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Rethink Culture is the podcast that shines the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. Virtually all of the business leaders who make headlines today do so because of their company performance. Yet, the people and the culture of a company is at least as important as its performance. It's time that we shine the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture and are putting people and culture at the forefront.
[00:00:08.15 - 00:00:12.16] Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome to Rethink Culture, the
[00:00:12.16 - 00:00:16.21] podcast that shines the spotlight on leaders of businesses that people love to
[00:00:16.21 - 00:00:22.12] work for. My name is Andreas Konstantinou. I'm a micromanager turned servant leader
[00:00:22.12 - 00:00:26.12] who developed a passion for workplace culture. And I'm also the founder of
[00:00:26.12 - 00:00:29.07] Rethink Culture, a company that helps businesses create healthier workplace
[00:00:29.07 - 00:00:35.12] culture by turning their culture into a KPI so they can manage and measure. Today,
[00:00:35.12 - 00:00:41.10] I have the very much pleasure of welcoming Richard Sheridan, founder and CEO of Menlo
[00:00:41.10 - 00:00:46.15] Innovations, a software company in Michigan, also known as a Chief
[00:00:46.15 - 00:00:52.00] Storyteller in his own company. He's written two books, Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy
[00:00:52.00 - 00:00:58.06] Officer. And what's unusual about Menlo Innovations is they have around about 3000
[00:00:58.06 - 00:01:05.12] visitors every year coming to the company just to witness the culture. And Richard
[00:01:05.12 - 00:01:12.09] also tells me he has many hobbies, skiing, golf and a pilot's license, as well as
[00:01:12.09 - 00:01:18.15] being a father to three daughters, a grandfather to four granddaughters, and
[00:01:18.15 - 00:01:24.15] with one more grandchild on the way. And with all of that, Rich, very welcome to
[00:01:24.15 - 00:01:26.04] the Rethink Culture podcast.
[00:01:26.04 - 00:01:28.00] Thank you, Andreas. Great to be here.
[00:01:28.00 - 00:01:28.21] So where do we
[00:01:28.21 - 00:01:35.15] start? Tell us a little bit about Joy, or actually not before the book, tell us a
[00:01:35.15 - 00:01:45.21] bit about Menlo Innovations. And what led you to the journey of founding Menlo
[00:01:45.21 - 00:01:47.12] Innovations?
[00:01:47.12 - 00:01:53.22] Yeah, so Menlo was founded in 2001. It is my first sort of real
[00:01:53.22 - 00:01:58.00] entrepreneurial venture. I had a few other things I dabbled in when I was much
[00:01:58.00 - 00:02:06.03] younger, but this was the for real one. And we founded the company with a crazy
[00:02:06.03 - 00:02:10.15] big mission. We wanted to end human suffering in the world as it relates to
[00:02:10.15 - 00:02:17.03] technology, by returning joy to both technology and to the teams that design it
[00:02:17.03 - 00:02:18.09] and build it.
[00:02:18.09 - 00:02:20.21] So you were very conscious about that mission when you started?
[00:02:22.10 - 00:02:27.07] Absolutely, yes. That was a mission statement we crafted in our earliest
[00:02:27.07 - 00:02:29.05] months of existence.
[00:02:29.05 - 00:02:34.12] And later would come to describe it to many of those tour visitors who come and
[00:02:34.12 - 00:02:39.13] visit, that they have come to a place that has very intentionally created a culture
[00:02:39.13 - 00:02:43.18] focused on what we like to call the business value of joy.
[00:02:43.22 - 00:02:47.14] And what were some
[00:02:47.14 - 00:02:56.08] of the early influences you had that maybe sparked that passion about creating joy?
[00:02:56.08 - 00:03:00.22] Were you dissatisfied? Were you disillusioned with life at work from your
[00:03:00.22 - 00:03:04.02] previous work perhaps?
[00:03:04.02 - 00:03:09.01] Yeah, you know, I had this fantastic experience when I was
[00:03:09.01 - 00:03:15.07] young. I touched a computer for the first time in 1971 when I was just a kid in high
[00:03:15.07 - 00:03:21.13] school. I was 13 years old. I know a lot of younger people these days are amazed
[00:03:21.13 - 00:03:26.04] that there were in fact computers back in 1971. They're a little different than they
[00:03:26.04 - 00:03:31.19] are today, of course. But in those early days, I just fell in love with the idea of
[00:03:31.19 - 00:03:37.13] programming. It was one of these just mind -blowing moments. Probably, I bet a lot of
[00:03:37.13 - 00:03:41.08] programmers can relate to that. The first time they had a computer, do what they
[00:03:41.08 - 00:03:45.20] told it to do and it worked. They were like, oh my gosh, I did this. And it felt
[00:03:45.20 - 00:03:52.01] very artistic to me. It felt very creative. I had a wonderful teacher who
[00:03:52.01 - 00:04:00.07] kind of really unleashed a creative spirit inside of me. By the next year in high
[00:04:00.07 - 00:04:06.08] school, I'd written a gaming program to play fantasy baseball on the computer. I
[00:04:06.08 - 00:04:10.10] typed in all of the major league baseball players into the computer so my friends
[00:04:10.10 - 00:04:14.10] and I could play our favorite teams against one another in the cold Michigan
[00:04:14.10 - 00:04:18.01] winter months on the computer. And I entered that program into a programming
[00:04:18.01 - 00:04:24.10] contest and I won the international gaming category for that program. And the people
[00:04:24.10 - 00:04:28.10] who were supplying us the compute power wanted to see the kid who won the contest
[00:04:28.10 - 00:04:33.23] because it was a pretty big feather in their cap too. Because doing computer
[00:04:33.23 - 00:04:38.20] science education in high school in the early 70s was a little bit unusual. I just
[00:04:38.20 - 00:04:43.10] happened to be in the right place at the right time. And the people who ran the
[00:04:43.10 - 00:04:47.17] computing center were the leader of that group, came to visit the kid who won the
[00:04:47.17 - 00:04:52.10] contest. And he asked me a fateful question. He said, do you want to come
[00:04:52.10 - 00:04:58.10] work for me? And I said, doing what? And he says, programming. I said, you can get
[00:04:58.10 - 00:05:03.22] paid for doing this? And so I got my first job as a programmer before I could even
[00:05:03.22 - 00:05:12.14] drive a car. And it was a wonderful first several years of programming experience.
[00:05:12.14 - 00:05:19.05] It was very heady time. Here I am, this kid that's building email systems and
[00:05:19.05 - 00:05:23.23] other things for the school systems that we worked in. I started having teams of
[00:05:23.23 - 00:05:29.17] people working around me. We were just, it was just that kind of energized, creative
[00:05:29.17 - 00:05:34.07] atmosphere that all of us probably dream about in our careers. And I had it. I had
[00:05:34.07 - 00:05:40.02] it at a very young age. I realized, you know, I didn't have enough education in
[00:05:40.02 - 00:05:45.07] computer science to really go far. So I went to the University of Michigan, got a
[00:05:45.07 - 00:05:49.16] couple of degrees in computer science and computer engineering and launched a career
[00:05:49.16 - 00:05:54.14] that, you know, I thought, boy, I've got the world by the tail. By the time I
[00:05:54.14 - 00:05:58.23] graduated from college, I had about seven years of programming experience. You know,
[00:05:58.23 - 00:06:04.01] I've got two degrees from a really big deal university in computer science. And
[00:06:04.01 - 00:06:08.08] it's an industry that's just about to take off, right? The PCs were just coming out
[00:06:08.08 - 00:06:13.08] and all this, right? I've got the world by the tail. It didn't take long before I
[00:06:13.08 - 00:06:19.14] fell into what I now call a deep trough of disillusionment about the industry, where
[00:06:19.14 - 00:06:24.05] I started seeing big problems. And I thought they were my fault, right? I
[00:06:24.05 - 00:06:28.13] thought I was the one that was, maybe I'm not qualified. Maybe I'm not as good at
[00:06:28.13 - 00:06:33.04] this as I thought I was. Because we were missing deadlines. We were blowing
[00:06:33.04 - 00:06:39.19] budgets. We were working through the night. We were delivering crappy quality.
[00:06:39.19 - 00:06:44.13] The users were unhappy. We missed the mark on what the company wanted us to build.
[00:06:44.13 - 00:06:47.22] And the marketing and sales people are complaining. The customers are
[00:06:47.22 - 00:06:53.10] complaining. The people who worked for me were complaining. Everybody was unhappy. I
[00:06:53.10 - 00:06:57.22] would go home after very long nights. My wife would look at tired me and she'd say,
[00:06:58.17 - 00:07:02.13] you don't look happy. And I said, I'm not. And she said, what are you going to do
[00:07:02.13 - 00:07:08.16] about it? I said, I don't know. And I was scared. I mean, this was what I knew. This
[00:07:08.16 - 00:07:12.11] is what I'd gone to school for. This was putting a roof over our head. This is what
[00:07:12.11 - 00:07:16.23] was, you know, building a life for our young family at that time. And I thought,
[00:07:16.23 - 00:07:23.22] what am I going to do? And I contemplated in those, sort of my late 20s, early 30s,
[00:07:23.22 - 00:07:27.08] maybe I should just get out of the industry. Maybe I should find something
[00:07:27.08 - 00:07:35.11] else. And whatever wiring is inside of me, part of it is optimism. Part of it was a
[00:07:35.11 - 00:07:41.08] belief that if there's this big a problem, there's probably some grand solution
[00:07:41.08 - 00:07:47.10] waiting to be found. And so I started reading a lot of books, but not books on
[00:07:47.10 - 00:07:54.19] technology. I've started reading books on teamwork and management and design
[00:07:54.19 - 00:08:01.20] thinking and leadership. And what I realized in reading those books was the
[00:08:01.20 - 00:08:06.07] challenge I faced and the challenge that most people in our industry still face to
[00:08:06.07 - 00:08:11.19] this day is not a technological challenge. It's a challenge of how do we organize the
[00:08:11.19 - 00:08:18.04] humans more effectively. And that became my passionate pursuit. I started consuming
[00:08:18.04 - 00:08:25.17] books on these topics. I didn't know what I was looking for exactly. I'd had that
[00:08:25.17 - 00:08:31.10] youthful experience that really sort of set my brain for, I know what's possible.
[00:08:31.10 - 00:08:37.23] I wanted to get back to that. But I also know my wiring well enough that when I'm
[00:08:37.23 - 00:08:46.01] in search mode like that, I will know it when I see it. And that started to happen
[00:08:46.01 - 00:08:50.07] much later in my career and would ultimately lead to the creation of Menlo
[00:08:50.07 - 00:08:51.05] Innovations.
[00:08:52.00 - 00:09:00.20] You realized you wanted to build a better workplace for software development. Was
[00:09:00.20 - 00:09:02.21] that in your 20s?
[00:09:02.21 - 00:09:07.09] Yeah, you know, I had this dream as a student at Michigan, you
[00:09:07.09 - 00:09:13.05] know, when I was in my early 20s, I just had this picture in my head of what do I
[00:09:13.05 - 00:09:19.05] want my work life to look like? And I thought to myself back then, just dreaming
[00:09:19.05 - 00:09:25.05] my brain, a big opening collaborative work environment, a place filled with human
[00:09:25.05 - 00:09:29.17] energy, a lot of collaboration, doing interesting, new, innovative things
[00:09:29.17 - 00:09:36.02] together, accomplishing big goals, not as individuals, but as a team. Because that's
[00:09:36.02 - 00:09:41.02] a bit of what I experienced when I was that kid still in high school. And I
[00:09:41.02 - 00:09:46.14] thought, I can do that again. And yet, my career looked the exact opposite. We were
[00:09:46.14 - 00:09:52.05] all isolated in little cubes and offices. And we were, you know, failing to
[00:09:52.05 - 00:09:56.14] understand what customers actually need. And we were shipping products before they
[00:09:56.14 - 00:10:01.12] were ready. And we didn't have any processes for quality that were worth
[00:10:01.12 - 00:10:08.06] anything at all. We did a terrible job recruiting and in hiring and onboarding.
[00:10:08.06 - 00:10:12.05] And everything was organized, misorganized, everything was poorly
[00:10:12.05 - 00:10:19.00] organized. And I just thought, no, there has to be a better way. It just has to be
[00:10:19.00 - 00:10:21.02] and I was determined to find it.
[00:10:21.02 - 00:10:24.00] So where did you start? So you started Menlo
[00:10:24.00 - 00:10:34.06] Innovations in 2001, I think? Yes. And what were the first foundation pillars of joy?
[00:10:34.06 - 00:10:38.14] Yeah, to understand Menlo, you have to understand what happened just before
[00:10:38.14 - 00:10:46.14] Menlo. Because there was this long pursuit. And then I was handed an
[00:10:46.14 - 00:10:53.03] opportunity to really have as much control as a human can have of the
[00:10:53.03 - 00:10:58.20] things that were important. This was back when I was a director at a company called
[00:10:58.20 - 00:11:04.13] Interface Systems here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And my boss, Bob Nero had been
[00:11:04.13 - 00:11:11.04] sort of guiding me towards an executive position with the company. And one day, he
[00:11:11.04 - 00:11:17.17] brought me into his office and said, Rich, I want to promote you to VP. And I said,
[00:11:17.17 - 00:11:24.17] No, not interested. I am not interested in the uncapped personal commitment that will
[00:11:24.17 - 00:11:31.07] be required to be an executive inside of a troubled public company. Oh, he didn't
[00:11:31.07 - 00:11:40.10] want to hear that. He was very upset with me. And so I left his office that day.
[00:11:40.10 - 00:11:47.04] Upset. He was upset. I went home that night. And I contemplated what just
[00:11:47.04 - 00:11:52.10] happened that afternoon when I told my boss, No, I don't want the promotion. You
[00:11:52.10 - 00:11:56.14] know, because there was a lot of, I remember him telling me at the time, he
[00:11:56.14 - 00:12:00.22] says, Rich, you have three daughters. Your life is about to get very
[00:12:00.22 - 00:12:04.07] expensive. I'm going to help with that. We're going to get you into this executive
[00:12:04.07 - 00:12:09.16] position. It was an interesting ploy on his part. But there was something far more
[00:12:09.16 - 00:12:16.14] important than money to me at risk there. And it was in here. And so I went home
[00:12:16.14 - 00:12:22.19] that night. I thought about my experience as a youth, my dream as a college student,
[00:12:22.22 - 00:12:29.08] the disillusionment I'd gone through over the last 15 years. And I realized I had
[00:12:29.08 - 00:12:36.10] just been handed a grand opportunity to make the dream real. So I went to back to
[00:12:36.10 - 00:12:42.05] Bob Nero, my CEO, the next day. And I said, I will take the job on one
[00:12:42.05 - 00:12:49.22] condition. I need your help. He was intrigued. And he said, What? I said, I
[00:12:49.22 - 00:12:53.01] need your help, because I want to build the best damn software team this town has
[00:12:53.01 - 00:12:58.05] ever seen. And he asked me, he says, Rich, what happened? He says, 12 hours ago, you
[00:12:58.05 - 00:13:03.05] were telling me no. And now you come back with this. And I said, You know, Bob, I've
[00:13:03.05 - 00:13:09.02] had this dream for a long time. This is my opportunity. I don't know exactly what I'm
[00:13:09.02 - 00:13:12.22] going to do. But I'm going to pour everything I can into taking this
[00:13:12.22 - 00:13:19.16] opportunity and turning it into what I want. And within two years, we started to
[00:13:19.16 - 00:13:24.16] reformulate how Interface Systems work, not just my team, but the effect on my
[00:13:24.16 - 00:13:34.07] team started to affect the whole company. By 1999, I had met a guy, James Goble, who
[00:13:34.07 - 00:13:39.14] would be a consultant to me then, now my co founder at Menlo. I'd read a book by a
[00:13:39.14 - 00:13:42.19] gentleman named Kent Beck, who wrote something called Extreme Programming
[00:13:42.19 - 00:13:47.23] Explained that a lot of people in the programming industry know well. And I saw
[00:13:47.23 - 00:13:53.14] a video on an industrial design firm in California called IDEO. They had featured
[00:13:53.14 - 00:14:00.04] them redesigning what does design look like? Because I was confused about design.
[00:14:00.04 - 00:14:04.20] I thought design came from genius designers. But design is really in the
[00:14:04.20 - 00:14:09.01] minds of the people you intend to serve. And our job as designers is to pull out
[00:14:09.01 - 00:14:15.04] what they know, and build it into whatever it is we're designing. And so those, those
[00:14:15.04 - 00:14:19.08] things all happen within a short period of time, reading the book, meeting James,
[00:14:19.08 - 00:14:23.22] seeing the IDEO video and having this platform from which I could, and we made
[00:14:23.22 - 00:14:28.04] dramatic changes quickly. Within six months, we had absolutely transformed
[00:14:28.04 - 00:14:33.16] Interface Systems into something that looks a lot like Menlo does today. And we
[00:14:33.16 - 00:14:38.23] we were running it within six months, it was working, I was back to this word joy,
[00:14:38.23 - 00:14:43.17] I wouldn't have used the word back then. But I could feel it. I could, I was
[00:14:43.17 - 00:14:48.01] walking in every day excited. I loved what we were doing. I loved what we were
[00:14:48.01 - 00:14:55.22] accomplishing. And then in 2001, we had been acquired, based on the work that my
[00:14:55.22 - 00:14:59.17] team had done in transforming the culture of that company. And then the internet
[00:14:59.17 - 00:15:04.16] bubble burst. And all this wonderful work that we had done over the previous two
[00:15:04.16 - 00:15:10.05] years, was literally washed away in an instant. And I went home and I told my
[00:15:10.05 - 00:15:14.23] wife, I'd lost my job. And she looked at me with tears in her eyes. And she said,
[00:15:14.23 - 00:15:21.19] you're unemployed? And I said, No, honey, I'm an entrepreneur now. And she didn't
[00:15:21.19 - 00:15:26.23] exactly know what that meant. But I realized that while I lost everything when
[00:15:26.23 - 00:15:30.16] the internet bubble burst, you know, the job, the title, the paycheck, the options,
[00:15:30.16 - 00:15:36.01] the everything, they couldn't take away what I had learned in those two years. And
[00:15:36.01 - 00:15:40.17] what I had learned would eventually become the basis for Menlo. And we started Menlo
[00:15:40.17 - 00:15:47.14] right on the heels of the dot com bubble burst, and very quickly came up with a
[00:15:47.14 - 00:15:53.16] famous mission statement, that we wanted to end human suffering in the world as it
[00:15:53.16 - 00:15:58.01] relates to technology, not only for the people who are paying for it, and the
[00:15:58.01 - 00:16:02.07] people who ultimately use it, but for the people who are building it. And the word
[00:16:02.07 - 00:16:07.07] we chose to center our culture on was an unusual word in the context of work. We
[00:16:07.07 - 00:16:13.01] picked the word joy, we wanted to return joy to technology. And that became
[00:16:13.01 - 00:16:17.04] the rest of the story, as they say.
[00:16:17.04 - 00:16:19.04] Now I know why you're called the chief
[00:16:19.04 - 00:16:22.23] storyteller, because you are really good with stories.
[00:16:22.23 - 00:16:25.13] So Rich, when you
[00:16:25.13 - 00:16:32.22] transformed the company back at the Interface days, using extreme programming
[00:16:32.22 - 00:16:38.19] and other principles, was there any resistance to the change?
[00:16:38.19 - 00:16:41.04] Yeah. So when I
[00:16:41.04 - 00:16:46.22] first read Kent Beck's book, and it wasn't even a book back then, he hadn't, the book
[00:16:46.22 - 00:16:50.11] came out just a little bit later, but there were wiki pages and all this sort of
[00:16:50.11 - 00:16:54.22] thing. So I was learning about these principles of extreme programming. And I
[00:16:54.22 - 00:16:59.07] was intrigued by a lot of them, automated unit testing frameworks, test driven
[00:16:59.07 - 00:17:04.10] design, iterative development, short cycles, you know, the story carding
[00:17:04.10 - 00:17:11.08] process, all that kind of stuff. But there was this one thing inside of Kent's, you
[00:17:11.08 - 00:17:15.16] know, 14 principles of extreme programming, that at first my brain
[00:17:15.16 - 00:17:21.22] resisted. And it was this idea of paired programming. And I kind of looked at that
[00:17:21.22 - 00:17:27.23] at first, I'm like, huh? Why would I put two programmers on one keyboard and mouse?
[00:17:27.23 - 00:17:32.14] That doesn't make sense. I'd be cutting productivity in half. And then I started
[00:17:32.14 - 00:17:38.23] to realize, personally, what the benefits of that could be. And actually, somewhat
[00:17:38.23 - 00:17:43.20] like Kent did, when he came up with it, I looked back in my own programming career,
[00:17:43.20 - 00:17:49.14] and realized how much better the code was when I had pulled someone up next to me
[00:17:49.14 - 00:17:53.10] and said, hey, Frank, come here, sit down with me. This code has to work the first
[00:17:53.10 - 00:17:58.01] time. Can you just work with me? And we sat together. So I had experienced it. I
[00:17:58.01 - 00:18:01.07] just never gave it a name. And I never thought it should be an instantiated
[00:18:01.07 - 00:18:07.17] practice that you do all the time. But it started to intrigue me. So then I brought
[00:18:07.17 - 00:18:16.05] this, these ideas to my team. And at the time, I had about 14 developers. I was
[00:18:16.05 - 00:18:20.20] still the new kid on the block at Interface Systems. I had only been there
[00:18:20.20 - 00:18:29.13] 16 years at that point. Some of my programmers had been there for 30 years.
[00:18:29.13 - 00:18:35.22] Okay, so this was a seasoned team. And I'm still the new kid on the block at 16 years
[00:18:35.22 - 00:18:41.16] of crazy new ideas. So I brought them together. I'm the VP now. So I can tell
[00:18:41.16 - 00:18:46.13] them what to do if I want to. But I knew that if I was going to make big changes, I
[00:18:46.13 - 00:18:52.19] had to get them to join me. And so I presented these ideas on Kent Beck to
[00:18:52.19 - 00:19:01.05] them. And I asked them what they thought. And at first, all of them just looked down
[00:19:01.05 - 00:19:06.13] at the floor. They didn't even want to make eye contact. They didn't say
[00:19:06.13 - 00:19:10.04] anything. And I said, Guys, I'm really thinking of going in this direction. What
[00:19:10.04 - 00:19:15.01] do you think? Finally, one of my developers raises his hand. I said, Gil,
[00:19:15.01 - 00:19:23.20] tell me what you think. He said, Rich, blood, mayhem, murder. That's what I think.
[00:19:23.20 - 00:19:30.11] He says, do not pull me out my office and put me out in a big open room. Do not make me
[00:19:30.11 - 00:19:37.07] share a computer with another human being. And for goodness sakes, do not make me
[00:19:37.07 - 00:19:45.18] share my code. It's my code. So that was the first reaction. Blood, mayhem, murder.
[00:19:47.10 - 00:19:54.13] Now, after that meeting, two of my guys came up to me, didn't want to speak up at the
[00:19:54.13 - 00:19:57.13] meeting because they could feel the resistance from everybody else. And they
[00:19:57.13 - 00:20:04.20] said, We want to try it. We want to run the experiment. So I authorized a little
[00:20:04.20 - 00:20:10.22] three week experiment where Bob and Claire paired together and did all the practice
[00:20:10.22 - 00:20:15.22] of extreme programming for three weeks, just to see what it would be like. And
[00:20:15.22 - 00:20:20.16] Claire stopped me about two weeks into the experiment out in the parking lot. We're
[00:20:20.16 - 00:20:27.13] walking in the building. And he asked me a really funny question. He said, Rich, are
[00:20:27.13 - 00:20:33.04] you still going to pay me to work here? I said, What do you mean? He said, I got to
[00:20:33.04 - 00:20:36.10] tell you, this new way of working feels like so much fun. It doesn't feel like
[00:20:36.10 - 00:20:41.04] work anymore. I'm not sure you should pay me. So this was the reactions I was
[00:20:41.04 - 00:20:45.08] getting at the beginning. Blood, mayhem, murder at one end of the spectrum. I will
[00:20:45.08 - 00:20:49.22] work for you for free at the other end of the spectrum. I was not getting lukewarm
[00:20:49.22 - 00:20:59.22] responses. And so we went through a series of ongoing experiments to continue to try
[00:20:59.22 - 00:21:06.04] this. And eventually, magic happened.
[00:21:08.01 - 00:21:17.01] So zooming to Menlo Innovations today, when a visitor comes in, what's typically
[00:21:17.01 - 00:21:22.16] the one or two things that create a wow moment for them?
[00:21:22.16 - 00:21:25.19] Yeah, what's fun for me,
[00:21:25.19 - 00:21:31.10] and I get to do this a lot, is often I will meet the visitors before they
[00:21:31.10 - 00:21:37.04] actually walk in our door. And so I'll walk in with them. The door opens, they
[00:21:37.04 - 00:21:42.08] walk into our space, and I listen. And it happens almost every single time. It's
[00:21:42.08 - 00:21:47.17] amazing. It happens so often, I can just predict it. The first word out of their
[00:21:47.17 - 00:21:50.15] mouth when they walk in is, wow.
[00:21:53.15 - 00:22:03.07] And because they can feel the human energy in the space. You know, and again, we're,
[00:22:03.07 - 00:22:09.10] these days, we are really counterculture. You know, we were counterculture up to the
[00:22:09.10 - 00:22:14.04] pandemic. And then of course, we, like everyone else, had to all go home and work
[00:22:14.04 - 00:22:18.08] from home and all that sort of thing for about 18 months. Now we're all back in the
[00:22:18.08 - 00:22:22.04] office, five days a week. So we're all back in the office and so people are
[00:22:22.04 - 00:22:26.14] shocked by that. They're like, really? Like the whole world's going to work from
[00:22:26.14 - 00:22:30.10] home and you guys are all back in the office. You know, how do you do that? Why
[00:22:30.10 - 00:22:35.02] do you do that? Why, you know, is there resistance to that? And, but you know,
[00:22:35.02 - 00:22:39.19] when they come in and they, they walk into this big open room and they find out that
[00:22:39.19 - 00:22:46.08] my office is a table out in the room with everybody else. There is no corner office
[00:22:46.08 - 00:22:51.14] for the CEO or for my co-founder James. And they can just feel the energy, the
[00:22:51.14 - 00:22:57.22] camaraderie, the laughter, the dogs running around, sometimes the baby in the
[00:22:57.22 - 00:23:03.04] place and that sort of thing. Now they're intrigued. They're like, okay, tell me
[00:23:03.04 - 00:23:07.01] what's going on here. Why do you, you know, what's happening over here? What are
[00:23:07.01 - 00:23:12.08] these visual artifacts about? And so, but the first thing they notice when I, you
[00:23:12.08 - 00:23:16.07] know, I usually have to point it out to them, but when they finally see it for
[00:23:16.07 - 00:23:23.01] what it is, I say, yeah, look how we work. Two people, one computer, one keyboard and
[00:23:23.01 - 00:23:28.01] mouse. And they're like, what?
[00:23:28.01 - 00:23:33.04] So let's say one of your visitors is an entrepreneur and
[00:23:33.04 - 00:23:37.22] they say, Rich, I really love what you've done here. Tell me what is the one or two
[00:23:37.22 - 00:23:44.11] things I can take back at my business and create more joyful work?
[00:23:44.11 - 00:23:46.19] Well, number one,
[00:23:46.19 - 00:23:53.02] what I tell people is, and it is the culture equation piece is you have to be
[00:23:53.02 - 00:23:57.23] intentional about your culture. And so you have to pick your culture's intention. And
[00:23:57.23 - 00:24:04.11] for us, it's joy. And for us, it's the outcomes of that joy. We want to delight
[00:24:04.11 - 00:24:08.07] the people we intend to serve. That's our belief about the purpose of an
[00:24:08.07 - 00:24:14.10] organization is an organization's purpose should be embedded in service to others.
[00:24:14.10 - 00:24:19.17] It should be embedded in serving others with joy and delight to produce delight in
[00:24:19.17 - 00:24:26.22] the people you serve, that your work is so embraced and loved by the people you
[00:24:26.22 - 00:24:31.22] intend to serve that they come back to you and say, thank you. I love what you did
[00:24:31.22 - 00:24:39.10] for us. So at the very least, that's the basic intention driven through our purpose
[00:24:39.10 - 00:24:45.16] and supported by our culture. And then of course, it's easy to say that be
[00:24:45.16 - 00:24:48.19] intentional about your culture. And I'm guessing a lot of people say, yeah, I
[00:24:48.19 - 00:24:53.07] think we're intentional about our culture. And then I would ask them, show me the
[00:24:53.07 - 00:25:00.17] evidence. And I will tell you where we look first is show me your HR practices
[00:25:00.17 - 00:25:06.22] and how do your HR practices align with your cultural intention? How do you
[00:25:06.22 - 00:25:13.20] recruit? How do you interview? How do you select? How do you onboard? How do you
[00:25:13.20 - 00:25:19.01] give feedback? How do you promote? What decisions lead to making a decision
[00:25:19.01 - 00:25:24.16] perhaps to fire someone? How do you handle that conversation? All of those things
[00:25:24.16 - 00:25:29.11] that are traditional in every organization, every organization has to
[00:25:29.11 - 00:25:34.14] work through those things in one way or another. What evidence do you see in those
[00:25:34.14 - 00:25:41.04] practices in your company that align with your cultural intentions? And so you might
[00:25:41.04 - 00:25:45.02] imagine ours look very different than many organizations.
[00:25:45.02 - 00:25:46.11] So how do you hire and how
[00:25:46.11 - 00:25:52.04] do you onboard? These were the two kind of parts in the book, Joy Inc that really
[00:25:52.04 - 00:25:56.23] stood out for me. I found them very refreshing. So tell us more.
[00:25:56.23 - 00:26:01.01] Yeah. So part
[00:26:01.01 - 00:26:07.10] of this is remembering how we work. And so let me describe how we work in a short
[00:26:07.10 - 00:26:11.16] sentence and then back it up into the interview process. So I described that we
[00:26:11.16 - 00:26:15.17] work in pairs, two people, one computer, sharing a keyboard and a mouse,
[00:26:15.17 - 00:26:19.16] collaborating all day long. This isn't like, come help me with my work. This is
[00:26:19.16 - 00:26:24.19] our work done together and it's done all day long, every day. Okay. So that's the
[00:26:24.19 - 00:26:29.01] typical work day for someone who works at Menlo. Every single day is you have a pair
[00:26:29.01 - 00:26:32.07] partner with you. You're sharing a keyboard. It's not come over on my
[00:26:32.07 - 00:26:38.10] computer. This is our shared computer, our shared work together. And then we switch
[00:26:38.10 - 00:26:44.16] those pairs at least every five business days. So it's very explicit. This isn't
[00:26:44.16 - 00:26:49.08] like, oh, I really like Andreas. So, you know, you come over here and work with me.
[00:26:49.08 - 00:26:53.16] No, we're going to get you to work with everybody on the team. Okay. We want, we
[00:26:53.16 - 00:26:58.13] believe there's a lot of benefit to that and we can talk about why we believe that.
[00:26:58.19 - 00:27:03.14] So now how would you find people who want to work like that if they've never worked
[00:27:03.14 - 00:27:07.19] like that before? Because most people do not work like that. It's a very unusual
[00:27:07.19 - 00:27:13.08] work environment. So we reinvented the interview practice. We bring people in, in
[00:27:13.08 - 00:27:20.01] groups. We call it an extreme interview. Now that's not because it's intense or
[00:27:20.01 - 00:27:26.16] something. It's named after extreme programming. And, and obviously there's
[00:27:26.16 - 00:27:30.14] this element of extreme programming that is pairing. And so we call it an extreme
[00:27:30.14 - 00:27:36.19] interview. We'll bring in 30 to 40 people at a time and we pair them during the
[00:27:36.19 - 00:27:44.16] interview with another candidate. Not pair them with a Menlonian. We pair off the
[00:27:44.16 - 00:27:48.20] candidates, one with another, and then we give them the weirdest instructions you
[00:27:48.20 - 00:27:53.23] will ever get in a job interview. You know, Andreas, if you're paired with, you
[00:27:53.23 - 00:27:59.17] know, Susan, we say your job in this interview through the practice you're
[00:27:59.17 - 00:28:05.17] going to do for the next 20 minutes is to help her get a second interview. Help your
[00:28:05.17 - 00:28:10.10] pair partner succeed. What we're going to evaluate you on is how do you support
[00:28:10.10 - 00:28:14.17] another human being? Why would that be important to us? Because that's the way we
[00:28:14.17 - 00:28:19.14] work every single day. So we are communicating, intentionally communicating
[00:28:19.14 - 00:28:25.23] our deepest held cultural value from the moment of first contact. Now, a lot of
[00:28:25.23 - 00:28:31.17] people think we are hiring for culture fit. And I used to believe that. I no
[00:28:31.17 - 00:28:36.22] longer believe that because the variety of people we get here, there is no way this
[00:28:36.22 - 00:28:42.17] is a culture fit test. What it is, and this is what I've discovered over time, is
[00:28:42.17 - 00:28:48.04] we are teaching our culture from the moment of first contact. We are sharing
[00:28:48.04 - 00:28:55.02] with you what are our expectations for you if you were to come to work here. And if
[00:28:55.02 - 00:29:00.16] we can share those expectations clearly, succinctly, and logically, and, you know,
[00:29:00.16 - 00:29:09.14] not complicated, it's amazing how human beings can adapt if they're presented with
[00:29:09.14 - 00:29:15.07] simple, reasonable expectations. And so we pair you for 20 minutes, and then we
[00:29:15.07 - 00:29:19.08] switch the pairs. So now you're not paired with Susan, you're paired with Bill, and
[00:29:19.08 - 00:29:24.04] then you're paired with John. And three pairings, and we send you all home. It
[00:29:24.04 - 00:29:28.14] lasts about two hours. We don't ask you any questions during this interview. We
[00:29:28.14 - 00:29:34.01] are simply observing your behavior. We actually tell you, before we begin this,
[00:29:34.01 - 00:29:39.02] what failure looks like. We tell people, we're not trying to weed you out, we're
[00:29:39.02 - 00:29:44.20] trying to weed you in. We want you to succeed. This isn't a, let's see if we can
[00:29:44.20 - 00:29:48.22] weed out as quickly as possible. It's like, let's see who can adapt the fastest
[00:29:48.22 - 00:29:53.10] to this crazy new environment that we have. And if you don't work out that time,
[00:29:53.10 - 00:29:57.22] because we'll vote right after you leave as to who would bring in for a second
[00:29:57.22 - 00:30:02.19] interview. And that's the only bar we're trying to set in this very first interview
[00:30:02.19 - 00:30:07.10] is, who do we invite back in for a second interview? And the people who come in on a
[00:30:07.10 - 00:30:11.22] second interview come in for a full day. We pay them. They pair in the morning with
[00:30:11.22 - 00:30:16.04] one Menlonian, they pair in the afternoon with another, and they do real work on a
[00:30:16.04 - 00:30:21.04] real client project. And then at the end of that day, we look for three more votes,
[00:30:21.04 - 00:30:26.02] the two people you paired with and you. Because you may say, this is really cool.
[00:30:26.02 - 00:30:31.19] I think this, this is amazing. It's not for me. Okay, that's great. There's lots
[00:30:31.19 - 00:30:36.01] of other companies you can work for. But we want to give you the experience because
[00:30:36.01 - 00:30:41.10] I think a lot of times interview processes feel very one sided. Oh, wouldn't you be
[00:30:41.10 - 00:30:45.16] lucky to work for us if we choose you? You know, like, really? I don't know if that's
[00:30:45.16 - 00:30:50.20] true. You know, I should give you an opportunity to see what does it feel like.
[00:30:50.20 - 00:30:55.13] What does it actually feel like to work here? And if that day works, we all say
[00:30:55.13 - 00:31:00.13] thumbs up again, then you come in for a paid three week trial. If it works for
[00:31:00.13 - 00:31:04.20] your life, if you can get enough time up. But what we're really trying to say is,
[00:31:04.20 - 00:31:10.16] look, this is different. And we better give you the best possible opportunity and
[00:31:10.16 - 00:31:15.20] us to figure out is this going to work between us? Can you adapt quick enough to
[00:31:15.20 - 00:31:21.04] our expectations of supporting other people, of not trying to take strong
[00:31:21.04 - 00:31:25.13] ownership and say, I did this and all that kind of stuff. It's just a different kind
[00:31:25.13 - 00:31:29.13] of environment. So we want to give you the best possible chance for success.
[00:31:29.13 - 00:31:33.16] To the critics that say this might work for a software company, but it won't work for my
[00:31:33.16 - 00:31:35.13] company. What do you say?
[00:31:35.13 - 00:31:38.22] You know, I you might guess that I've spent a lot of time
[00:31:38.22 - 00:31:44.23] looking at other industries and saying, who else pairs people? Oh, my goodness,
[00:31:44.23 - 00:31:50.16] it's there's so many. It's so obvious to us as humans that we just take it for
[00:31:50.16 - 00:31:56.16] granted. For example, when's the when's the last time you got on a commercial
[00:31:56.16 - 00:32:00.19] airliner and felt comfortable when the pilot said, oh, my copilot called in sick
[00:32:00.19 - 00:32:07.22] today. I got this. I'm going to do it all by myself. It's like so pilots, emergency,
[00:32:07.22 - 00:32:13.08] you know, police and firefighters and paramedics, health care professionals,
[00:32:13.08 - 00:32:17.23] often a surgeon and a parasurgeon or nurse and a paramedic, anesthesiologists and a
[00:32:17.23 - 00:32:23.19] paranesthesiologist. What I like to say is when there's lives at risk, and there is
[00:32:23.19 - 00:32:31.17] with software now, we pair people, parents of teenagers. You know, I realize some
[00:32:31.17 - 00:32:36.16] people have raised teenagers without a spouse that that works, but I'm guessing
[00:32:36.16 - 00:32:41.11] there are moments in every parent's life that, boy, I really need a partner right
[00:32:41.11 - 00:32:47.23] now to make sure my kids stay safe. So golfers and caddies, you know, is a great
[00:32:47.23 - 00:32:55.01] example of pairing as well. So there's lots of examples. And we don't just pair
[00:32:55.01 - 00:33:00.13] programmers. Pretty much everybody in the company pairs. And so we've just found
[00:33:00.13 - 00:33:09.04] such great benefits from pairing in terms of speed to a quality solution, you know,
[00:33:09.04 - 00:33:14.22] on boarding and growing people and transferring skills and making sure we
[00:33:14.22 - 00:33:19.02] don't have these towers of knowledge that define most software teams. All those kind
[00:33:19.02 - 00:33:23.04] of things are just tremendous side benefits we get from pairing.
[00:33:23.04 - 00:33:31.23] What were some of the mistakes or experiments or failed experiments that you made on the way?
[00:33:31.23 - 00:33:35.17] Yeah, I mean, there's so many along the way, because we just keep trying
[00:33:35.17 - 00:33:40.14] stuff, and we never get too wound up about, you know, what didn't work and why
[00:33:40.14 - 00:33:48.16] did we try that. But, you know, in the early days, we weren't, we kind of let
[00:33:48.16 - 00:33:53.17] everybody sort of self-select their pairs. And just, you just figure out who you want
[00:33:53.17 - 00:33:57.19] to pair with. And we found out right away, of course, it was, it was like those
[00:33:57.19 - 00:34:03.07] difficult, youthful experiments on the playground when, you know, you were, you
[00:34:03.07 - 00:34:07.07] were playing some sport, and you had to pick your teams. And then there was always
[00:34:07.07 - 00:34:14.22] the kid left at the end. It felt like, oh, nobody wants me on their team. And so, you
[00:34:14.22 - 00:34:20.01] know, we just started assigning the pairs. And we thought, oh, that we'll just do
[00:34:20.01 - 00:34:23.14] that for a while, then everybody will get used to pairing with everybody else. And
[00:34:23.14 - 00:34:27.01] then we won't have to do it anymore. And the team actually came to us and said,
[00:34:27.01 - 00:34:32.19] don't ever stop assigning the pairs. That removes so much social anxiety. And quite
[00:34:32.19 - 00:34:37.10] frankly, there's people I probably wouldn't have naturally paired with, on my
[00:34:37.10 - 00:34:41.01] own. But because we're forcing that equation, they find out, oh, they're not
[00:34:41.01 - 00:34:44.06] as bad as I thought they were going to be, and all that kind of stuff.
[00:34:44.06 - 00:34:47.13] Yeah, there's, I mean, there's lots of stuff, we're always trying, some of it
[00:34:47.13 - 00:34:53.18] works, some of it doesn't. One of our famous phrases here is let's run the
[00:34:53.18 - 00:34:59.15] experiment. So what you see here is, we like to take action versus take a meeting.
[00:34:59.15 - 00:35:04.03] If somebody has an idea, we're like, well, let's try it and see if it works. And if
[00:35:04.03 - 00:35:10.00] it does, great, keep going. If it doesn't, either adjust it or forget it.
[00:35:10.00 - 00:35:14.11] Are you intentional about hiring for diverse, you know,
[00:35:17.07 - 00:35:23.22] ethnic origin or anything else, or you just let it grow organically?
[00:35:23.22 - 00:35:31.07] What's wonderful about our interviewing process is it scales so easily. And the reason I
[00:35:31.07 - 00:35:36.11] bring that up in the context of this question is, I think the mistakes I used
[00:35:36.11 - 00:35:41.19] to make as a hiring manager, go right to the heart of where I think diversity and
[00:35:41.19 - 00:35:46.17] inclusion starts to break down. If I looked at a resume when I was an
[00:35:46.17 - 00:35:53.08] executive, you know, if I was hiring for a position, I know I would look and say, oh,
[00:35:53.08 - 00:35:57.20] look, they went to the University of Michigan, just like me. Oh, they took the
[00:35:57.20 - 00:36:03.22] same classes from the same professors that I did. Oh, you know, I can see their grade
[00:36:03.22 - 00:36:08.17] point average is a lot like mine, or they grew up around where I did. They must be a
[00:36:08.17 - 00:36:13.10] lot like me. And I did really well, you know, shouldn't I hire them? And you're
[00:36:13.10 - 00:36:19.22] going to end up with very low diversity in that situation. Here, we don't even look
[00:36:19.22 - 00:36:24.05] at the people who are, so when we're pairing during that extreme interview, I
[00:36:24.05 - 00:36:28.04] told you about where you put one candidate with another, there's a Menlonian sitting
[00:36:28.04 - 00:36:33.08] on the other side, just taking notes about what they see. The people taking notes do
[00:36:33.08 - 00:36:38.01] not have access to the resumes of the people sitting across from them. So
[00:36:38.01 - 00:36:44.11] they're just looking at the humans. And I think the first step towards diversity is
[00:36:44.11 - 00:36:48.15] don't look at eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper, look at the human beings.
[00:36:49.11 - 00:36:54.16] And when the, when the judgment of second interview is, did you make your peer
[00:36:54.16 - 00:37:00.20] partner look good? Did you support another human being? The cognitive diversity that
[00:37:00.20 - 00:37:06.13] results from this is very high. Because this is where I started to realize,
[00:37:06.13 - 00:37:09.22] because a lot of people said, oh, you're hiring for culture fit, you must have all
[00:37:09.22 - 00:37:14.11] the extroverted programmers on planet Earth working for you. Because who else
[00:37:14.11 - 00:37:18.01] would like to work in an environment like this, but extroverts. And then I kept
[00:37:18.01 - 00:37:23.13] looking, I'm like, almost none of us are extroverts. I mean, the level of deep
[00:37:23.13 - 00:37:28.19] introversion here at Menlo is very high, because that's the industry we're in. And
[00:37:28.19 - 00:37:32.01] one of the things I discovered about extrovert versus introvert, it's not that
[00:37:32.01 - 00:37:38.04] introverts don't like to work with other humans, they just prefer fewer, safer,
[00:37:38.04 - 00:37:44.07] deeper relationships. And they get that. And so I started looking at the people
[00:37:44.07 - 00:37:48.02] were collecting, and they're all so different, different backgrounds,
[00:37:48.02 - 00:37:53.05] different amount of education, different kinds of experience. In one of the moments
[00:37:53.05 - 00:37:59.07] for me, that was kind of mind blowing, actually was, there was a gentleman that
[00:37:59.07 - 00:38:04.07] he's still here, Scott. And, you know, people were asking us about our interview.
[00:38:04.07 - 00:38:08.07] And Scott has an interesting, I actually tell Scott's story, and I think it's Chief
[00:38:08.07 - 00:38:12.19] Joy Officer, about his interview process, because it was kind of laborious. He tried
[00:38:12.19 - 00:38:16.14] it a couple of times, we gave him some extra chances, that sort of thing. And
[00:38:16.14 - 00:38:21.10] eventually he got in. But he didn't, he didn't align at first. And then he learned
[00:38:21.10 - 00:38:27.05] to adapt. And that adaptation has made him into just a terrific leader here. But, you
[00:38:27.05 - 00:38:30.07] know, people were asking me questions like you're asking me, and I said, Hey, let's
[00:38:30.07 - 00:38:34.05] go talk to Scott about his experiences coming here. So we worked through all the
[00:38:34.05 - 00:38:36.17] things that Scott went through, and eventually make it through our interview
[00:38:36.17 - 00:38:43.13] process. And then I, I asked Scott, I said, Well, what was it that drew you to
[00:38:43.13 - 00:38:48.02] Menlo? Because clearly you weren't, you know, you weren't succeeding in our
[00:38:48.02 - 00:38:51.13] interview process, but you kept trying, you kept wanting to be here. I said, What
[00:38:51.13 - 00:38:56.20] was it about it that about us that had you want to be here? He smiled, he
[00:38:56.20 - 00:39:04.19] says, You guys don't look at resumes. And I'm like, Oh, tell me more, you know,
[00:39:04.19 - 00:39:08.19] like, what did I just learn? You know, what did your resume say? And he said,
[00:39:08.19 - 00:39:14.10] Well, if you'd looked at my resume, you would have seen that the only education I
[00:39:14.10 - 00:39:19.02] had, formal education, is I got a welding certificate.
[00:39:21.04 - 00:39:27.01] He has no formal education in computer science. He says that was a hobby. He says
[00:39:27.01 - 00:39:35.07] most people wouldn't hire me. You guys would. He says that. And so I think we end
[00:39:35.07 - 00:39:42.01] up getting a tremendous diversity here. That is the truest kind of diversity,
[00:39:42.01 - 00:39:46.19] which is the cognitive diversity you need for creativity.
[00:39:46.19 - 00:39:48.02] So I'm hearing you're,
[00:39:48.02 - 00:39:54.16] you're hiding everything that can introduce inadvertent bias into the hiring process.
[00:39:54.16 - 00:39:58.16] Well, you can't hide what people look like. You can't hide the color of
[00:39:58.16 - 00:40:04.04] their skin. You can probably tell I look a little older than others. Yeah.
[00:40:04.21 - 00:40:11.09] But, but I also think the other, the other thing we do is the team builds the team.
[00:40:11.19 - 00:40:15.14] And what's interesting about that is when we get together after that extreme
[00:40:15.14 - 00:40:20.01] interview, it's a big session. You know, if there were 40 people that came in
[00:40:20.01 - 00:40:25.10] interview, there's 20 of us together talking through what we saw. If you had
[00:40:25.10 - 00:40:30.23] somebody who was like, Oh, I don't really like people, like exposing that in front
[00:40:30.23 - 00:40:36.23] of 20 of your peers would be, be a big risk, right? And so what do you do? You
[00:40:36.23 - 00:40:41.22] end up talking about the behaviors you saw, you end up talking about the, you
[00:40:41.22 - 00:40:47.16] know, what you saw happen. It's really hard to bias yourself. And, and, you know,
[00:40:47.16 - 00:40:51.14] people will challenge, they'll say, you know, yeah, okay. They struggled. You
[00:40:51.14 - 00:40:55.13] think they were nervous? I was nervous when I went through that. Do you think
[00:40:55.13 - 00:41:00.19] that they might've been nervous? Or we'll look at it and say, okay, they didn't do
[00:41:00.19 - 00:41:05.01] well in the first pairing. Did they get better at pairing two? Did they get better
[00:41:05.01 - 00:41:09.07] at pairing three? Were they already showing signs of adaptation? And that
[00:41:09.07 - 00:41:13.14] becomes the nature of the conversation as opposed to, well, where did they get their
[00:41:13.14 - 00:41:19.02] degree from, that sort of thing. So, you know, I mean, we're humans, we're going to
[00:41:19.02 - 00:41:27.16] have normal biases about things. But I think, you know, from my own
[00:41:27.16 - 00:41:34.04] experience, I know this is so different from anything I used to do. And it's so
[00:41:34.04 - 00:41:37.10] much better in terms of the resulting team.
[00:41:37.10 - 00:41:39.04] And I don't know if modern software
[00:41:39.04 - 00:41:44.04] companies are any more thoughtful about culture than they were 10 and 20 years
[00:41:44.04 - 00:41:49.04] ago. I haven't seen that. I just, you know, the stacks, the technology stacks
[00:41:49.04 - 00:41:56.02] and the computers and the tools evolve. But culture hasn't maybe by, you know, we
[00:41:56.02 - 00:42:02.04] don't have enough role models that are spreading the word.
[00:42:02.04 - 00:42:03.10] You know, and I think,
[00:42:03.10 - 00:42:07.08] you know, for me, that's one of the reasons that motivated me to write the
[00:42:07.08 - 00:42:12.16] book and motivates us to open our doors for tours. I mean, we could just keep
[00:42:12.16 - 00:42:17.07] everything a secret and not tell anybody about what we're doing and keep it all to
[00:42:17.07 - 00:42:21.07] ourselves. But when we say we want to end human suffering in the world, as it
[00:42:21.07 - 00:42:28.06] relates to technology, we can't do it by ourselves. So while we don't ever believe,
[00:42:28.16 - 00:42:35.04] and would never say to anyone, we have found the one true way of working. We are
[00:42:35.04 - 00:42:40.13] a living, breathing example that people can come in and inspect and look at and
[00:42:40.13 - 00:42:45.04] ask questions about, and then decide for themselves, do they see something here
[00:42:45.04 - 00:42:51.13] that they can bring back to their environment? And so there's lots of
[00:42:51.13 - 00:42:56.22] opportunities. That's why people come here. Because if they were like me, you
[00:42:56.22 - 00:43:00.16] know, I didn't have a memo to go look at when I was on my search journey. So it
[00:43:00.16 - 00:43:05.01] took a long time. But I think every once in a while, when somebody's reading a book
[00:43:05.01 - 00:43:08.19] about anything and gets an inspirational thought in their head, they think to
[00:43:08.19 - 00:43:14.02] themselves, man, wouldn't it be cool if there was an example I could go visit
[00:43:14.02 - 00:43:19.04] right now. And that's what we've become for a lot of people.
[00:43:19.04 - 00:43:22.02] What keeps you
[00:43:22.02 - 00:43:30.16] passionate? And what still drives you to be at the helm of Menlo Innovations after
[00:43:30.16 - 00:43:33.10] 23 or so years?
[00:43:33.10 - 00:43:41.19] 23 years. Yeah. You know, I have achieved something that many don't
[00:43:41.19 - 00:43:47.22] ever get to achieve. I got to the place I wanted to be. And I know that's a
[00:43:47.22 - 00:43:57.04] blessing. I know that is rare. And I am very grateful for where I've ended up in
[00:43:57.04 - 00:44:04.01] my life, in my work life, in the translation of being happier at work and
[00:44:04.01 - 00:44:09.08] what that makes me as a father, as a husband, as a grandfather in the world.
[00:44:09.08 - 00:44:16.11] And so I will tell you, when I walk into Menlo every day, and feel that energy that
[00:44:16.11 - 00:44:20.13] causes our visitors say wow, there's a wow that happens inside of me every single
[00:44:20.13 - 00:44:29.10] day. I sit right out in the room with the team. I literally have right next to me, I
[00:44:29.10 - 00:44:34.08] mean, our tables are right next to one another. Two programmers working on one of
[00:44:34.08 - 00:44:38.16] our big projects sitting right next to me. I get to hear their, overhear their
[00:44:38.16 - 00:44:46.22] interactions. You know, to me, it's just, it's joy. I don't know if there are any
[00:44:46.22 - 00:44:47.12] other words.
[00:44:47.12 - 00:44:49.02] There's no better words.
[00:44:49.02 - 00:44:49.16] Yeah.
[00:44:50.18 - 00:44:55.03] Rich, where can people find out more about Menlo Innovations?
[00:44:55.03 - 00:44:56.06] Yeah, obviously our
[00:44:56.06 - 00:45:02.17] website. And we have free public tours, virtual tours, once a month, or twice a
[00:45:02.17 - 00:45:07.11] month, I think. So you can just, you know, click on a link and sign up for a free
[00:45:07.11 - 00:45:12.14] virtual tour of now the real Menlo. We started doing virtual tours in the
[00:45:12.14 - 00:45:17.14] pandemic. And then we realized, why would we stop doing that? We learned how to
[00:45:17.14 - 00:45:23.12] virtualize our tours. So you can do, back then it was virtual tours of the virtual
[00:45:23.12 - 00:45:27.20] Menlo. Now it's virtual tours of the real Menlo. Obviously, if you're anywhere near
[00:45:27.20 - 00:45:32.06] Ann Arbor, Michigan, and willing to, you know, if it takes getting on an airplane,
[00:45:32.06 - 00:45:37.16] a lot of people still do this. We also have tours that you can come to in person.
[00:45:38.05 - 00:45:42.03] And so I would encourage that, you know, just the free public tours here, wherever
[00:45:42.03 - 00:45:46.11] you are, you know, Andreas, you're in Athens, Greece, you can just click on a
[00:45:46.11 - 00:45:49.08] link, and you're here, click on a link in your home, you might have to deal with
[00:45:49.08 - 00:45:53.09] some time zone differences, but that's about it. So we get people from all over
[00:45:53.09 - 00:45:58.17] the world. And since we started doing virtual tours, we've had visitors from 77
[00:45:58.17 - 00:46:04.08] countries and 47 US states. So it's been really successful in that regard.
[00:46:04.17 - 00:46:09.15] Obviously, the books are there, Joy Inc. and Chief Joy Officer to really learn the
[00:46:09.15 - 00:46:14.06] drippy details of the history and the thinking and the philosophies and that
[00:46:14.06 - 00:46:18.23] sort of thing. If you want to, you know, anybody in your podcast can connect with
[00:46:18.23 - 00:46:26.14] me on LinkedIn, and follow me there. I'm happy to expand my network by saying yes
[00:46:26.14 - 00:46:31.14] to your invitations, I would recommend to your audience that they say something
[00:46:31.14 - 00:46:37.05] like, hey, I just saw the Rethink Culture podcast with Andreas, and I really love to
[00:46:37.05 - 00:46:43.20] connect with you. That's more likely than the blind, you know, ones that say
[00:46:43.20 - 00:46:50.14] nothing. But yeah, so lots of ways to connect and get to know us.
[00:46:51.06 - 00:46:51.23] And Rich, if
[00:46:51.23 - 00:46:53.08] you were to whisper to them about their workplace culture, what would you tell
[00:46:53.08 - 00:46:57.23] you were to whisper to them about their workplace culture, what would you tell
[00:46:57.23 - 00:47:00.00] them? What would they have to rethink?
[00:47:01.14 - 00:47:10.18] You know, I would say, look inside first. For me, this journey was a journey of self
[00:47:10.18 - 00:47:17.07] discovery. You know, I had those youthful experiences, I had a dream. And then I got
[00:47:17.07 - 00:47:21.15] on to reality of building a life, buying a home, having a family, all the
[00:47:21.15 - 00:47:27.09] responsibilities of life and work just became work, and it became a drudgery, and
[00:47:27.09 - 00:47:34.06] it became tiring, and it became uninspiring, and de-energizing, and all
[00:47:34.06 - 00:47:41.03] that sort of thing. And I think, you know, as the famous quote is, you know, and, you
[00:47:41.03 - 00:47:44.21] know, most people lead lives of quiet desperation and go to their graves with
[00:47:44.21 - 00:47:50.00] their heart still, the song in their heart left unsung, I got to sing the song
[00:47:50.00 - 00:47:57.16] that was in my heart. Look inside first. No journey like I'm on can begin unless it
[00:47:57.16 - 00:48:04.06] is first a journey of self discovery. And I had to learn what I really wanted from
[00:48:04.06 - 00:48:11.00] work, what I really wanted. And then I could begin to have asked others to join me.
[00:48:11.00 - 00:48:16.11] Rich, I could think no better way to end the podcast than with these words.
[00:48:17.10 - 00:48:23.03] You're incredibly inspiring to me. And I hope to many more.
[00:48:23.03 - 00:48:24.00] Thank you.
[00:48:24.03 - 00:48:24.17] The virtue
[00:48:24.17 - 00:48:30.17] of pursuing one's true calling, and our true calling should be to make meaning of
[00:48:30.17 - 00:48:35.05] our lives, including our work lives, pursuing what we love, what gives us
[00:48:35.05 - 00:48:41.17] energy, and especially what gives energy to the people around us. And so with that,
[00:48:41.17 - 00:48:49.05] I'd like to thank you again, to thank everyone who stayed until the end to this
[00:48:49.05 - 00:48:54.11] episode. Thank you for being generous for your time, Rich, and thank you for the
[00:48:54.11 - 00:48:59.06] audience for being generous with your time. If you like the show, you can
[00:48:59.06 - 00:49:03.20] support us by telling your friends, you can leave a comment in your podcast app,
[00:49:03.23 - 00:49:11.14] you can email me personally at andreas { rethinkculture.co. And you can also watch
[00:49:11.14 - 00:49:15.23] this episode. If you just listen to it, you can go to YouTube and go to the
[00:49:15.23 - 00:49:23.20] channel at rethink culture { rethink culture, and just watch. And as I
[00:49:23.20 - 00:49:29.15] like to say, keep on leading and creating intentional,
[00:49:29.15 - 00:49:33.23] happier workplace cultures for you and those around you. Thank you.