Adam Markel
Leaders are being asked to absorb wave after wave of change without losing decision quality. The cost lands before burnout does, in slower judgement and quiet disengagement at the top of the organisation. Resilience at this level has to be built deliberately, ahead of the damage, into how the executive team works.
Adam Markel is a resilience researcher and WORKWELL co-founder who helps senior leaders hold their decision quality steady through constant change.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Adam Markel
- Author of Pivot, a #1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly bestseller, alongside Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022) and Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026), which sets out the WORK WELL TOGETHER framework for rebuilding trust in teams. A leadership audience gets a documented body of work with named frameworks behind it.
- Co-Founder and Chief Researcher of WORKWELL, a workplace resilience research initiative, so the material in his sessions comes out of his own research base.
- Eighteen years as a trial attorney, then CEO of the professional training company Peak Potentials/New Peaks. The resilience argument comes from someone who has carried operating responsibility for a business.
- He works from a distinction between operational resilience and strategic resilience, and builds sessions around the second. Teams leave with the four domains of resilience as shared language: mental, emotional, physical, and spirit-driven.
- Named clients include Procter & Gamble, US Bank, Thermo Fisher Scientific, American Airlines, Baptist Health System, and Dunkin’. His Rank My Resilience assessment gives a leadership team a measured starting point alongside the keynote.
Biography highlights
- Author of Pivot (#1 Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly 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 clients including Procter & Gamble, US Bank, Thermo Fisher Scientific, American Airlines, and Dunkin’
Biography
The cost of constant change lands on decision quality first. Restructures and AI rollouts stack up, judgement slows, and attrition registers the damage much later. Adam Markel’s work sits in that gap, between the change load a leadership team is carrying and the quality of the calls it is still making.
Change Proof (McGraw-Hill, 2022) argues that resilience is a capacity an organisation builds into the way its leaders work. Pivot ran that argument across career and business reinvention, and topped the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and Publishers Weekly lists. He co-founded WORKWELL, a workplace resilience research initiative, and is its Chief Researcher.
Re-Culture (Post Hill Press, 2026) moves the argument from the individual leader to the team. Its central claim is that the strongest cultures are designed on purpose, around what he calls a “Got Your Back” culture where people are supported enough to do their best work. The book sets out the WORK WELL TOGETHER framework and names Six Myths of Culture that keep organisations stuck. Its case studies run from Pixar to WD-40 to Manchester United’s marginal gains.
Eighteen years as a trial attorney came first, then a run as CEO of the training company Peak Potentials/New Peaks, and before either of those, seasons as an ocean lifeguard. He hosts The Change Proof Podcast, and his corporate clients include Procter & Gamble, US Bank, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and American Airlines.
Key speaking topics
- Leadership resilience under sustained change
- Operational resilience and strategic resilience
- Change Proof: organisational capacity for uncertainty
- Re-Culture and the WORK WELL TOGETHER framework
- Trust, connection, and “Got Your Back” team culture
- AI adoption and organisational adaptability
- 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
- Transformation and change leads owning multi-year programmes
Audience outcomes
- A definition of resilience as an operating capacity a leadership team can build
- The four domains of resilience as shared language: mental, emotional, physical, and spirit-driven
- A measured starting point on organisational resilience from the Rank My Resilience assessment
- Practices for recovery and renewal that fit inside a leader’s working week
- The Six Myths of Culture from Re-Culture, and what replaces them
Talks
Unlocking the Power of Strategic Resilience to Lead Change and Fuel High Performance
Sets out the difference between operational and strategic resilience, and how organisations build the second.
Key takeaways:
- Where operational resilience stops and strategic resilience starts, and why a business needs both
- Leadership practices that raise adaptability and psychological safety across a team
- A repeatable method for embedding resilience into culture, strategy, and operations during transformation
How to Future-Proof Teams and Thrive Through Uncertainty
A research-backed approach to sustaining performance without burning people out.
Key takeaways:
- The four domains of resilience: mental, emotional, physical, and spirit-driven
- Where change resistance sits inside a team, and how to shift it
- Ways to protect energy and focus without trading away health or engagement
How to Turn Adversity into Growth, Agility and Innovation
Reframes resilience as the capability an organisation uses to convert pressure into performance.
Key takeaways:
- How to move a team off a survival footing
- Using constraint as the starting point for innovation
- What it takes for resilience to reinforce trust and alignment
Equipping Teams to Embrace Change, Recover Smarter and Create What’s Next
Builds resilience across every level of an organisation when change is continuous.
Key takeaways:
- Tools for identifying and preventing burnout inside a team
- How a “Got Your Back” culture of trust changes collaboration and accountability
- Systems that make high performance repeatable through sustained change
Building Trust-Driven Teams That Attract, Retain and Truly Thrive
The central argument of Re-Culture, that the strongest cultures are designed on purpose.
Key takeaways:
- The Six Myths of Culture that keep organisations stuck, and what replaces them
- Why trust and psychological safety decide who keeps their talent
- Early signals of burnout, and the systems that hold a team together
Why Resilience Will Determine Who Wins in the Age of AI
Addresses why AI adoption stalls on culture rather than on technology.
Key takeaways:
- The adaptability gap between what the technology can do and what an organisation can absorb
- How to lead high-stakes change without triggering resistance or disengagement
- Resilience treated as an operating capability that accelerates adoption