0:00:01.05 Junior: So, Tim.

0:00:01.25 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:00:02.21 Junior: I heard there's a recession coming. Really?

0:00:04.15 Timothy Clark: You heard that? Yeah, I hear I've been hearing that for ten years now.

0:00:07.26 Junior: Me too. It seems like every day of every week of every month and year, there's rumor of a recession. The reason I bring it up is because when it does happen. Yeah. This next recession, That is imminent. Apparently 91% of companies will do one of two things they will fail, or best case, they'll eke out performance equal to what they were doing before.

0:00:31.28 Junior: Now, this is from some empirical evidence, which is really interesting.

0:00:35.26 Timothy Clark: And this is based on what the last economic cycle.

0:00:38.22 Junior: No. Several 80. We'll talk about this 90 and 12.

0:00:44.18 Timothy Clark: Okay. So they put them all together.

0:00:46.03 Junior: Yep. Okay. So the only 9% of companies emerge stronger after a recession. So what does this make you think?

0:00:56.03 Timothy Clark: So one out of ten, one out of ten emerge stronger. Nine out of ten are eking it out or even failing. Yep. It reminds me of, I think, the pattern that we saw during the pandemic. Junior, you go back to the pandemic. You have an event that kind of liquefies the status quo. And so as we looked at an organizations and we were working with organizations, what were they doing?

0:01:23.13 Timothy Clark: I thought a very clear pattern emerged where you had a very few that were accelerating. What was everybody else doing hibernating? Hibernate was like, go get in your bunker. We're going to wait this thing out. Very interesting response patterns. Yeah.

0:01:43.07 Junior: Really interesting response patterns. So there's an article called roaring, roaring Out of Recession. There's a lot of HBR 2010. They in this study analyzed 4700 public companies across those three recession periods. I mentioned 1890 and 2000, about 9% of them flourished after each downturn, outperforming industry peers by at least 10% in sales and profit growth. So that's the way that they categorized them.

0:02:10.15 Junior: So we can tell, that 10% that you called out responded differently to the stimulus. The stimulus was something that liquified the status quo. We have a recession that's disadvantageous for almost everyone. It's inherently advantageous, probably for some companies, depending on what they're doing and what the situation is. But for most, it's going to be a bad event.

0:02:35.28 Junior: Yeah. And yet there were 9% that roared out of the recession and catapulted growth. Experienced the same set of circumstances. And I'm sure that this happened across many of the same industries where you may have been competing in the same space. And it's not just that one industry came roaring out of the recession. But organizations across industries did that were competing for the same dollars playing in the same market, and yet respond differently to the situation.

0:03:08.15 Junior: So the title for today's episode, we've narrowed it down to two. I guess you'll see.

0:03:14.05 Timothy Clark: Okay, I guess you can make a choice. Yeah.0:03:16:16 Junior: But we had the adversity advantage or the stability stress paradox, and we've been going back and forth. How do we position this episode? And as I was thinking about this topic originally, I put the adversity advantage and I thought, well, this is going to be great. We'll talk about these organizations. They went through hard things and they come out better.

0:03:36.04 Junior: But it seemed a little trite because it's talked about so much hard. Things are good for you. Really lean in, right? It's going to purify the organization and you decide, yeah, but it's not enough. So I wanted to go a little bit deeper and talk about the other side. So there is this thing which we'll discuss today called the stability stress paradox., which is another layer.

0:04:00.22 Junior: It's a level deeper that I think is going to be an interesting conversation to have. So the premise is that adversity is fertile ground for growth, yet we're hardwired to avoid adversity when adversity comes. What are we hardwired to do? The very thing that you mentioned hunker down.

0:04:23.13 Timothy Clark: Survive, hibernate, hibernate.

0:04:26.11 Junior: And this is.

0:04:26.22 Timothy Clark: Biological. Yeah.

0:04:28.06 Junior: So the cool thing here, and the irony is that you're hardwired as a person to avoid adversity. Yet adversity is the very thing we need to progress. The point here is that it's biological, and that's where we are going to spend a little bit of time today unpacking this, because there are things that the listener or you I need to overcome in order to take advantage of the adversity.

0:04:53.27 Junior: And we need to pair that with some stability. So what do you think about this topic generally as we jump into it today?

0:04:59.29 Timothy Clark: I think one of the most important things, junior, is that if you think back, well, if you think about the organizational response to when adversity strikes, the organizational response is a function of the executive team's response, really, because they have enterprise level responsibility to figure out how, how, how do we direct this organization? Where do we go? And so as a team, they're responsible to do three things.

0:05:29.06 Timothy Clark: We all have to do this at an individual level. An organizational level. Adversity strikes. You got to identify it sometimes. Well if it's if it's a big, big thing right. If a hurricane rips through your neighborhood, you don't need anyone to help you identify that. But that's always step one. Identify. Step two interpret. Step three respond. And so somewhere along the line, if you look right, the 90% versus the 10%, they're doing this differently than the 10% are looking at the adversity.

0:06:05.03 Timothy Clark: And they're saying at some level this is fertile ground for growth. And the others are not. So identify, interpret, respond. That's not happening in the same way.

0:06:19.22 Junior: Yeah.

0:06:21.01 Timothy Clark: And again I just want to say the organization response is really the collective response of the executive team. And let's say that's ten people, you know, they have to come together. They have to interpret and respond. And that's what's happening.

0:06:38.17 Junior: Yeah. So in this slide we say the difference is how each group responds to instinct. I love framing it this way because every person in that scenario has the same instinct and instinct I'm speaking about. Biologically. We're hardwired to avoid adversity, to keep us alive. Yet each of us, presumably listening to a podcast like this, is interested in building something meaningful, an interesting organization that has impact in the world, a meaningful, high performing team.0:07:13:17 Junior: Your biology is not optimized to create anything meaningful in life. That's an interesting point. Your biology is not optimized for you to go and create a competitive organization. Your biology is hard wired you to keep you alive, to avoid the very adversity and pain that's associated with doing anything meaningful. So we have to overcome our biology that's been wired for a couple hundred thousand years.

0:07:43.18 Junior: We have to overcome that to do anything meaningful, not just professionally, but certainly professionally. And to me, that's an interesting point, because like, right now, what's your biological instinct? Is it to be doing a podcast and doing content creation? Was it to hop on a plane yesterday and fly to Canada and be with clients? No. Your hard wiring incentivizes you to stay home and hibernate.

0:08:15.01 Junior: Avoid the pain. Right.

0:08:17.05 Timothy Clark: Push the easy.

0:08:17.27 Junior: Button. Right. But I can't overstate that point. I don't know why I've found this so fascinating but you are not wired to create anything meaningful biologically speaking. Now I believe that there's other wiring that helps you aspire for more. And that's another conversation. But you have to overcome a lot of friction in order to do something meaningful. And that's why we have this difference between the 91 and the 9%.

0:08:43.29 Junior: The 9% experience that impulse to hunker down, to preserve self. And they're able to quiet that and say, actually, we're going to go do this over here because there's an opportunity. They think and act their way through it, and they're able to create something meaningful.

0:09:02.10 Timothy Clark: Well, I think we need to think about constraints though to

0:09:04.12 Junior: because constraints generate well, they may not generate, but they certainly they give us the opportunity to innovate. Innovation comes out of an environment that is constrained right where we have scarce resources. So something's going on differently with the 10% here, because we all experience ofttimes acute constraints and yet amazing, beautiful, creative things come out of those constraints.

0:09:41.05 Timothy Clark: So something's happening in the interpretation and the motivation to respond to those conditions.

0:09:48.15 Junior: Yeah. What do you think the difference is between resilience at an individual level and at a team level? You mentioned the executive team, how they respond to adversity and then that trickles through the organization. Is there a difference between personal resilience and organizational or team resilience?

0:10:07.07 Timothy Clark: I it's a great question. I don't I don't know for sure, but I have been trying to synthesize the resilience research literature when it comes to the individual. And if you do that, what you find is that there are four basic response patterns when adversity strikes. So the first response pattern is that you bounce back quickly and that's fantastic.

0:10:39.08 Timothy Clark: So you're able to respond well and you come back to baseline functioning. The second response pattern is that you bounce back slowly. That means you're going to gradually recover, but you're going to be able to get back to baseline functioning. The third response pattern that you see in the research literature is the bounce back. Never. That means that you've developed chronic symptoms and it becomes pathological, and you're just not able to get back to baseline functioning.

0:11:12.17 Timothy Clark: But here's the fourth one. And this is so fascinating. You bounce forward. This is what we're talking about. So in in clinical psychology and in positive psychology this takes us to the pattern of post-traumatic growth. So is there an organizational equivalent of post-traumatic growth where you bounce forward. Not only do you recover baseline functioning, but you go beyond it.

0:11:41.06 Timothy Clark: And that's what you're talking about with these 10% junior, do I think there's an organizational equivalent? I do, I do I think it's the team is somehow able to mount this response pattern that is post-traumatic growth.

0:11:58.08 Junior: Well, that's where the conversation starts to get interesting in my mind, because you can go tell an individual to be resilient. And in the slide we've got that the capacity to withstand and recover quickly from difficulties. The ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape elasticity. But how does that translate into a team? That's a different question.

0:12:19.14 Junior: Yeah. And it's not necessarily true that a group of resilient individuals equals a resilient team.

0:12:25.24 Timothy Clark: can hear it. Oh, you can say that again. You need to say that again just so people

0:12:29.24 Junior: Well. And the opposite is also true. But if you have a group of highly resilient individuals who exhibit the bounce forward response to adversity, it's not necessarily true that if you put them in a group that they will be a resilient group. Why? Because you've introduced interaction. You've introduced culture. We say that culture is the way we interact.

0:12:55.29 Junior: If you're an individual, you're interacting with no one in a vacuum, right? Just resilient individual. You have some individual adversity. Surely you're interacting more broadly speaking. But we're not talking about that. If it's a team now, there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on. You have people wired to act out of self-preservation, and you're acting them to be resilient as a group and bounce forward, not only for the benefit of the individual, presumably, but for the group.

0:13:23.14 Junior: That's not obvious. Yeah, it's not obvious that all of a sudden we experience some adversity as a group and we as a group lean into it.

0:13:31.28 Timothy Clark: So each member of that team loses control and gains interdependency.0:13:37:27 Junior: Yeah.

0:13:38.18 Timothy Clark: And we have to do this together now I can't go do it by myself.

0:13:42.13 Junior: Yeah. Well, and we're hard wired not only to survive but to belong. And what's fascinating about that is that if the environment imposes something really difficult on the organization, that wiring to belong doesn't go away. Yeah. What has to happen in order for the organization to adapt is that it needs to do something differently, which is counter the belongingness need.

0:14:11.09 Junior: If we're talking about ideation and execution and innovation, that's counter the status quo. Now, that might seem like a lot. There's a lot going on there, and there is. But the principle is that the environment will impose a scenario that requires deviation from the status quo, deviation from the status quo is not something that we like to do as humans, because we're trying to survive and we're trying to belong.

0:14:39.05 Junior: Yeah, that's what a resilient team would need in order to come out as one of the 9%. So there's something going on in the environment that will allow or disallow that outcome. And that's the conversation today, which is the stability stress paradox, which will introduce. Do you think that 9% is about right with the teams that you've worked with over time?

0:15:03.02 Junior: Do you think that about that percentage is accurate, that get through the hard thing and come out better on the other side?

0:15:08.26 Timothy Clark: Actually, do that squares with my experience with teams, right. Which is in most organizations, the basic unit of performance. But I think that that statistic is about right on.

0:15:24.06 Junior: Yeah, it's an interesting one because. I think yeah, probably 10%.0:15:30:08 Timothy Clark: One out of.

0:15:30.19 Junior: Ten, it seems it seems about right. But most people at this part of the conversation would say, okay, now we need to go be resilient and develop a resilient team. But this is where we tend to oversimplify. And I think that this is where the grind culture goes a little bit too far to one extreme, okay. And says, just double down and just work through it and you'll get out to the other side.

0:15:57.12 Junior: But survival doesn't mean improvement. And it doesn't. You may very well make it through the recession or the adversity or whatever thing came your way, but are you actually going to be able to get better? That's a different question. So the stability stress paradox well, let's open it up. This paradox ends a lot of companies and ends a lot of marriages.

0:16:21.15 Junior: Humans need stability. That's what we've been talking about so far. We crave security and predictability. We love familiarity. We love routine. But at the same time we need novelty and we need variety. The same is true with organizations. We need challenges.

0:16:40.06 Timothy Clark: Getting complicated.

0:16:41.02 Junior: Junior? Maybe, but at least it's interesting.

0:16:44.10 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:16:45.09 Junior: We need challenges. We need fresh experience. And so if you were to say to an organization, you're just going to be stable.

0:16:53.22 Tim0:16:54:28 Junior: Well the organization if it wanted to be great isn't going to want that. It's going to stagnate.

0:17:01.16 Timothy Clark: Right. So the reality is that there's no such thing as equilibrium.

0:17:05.24 Junior: Well if there were it wouldn't be good for you.

0:17:08.23 Timothy Clark: And but even so, even so you are either progressing or regressing. There's no status. There's no real stasis in the middle. The stasis ends up becoming a state of deterioration and degradation.

0:17:25.11 Junior: But that's not always immediately obvious from the outside looking in. If you took the most stable organizations we know of, governments are one. What happens in stasis? Outwardly, it may be okay. Inside, they're rotting. Yes, and that's true.

0:17:38.25 Timothy Clark: But that's what I'm saying. Yeah, it's there's, it's.

0:17:41.17 Junior: But you won't see that immediate.

0:17:43.04 Timothy Clark: It's a deception to say that you can run your life or you can run an organization in a healthy state of equilibrium. I don't I don't believe that you're either you're you're progressing or regressing.

0:18:0.16 Junior: And you're progressing or regressing in both times of famine and times of plenty.

0:18:08.00 Timothy Clark: That's right. It doesn't matter with the condition, if it's.0:18:09:27 Junior: Stable or if it's adverse. You have an opportunity to do both of those things. So that's the too much stability. And we stagnate. Now on the other end, too much turbulence and it's chaos. And that's where grind culture yeah becomes extreme now that we don't need a little dose of that right here and there. But if we go too far that way.

0:18:33.16 Junior: You wrote in the notes, tyranny at the extremes, both extreme. That's certainly.

0:18:37.20 Timothy Clark: Tyranny. Both dreams.

0:18:39.19 Junior: So the sweet spot, moderate stress is where innovation and resilience tend to flourish.

0:18:46.00 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:18:46.23 Junior: And often people will lean really into what's impossibly difficult to build the resilience. But if we don't have moderation in the adversity, then we are not going to make the progress that we're going to need to make.

0:19:02.03 Timothy Clark: So here's another way to frame it. So if you think about tyranny at the extreme, at one extreme is boredom okay. But is boredom a state of equilibrium? No. Boredom is a state of deterioration. It may be gradual. It may be slow. You may not be able to see it with the naked eye, but boredom is a state of deterioration.

0:19:25.24 Timothy Clark: The opposite extreme is burnout. Now that's a state of deterioration too. But you can see it right? It's more visible. It's more blatant. Yeah, but nevertheless, you can see the tyranny at both extremes. Yeah.

0:19:38.27 Junior: So as I said, that problem ends a lot of companies. It ends a lot of marriages. Because this is also where great relationships live. Moderate stress. Name a great relationship that you have with anyone that has no stress. There's not going to be one.

0:19:56.27 Timothy Clark: Yeah. Well, since it's going to be it's going to be an acquaintance. It's going to be right.

0:20:04.16 Junior: Right. But it's not it's not a good right.

0:20:06.17 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:20:07.01 Junior: For the sake of the.

0:20:07.20 Timothy Clark: Question, it's not a meaningful relationship.

0:20:10.03 Junior: Yeah.

0:20:10.12 Timothy Clark: Really. It could be someone in your Rolodex.

0:20:13.05 Junior: Yeah, sure.

0:20:13.27 Timothy Clark: Sure.

0:20:14.13 Junior: Sure. But and on the other side, if it's too stress filled, it's certainly not going to be, Right. Excellent relationship. Right. So what's the balance? How do we find this balance? This is where the paradox. comes into play. And this is where it starts to get interesting for leaders who are trying to get better, some of the stability and some of the stress will be naturally occurring in the environment.

0:20:37.11 Timothy Clark: In other words, it chooses you.

0:20:38.25 Junior: It chooses you. You don't know the timing and you don't know the severity and you don't know the duration. That's right. It could happen at any time. You could flow into a season of plenty and things are great. Maybe that lasts for six months, maybe that lasts for six years. It could be turbulent. Maybe that lasts for six weeks or six months.

0:21:0.02 Junior: You don't know there are macroeconomic factors or geopolitical factors. There are talent factors, things that happen at the individual level. The people on your team you don't know.

0:21:11.06 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:21:11.26 Junior: And so what has to happen is that if you are getting too much of either one of those, you have to modulate as a leader. And this is where the skill comes in. If the environment is too static, you have to introduce turbulence. If the environment's too turbulent, you have to introduce some stasis and some stability. Every organization's going to go through at least one existential crisis.

0:21:40.26 Junior: If they can manage their way through that, then one of those three things is going to be true. They they either underperform, they get back to where they were or they do better.

0:21:49.20 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:21:50.05 Junior: But the same is also true for stability. So we talk about adversity as if that's the thing you have to get through. Yet it's also true for stability. That's an interesting point that we don't often talk about. Stability may present the same disadvantage that you think lies only in adversity. You have to look at both as opportunities.

0:22:12.28 Timothy Clark: So there's danger that surrounds stability.

0:22:15.01 Junior: Both as a person and a professional.

0:22:17.20 Timothy Clark: I agree.

0:22:18.13 Junior: Yeah. In a business, in a relationship, you have to have the radar and the alarm's set for either one because if it's too stable, that's a bad thing. What do you think?

0:22:32.12 Timothy Clark: Well, I just think you're going to. The temptation is always during flush times to slip into complacency. And there's therein lies the danger. Yeah, but are the alarm bells going off? Are they alerting us to the fact that there is risk associated with these conditions? Especially. When they don't come immediately. Right. There's suspense between cause and effect.

0:23:06.25 Timothy Clark: And that's a false positive. And it pulls a lot of us in and then we go down. Yep.

0:23:14:05 Junior: Yep. So as a leader we're going to talk about what this means for you. But we talk about man you factoring some stability in the adversity so that your team has something to hold on to. But you also have to manufacture stress. And that's something that you have to learn over time.

0:23:33.02 Timothy Clark: If people don't like that.

0:23:34.00 Junior: No, they don't, but it's something you have to learn how to do as a leader. You do. Because if you're if all is well and good, all is not well and good. That's right. And you have to make sure to introduce some volatility in the environment. So how do you do this as a leader. The first thing that we'll talk about is screening for resilience.

0:23:51.01 Junior: It is infinitely easier to develop resilience in a team that is already resilient at the individual level, than it is to try and develop fragile individuals into resilient people.

0:24:06.10 Timothy Clark: I yeah, I, I can't agree with this more. And, we have learned through trial and error have we JR.

0:24:16.06 Junior: Yeah, we totally have.

0:24:17.29 Timothy Clark: And so we're so that's the question how do you find hungry scrappy B gritty people.

0:24:25.27 Junior: Yeah. And some you know we won't always have the luxury of starting at zero and building a team with an eye toward this. And so we'll talk about that. But if you have the opportunity at least start today by screening for resilience really hard. There are three things that I like to look for when I'm looking for resilience, because it's really difficult to evaluate that on its own.

0:24:49.22 Junior: Right. Just are you a resilient person? These three characteristics I think, are some markers for resilience. One is resourcefulness. What do you do with what you have? Can you do a lot with a little? People who can do a lot with a little tend to be resilient, no.

0:25:10.04 Timothy Clark: Question.

0:25:10.26 Junior: To gratitude. Know who you are relative to everyone and everything else. If you see yourself as dependent and then you have a healthy acknowledgment of your own dependance, you're grateful for what's around you. You're grateful for the help of others. You're grateful for when things go well. That is a marker for resilience. And the last one that I would mention is compassion.

0:25:38.21 Junior: If you understand that other people are people, those people tend to be more resilient because they have an eye toward others. And the way that their interaction affects everyone else in the whole scenario. What do you think about those?

0:25:52.18 Timothy Clark: I think I think it's right on. I think those are accurate markers. Resourcefulness, gratitude, compassion. I think I, I, I think what underlies all of that too, is just high drive. You've got to find someone that has their own generator. That you don't have to babysit at task level accountability. And I think you look for evidence that they have done that in their lives.

0:26:24.15 Timothy Clark: And, evidence of that is when they are able to share with you challenges that they have chosen in their lives. Right? What have they chosen to do? Yeah. When adversity didn't choose them, but they chose it. They chose some stress. They chose some goals. They chose some challenges. They chose some peaks to climb on their own.

0:26:54.05 Timothy Clark: find that. I think that's evidence. Yeah. I think you got to I think you got to

0:26:58.05 Junior: Oh, you totally do. I had the opportunity to teach a youth group here locally, and we were talking about this topic of resilience and an exercise I had them do was to look back at the last five hard things that happened to them and mark the pattern and then use the language that you used. But it would have been useful.

0:27:16.18 Junior: Did you bounce back quickly, bounce back slowly, bounce back never or bounce forward.

0:27:21.25 Timothy Clark: Right.

0:27:22.06 - 00:27:38:26Junior: For each of the five, right? What's your pattern? That is hugely helpful. It is because if you're honest with yourself and you're looking back at the big five things and you're like, well, I still haven't recovered from that one. And that definitely was worse. And that one took me out for six months.

0:27:39.02 Timothy Clark: Yep.

0:27:39.29 Junior: You can see where the opportunity lies and you can do some of that in some behavioral interviewing.

0:27:45.17 Timothy Clark: And, you can.

0:27:46.22 Junior: It's important to do.

0:27:47.27 Timothy Clark: That. You can't.

0:27:48.25 Junior: And if you're screening references, it's a great question to ask if you want to like niche down on the resilience piece. It's a really important.

0:27:56.22 Timothy Clark: It is plus junior, I think that the resilience is a proxy indicator of the person's ability and willingness, both ability and willingness to learn and grow in the future. And that's exactly what you're going to need.

0:28:16.17 Junior: Yep, I it's funny because I've been doing some interviewing lately over the last few weeks, for a couple positions, and I've seen the differences here and what used to not be an immediate no for me is now an immediate no. When I see somebody that is exhibiting some of these behaviors on the wrong side of the ledger, if I see that they're not here to learn like it's almost an automatic no.00:28:43:08 Junior: Yeah. Oh, like you're here to just tell me stuff.

0:28:47.28 Timothy Clark: Yeah. Oh.

0:28:49.21 Junior: Okay. Got it right. Not going to work.

0:28:51.27 Timothy Clark: And the way that we like to frame that junior a leader factor is we like to say that you are demonstrating the habits, the learning disposition, the mindset of an unsupervised learner.

0:29:08.01 Junior: Yeah.

0:29:09.00 Timothy Clark: That's it. Yeah. Are you an unsupervised learner?

0:29:12.08 Junior: Yep. I'm going to hopefully get this right. It's a Carl Jung quote. He said every year before year 40 is just research. I love that. And it makes me think about, you know, who knows is there's anything magical, who knows if there's anything magical about 40. But I've thought a lot about that. And like, what if you lived every day of your life as if you were an apprentice, right?

0:29:40.21 Junior: Yeah, that mindset is a healthy mindset. Imagine seeing someone and man, they would stand out like a sore thumb in the best way possible. You're interviewing somebody who's 50, who's like, I am. I'm here to learn, right? And like, obviously I contribute. I can do these things.

0:29:57.28 Timothy Clark: I don't even expect that.

0:29:59.14 Junior: No, but shouldn't we?00:30:00:27 Timothy Clark: Yes we should. Right.

0:30:02.10 Junior: Especially with how volatile the environment is. Yeah, right. If you look at all of the technology available to you, all of the tools, how is anyone going to be productive if they're not learning constantly? So we can move on from that. But I think it's an important point.

0:30:15.26 Timothy Clark: It is.

0:30:16.19 Junior: Okay. Move from theory to practice. This is step two. So step one was screen for it. That's the easiest thing that you have available to you. Just get a team that already has a lot of those core components. But from there there's still work to do. And this is where we go from being a group of just resilient individuals to a resilient group.

0:30:40.24 Junior: One is strategic distress. This is the first thing that we're going to talk about. Strategic distress means imposing the stress when there isn't any and modulating the stress down when it might be too much. And this is where you have to become really skilled as a leader and monitor that at all times, not only at the level of the group, but at the level of the individual.

0:31:05.18 Junior: If an individual is going through something super high stress personally or professionally, you need to be tuned into that. And maybe there's something that you can do to moderate that. If somebody has been just kind of floating for a little while, not good, you got to go over there and introduce some stress, introduce a deadline, introduce something right on a new assignment, a cross-functional project like you got to go disrupt it and say, hey, Stacy's not good, we've got to go do some stuff.

0:31:32.05 Timothy Clark: We're going to disrupt your equilibrium. That's right.

0:31:35.14 JuniorWhat do you do here? How do you how would you, approach this idea of strategic distress with the team?

0:31:42.04 Timothy Clark: With the team? Yeah. Junior, honestly, it hasn't been much of a problem because we just have project after project.

0:31:49.15 Junior: There's enough environmental.

0:31:50.17 Timothy Clark: Stress, but we have a vision and we look at on on the horizon, and we look at some of the things that we want to accomplish. And there are milestones along the way. Yeah. And so we kind of reverse engineer from there and we say we got to do this and this and this. So I think for us, we never run out.

0:32:08.16 Timothy Clark: Yeah. I think it's more about I think our challenge is the opposite, which is how do we regulate this, the stress so that it's not too much.

0:32:18.14 Junior: Yeah.

0:32:19.05 Timothy Clark: And how do we make the trade offs. It comes back to the trade offs and the triage. Yeah. And allocating the scarce resources that we have I think that's where I find myself more often. And personally that's the same thing.

0:32:32.18 Junior: Yeah. And what's interesting to me as a leader, you will always have an excuse to run around with your hair on fire. Always. There's always something to be up in arms about. There's always something to be neurotic about. But what your team needs often is for you to come into a volatile environment and say, it's okay.

0:32:50.26 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:32:51.27 - 00:33:18:19Junior: You're all right. This can be fine, and you're not going to do that in ignorance, but you can be completely apprized of everything that's going on for the worse and still impose some stability by just showing up with some calm. Right. So I strategic distress I often think about like heart rate zones for endurance training. I'm an amateur endurance athlete.

0:33:18.19 Junior: There are people out there significantly better than I am. But it's interesting to dabble in. And what I've learned is that you have to manage your stress very carefully when it comes to your training impulse. You can't just go and do as much volume as humanly possible and expect the best results, right? In endurance sports, in any sport that's aerobically oriented, you are managing your heart rate zones.

0:33:43.04 Junior: There are five, right? And you'll often see them in a pyramid. The base of that pyramid, your cardio base is going to be zones zero through two, right? That's going to be where a lot of that just grind work is done over periods of years where you're building your aerobic base. From there, you have to go and spend some time in each of those zones at disproportionate levels.

0:34:08.19 Junior: You're not going to spend 50% of your time training in zone five. Your body's going to just get smashed, right? It won't put up with it.

0:34:14.27 Timothy Clark: You can't.

0:34:15.07 Junior: Do it. And if you don't have enough stimulus because you're staying too low, if your heart rate stays at a 125 forever, you're never going to improve. So you have to strategically go to each of those zones and spend some time there. That to me has been so informative as a person, as a professional, after having trained for long enough, because now I have a better on a more nuanced understanding of not just like more is better, right?

0:34:43.26 Junior: No, no, more is not always better. Sometimes more is better. And when it is, go do it. And when it's hard, go do it. But you have to be careful. If you only spend, you know, 5% of your time in zone two and you’re doing threshold and speed work. Too often it goes anaerobic too fast, like you're not going to get the full benefit of the training.

0:35:05.29 Junior: That's a metaphor for life to me. And so you've got to be really careful. And as a coach, right. That's what your coach would be doing as an endurance sport coach. They're helping you program for each of those zones to spend an appropriate amount of time. Is that not the same thing that you should be doing as a leader?

0:35:23.28 Timothy Clark: I think so.

0:35:24.18 Junior: Hey, like you over there, too much zone too. Yeah. You over there too much zone five. Right. You need a week of recovery because you have stress.

0:35:33.15 Timothy Clark: Fractures, right?

0:35:35.03 Junior: Like we.

0:35:35.21 Timothy Clark: Need. And you need to get going.

0:35:37.14 Junior: Exactly like I'm going to go crack the whip over here. Yeah. And I'm going to give you, some money to go to dinner.

0:35:44.07 Timothy Clark: So in other words, you're doing programing.

0:35:46.07 Junior: You are. And that's kind of a cool thing is it's an interesting way to look at it. So heart rate zones and professional development. Who does that. Anything else you want to talk about here in strategic distress.

0:36:0.10 Timothy Clark: I think the with most organizations, you're probably going to find yourself in the position that we find ourselves in. That is how do you there's more to do than you can do. And so you got you got to program that balance. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's going to be the, the challenge for a lot of people.

0:36:24.20 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:36:25.27 Junior: Okay. Let's move on to the next one. Adopt a pirate crew mindset.

0:36:29.24 Timothy Clark: So did you say pirate?

0:36:31.04 Junior: I said pirate. Yep. Murder and plunder. That's what we're going to advocate for. Just kidding. The pirate crew mindset. I like the visual because it helps me understand. Like what? What do I think about when I think about a pirate crew? I think about some swarthy guys that are on a boat that have a mission. And I think the metaphor informs some of what we need to do as leaders.

0:36:58.22 Junior: So I broke down pirate crew into a few different things.

0:37:02.28 Timothy Clark: This is going to be interesting.

0:37:04.24 Junior: Yeah. Where is he going to go? Storms are par for the course. That's one thing that I think about.

0:37:09.04 Timothy Clark: When I like that.

0:37:10.18 Junior: A pirate crew, like if you if you. Yeah. Let's say you're a pirate, right. Let's say when you get on that boat, do you think that you're going to be calm seas.00:37:22:28 Timothy Clark: Yeah. Smooth water. No, no.

0:37:25.01 Junior: Like, you know what you're getting yourself into. Right. And so when a storm comes, it's like, well, it's another one of those, right? Having that mentality of like, I'm getting on the boat. I know what this is going to be like, I think is really helpful because when it does come, you're not gonna be surprised. It's just part of it.

0:37:43.02 Timothy Clark: You prepare for their arrival. You just don't know when. But that's part of the journey. It's part of the adventure. Yeah.

0:37:49.29 Junior: The next one is that we've been here before together. Now I'm imposing some of my own thinking on what I think this pirate crew does and how they think about life, but I think that there's some element of unity right now. There's certainly mutiny that we hear about on the pirate front, but like, think about we're after the same goal.

0:38:09.12 Junior: We each have different jobs, and we have to get through the storm and do the thing to get the bounty right. What do you think about that? We've been here before together.

0:38:23.03 Timothy Clark: Well, I think that speaks to the cohesion of the team. Yeah, the alignment of the team. And there's some track record there. Yeah. They've learned to trust each other.

0:38:36.11 Junior: Yep.

0:38:37.22 Timothy Clark: They know what to do. There's a division of labor as well. So it's mutually reinforcing. So I like that. Can you bring in a new crew member and integrate them quickly? I think you need to be able to.

0:38:51.02 Junior: Yeah.

00:38:51:17 Timothy Clark: It can't take forever.

0:38:52.18 Junior: No, but yet there's still some deference to those who have been around, right?

0:38:56.17 Timothy Clark: Yeah. I agree.

0:38:57.21 Junior: And, Mike, you've got to earn your stripes.

0:38:59.22 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:39:01.06 Junior: But like, there's an element of that that I really like.

0:39:03.17 Timothy Clark: But you got to let people come in and contribute as quickly as they are able.

0:39:09.20 Junior: Right. But like competence. So that's the thing. Yeah. It's they're going to ask great. Can you really hoist the sail. Right. Can you really like man the ship.

0:39:18.18 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:39:19.10 Junior: And if you can't like you're not welcome here right.

0:39:22.28 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:39:23.22 - 00:39:29:29Junior: That's why I like that pirate crew mentality here is like you show up and you can contribute or we don't want you here.

0:39:30.03 Timothy Clark: move on. Everybody starts by scrubbing the deck, right? That's fine, but let's

0:39:34.01 Junior: Yeah, yeah. If you can contribute at a higher level, that'd be great because that's best for all of us.

0:39:38.14 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:39:39.01 Junior: But I think that there is something to that. Hey, we've been here before together. There's some camaraderie. I can lean on you. I know you're going to do your job. I know that you're going to do your job. And I don't have to be worrying about it because we're each going to do our part, and we'll be able to weather whatever's coming.

0:39:55.17 Timothy Clark: I think the other thing that comes to my junior with the pirate metaphor is that you, you're allowing maybe a little bit more autonomy in the way that people do the job. That's what strikes me.

0:40:06.10 Junior: Yeah. There's no rulebook.

0:40:07.20 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:40:08.05 Junior: There's no code of conduct.

0:40:09.11 Timothy Clark: More autonomy to do it. Yeah.

0:40:13.08 Junior: Yeah. And that's part of some of these other. So the ne.t one I have, each crew member has a stake in the outcome. You know, I don't know if this is true. It seems true. Right? I've seen Pirates of the Caribbean, Caribbean, whatever it. Everybody feels the risk. Everybody feels the reward. Right? We're experiencing the downside risk together.

0:40:35.19 Junior: If we don't accomplish the thing, we all don't accomplish the thing. But if we do, like, we're going to pass around the goal together. Yeah, right. Ne.t one. Rough and tumble democracy. Oh, this one I kind of like you throw the rulebook right out because there isn't one, right? There's probably not a list of rules that we're all adhering to in terms of policies and procedures.

0:40:58.16 Junior: There's some unspoken stuff and there are some expectations, but we throw the book out the window, we embrace a little chaos. We take some risks and we move forward. So it's a little bit more gritty than the traditional. Like here is our onboarding manual, right? Like if pirates don't have onboarding manuals, right?

0:41:19.07 Timothy Clark: Yeah. You know what? I really liked the pirate onboarding manual. Yeah, but, like, you open course and there's nothing there.

0:41:28.05 Junior: Yeah, but it's like, yeah, yeah. Or there's some things there that shouldn't be.

0:41:32.23 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:41:34.02 Junior: The next one I put is nothing is sacred. So if something needs to be thrown overboard because the storm's coming, you throw it over. Yeah. We're here to accomplish the mission at any cost, and we're going to do what we need to do to do that. If something needs to go, it needs to go.

0:41:54.10 Timothy Clark: I think. I think it's good to push on this one, junior, because I, we work, we've worked with so many organizations that have been so successful over a period of time that they become extremely risk averse. And it's all about de-risking the organization. And they don't know how to play offense anymore.

0:42:17.23 Junior: Yeah.

0:42:18.13 Timothy Clark: They don't know how to play offense. And so the game is we're trying to avoid losing. Yeah. But we're really not playing offense. And there's it's risk aversion. But it's also there's some complacency there. And it gets very dangerous. Yeah. And so I really like this one because there's right there's path dependency based on the choices that we've made and the strategy that we have and the with the trade offs.

0:42:56.16 Timothy Clark: But you can get yourself in a pretty tough spot as an organization if you keep doing that over time, you have to know and learn how to disrupt yourself, and you have to learn how to change before you have to. And that's not easy.

0:43:14.02 Junior: And playing not to lose is so boring.

0:43:16.23 Timothy Clark: It is pretty boring. It's so.

0:43:18.08 Junior: Boring.

0:43:18.28 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:43:19:13 Junior: Often you're defending a status quo that somebody else made, and it could be the somebody else that made it. Could be you from five years ago.

0:43:27.16 Timothy Clark: Exactly. Right.00:43:28:26 Junior: But typically you did the thing. But what, you're just going to sit here at your castle and defend it.

0:43:34.11 Timothy Clark: You're going to defend what you created. Yeah. It's all defense.

0:43:38.11 Junior: Boring. So boring.

0:43:40.15 Timothy Clark: But hard to do.

0:43:41.24 Junior: Yeah. Like go dare for something more, right.

0:43:44.04 Timothy Clark: You need a new counteroffensive.

0:43:46.07 Junior: Which is this next one? Which is a swashbuckling ethos. Right. I'm going to put this in our offer letter.

0:43:53.03 Timothy Clark: And it's a that's going to be good.

0:43:56.07 Junior: Bold moves, a bit of daring and a strong sense of camaraderie under pressure. And I'm interested to hear what you think about this one. Like a little bit of flair for arrogance right there. There's not there's no pirate like no good pirate is just completely humble. Right? I don't know of any good humble pirate.

0:44:20.15 Timothy Clark: No, they're they're confident.

0:44:22.22 Junior: Yeah. Blackbeard is confident.00:44:24:04 Timothy Clark: Confident.

0:44:25.02 Junior: Yeah. And again, this is not an endorsement for piracy, folks. But just like, hang with the metaphor, but I think that there is something to that. Like there's some we take pride in what we do. Right. There's some forward leaning. There's some offense. There's some drive. There's some ambition. Yeah. And a lot of that that I like is unapologetic.

0:44:45.00 Junior: Like no this is what we're after. This is what we're going for. If your team is sitting playing defense, everything is just on paper. It's by the book. There's no daring, it's safe, it's status. Like, what a waste, what a total waste of your energy. Like go do something. Right. So that's why I put this one in here.

0:45:09.03 Timothy Clark: I'm going to mi. metaphors. Junior for just a minute. Yeah. So we got to bring football into it okay. And I piracy and football I know I know I'm mixing metaphors on for it. You have to be able to call audibles. You read and then you react. Yeah. And sometimes that blows up your playbook. Yeah. Because what's happening becomes so emergent.

0:45:34.06 Timothy Clark: You're not being reckless. You're adapting to the environment. You're you're looking for opportunities and you're acting. You have to be able to do that. Yeah. That's the especially in a in a highly dynamic environment.

0:45:49.24 Junior: Oh I love that because let's say that you're playing offense in football and suddenly they move from zone to man. Right. And the quarterback's got to make the read and make a decision. Maybe calls an audible at the line. It's like, hey, I've got isolation over here. That's where I'm going to go hit my I'm going to do it this way.

0:46:06.05 Timothy Clark: Yeah.

0:46:07.14 - 00:46:12:29Junior: I love that. And if you're a pirate, maybe there's a kraken that you have to deal with, right?

0:46:13.01 Timothy Clark: That's right.

0:46:14.01 Junior: Okay, we'll move on from the pirate. The next one. Narrow. Don't broaden. We'll move through these last three relatively quickly, but this is a failure pattern that I see in a lot of organizations, and it's where I've failed personally before at a level of the team. If you broaden the scope of what you're going after in a time of trouble, you're almost always going to lose.

0:46:37:22 Junior: If you look at the 9% that came through the recession stronger than they were before, the dominant pattern is reduction.

0:46:48.16 Timothy Clark: In their strategy.

0:46:49.18 Junior: They went back to basics, in their strategy, in their personnel, in their product mi.. Right. Jobs comes back to Apple and is like, no, no, like stuff like this. Right. We're going to do ., y, z. That's all that focus is difficult because organizations by themselves proliferate.

0:47:09.22 Timothy Clark: They do.

0:47:10.12 Junior: The stress is an opportunity to reduce. And we should always take advantage of that, even if we don't have to. If the environment is volatile, that means that the team's in a fluid state. It's a great opportunity to be like actually, no, like prune the tree. We're going to cut off this branch. We're going to do this thing so narrow.

0:47:30.23 Junior: Don't broad.00:47:31:12 Timothy Clark: If you don't narrow junior, then what are you doing. By definition there's going to be dilution because you still have scarce resources.

0:47:38.07 Junior: And what does this do when the stress comes. It dilutes every individual. Yeah. So when we're talking about how do you create a resilient group, it's more difficult to create a resilient group if they're responsible for doing more things, if they can hunker down and make sure that their one thing is taken care of and in good hands, great, they're going to be less stressed.

0:47:59.21 Junior: We have a greater chance of coming out the other side.

0:48:02.25 Timothy Clark: Junior, I have a I have a friend that ran a business for many years, and part of his tagline was unlimited services. Okay, so I want you to think about that from a strategic standpoint. After a few years, he found an area and he absolutely focused. So he he did this, in an incredible way. He narrowed. Yeah.

0:48:32.10 Timothy Clark: And he has become so successful because of that. And that's a principle of strategy, right? Yeah. You have to narrow. You have to focus. You need disproportionate amount of attention, energy and resource in a specific area. And then you go, yeah.

0:48:54.08 Junior: Especially in times of stress. The next one is have discussions with no egos and no apologies. Now this is pretty polar, but I think that there are times for this, especially in times of stress. We're going to give each other some grace, and we're going to leave our egos at the door, and we're not going to apologize for our point of view.

0:49:15.16 Junior: We're going to say, this is what I think. Hopefully your egos out the door, hopefully mine's at the door and we can have a real honest, frank conversation. We can move.

0:49:24.15 Timothy Clark: Forward. Yeah, right.

0:49:25.29 Junior: Like the Pirates don't say like, hey. So last week I was kind of thinking, right. And I know that I'm not sure exactly quite how you're going to take this, but. Right. That's not the conversation.

0:49:38.29 Timothy Clark: Yeah. I think you have the wrong island in mind. You need to go to this island, right?

0:49:42.23 Junior: Right, right. Yeah. And so we have to be able to do that and do that quickly. There are times where that is useful and a resilient team is going to demonstrate in this pattern. And I'm going to walk around and tiptoe all the time. And they're all going to be nice all the time for the sake of being nice.

0:49:57.01 Junior: They're going to say what needs to be said. You're going to do so with respect, but we're going to give each other some grace, knowing that we're going after the same thing. And it's not a personal thing. And we've talked about this, and there are other strategies that we can employ, but put bluntly, no egos, no apologies.

0:50:14.08 Timothy Clark: Then we end when we come to a decision and it doesn't go your way. Then we do commit. Yeah. and

0:50:20.04 Junior: Disagree. That's right. And the last one I threw this in here because I, because I wanted to maintain a healthy cash position. I think that too many organizations don't do this. And I think it creates for teams that aren't resilient. There's a broader.

0:50:39.02 Timothy Clark: Macro. We could talk about this for a.

0:50:40.27 Junior: Financial.

0:50:42.06 - 00:50:47:19Timothy Clark: With, with the way that startups are capitalized.

0:50:47.21 Junior: Up.

0:50:48.13 Timothy Clark: And then the discipline that they exercise in the use of that cash.

0:50:53.00 Junior: Yeah, right. So right now we operate out of Lehigh, Utah, one of the startup centers.

0:51:02.09 Timothy Clark: Of the word of.

0:51:02.28 Junior: The world.

0:51:03.17 Timothy Clark: Silicon House.

0:51:04.25 Junior: Silicon Slope.

0:51:05.23 Timothy Clark: That's where we are.

0:51:07.01 Junior: And we have an interesting view into a lot of organizations that are here, a lot of opportunity to meet with founders, to meet with different people in growth stage startups and things that have scaled quite big. We have some big organizations here, too, and I can't emphasize enough the amount of stress that the financial position imposes, regardless of whatever else is going on.

0:51:32.08 Junior: If you have some stressful environment that comes from luck or timing, bad luck or bad timing, and you have a really disadvantageous financial position, you are not going to have as resilient a team as you would if you had taken care of your balance sheet.

0:51:49.00 Timothy Clark: Well, you're not going to be able to weather a storm.

0:51:50.21 Junior: Yeah. So I just wanted to call that out because it often goes on. Sadly, I don't know why we don't talk about this more, probably because not many people have influence over that situation. But if you do, right, if there are listeners out there, feel like it's worth saying, right? Like you have to have an eye toward this.

0:52:08.19 Junior: You can't expect your team to be infinitely resilient if you don't have your financial affairs in order. And your balance sheet looks terrible.

0:52:16.14 Timothy Clark: Yeah. So, I mean, think about all the unicorns, junior, that became unicorns. And then, a day later, a week later, a month later, they're imploding.

0:52:28.11 Junior: Yeah.

0:52:28.29 Timothy Clark: Right. And their cash position is terrible. There's no liquidity.

0:52:32.10 Junior: And they're going down and you're Optima guys to work on the quarter. That's when you're going to make some decisions in crisis for your investors. That may not be in the best interest long term of your company.

0:52:47.16 Timothy Clark: That's right.

0:52:48.09 Junior: Or your people. That's right. So okay, those are the cultural conditions that we have to manage if we're going to build a resilient team. Strategic distress, adopt a pirate crew mindset narrow don’t broaden no egos, no apologies, and maintain a healthy cash position. Tim, what do you want to say as we wrap up.

0:53:06.17 Timothy Clark: Today, I just want to come back to the central paradox stability and stress. If there's too much stability, introduce stress. If there's too much stress introduced ability, I think that's always going to be true. I think that's the theme and I love it.

0:53:22.12 Junior: Yeah, it's a mark of a great leader. So if you want to become a great leader, that's something that you're going to have to learn how to do. And we're here to help you do that. So if you like today's episode, please leave us a like share with a friend and subscribe if you haven't already. I'm sure the download bubbles that are going to be coming out for these episodes are going to be excellent, so go ahead and download those.

0:53:43.13 Junior: You can have an offline resource that you can use, print out, put on your desk. And another thing that I wanted to just ask from the listeners is, is there an episode topic or a question that you would like us to cover on The Leader Factor? I would love to start sourcing some of our material, and topics from all of you.

0:54:03.14 Junior: So if there is something that's top of mind, something that you wish we would cover, throw it in the comments and we will be sure to read them. And maybe you will find your topic or question in an upcoming episode. With that, we will say thank you and see you next time. Bye.