TBC Flashback - Rich Sheridan: The Chief Joy Officer

Fear is expensive, and not just emotionally. It slows decisions, kills creativity, and quietly trains good people to play it safe. In this TBC Flashback, we sit down with Rich Sheridan, CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations and author of Joy Inc. and Chief Joy Officer, to unpack what it really takes to build a joyful workplace culture that performs without burning people out.

• Click HERE to find Rich's book "Chief Joy Officer"
• Click HERE to find Rich's book "Joy, Inc."

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Transcript

Flashback Setup And Listener Notes

John Broer 0:11

A very warm welcome to all of our friends out there in The Boss hole Transformation Nation. This is John Broer welcoming you to another installment of a TBC flashback for going back into the archives to January of 2022 when we were visited by Rich Sheridan, who is the Chief Storyteller for Menlo Innovations. This was somebody that Sara had met, and it was just really a remarkable conversation that warranted an opportunity to re-release to the Vostal Transformation Nation. So let's listen. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us at Interior Feedback. Enjoy today's episode. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Meet Rich Sheridan Of Menlo

John Broer 1:41

Welcome back, everybody, to The Boss hole Chronicles. It is so great to have you here. We are so blessed by all of our listeners out there in our growing audience. My name is John Broer. I'm your co-host today. And I am joined by, you know what? You know what I'm going to say. She's just flat out amazing and a very special individual. My colleague, friend, co-host, Sara Best. Sara, how are you today?

Sara Best 2:07

John, how could I not be amazing after such a kind introduction? You're wonderful, and it is good to be here. I'm great. Thank you.

John Broer 2:14

And you know, it's been a little, we've had a break here, like you've done a couple episodes. You did an episode with Karen. I did one with Karen. Uh, you've been on assignment, I've been on assignment. It's so good to be back together again. And especially today, because we have another subject matter expert episode teed up. And this is somebody you met not too long ago, Sara, and you said, oh my gosh, we've got to have him on the podcast. So with that, I'm just going to throw it over to you to introduce our guest today.

Sara Best 2:42

Thank you, John. You know, it is the season of joy. Uh, I guess any season can be a season of joy. That's what makes our subject matter expert today uh quite extra special. Uh, but if I may, first let me welcome to the podcast Rich Sheridan, CEO and chief storyteller and tour guide at Menlo Innovations. Rich, welcome to the podcast.

Rich Sheridan 3:04

Thanks, Sara. It's great to be here.

Sara Best 3:07

Yeah, I had the privilege of listening to Rich uh provide a keynote to, I don't know, three, four hundred people uh a couple of months back. Uh, and he's gonna share today some of what he shared in to that particular audience. But it really resonated uh what connected for me was that I think we we are all in the business of bosshole prevention, bosshole intervention. And no one is really born to be a boss hole. That there are experiences and circumstances we encounter, and and we need tools, we need approaches, we need strategies for overcoming what can really become obstacles to our uh well-being and our effectiveness as leaders. So let me just tell you a little bit about Rich before we dig in. He is the CEO, as I mentioned, of Menlo Innovations. This is this company is amazing and it's worth a whole episode of the podcast all by itself. But Rich became disillusioned in the middle of his career uh working at, you know, in the technology industry, which can be very chaotic. He had an all-consuming thought, and it's simple and powerful. Things can be better, much better. He had to find a way. And uh, why couldn't workplace be filled with camaraderie, human energy, creativity, productivity? And I think in in the light of the circumstances of the last two years, um, recognizing that we can still have that, that we can create that is powerful. Ultimately, Rich co-founded Menlo Innovations in 2001 to end human suffering in the workplace. I mean, who cannot hang a hat on that? It's amazing. His unique approach to custom software creation is so surprisingly different that 3,000 people a year, 3,000 people a year travel from around the world just to see how Menlo Innovations does what they do. His passion for creating joyful work environments led to his best-selling and widely celebrated book, Joy Inc. How we build a workplace people love. His highly anticipated second book, Chief Joy Officer, came out in December of 2018 and will continue to prove that a positive and engaging leadership style is actually good for business. Rich, we're just so excited to have you here and cannot wait to dig in. How are you?

Rich Sheridan 5:19

I'm doing well. We're uh we are thriving again after a tough 2020, like I'm sure a lot of people had.

Sara Best 5:26

Yeah, yeah. I think a great place to start today, Rich, would be for you to tell us a little bit about the disillusionment you encountered, a little bit about your

Disillusionment With Tech Chaos

Sara Best 5:35

story, which has inspired some pretty incredible work.

Rich Sheridan 5:39

Yeah, you know, I touched a computer, Sara, for the first time 50 years ago. I was just a kid in high school. Uh McComb County, uh, just north of Detroit, was one of the first three counties in the nation to offer computer science curriculum to high school students. And I just happened to be a freshman at this high school in Macomb County, touched a computer and I fell in love. I knew what I wanted to do the rest of my days. Uh, I started programming for pay before I could even drive a car. Eventually went to the University of Michigan, got a couple of degrees in computer science, computer engineering, and launched an official career in 1982 that, by all and all measures, looked perfect from the outside. Raises, promotions, stock options, greater title, greater authority, bigger teams, everything in the world measures the success I had. And by my mid-30s, I wanted out. I didn't want to be in the industry anymore. Here I had this job that was, you know, my parents were very proud of me. My wife was delighted with how I was taking care of her and our and our three daughters, and yet I could not picture doing it for another 30 years. I knew it would kill me. And what was going on is kind of what you hinted at in my introduction. It was chaos every single day. Inability to go to work and get meaningful things done, phones ringing off the hook with problems, missing deadlines, blowing budgets, delivering crappy quality to the world through the work of either my own hands when I was early on in my career or through the hands and hearts of the teams that I led. And, you know, my inner optimist kicked in. I was stuck in a room full of manure. I was going to keep digging until I found a pony because I knew there had to be a pony in this room somewhere. And uh my journey out led me to authors and books, but not books on technology, books on how do you organize humans more effectively, because that's really the biggest challenge in every organization. And in mine, the ones I was a part of, technology organizations, it's still to this day, it's still all about the people. And everything that I changed ultimately had to do with how we organize the humans more effectively, so that then we could create great technology and end that human suffering that we talked about. And so for us, we centered the entire culture that we create here at the company around a simple word, the word joy. And we define it. We want to delight the people we intend to serve with the work that happens in the room of people behind me. And we want to have people see what we've created, use it every single day in their lives if that's appropriate, and tell us they love it. Which is the only thing that thrills the heart of a software engineer is to create something useful that gets done, gets delivered, and people start using it in large numbers and tell you I love this software. And that's what I wanted for me. That's what I wanted for the team of people I was leading. And in order to do that, we had to craft an entire culture and fit the processes to that culture so that we could create these results systematically, not just by chance.

Sara Best 8:54

And it's all centered on this idea of joy.

Rich Sheridan 8:57

Yeah, you know, I mean, joy is an interesting word, typically not a word you hear in the context of work life. Right? If you ask people, where do you get your joy? You know, they'll talk about their kids or their grandkids or their church or their school or their community or their hobbies. Not too many people are gonna turn towards work and say, that's where I get my joy. That's where we spend the majority of our working hours or our waking hours is in the office, uh, you know, working away. Most of our lives are spent in that time. Really? We can't get our joy there either. No, it can. It is possible. You have to be intentional about it though.

John Broer 9:36

Rich, that just resonates with us because at Real Good Ventures, our mission is to help people find what we say meaning and fulfillment in their work. And through that, uh not to not to sort of jump onto your definition of joy, but it's it's it's so it's absolutely relevant. And organizations that don't focus on that are just missing so much. So that is so refreshing to hear. I just wanted to, I wanted to share that with you because it resonates with us. Yeah, thanks, John.

Rich Sheridan 10:06

And you know, I will tell you what I have found over the years of using this word joy is much like even in this conversation, it's an infectious word. You just drop joy in a conversation once, and all of a sudden it'll start popping up like little popcorn in the conversation that follows, because people want that in their lives. Yeah, and they certainly want it in their work lives.

Sara Best 10:28

Oh my gosh. Here, here, I I can't help but think about you know, that tough period of time where after a significant period of time in the industry, you could not see yourself being sustained. You you could not stay there any longer. You know, I I would love to hear a little bit more about what were some of those challenges. I know it was chaotic and um not enough time in the day to do what you had to do. Were there leadership issues and and what were those? Did you deal with boss holes?

Rich Sheridan 10:56

I did, uh, you know, successfully, and I think I became one, quite frankly. You know, because quite frankly, when you're a young leader and you're popping out of your little manager or like shell, who are you gonna imprint on? You're gonna imprint on the person who promoted you. And so I I'm sure there were moments where I behaved just like the people who led me, even though I had great disdain for the

Why Customer Contact Matters

Rich Sheridan 11:20

you know the results I was producing and and their management style. And you know, I can remember one of my first jobs out of college. And I when you're a young programmer, I will tell you the the the the the uh the holy grail is to get a new project, something, you know, start with a clean sheet of paper and say, this is your baby, you're gonna create this new product, you're gonna help us build this new piece of technology, it'll be so exciting. And I was just beyond uh excited about this. And I went to my boss and I said, Hey, here's what I want to do. I would like to go out into the world and meet the customers who will one day use the product I'm about to design and build with a team of people around me. And he looks at me, he says, Why would you want to do that? I said, Well, I really want the product to be successful. I want to make sure we're building the right thing. And he says, No, that's why we have Jim down the hall. Jim will answer all your questions. You just go build the product. I'm like, what? He goes, Yeah, you you don't need to talk to anybody. We've got people who talk to people and you ask them questions. And I said, Well, I'll I will talk to them. I promise I will talk to them. But I think it would be good if I went out into the world and actually interacted directly with the people we're building product for. And he paused and he got this stern look in his face. And he said, if you want to spend your days talking to customers, I'll stink you in customer service. And I looked at him and I said, Wow, that's a great idea. I could spend all day on the phone with customers. I could hear what they like about our current products, what they need in those products. That would help me so much. That's a great idea. And now he gets this even, he's starting to turn red in the face because he's like, You're not getting this, are you? He says, if I stick you in customer service, you're never coming out again. You'll never get the chance to build those products. So basically, sit down, shut up, and go do your work. I quit two weeks later. Wow. I said that company is doomed. And in fact, they were. They went out of business within just a few years because I thought that attitude is going to destroy this company. You will never build good products.

John Broer 13:38

Just out of curiosity, and we may edit this out. Um, Rich, when you quit, did you have another job or did you just quit?

Rich Sheridan 13:47

No, in that case, I did find another job before I quit, but it didn't take me long. You know, it was 1982. Oh, sure. Yeah. There were programming jobs everywhere. There was no chance I wasn't going to find another job. So I wasn't, I wasn't actually worried whether I quit or found another job ahead of time. Although uh we had just had our first child, so I'm pretty sure I was at least responsible enough to say, uh, I'm gonna make sure I have health insurance and all that stuff before kudos to you because I have a story and Sara knows it that I actually quit a job and had nothing.

John Broer 14:23

And I that's when I started my consulting practice. And anyway, that's that's for another time. I was just kind of curious. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Sara Best 14:30

Yeah, and and that's when your wife didn't talk to you for two years, John.

John Broer 14:34

It was it was 18 months, not quite two years, but there's like an asterisk for our our 35th anniversary is this April, and there's an asterisk because 18 months was kind of kind of tenuous there for a second. Go ahead. Sorry, thank you.

Sara Best 14:47

Rich, I I appreciate that you acknowledge that you know you might have entered the bosshole zone too at some point in there. I think it would be helpful for for people to understand, you know, how how did you identify that

The Day He Quit Being Hero

Sara Best 15:00

you had reached that point for yourself? And then what helped you?

Rich Sheridan 15:04

There was a crystallizing moment for me. And it was after I was VP, I had just been uh moved up to vice president of RD for a company I worked with before Men Law. And it was one of these um school events where you can take your child to work with you. So I took my youngest daughter, Sara, she was eight, and it was take your child to work day so the child can watch their parent and their work environment be inspired to careers of their own. So I'm taking my eight-year-old to watch a newly minted BP work all day. Can you imagine a more boring day for an eight-year-old to watch? Oh my dad does email all day long. I can't wait to get into the work world. Um and so she was wise enough to bring stickers, coloring books, and crayons and all that sort of thing. She sat at my task table while I did the work of the BP. But at the end of the day, I thought, well, I better ask her because her teacher's gonna ask her tomorrow. I said, So, Sara, what'd you learn today? Oh my out of the mouths of babes, right? Here's this eight-year-old. She says, What I learned, Dad, is you're really important. I said, What? She goes, Yeah, what I saw is nobody here can make a decision without asking you. From an eight-year-old. From an eight-year-old. Wow. This is a smart girl. She's 32 now. She's really smart. Yeah. And um, and you know, in that moment, she was very proud, by the way. I was instantly mortified because in that moment, what she just so quickly cut through was I had created a hero-based organization, and I was the number one hero. Right. You know the way you become a hero in an organization? Drowned out the conversations of others. Make sure your ideas are the ones that win inside of a conference room. Make sure that you're the loudest voice in the room. Make sure you are not gonna walk out of the room without anybody thinking if it's anything else is your idea. Right. Right? Wow. And so I'm thinking about this right in the moment. And I said, the only way to scale a hero-based organization is to scale the hero, and the only way to do that is overtime. And I'm looking across the table at this eight-year-old, and I'm thinking, I don't want to miss the best parts of being a dad.

John Broer 17:26

Right.

Rich Sheridan 17:27

And so that was a crystallizing moment for me to say, you know what needs to change here? Me. I needed to make a change. I needed to be a different kind of leader. I needed to let my team go and run without me. And that is that was 1997. I have not looked back since.

John Broer 17:48

It's interesting that you bring up the term hero because just today, um, the episode that published is called The Hero and the Guide. And you've no doubt heard that comparison because managers, supervisors, when we cast ourselves in the role of the hero, big problems. We are the guide. And and it is their journey that we have to support. So that's when it that was transformational for you at that point. Yep, absolutely. Wow. Never looked back.

Sara Best 18:19

Well, and and I think there's a lot to to take now from what you have built, what you've put together, what you've connected, and what you've been able to create with and through your team uh at Menlo. And I'm not even sure which angle to take here, Rich, because there's so much. But this whole idea of leading with joy, if we circle back to that keyword joy and that crystallizing moment for you, you know, you put some things together so much so that you were able to even capture them in a way that allows others to kind of read this manual of leading with joy. Tell us, you know, is that the lift of human energy? Tell us where where we go from here.

Joy Versus Fear At Work

Rich Sheridan 19:00

Yeah, you know, I always think that if you can communicate a simple model that people can remember, they can really run with it. And uh, for me, I use the forces that work on an airplane as an analog for the forces that work on a human organization. So there is this lift of human energy, the weight of bureaucracy, the thrust of purpose, and the drag of fear. And if we want to get our little corporate aircraft off the ground reliably and safely every single day, we better have more lift than weight and more human energy than bureaucracy and more focus on our purpose than on the drag of fear. And I will tell you, fear is the big one. I'm guessing this has come up again and again in your chronicles where we I was taught that you motivate others by making them afraid. I had a boss who used to come into my office, my cube, at about 4 45 on a Friday afternoon. And he'd just pop in. You know, management by walking around, except I called it management by walking around and annoying people. So he'd pop in, he'd say, Hey, how's it going? He's like, What you working on? Well, the thing you were expecting me to work. How's that going? Are you almost done? Well, not quite. Oh, are you coming in this weekend? And that wasn't really a question. You might as well said, Well, you're coming in this weekend. Right? And you know, and and he measured your productivity by how long your car was in the parking lot. Did you show up on a Saturday? Now, amazingly, he never showed up on a Saturday. I always believe that if a boss was going to ask his team to work that kind of time, maybe they should be there too. Maybe they'd start to hold themselves a little bit accountable for the kind of culture they're trying to create. That kind of fear-based approach robs us of our humanity. Because the part of our brain that shuts down is the part we all need right now in our businesses. Creativity, imagination, invention, and innovation come from the part of our brain that literally shuts down when we are afraid. Yeah.

John Broer 21:12

Early in my career, I remember I had a mentor that said, look, John, motivation is based on two things, fear or desire. And most managers will use a fear-based approach. And that never made any sense to me, but coercion, pressure, manipulation, stuff that you're talking about. Whereas the other, to your point, unlocks so much more. I mean, the reinforcement, alignment with the work, the joy of the work itself, that's when things really do evolve with people. And where was that book? Where was that text that said you have to try to pressure and coerce and scare people? Use fear as a motivating factor. That is ridiculous. I don't know where that came from, but it is it is far too prevalent and continues to be so out there.

Rich Sheridan 21:58

You know, I'm not sure. Either, but um it probably comes out of the same book that stated that the purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder value. There you go. Probably one of the worst ideas ever fostered on us by business schools. Right.

Sara Best 22:13

Right. I do think we have to acknowledge, too, that for a lot of leaders who are in the bosshole zone, they're unaware of their own fear. You know, I'm not enough. I won't get my team there. Uh, people don't like me. Um it but and those are the basic ones. There's so many more uh layers to the kind of fear that people encounter. And if we think about motivation being um fear or desire, there's also fear or love and and the joy you're talking about, that creativity, that camaraderie, that fun, that people being able to let their hair down and be who they naturally are in the workplace, that's the love channel. You you can't be in both channels. It's impossible. So, as you indicated, you know, that when we're in fear, the others are inaccessible.

Rich Sheridan 23:02

You know, one of my favorite uh ASOPs fables is the fable of the north wind and the sun. In competition, uh, they decided they're gonna see which one is stronger. And there was this traveler walking across a field with a coat on, and they both looked at each other, and the wind says, I bet I can get his coat off. And the sun said, Great, I'll retreat, went behind the clouds, said, You try. And the wind just blew and blew and blew and blew, and all that traveler did was wrap himself tighter and tighter and tighter in that coat. And the wind finally ran out of energy, and the sun says, Let me give it a try. And the clouds part, and the sun comes down and shines down on that traveler with his gentle horn. The traveler just peels off his coat. I think it's a great fable for leadership. What's going to win? You know, if we think of the coat as the people protecting themselves and not revealing their true vulnerable selves at work, not bringing their whole selves to work. That's what you get when you get the blow hard bosses.

Sara Best 24:10

That's so true. I remember writing down something you said in your keynote about pumping the fear out of the room, you know, helping people peel

No Bosses And Radical Team Practices

Sara Best 24:20

off the coat. How have you done that? How do you do that in your organization at Menlo?

Rich Sheridan 24:25

Yeah, given that the um the nature of your podcast, you're going to be fascinated to know that we have no bosses here at all. So there can't be a boss all at Menlo. I mean, maybe I could be one because, yeah, I mean, as a CEO, co-founder, and 50% owner of the company, yes, I have authority. If I go out in the room and exercise that authority, I would destroy our culture in an instant.

John Broer 24:49

Wow.

Rich Sheridan 24:50

But how does so how does that work? Yep. So team makes all the hiring decisions, team makes all the promotion decisions, team gives each other feedback. Now, part of it is you have to understand our work style is unusual too. We work two people to one computer, sharing a keyboard and a mouse all day long, and the pairs switch every five days. So nobody's ever together with the pair partner longer than five days. So the team organizes themselves every week as to who should be paired with whom, who should we be on which projects. And again, no hierarchical authority going on. This is a collaborative effort among the team. And then if it comes time, we have a public display of all of our compensation. So everybody here knows what everybody else is making. There's one way to pump fear out of the room. Because have you ever noticed that when you don't share information with humans, they make up stuff in its absence and they never make up a better story than that truth. They always make up a worse story.

John Broer 25:50

Yes.

Rich Sheridan 25:51

That kind of stuff promotes fear, right? But if you publicly display it, it doesn't mean it's perfect. But we always say the artifacts we use here don't solve the problems. They expose the problem so the humans can solve the problems. So if you see an imbalance in the chart, if you don't think where you're where you're supposed to be, if you think you should be moving up in our chart of pay levels and that sort of thing, you go to your peers and talk to them about it. And we have taught them over the years to have those gentle conversations, those growth-encouraging conversations with people. Now, you know, we're a regular team. We have regular human beings. It's not nervonic here. It doesn't go well every single day. It's not like we don't have conflict, and it's not like we don't have difficult conversations from time to time. But what we've taught the team to do is care enough about each other that when conflict arises, to check in with the other person. Say, look, are you okay? Is everything going on in your life? Is there something going on that's causing you some pain right now? Or did I cause that pain, right? How many times when we're in conflict with another person? Of course we assume it's the other person. Really? You think it could have been you that started this? Oh no, not me. How could that be? I had no, you know, ill intent in my heart for the other person. But maybe I just, you know, maybe I did something wrong and I should, I should fess up to it. You know, this peer evaluation process, uh, the team has designed it, they do a wonderful job with it. Uh it it, I will tell you, there's no better people to know how someone's doing here than the peers you pair with on a on a weekly basis. I mean, how much would I know as a boss about the people who are working out there? Think how vacant most annual performance reviews are. Right? Getting a, you know, you do it once a year, or you know, at least that's been the old system. Um, you know, you close the door and you uh, you know, you talk about, you know, the 12 things you did wrong in the last year, and you're like, wow, could you told me that back in January when I started doing? Well, no, we need to talk about these things. And then, you know, we then we bin them into, you know, meets expectations or exceeds expectations and all that sort of thing. I like, I can guarantee you, no one, not a single human being ever went into an annual performance review thinking to themselves, yeah, this year I pretty much just met expectations. So everybody goes in thinking, I tore the cover off the ball this year. Yeah, I rocked it. That's right. And I'm gonna get an exceeds, and the boss's like, well, you know, only 3.5% of you can get an exceeds expectations this year based on uh how we're gonna dole out the and you got one three years ago, John, so we can't hand one out to you again. Right. I don't know who thinks of this year. I know it's it's remarkable.

John Broer 28:46

It really is. Yeah.

Sara Best 28:49

It seems to me you've cracked the code. Uh, you know, it's it's it's so revolutionary and so simple, but yet clearly it's effective that you're in your environment, uh, people are empowered. They're totally empowered.

Rich Sheridan 29:03

Yeah, and you know, I will tell you, you know what it does for me? It simplifies my life. I will tell you these days, this team is racing ahead of me so fast I can barely keep up. I'm hearing about stuff they're inventing, experiments they're running, things they're trying. I'm like, what? What when did you decide to do that? But they they this is their company. They believe in what we've created. And I think that's a powerful system inside of an organization. When you create a system that people actually believe in, it's it's a powerful force. How how big is the team, Rich? So right now we're in 45 people, John. We were as high as 55 people pre-cand.

John Broer 29:45

Okay. The reason I ask is that, you know, we had another guest on, and gosh, do you I can't remember, Sara, what Artie talked about. There was this theory that once you get beyond a certain, I mean, that in terms of relationships, that once you get past a certain number, the genuine nature of it just starts to fall off. And there's a certain threshold that you that you hit. And I wonder if, you know, you've sort of been able to create this dynamic with a I mean, uh, 45 people, that's a a sizable group, but I would imagine that within it, you've pared it down, or literally worked it to the you know, with to dyads and then created a real dynamic by mixing those up all the time so that that you there is a bit more universal nature of accountability, understanding, and relationship building. That's interesting.

Rich Sheridan 30:35

And and relationships, right? I mean, they they know each other. You spend 40 hours working at a keyboard to mouse with somebody, guess what? You're gonna get to know them as a human being, not just as a colleague.

John Broer 30:46

Right. It's funny. People are out there going, well, I'm sure they could afford to get everybody their own keyboard and mouse, but help help them understand. That's intentional.

Real Vacations And Shared Knowledge

Rich Sheridan 30:55

Yeah, that's intentional. It's very intentional. It goes to the heart of a couple of big problems. Uh, in the software industry in particular, we have these tower of knowledge where there's one person on a team who knows everything about a single singular tower of uh you know technical knowledge and nobody else knows what they know. Right. That person can't go on vacation without taking their cell phone and their laptop. Uh, they're incessantly checking their email while they're away. That's not a vacation. You're just changing your work location at that point. Right. You know, these companies that say, hey, we're gonna give you a cell phone and a laptop so you can work from anywhere. Well, that sounds free, but here's what they're really saying we expect you to work from everywhere all the time. And that's a fear-based system all by itself. We actually have a system here through peer pressure alone. When you go on vacation, we forbid you from checking email while you're away.

John Broer 31:55

Wow.

Rich Sheridan 31:56

Work smart. Yeah. And uh, and if we catch you checking work email while you're away, we will make fun of you when you come back to the office. There is a public shaming at the office. Right, right. So um, and you know, I remember one time I was going on vacation and Lisa looked at me and she said, You know, Rich, that whole no checking email applies to you too. And I said, Well, I mean, Lisa, I'm the CEO. I mean, you know, I gotta check email. I don't want to come home to a thousand. She said, Well, how about if you have us check your email while you're away? And she said, I'm sure there will be a few we can't handle, but we'll leave that, we'll tell them you're away. And when you come back, we'll have them in a special, you know, folder for you to check. When I came back, 18 messages after a week's vacation.

Sara Best 32:52

Wow.

Rich Sheridan 32:53

Holy cow. That I mean, suddenly it was like I just had a vacation. Like the look I want for the team. It's like 18 messages, I could do those in two hours, and I'm all caught up after being off with

Job Fit And Parting With Dignity

Rich Sheridan 33:05

me. It was incredible.

Sara Best 33:06

That is incredible. I have to ask, Rich, do you have you encountered, you know, what we would describe in our world as poor job fit? Have you encountered somebody who's been hired and they just didn't thrive in an environment where they were collaborating with they needed to collaborate effectively with others?

Rich Sheridan 33:27

Yeah, I mean, this is we don't try and be all things to all people. We have a very unique uh approach to all of the traditional HR processes, including how we interview. But it's not a perfect process, just like no interview process is perfect. And there are times where we decide it's not working out or they decide it's not working out. So they either leave us or we park company with them. And I always tell the team at that point, I said, now switch from talking with Sara, the employee, to Sara the human being. Ask her what she needs, where does she need to go next, where where would she like to look for work and that sort of thing. So we try and handle that with dignity and respect, but of course, I mean, we have a very unique culture here. Some people get really enamored with it at the beginning, and then they realize um it's not it's not for them. And that's okay. Uh, we're not going to change our culture to fit an individual. Our culture is what it is. It's very clear. We're very upfront with it. We do tours, we've written books about it. People can come visit and see, and then they can try it.

Sara Best 34:35

Yeah, see so much to offer. I know we will, Rich will include in the show notes uh links to both Joy Inc., your first book, and then your more recent book, um, Chief Joy Officer, how great leaders elevate human energy and eliminate fear, which is is that model, that simple model you talked about, uh, with and then I know there's real practical application in the book. I'm dying to know what's next for you. You know, you're you're speaking, you're talking, you're you're inviting others into your organization to learn how to apply these ideas in their own organizations, but what's on the horizon for you?

Rich Sheridan 35:12

Yeah, you know, a lot of people are looking like, hey

Thriving Again After The Pandemic

Rich Sheridan 35:15

Rich, you're looking, you know, like maybe you're thinking about retirement. And uh I was telling them, I got 30 years to figure that out. I'm only 64, so I've got another 30 years to figure out the retirement equation. Yeah, you know, obviously the pandemic has caused us to have to reinvent many of the traditional practices we've used at Menlo over these years, and I wasn't sure my old brain was ready for that. And good news, the team led. I followed, and now I see what they're doing. We absolutely emerged stronger uh from the pandemic, which was uh kind of a call to arms here. We we set up a uh uh rallying cry when the pandemic started that we will get back to thriving again. And it was a five-step plan of survive, adapt, sustain, emerge stronger, and thrive again if we do all those other things. And we got there, and it was delightful to watch the team lead that effort. And I will say what I'm learning to do personally, Sara, is just keep stepping back, letting them lead, letting the team lead. They are growing the company, they are growing personally, and it is just a delight to watch. I find, you know, uh be a little careful how you say this with an earshot. I find the less I do, the better things go here.

Sara Best 36:33

That's a good arrangement.

Rich Sheridan 36:35

That that's pretty and yeah, I am uh uh toying with the idea of a third book. Uh, and my imagined title is Joy Inc. 2, How We Rebuilt a per a workplace people love and emerged stronger.

John Broer 36:48

Oh, very bad.

Rich Sheridan 36:49

There were a lot of lessons. We learned we have learned so much uh during the pandemic times, it's

One Move To Change Culture

Rich Sheridan 36:55

just incredible. I would have never guessed uh what we would go through and what we've learned.

John Broer 36:59

So, Rich, staying on that, if you were to give our boss holes that are listening in and intrigued by your message, and they do listen, if you were to say, if you were to take them aside and say, I got one thing for you to to really do right now, what would that be?

Rich Sheridan 37:17

Well, I think the simplest thing to say is often the hardest thing to do is be intentional about your culture. Most cultures are default cultures. Who did we hire? What behaviors do we tolerate? What attitudes walked in the door this morning? But no one can define those kind of cultures. And sometimes those cultures can work really well for a long time until they stop, and nobody knew nobody knew then what allowed them to work. There's probably some hero in the mix somewhere, and they departed, and then the whole thing fell apart. So my encouragement is to build an intentionally joyful culture. And I choose those words very carefully, and then begin fitting every part of the processes of your company to that cultural intention, including, and maybe even especially every single step of the traditional HR process. How do we recruit? How do we interview? How do we select? How do we onboard? Probably one of the most difficult HR processes ever invented. How do we onboard new people, particularly in pandemic times? How do we give feedback? How do we promote? And quite frankly, at what point should we fire someone? Yeah.

John Broer 38:32

Great advice. Thank you.

Sara Best 38:34

Such good stuff. Rich, it's been a true delight uh to have you on the podcast. Um, I I think our listeners would be gifted, you know. No, let me say that differently. I think our listeners would really receive a great gift from reading, in particular, Chief Joy Officer. It really goes into more detail about a lot of what you've talked about today. But, you know, thanks for your humility, your your willingness to empower others. I think, you know, we we keep coming back to this idea on the Boss Hole Chronicles that people just want to be fulfilled. And one way to be fulfilled is is to own and and to drive and to to find meaning in what they do. And you've uh you've done a really decent job of that.

Rich Sheridan 39:15

Thank you, I really appreciate it.

Sara Best 39:17

We'll see you next time, folks, on the on the Boss Hole Chronicles.

John Broer 39:23

Thanks very much for checking out this episode of the Fox Holy Chronicles. It was so good to have you here. And if you have your own Fossfold story that you want to share with the Fossil Transformation native, just reach out. You can email us at my story at the Fossbull Chronicles.com. Again, my story at the Fossball Chronicles.com.