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Killer Quote: "Resilience is really the ability to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of various challenges. It's not just about bouncing back—it's about bouncing forward, embracing mistakes, and learning from them to become stronger and more adaptable." -- Victoria Meyer
Welcome to The Chemical Show™, where chemicals mean business. If you're looking for insights from business leaders of mid-market to Fortune 50, this is the place to be.
Featuring interviews with industry executives, you’ll hear about the key trends impacting chemicals and plastics today: growth, sustainability, innovation, business transformation, digitalization, supply chain, talent, strategic marketing, customer experience and much more.
Episodes are published every Tuesday.
Host Victoria Meyer gained her industry experience at leading companies, including Shell, LyondellBasell and Clariant. Before taking those insights to the broader industry. Victoria brings a informed and engaging perspective, making this podcast not just about the chemical business, but about people, leadership, business challenges and opportunities, and so much more.
The Chemical Show brings you the latest insights into trillion-dollar chemical industry. You will hear from leading industry executives as they discuss their companies, business, markets, and leadership. You’ll learn how chemical, specialty chemical, petrochemical, material science and plastics companies are making an impact, responding to the changing business environment, and discussing best practices and approaches you can apply in your business.
This podcast is a must-listen for executives and business leader everywhere, leading B2B process businesses and industries, driving strategy, harnessing customers and suppliers, and driving business innovation.
A key component of the modern
world economy, the chemical
industry delivers products and
innovations to enhance everyday life.
It is also an industry in transformation
where chemical executives and
workers are delivering growth and
industry changing advancements while
responding to pressures from investors,
regulators, and public opinion.
Discover how leading companies
are approaching these challenges
here on the chemical show.
Join Victoria Meyer, president
of Progressio Global and
host of the chemical show.
As she speaks with executives across the
industry and learns how they are leading
their companies to grow, transform, and
push industry boundaries on all frontiers.
Here's your host, Victoria Meyer.
Hi, this is Victoria Meyer.
Welcome back to The Chemical Show
where chemicals means business.
Today I'm recording a solo episode about
the importance of building resilience
in your business and in your team.
So current events have underscored
the need for resilience.
Let's just take a look
back at the past month.
We had Hurricane Beryl, which took
out power in the Houston area for
up to two weeks in some places.
We've had political upheaval, right?
So there's been a snap election in France.
twice.
A highly contested election in Venezuela.
And then, of course, in the U.
S.
President Biden withdrew from the 2024
presidential elections, which threw
this into a bit of upheaval, right?
Um, and then, you know, last but
not least, and I'm probably gonna
share a story or two about this.
We had the Meyer family European
vacation, which, um, if you're a
Chevy Chase fan, you might recall
National Lampoon's European Vacation.
Well, I'm here to tell you.
rival that just as well.
So, um, this conversation on resilience
sparked from a number of places and
also from a recent discussion in
our Chemical Executive Mastermind
group when we really started talking
about the need for resilience in
our business and in our teams.
So two shout outs here.
Number one, we are launching another
round of Chemical executive Mastermind.
Um, in the next month.
So if you are interested, I'm
including a link where you can get
more information and you can reach
out to me directly to find out more.
Um, and then too, well, let's talk
about what we're going to talk about
today, which is what is resilience?
How you build personal resilience,
how you can build business resilience,
and then some tips and ideas for
building resilience in your teams
and encouraging and supporting that.
Um, so that's what we're
talking about today.
So first of all, what is resilience?
It's a word we use a lot of.
And certainly in recent times, we've
talked a lot about supply chain
resilience and business resilience.
But what does it really mean,
um, in the context of what
we're talking about here today?
Resilience is really the ability
to adapt, recover, and thrive in
the face of various challenges.
When we think about this in a
business context, it's obviously
about your business and how your
business is responding to marketplace
challenges, political challenges.
staffing challenges, you know, the wide
variety of things that take place that
maybe you can plan for you, but you
can't always plan for in the same way.
As opposed to business
continuity planning.
And I was thinking about this.
When I think about the hurricane
barrel example, and I've got a couple
of examples with that where you'd
say, well, don't you have a business
continuity plan to deal with that?
Yes.
And Resilience is still
part of the answer.
So, you know, business continuity
plans really focus on a very specific
and tactical aspects of response.
Whereas resilience ties a bit more into
emotional response, your willingness to
take risks, your adaptability in the face
of change and unexpected circumstances.
So we need both.
There is no doubt in business.
We need both resilience as well
as business continuity planning.
Today we're talking much more about
resilience, and what that means.
Why is this important?
As you guys know, as we've seen
over the past four years, heck,
as we've seen over the past month.
There is a lot of unexpected circumstances
that take place that we need to
be able to respond and adapt to.
And that's where resilience comes in.
Difficulties that we need to overcome.
Unexpected situations that
we need to respond to.
And not just respond to.
Thrive, adapt, thrive and go forward.
So when we talk about resilience and
the good news is I can laugh about some
of this, um, Meyer family vacation,
really, we could be poster children
for national Lampoon family vacation.
The one example I'm going to give you.
So we went to France, six people.
We're American, we don't pack lightly,
six basically adults, so you know, we
got one of those big mini buses as they
call it, so kind of a van, in order to
make sure that we could accommodate us
where we were driving around in Brittany
and Normandy in the north of France.
Awesome.
Three days into the
vacation, our car gets towed.
Alternator was bad.
They tow the car away.
I've had many, many long phone calls
with the car rental agency trying
to figure out what the solution was.
We had to adapt and be resilient
and thrive on the fly.
Well, that day, you know, we
took a taxi to what turned out
to be a bust of a location.
Okay.
Lesson learned coming back.
Um, next day they delivered us two cars.
Not our plan, not the way we anticipate
our vacation going, not the way
we anticipated the days going, but
there was , a hurdle, we overcame
it, found solutions, moved forward.
That's resilience.
And these things happen.
I'm sure they don't just happen to me.
I'm certain they happen to you as well.
Resilience is needed
every step along the way.
Second example on this,
hurricane Beryl, it hit Houston
differently than expected, right?
So the good news is with the
hurricane, if there is good
news, you have early indications.
So chemical plants, manufacturing,
people start making plans to shut
down, to move into those areas.
Business continuity plans to move into
these preparedness modes that you expect
what we did not expect was how hard
the central part of Houston got hit
all the way up from, Houston, downtown,
all the way up north of the woodlands.
If you guys know the area.
So a very long stretch, um, the number
of trees down on a power outage.
And I talked to a business
leader whose offices and
location is based in the Galleria.
Yeah.
Houston, it's near downtown.
Their office was without power,
without internet, without
phone service for two weeks.
So they made plans and they're a
small business, big businesses.
Sometimes it's easier to say, oh,
we're going to move people someplace
and we'll resolve it that way.
This is a business that, um, is a
service provider into the industry, had
to figure out how to deal with the fact
that the office was out without power.
People's homes were without
power for several days.
And then the office became a bigger issue.
Everybody worked from home.
Which again seems like a fine solution.
Heck, it's 2024.
We're used to working from home.
We enjoy it sometimes,
except when you can't leave.
Um, and when there's no other solutions,
she told me as this extended on, they
were out buying printers to make sure
that they could print the necessary
things for their customers and business
partners that they needed to do.
It was adapting.
Their business had to adapt.
Be resilient, be adaptive, find
ways to get past that hurdle.
I'm sure you've got your own story
and frankly, I'd love to hear it.
So send me a message when you're
listening to this mega note, send
Victoria message about your example
of personal and business resilience.
So, that's what resilience
is and why we need it.
Let's talk about how do
you build resilience?
So this was a topic of conversation,
and in fact, You see this in life.
You see this at work.
Some people.
are more able to work their way through
it, are more resilient, face challenges
with a greater positive attitude.
They see the path forward.
Is this something that is,
you know, nature that you
come with or is it nurture?
Can you grow and build
personal resilience?
And the answer to that
is, yeah, you sure can.
, how do you do it?
Number one, embracing mistakes
and learning from them.
Encouraging a growth mindset for yourself,
for your team, for the people around you.
The best lessons I've ever
had, and my biggest growth, has
been when I've made a mistake.
When I've screwed up in some way, when
I discovered something that went wrong.
Having a growth mindset, and embracing
the fact that mistakes happen.
And the key is not making the same
mistake over and over and over and
figuring out how you go forward.
The second piece that ties in really
closely with this is accountability.
Owning actions and learning
from those outcomes, right?
What part did you contribute to this?
And you know, there's certain aspects that
you say, Oh yeah, I contributed to that.
Um, and how do you learn from that?
Back to my Meyer family vacation.
So we were driving to
the beaches of Normandy.
This is when we now have.
Two cars instead of one car, um, we're
supposed to be going to Omaha beach
as it turns out, much like the allied
paratroopers whose GPS failed a bit.
Um, and they ended up
in different locations.
The Meyer family GPS failed as well.
And one part of the family
ended up in Utah beach.
The other part ended up in Omaha beach.
It was a bit of a, Oh heck moment.
Um, A few testy words were shared.
As it turns out, uh, Navigator in
Car 1 did not look carefully at
where she was navigating to, and
so we ended up in the wrong spot.
Now, lessons learned.
I said, Hey, did you get this?
Yeah, I did.
I was kind of mad I just picked this.
This is one of my kids, by the
way, who was the Navigator.
Um, so, you know, lessons learned.
Lessons learned.
She took accountability for it.
We figured it out.
We ended up having a great day.
We made a plan.
That was part of our resilience.
How do you get to that point?
You recognize that.
Oh yeah, stuff happens.
I own the piece that happened.
I understand where the mistake is.
I'm accountable for it and then fixing it.
And then the first, the third piece
is response versus reaction, right?
So in that moment, my reaction, was
actually a few colorful words.
Let's be really honest.
You guys are probably not surprised,
but then what was the response?
We realized we are 45
minutes, And 15 miles apart.
There was no easy way to just
get back on track with car a
and car b Doing the same thing.
So we said, okay you do things in
utah beach We're doing things in
omaha beach and we will meet in the
middle In a couple hours and that's
what happened and it worked You figure
out how you're going to respond one
of the things I do on a daily basis.
I didn't do this on my vacation.
Maybe I needed to, um, I do a daily
journaling practices and this is something
I've started in the last few months and
it, I go through a number of questions
every day and one of the questions is what
could go wrong and that can really throw
you, um, what could go wrong, what can
really throw me and cause me to have an
emotional response to shut down, whatever.
What could go wrong?
And if it does go wrong,
how am I going to respond?
Um, and just having a planned
response versus a reaction boosts
that resilience de stresses you, helps
you figure out how to move forward.
And this is something, again, we talked
about this , in our mastermind group.
Can you teach it?
Yeah, you can, you model it, you
teach it, you teach skills in terms
of how do we help our next generation?
Some of whom grew up with helicopter
parents, uh, some of whom are, just
don't seem to be as resilient, right?
If you talk to people in the teaching
profession, if you talk to people that are
leading young teams, often they get stuck.
When something happens, they
stop, and they say, wow.
I don't know how to react.
I don't know how to move on from there.
Teaching them to respond,
accepting mistakes, moving forward.
That's key to this.
Victoria: So we've talked
about personal resilience.
How do you build business resilience?
And again, we have talked a lot in recent
times about supply chain, resilience,
and business continuity and those things.
But the reality is building
resilience into your business and
your company culture is critical.
The company culture is a lot
about this personal aspect of
how do you build that resolve?
But it absolutely ties
into business performance.
the happiness of your employees,
the performance and development of
the teams, your business, et cetera.
So a few strategies, um, where, how do
you build resilience within your business?
Number one, diversification.
When you think about diversification of
your business, it's business units, it's
your customers, it's your suppliers.
You know, if we think about and go through
that whole list of things we've already
talked about today, where I've kicked
off, if you look back at the past month of
just what's going on, political upheaval,
Weather incidents that prompt challenges.
If we go back even further, and then
if we look forward, we know that
it's not a, uh, steady state year.
Never really is.
Here's another year where
it's not steady state.
We need to have that resilience and
diversification is really helpful.
If you go and you look back at,
business performance in 2020 and
2021, the businesses that were more
diversified perform more solidly.
If you were dependent on, let's
just say the automobile industry
in 2020, you kind of were hurting.
It was not a great time to
be solely reliant on selling
into the automobile industry.
That's turned around.
Same with travel.
Same with other things.
So having diversification helps with that.
We talk a lot about supply chain
resilience, and that's often code
for having multiple suppliers,
having multiple routes to market.
So having a diversification of
choices is one way that you're
building business resilience.
Um, another way to build business
resilience is around reassessing
and evaluating your business plans.
One of the leaders I've spoken
with recently, you know, we talked
about the fact that people will
sometimes say, well, you know,
the year is up, the year is down.
How is the year performing?
Making sure you're really comparing your
performance trends with prior years.
In a snapshot, the market can look great.
The market can look bad.
Your business can look great.
Your business can look bad.
You have to look at broader trends.
Indicators, capacities, other things
that will help you identify how to
reassess your current business, plan
for the future, adapt and respond.
All critical to build business resilience.
The third piece of this, and this ties
really into company culture, and it
goes back to what we talked about with
personal resilience is around encouraging
a learning culture, allowing mistakes,
people are going to make mistakes and
prioritizing recovery and learning.
Actually, also, just as I was coming
back from this Meyer European vacation
that was a lot like a National Lampoon
European vacation, CrowdStrike hit, right?
So CrowdStrike, which is that update
that shut down Microsoft, that
shut down airports and airlines
that caused global upheaval.
It was a mistake.
And what was interesting, we talked about,
well, should CrowdStrike be penalized
for this from a stock market perspective?
It's like, well, they responded.
Should they be penalized where they're at?
I don't know.
That's a different story.
But, um, when you think about business
mistakes that happen, mistakes happen.
Right.
We are human.
We are humans leading businesses.
As long as you are keeping your
people and your environment
and your assets safe, right?
Those are the critical things.
Um, when you look at a mistake, you have
to say, okay, how do we learn from this?
Is it recoverable?
It's okay to make mistakes.
There's an analogy.
that I read, uh, in a book a long
time ago when, which is around a tree.
Um, and if you think about allowing
and encouraging and building this
learning culture, it's around, you
know, you call it decision tree.
I'll just call it a tree.
But thinking about, the leafs,
um, letting people make decisions
that are at least they are minor.
There's thousands of decisions
that get made on a daily basis
inside of a business, if you make
a mistake and it's on the leaf.
It's going to recover.
It's going to grow back.
Yeah, maybe it falls off
the tree, but it's fine.
And then you've got the branches, which
are bigger decisions that maybe need
to have more systems and controls.
You have to have more
experience to make it.
And then you've got the core trunk of the
tree and understanding in your business.
What are leaf decisions?
So small versus trunk decisions that are
big and encouraging a learning culture
by giving people access early on to
making mistakes on those minor things
and growing and learning and developing
and then growing more broadly from that.
That's my example there.
The final thing is really having
transparency and flexibility.
And part of this is as a leader,
sharing what you can share, sharing
your own mistakes, demonstrating
that flexibility within reasons
and within boundaries, right?
That encourages and helps your business
and your people get more resilient.
And then I'm moving on to my
final thing, which is how do you,
implement resilience with your team.
And in fact, even can
you teach resilience?
So the answer to that is yes, right?
I talked that before.
Can you learn resilience?
Yes.
Can you teach resilience?
Yes.
And some examples that have
come through from leaders that
I've spoken with is number one.
Getting your team real and
challenging tasks, right?
So an example that came from a leader
recently was how they challenged their
summer interns to figure out problems
and giving them real challenges, not
challenges that are gonna hurt the
business, but their challenges and their
open ended and they need to be solved.
And those interns probably don't know how
to solve them, but figuring out That there
is an approach and frankly, that you're
going to make mistakes along the way.
But giving them the chance to
do that, giving them the chance
to learn, grow and develop.
That's one thing.
The second piece is around, you
know, creating this culture of
open communication and feedback.
Don't shoot the messenger, right?
We've heard that phrase
and part of that is around.
You want people to give you feedback.
You want to have transparency in
your workplace so that your team
is comfortable asking questions,
making mistakes, understanding and
adapting, building resilience in
everyday moments so that when they're
big situations are facing them.
They have resilience there as well.
And then honestly, you know,
training and development.
There are scenario planning
workshops that you can do.
There are courses that that help
build crisis handling skills.
Those things are all critical
to building resilience.
With your teams, with the
individuals and with your business.
So, um, that is my take, so,
resilience has been on my mind recently.
The events of the last month have really
heightened the need for resilience.
And I think as we look to the end of 2024,
we know that resilience is important.
Part of our ongoing everyday
necessary practices.
We talked about today just what
is resilience, the importance of
building resilience and how you can
build it for yourself and your team.
I hope that you have found that valuable.
I would love to hear your examples
of, things that have gone awry and how
you recovered from that resiliently.
I would love to hear some challenges that
you faced and that you've overcome, as a
demonstration of your personal resilience
and heck as your business resilience.
So Thank you again for listening.
Keep listening, keep
following, keep sharing.
I am posting a link to the next upcoming
mastermind, because I think you're
going to find that hugely valuable.
And we will talk with you again soon.