Adam Markel
Leaders are being asked to absorb wave after wave of change without losing decision quality. The cost shows up before burnout, in slower judgement, narrower thinking, and quiet disengagement at the top of the organisation. Resilience at this level is a capacity that has to be built deliberately, not a recovery message delivered after the damage is done.
Adam Markel is a resilience researcher and former CEO who helps senior leaders convert constant change into a source of operating advantage rather than a tax on their judgement.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Adam Markel
- Author of three books on resilience and culture, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller Pivot and Change Proof (McGraw-Hill), with Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) setting out the WORK WELL TOGETHER framework for rebuilding trust and connection in teams. Leadership audiences get a researched body of work, not a personal story repurposed as advice.
- Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, where his work translates resilience research into measurable cultural inputs for senior teams.
- Operator credibility from 18 years as a trial attorney and a multi-year run as CEO of a professional training business; senior buyers get someone who has run a P&L, not only studied one.
- His formats are built for application. Drawing on the Re-Culture argument that culture forms through repeated shared practice, sessions are structured to move a leadership team to specific commitments while still in the room.
- Track record with operating businesses under pressure, including Medtronic and Jack in the Box, working with leadership audiences rather than only HR and L&D.
Biography highlights
- Author of three books on resilience and culture: Pivot (Wall Street Journal bestseller), Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), and Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026)
- Co-Founder and Chief Researcher, WORKWELL
- Host of The Change Proof Podcast
- TEDx speaker
- Former CEO of Peak Potentials/New Peaks, a professional training enterprise; previously an 18-year trial attorney
- Corporate engagements with operating businesses including Medtronic and Jack in the Box
Biography
Most senior leaders do not have a resilience problem in the wellness sense. They have a decision-quality problem. Repeated restructures, AI rollouts, and cost programmes compound, and the cost shows up in slower judgement long before it shows up in attrition. That is the gap Adam Markel’s work addresses.
His framework, set out in Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022), treats resilience as a capacity organisations build into how leaders work, not a personal trait. The earlier Pivot, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, traced the same logic across career and business reinvention. Both sit on top of his research practice at WORKWELL, where he is Co-Founder and Chief Researcher.
Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) extends that work from the individual leader to the team. Its argument is that culture forms through what people repeatedly practise together, and it sets out a framework, WORK WELL TOGETHER, for rebuilding trust in organisations strained by constant change. That argument shapes how he runs a room: sessions are structured so a leadership team leaves with specific commitments it has agreed together.
The credibility comes from a layered career. Eighteen years as a trial attorney, a multi-year run as CEO of the professional training business Peak Potentials, and seven seasons as an ocean lifeguard before any of it. That operator history is what senior audiences respond to, and it stays tested against current briefs through the Change Proof Podcast and engagements with operating businesses such as Medtronic and Jack in the Box.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership resilience under sustained change
- Change Proof: building organisational capacity for uncertainty
- Re-Culture: designing culture through shared practice
- Workplace culture, trust, and engagement
- Leading through restructure and reinvention
- Burnout prevention in senior teams
Ideal for
- CEOs and executive committees facing repeated change cycles
- CHROs and people leaders responsible for senior-team resilience
- Leadership offsites and annual conferences for operating businesses
- Transformation and change leads owning multi-year programmes
Audience outcomes
- A working definition of resilience as an operating capacity, not a personal trait
- A diagnostic for where change fatigue is degrading senior decision quality
- Specific practices for recovery and renewal that fit inside a leader’s working week
- A frame for translating resilience research into culture and engagement decisions
- Language to use with their own teams about why this matters now
Talks
A keynote on building resilience as an operating capacity inside leadership teams.
Key takeaways:
- Why resilience is a leadership variable, not a wellness one
- How decision quality degrades under sustained change, and what to measure
- A practice set leaders can apply inside the working week
A talk on the link between recovery, renewal, and sustained performance at senior levels.
Key takeaways:
- The performance cost of unmanaged change load
- Habits and rituals that protect judgement under pressure
- How senior teams model resilience for the wider organisation
A keynote on designing the conditions, trust and repeated shared practice, that make people choose to stay and perform.
Key takeaways:
- The Six Myths of Culture that keep organisations stuck, and what replaces them
- The WORK WELL TOGETHER framework for rebuilding connection in change-fatigued and distributed teams
- Why culture forms through practice rather than values statements, and what leaders do differently as a result