've seen they end up in a better place. I would say 99% of the time, right? But for those months when you're going through it, it is incredibly painful. Incredibly painful.

Which maybe is a good lead into just the concept of being resilient and staying resilient in a career that is long. I mean, it's going to go quickly. Here's a spoiler alert for everybody who doesn't have my hairstyle and wherever you are, it's going to go a lot More quickly than you could possibly imagine. So, okay. But wherever you are right now, the resilience component, in my view, is going to depend on how resilient you are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually speaking. So I'm going to ask you, a man that has had a long and illustrious career, how have you been resilient? What does resilience look like? How's that taken on a life within your, within your career, Andy?

Yeah. I mean, first of all, you're right. 30 years goes incredibly fast. I mean, I can't even believe we're having this discussion in many ways, right? But I think for me, it was really making sure I was taking the time outside of work for myself. We talked a little bit about the charity work at the beginning that I was involved in. Exercise, a lot of time with family, talking to my wife Diana and our kids, spending time with God, leading a small group for North Point Church, which we've done for 10 years every Sunday night at our house. All were things that helped put life in perspective and helped me talk through it with other people that I think really helped a lot. The other thing I'll raise up is that I've always had this mentality that I instilled in my kids at a very young age around clements never lose. And it's not what you think when you hear that. What I told my kids, and this is when they were in elementary school, after the Little League game or the test or ready to ask a girl out, was, If you have a Clements never lose mentality, that doesn't mean you win every time, but if you learn from your mistakes, you will never lose because you will not make the same mistake again and you'll be more confident in your decisions. And I mentioned that at a couple Kimberly Clark Center Stage presentations around Clements never lose and Casey Peers never lose with the same idea. Hey, sometimes we may not get every sale, but if we learn from that, we're going to be that much better in the future. And so that's kind of a mentality we used in my family and we still talk about it 20 years later.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so powerful as a dad, even as a, you know, somebody that we are always in sales. That's what business is. You're in sales.

Yes.

And even internally in our company, it always kind of, I want to win. Probably got that from my dad and from being in the schoolyard and just competing in sports and things like that. But we can't win all the time and it's not even fair, honestly. The guy that— the center, he's an NBA center, and he plays for the Bucks, for the Milwaukee Bucks. Do you know who I'm talking about?

Giannis.

Giannis, right?

Yes.

All right. So, so I was trying to get his last name, but I can't. I can't pronounce that. Rather than screw it up and just say, okay, it's Giannis, right? When they went out last year, it's kind of a famous YouTube video of him being kind of grilled by the media about losing when they were expected to win. He's expected to be the MVP and all that kind of thing. And he said a bunch of things. But one of the things that he said was, it's not always your turn to win.

Yeah.

That's an element of competing that other people get to win as well. I mean, it's not always your turn. And I think it does, it puts it in perspective as well that it's not losing to lose, provided you are able to learn and apply experience and move forward. Where is the loss in that? And he was getting at the same thing. We in our company, we think of it as a not now. That's what we call it when there's a the equivalent of a no. It's a not now. And I think that's a nice— it frames it in those terms because it's not never, it's just not now. Right. And it's not now in this moment. It's not now with that particular company or with that particular individual. It makes a big difference. I'm a believer in the power of words. It's not just semantics. And so people who are listening to this, you say, oh, you know, that might sound good. You know, that might be good for I don't know, a presentation, but with my teams, are they really gonna chew on that or is it gonna seem like, I don't know, too Pollyanna-like? I could just say that, that our teams love that. It's a language change. We don't think about closing sales. I know it's an old expression, been around forever and ever and ever. We think about opening, opening relationships. That's, but again, reframing, using language, applying language like Clements, don't lose. It's a big deal in terms of what creates resilience when the storm is hitting. Because when the wind's blowing and everything is rocky underneath you, or feels like that, you gotta have stuff that immediately puts you in the right headspace. You gotta be able to think rightly, you know, be the eye of the storm. And so many people I see, they don't have that capacity in part because they don't have, have not prepared ahead of time. with language like that to be ready for when change occurs. Do you lean into that too, Andy?

Totally, totally buy into it. And which was kind of some of the thinking there with the statement, but change is going to happen in your life and in big companies. 90% of it is out of your control. You just got to learn, you just got to be ready for it and deal with it. So totally agree.

Those are the situations where sort of it's pivot by default. Stuff happens. There's also pivot by design, and you've designed a pivot, which I want to chat with you about for a minute here too, which is you announced your retirement a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

And it's just recently come to pass, right?

March 1st. Yeah, sure, sure has. Yes. So no, I mean, great career at Kimberly-Clark, but just kind of ready to do something different. Wanted to make sure I was continuing to learn and grow, have a growth mindset, right? And kind of felt that as much as I love the Kimberly-Clark people and our customers, that maybe I was working hard, but not growing and learning like I had been maybe earlier in my career. So I'm in the process of figuring out what that pivot is going to be, doing a lot of things. I reread The Pivot book, and actually, I feel like I'm doing some of the things that you list in the book, right? Finding that new ritual since I'm not in meetings from 7:30 AM to 6:30 at night every day. You need a new ritual, right? Similar to my career, working on new mentors, people that maybe are 1 to 5 years ahead of me that seem to super happy with their life and talking to them about what their secrets are, having left maybe a big company because no one pivots alone, right? And then lastly, just making sure I'm taking some baby steps to get started on the new career. And in doing so, I've started an LLC, doing a little bit of consulting work to get going as a baby step.

Yeah. And considering your stakeholders as well, right? I'm thinking to the content and pivot as well, and, and it, you don't do it alone. You do it as It's part of a team. So again, when you think about where you are in your life right now and your career, and I say this to the audience listening or watching and/or watching, that mentality that sometimes we think we gotta go it alone. It's not just that it could get in the way of success then or now for you, but later on when thinking about what comes next or what might be next involves other people. Again, it'll involve that collaboration and that Humility. But if you're not practiced at that, if that's going to be really a tough fit for you, the solo road will probably be what is left. It's more what you lean in, you know, by default, it's your mode of being. And I just feel like we ought to know early on, as early on as possible, how important it is that we are cultivating relationships with others, that we are willing to be always in some stage of openness to learning and growth. Otherwise, it can be tougher, I think, that way. Totally true. So nobody has this crystal ball for the road ahead, right? But you, you are making a conscious choice to go into the unknown for yourself right now because growth is, it's really the only path. It's the beginning path, it's the end path, it's all of that. So any thoughts, just because maybe this is a mile marker that we look back on, you and I, maybe there's another part to our conversation. We look back and go, remember that day we talked about this? You know, what, what it was, what was going on in your head back then? So vulnerably speaking, are there concerns that you've got? Are there things you're super just excited about? Like, because you have, you are replacing a ritual of being really on task for a particular, in a structure that exists now for 152 years. And you have detached from that sort of mothership. So what is this new ritual like for you? What are you already experiencing that you could share with us?

I mean, it is frightening, but it is exciting is the way I would describe it. When I first— this started happening a month or two ago and I'm like, I've only got 8 emails a day versus 150. I mean, it was like, it felt great, but it was scary, right? But hey, I've lost 10 pounds. My blood pressure's down. I am getting a chance to do things that I've not had a chance to do, read books, listen to a lot more podcasts, learn in areas that I know I need to grow on, continue to go somewhere else. And as you said, I've just found so many people who have been willing to help and offer suggestions in a positive way. Some of them were colleagues and friends or mentors from Kimberly-Clark who have subsequently retired or moved on to their next phase, and others are just people that kind of come out of the woodwork. But I've been really blessed to have many folks over the last 60 days kind of step into my life. And offer suggestions. But I would be lying if I didn't tell you that there's not a moment every day that I'm like, oh boy, is this the right thing?

Awesome. Andy, I can't tell you how much I know I've gotten so much out of this conversation. I just have a, maybe it's an intuition or a sense, just a gut feeling about the fact that there are a lot of people listening that just needed to hear what you shared with us today. So I so appreciate you being on the show again and for our relationship.

Thank you, Adam. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate you having me on.

I would say that that theme, the through line for this discussion today, this podcast with Andy Clement, was really a life in perspective. We really just chronologically captured his entire career. I say that boldly, but we did cover a lot. We really looked at the insights that he learned, the kinds of things that he developed as skills and the wisdom of having Been an individual contributor for almost a decade, a middle-level manager for another decade of his career. And then finally, sort of the last 12, 13 years of a career with Kimberly-Clark in many senior-level roles, running a giant sales organization, really looking at buyer behaviors and making adjustments, having to do a lot of things, learn a lot of new skills, develop a lot of acumen in business and in people management, really in people leadership. I love the conversation. We talked about the professional side as well as the personal side, talked about how we stay resilient, how we create resilience and stay resilient in our careers. I think there's a lot of insights there that you're going to want to lean into, maybe re-listen to, share with other folks. Of course, if that rings true for you, we talked about how it is that we develop these capabilities and we lean into the middle area of our career. of many careers as well, and the fact that there's a lack of training often for that section. So if you're there, if you're not yet there, if you're past that point and you're in roles, leadership roles yourself, I think it's wise to be thinking about how you support those rising leaders. And we talked about just so many things that I think are relevant in our personal pursuits today, how we want to achieve and what it takes to achieve outside of business, but also Right there in, in our roles, in our jobs. For many of you that own your own businesses, perhaps even in those entrepreneurial or side hustle pursuits, I think there's just tremendous wisdom. I love this conversation. Andy Clement is just such a solid guy, as you can tell. I don't think he would've had the career he did, epic career with an amazing company that's been around for 152 years. Talk about resilience. KC's been around a long, long time, resilient brand, and no doubt better for the fact That for more than 3 decades, they had Andy Clement in important roles. So kudos to them and kudos to you all as well for leaning in, for listening. We love the fact that you're part of this expanding community. We wanna support you in every way we can. So of course, we'd love to get your thoughts. You can always go to adamarkel.com/podcast to leave a comment or a question for myself or for one of our guests. Take advantage of our resilient leader assessment. by simply going to rankmyresilience.com. That's an entirely free tool resource for you and for members of your team, even for members of your family, frankly. rankmyresilience.com, and that's there for you. If at all possible to take a moment and provide a, a review or a ranking on the platform that you listen to this podcast, it helps the algorithm to help more people to find our show, to join the community that you're a part of. So thank you so much for taking the time to do that. We really just could not grow without all of you. So thanks again. Ciao for now, and have a beautiful rest of your day.

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.