How Culture, Storytelling, and Joy Saved Menlo, with Rich Sheridan

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A podcast about how the traits and behaviors of elite athletes and remarkable business leaders frequently intersect. The real stories and hard lessons to help you level up your leadership and performance. Now your host, Ed Molotour.

Welcome back to another episode of the Athletics of Business podcast. I am your host and CEO of the Molotor Group, Ed Molitore. And thank you for joining us here in episode number 118. And I am so thrilled to bring you today's special guest CEO of Menlo Innovations, Rich Sheraton, who is joining us for his encore interview. Although it seems like yesterday, so many incredible things have happened and so many challenging things have happened since Rich first joined us on episode number 16. And if you have not had the good fortune of listening to that episode, I I highly encourage you to go back and do so. Where Rich and I talk about team building and innovating in a joyful business culture. Now let me tell you a little bit about Rich.

Rich became disillusioned in the middle of his career in the chaotic technology industry and he had an all consuming thought and he talks a lot about this in episode number 16. Things can better, much better. And he had to find a way. Here was the big thing he kept asking himself. Why couldn't a workplace be filled with camaraderie, human energy, creativity and productivity? So ultimately Rich co founded Menlo Innovations way back in 2001 to end human suffering in the workplace. His unique approach to custom software creation is so surprisingly different that up to 4,000 people a year travel from around the world just to see how they do it. Now let me stop here for a second because they don't stop to see how they create custom software. They stop to see how they do it as a team. What the human element is.

What is so special about this intentional culture that's full of joy, that's driven by purpose storytelling? What makes this go and what makes it so unique? And on that note, his passion for creating joyful work environments led to his bestselling and widely celebrated books, Joy Inc. How He Built the Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer Incredible Books. I have links for those in the show. Notes. There is so much incredible stuff in this conversation. We're going to talk about Rich's willingness to make himself vulnerable during the pandemic and how he and his co founder James turned to his amazing team at Menlo for help during the pandemic and what the two key questions that you need to ask yourself in a purpose driven culture and keep checking in.

And then Rich will Talk about how the restrictions that were put in place during the pandemic. In other words, you had to work from home, you had to work remote, you relied on Zoom, you relied on Google teams, whatever it is. But how this pandemic, how those restrictions engineered a deeper understanding of each other at Menlo and what they learned about each other. And he will share the five step plan that allowed Menlo to emerge stronger and where that whole idea and that whole concept of emerging stronger came from. Now I'm going to get out of the way. There's so much here, so much incredible stuff. If you don't have a pen and paper handy, get it. If you're driving, squeeze the wheel tighter because there's some great stuff here from Rich Sheridan.

Rich, it is so great to see you again, albeit we're not sitting in the headquarters of Menlo Innovations, but, gosh, it's good to see and I really appreciate you taking the time to join me again on the Athletics of Business podcast.

Great to be with you, Ed. Just like everybody else, we're in our homes, we're away from the offices.

That's right. That's right.

We are.

Social distancing six feet away. So much has happened since we last talked. You were originally on episode number 16, which I mentioned to you pre recording that I am blown away by the fact that podcast was November of 2018. It does seem like yesterday we had such a phenomenal conversation, which I'm sure we'll reference a few times today. But, gosh, you're back. You're up and running, you're thriving, the business is growing full steam. You're hiring again. But this pandemic, this, what we've been through, was not easy for Menlo Innovations and it was not easy for you personally. And I would love, if you'd be so kind, if you could take us through that journey dating back to last March.

Well, it was like a fire drill for us, Ed, like I'm sure it was for most who have in person offices. I think what was probably more unnerving for us is how much we focused on the idea of people being together in a big open room and no walls, offices, cubes or doors. Our team working in pairs, two to a computer, sharing a keyboard and a mouse, standing in a big circle with our plastic Viking helmet, passing around for our daily standup meeting. I mean, you couldn't design a more contagious workspace than Memo Innovations. We would have been dead in weeks if we stayed working. And of course, the challenge was all of Those practices were wedded to our principles. And so suddenly these are pulled apart. And yeah, I panicked.

I thought, have I just witnessed the demise of this beautifully joyful company that we had crafted so carefully over 19 years? And it was all built on this. These practices of being in person with one another.

Well, and your vision was coming to a fruition. Right. And the way you relied on people and the energy and the collaboration and communication and to have that shock of it being taken away without any, like, heads up. There was no forewarning, there was notice there. There was maybe anticipation that our worlds were going to change a little bit for the short term. But when you, if you could walk us through what was first going through your head on March 13th when you were getting ready to board a plane in San Diego, what was that punch in the gut light for you?

Well, you know, it was my last business trip of pre pandemic. I haven't been on an airplane for business since then. And we're getting on the plane and president's on the monitor saying, national emergency. We literally thought were going to get stuck in San Diego. We thought he was going to cancel domestic flights. And as I'm flying home saying, well, what are we going to do? How are we going to make this work? We had in, obviously at that point it's real that something's going to happen, something's going to shift. But the degree getting back to the office, sitting down with the team and saying, guys, we've never seen anything like this before. We won't be able to weather the storm by ourselves.

You know, we gathered the team together that Monday afternoon, March 16, and said, we don't know what's coming, but what we know is it's bigger than us. We can't survive this storm on our own. And you know, and back then, what I told them was I said, look, there's going to have to be some government intervention on behalf of you, the employees, on behalf of us, the business that long before CARES act or PPP loans or different kinds of unemployment insurance. But we knew this economic suitcase tsunami was just coming towards us. And then of course, the governor that day declared, here in Michigan, get out of the building, get out as quick as you can. And so we told everybody, like a fire drill, grab equipment, get out, go home, set up. If you forgot something, we'll bring it to you.

And as in those waning hours of in person, I still remember sitting next to Eric and I looked at her saying, what is today? She said, it's Tuesday. I said, no, no. What day of the week is it? She said, it's Tuesday. I said, no, Monday through Friday. What day is it? She said, it's Tuesday. And then she swings her head and looks at my co founder James and he said, don't worry, he'll be okay. He's just panicking. Right. And I did. I mean, I thought I saw my little world just being dismantled right before my eyes. Something we'd carefully crafted for 19 years and I didn't know if it would work.

Well, you and I joke about this little world, but it truly is a significant, massive world of how many lives you touch through the speaking, through the tours, through the in person, the human again, the human factor. And you can't really replicate that. Right. Like we didn't know what our zoom world was going to turn into. Right. Our Google Meets whatever you want to use. So at what point of the game did you were able to take a step back and say, okay, well we know we need to shift. How are we going to do this? When did that start to take shape for you? Yeah.

And I'll paint just a little deeper picture for your listeners because so much of our business is bringing people to our office, our customers for one. But all these visitors, we get three to 4,000 visitors a year like you visited for your first podcast. They come one to three tour groups a day. Yeah, right. And a lot of our business comes out of that. And then we have this piece of menlo because we're a software design and development firm. The design piece, our design thinking piece are these specialized group of folks on our team have a cool title. They're called high tech anthropologists. Well, anthropologists, the very meaning of anthropology is go out into the world and study people in their native environment. Well, guess what, there's no visitors now coming. There's no classes, there's no tours.

Our team's gone home and our anthropologists are stuck at home. They can't go observe people in the native environment. Number one, you can't go and number two, there'd be nobody observe anyways. And fortunately enough of a trickle of new business started coming in at that time, which quite frankly, looking back now, that feels like a miracle because a lot of our big customers pulled back quickly.

Sure. Did you have to go look for that new business or is that something.

Well, I will tell you, it just, it feels so like such a blessing now that San Diego trip was a new piece of business. We got on an airplane, we flew out, we met with this company and we got their business. It was a lifesaver for us because a lot of our current clients pulled back. I remember General Motors called us and said, hey guys, you have 12 hours left on this statement of work. We need you to cut that back to 10. I'm like, what? General Motors is calling me to cut two billable hours. I'm like, oh, my God, this is way bigger than I thought it was going to be. And then we landed this purely virtual client, landed them virtually. They engaged with us virtually down in Texas.

And it was this moment where I think I decided everything was going to be okay, even though it was going to be tough. We were putting together the deal, were constructing the project and it was going to include high tech anthropology. And Molly, one of our senior high tech anthropologists, leans in during the discussion. She goes, this will be so exciting to figure out how to do this remotely. Because all I'm thinking is there's no way. Yeah, this will never work. You know, and you know me, I'm like, chief optimist should be on my story, my business, big time, right? And you know, and there's Molly rescuing me with that simple sense. And I thought, you know what, Rich? This is the culture you helped foster.

Yeah. Amen.

This team saying stuff like that in a moment like that is what I needed to hear. They rescued me. I didn't have to rescue them.

You know, it's funny you say that, because our first conversation in the podcast, we talked about authenticity, right? And that being everything. And I had mentioned to you that I broke authenticity down into honesty and integrity. And we all evolve, we all add things, we all discover new things. I soon realized how significant vulnerability was in the authenticity piece and what you're speaking to right now. How big of a role did your willingness, because you are so willing, did your willingness to be vulnerable and say, hey, listen, I might not have the answers for this, we need to work on this one together. How significant was that to have you folks back up and running and thriving like you are now.

The thing was, we just turned to the team and at the beginning we laid out a fairly simply constructed but powerful five step plan to get back to where we are now, which is thriving again. We brought them together and said, James and I admitted we don't have the capacity to fight what's coming by ourselves. There's going to have to be outside help. So we labeled that part of the business survive. And what we did was we cut pay for everybody, including the founders, went to zero. We Cut hours because we pay by the hour. We cut people in half. So, I mean, there was a huge, significant financial hit to everybody on the team. But we told them, we said, look, we got to preserve cash. So survival was key in the beginning. Then it was adapt.

This will be so exciting to figure out how to do this remotely. Wow. We had to adapt big time. The third part was sustain. Get back to some level of business that we can keep this thing going while this turmoil. Because, you know, Ed, I'm guessing you and me and everybody who has gone into this at the beginning thought the same thing. I did. Eight weeks and we'll be back to work. It can't possibly last longer than three months.

Fingers crossed now. Nope.

Right. I mean, we're a year and three months in, and I'm not sure it'll be done in another year. And so sustain was going to be important. Right. Get to a. It's going to be a lower level of business, but let's create that. And then. And this is the key. Emerge stronger. And for us, that came out of a Lencioni seminar I attended, a virtual one, kind of the first one he did after the pandemic started. And he laid out a pretty simple formula that I just took to heart. He said, look, of all the business going into this storm, they will either go right and survive, they will go left, they will die. Those that survive will either go right and emerge stronger or go left and emerge weaker.

He said, the path to survival and the path to emerging stronger is a choice of leadership. And there are specific things you can do to emerge stronger. And that became a rallying cry. Emerge stronger. And we have. Holy cow, have we. And I told the team, if we keep doing these things and we keep doing them well, we will get back to thriving again. And that is exactly where we are now.

I love that because you think you're out of the weeds when you turn left instead of right the first time, but then when you turn left, you survived. Right. You're either going to emerge stronger or you're going to emerge weaker. And that's exactly what we talk about with, you know, growing through the adversity. How challenging was it for you? Is one of the things I realized with my clients is even though we talk about controlling the controllables, everyone thought they could set the deadline for, like, when this thing goes away. Right. So if we can make it to this point, we're good. That's not us. Like, we. We don't have that. How challenging was that for you to Keep everybody on page.

Like, we've got to keep going, got to keep plowing through it, and we can't have any expectations whatsoever about when life is fully back to normal.

Yeah, we did a bunch of stuff that I look back now and, you know, there's so many things we do now. They're like, well, how on earth weren't we doing this more consistently before? The team looked at James and I, my co founder and I said, we miss you guys. You're not seeing you. We see each other because we still pair our team members via Zoom like we are right now, you and I. But they weren't seeing the founders, they weren't seeing the owners. They weren't, you know, we would be in the room with everybody else on everyday basis. We weren't traveling and now they were missing us. So we established a weekly lunch with Rich and James just so they could check in with us. They asked us how were doing. Inside of that, we started getting very, very transparent.

We started drawing graphs and charts about cash in the bank and expenses and how much work do we have and how much work do we need to be break even. And we started creating these. Over time, what I would say is simpler and simpler pictures that could be grasped in 10 minutes. But every week the team was getting this peek into exactly what the state of the business is. Because if were going to pull out of this, Ed, were going to do it as a team. We weren't going to do it because of some heroic thing that James and I were going to do. This was going to be a total team effort. We needed everybody on board in order to make this happen.

Well, and that gets that emotional buy in even deeper. I mean, you already had it. But that emotional attachment, the buy in when they realize that they're. This is really truly where we're at. It's not where they're telling us we're at. This is where we're at. And this is the role we play into, you know, emerging stronger. And that had to be pretty powerful to see that.

And, you know, I mean, it's easy to talk about that stuff when things are going well.

Right?

You know, and I think even that first day when we pulled them in, you know, back on March 16th, and we said, guys, bigger than us, it's going to affect us. This is what we're going to do. We're doing it right now. And, you know, and there's. There's few times at Menlo where the owners come in and say, no decisions no consensus, no discussion. This is where it's going. Talk to us about what you're feeling about it, but we have to do this, and here's why. And you know, those are rare moments in our history, but this was one of them where like all hands on deck get in the lifeboats, you know, get out of the building.

So let me ask you know, that brings up a great point because we talked a lot about eliminating fear. You know, one of the key roles of a leader is to eliminate fear from their people. How do you do that dance of okay, you know, being an authentic leader, being a resilient leader, being vulnerable, being true and honest, but yet not instilling that fear that we know just attacks the prefrontal cortex.

Well, number one, when I talk about eliminating fear, the fear I go after is the kind I was taught in my earliest part of my career, which was motivate people with artificial fear. If they're not afraid, make them afraid. If they're. If you can't with something real, then make something up and make them afraid.

Right?

And that's horrible. It's a terrible way to lead a team if you're looking for creativity, imagination, invention and innovation. But for goodness sakes, it doesn't mean about lying about the current situation. Because I think what happens in these moments when the leaders come through and say, guys, we don't know what's going on. We don't. You know, we knew what was going on, but I mean, we don't know how long it's going to last, what the net effect is going to be. But we're scared and we need you. And it's. It's fun.

I'm sure, you know, in your sports context, you can always see this moment where a team either comes together in those moments and does something mind blowing even to themselves, they don't realize how deep they dug, how much they pulled out, and how much they delivered during that time, which is what we saw. Or they fall apart because the foundation wasn't there. And that's maybe my biggest lesson in this entire year, was, boy, did I figure out the value of building a strong foundation of an intentionally joyful culture. This was it. This was if. If there was anything I have been preparing for in my 19 years of entrepreneurship and my 45ish years of being a professional, this was the year everything was around right now.

And think about that. The intentional culture that you built, never in a million years would you have ever imagined when you really needed to shine through would be a pandemic and yet there it was, you know, and yet there was. And at the foundation of that, one of the core ingredients of that is the purpose that you folks operate with. How much did you go back to and refer you to purpose, the why you do what you do? How much did you folks lean into that during this time?

Well, you know, ultimately, when the tour started up again, the virtual tours as we ran the experiment, I think that message, it's even been better seated in my heart since it all began. We talk about this purpose driven culture that at the center of it is joy. And there's two questions we ask during this time. Who do you serve? And what would delight look like for them?

Right?

And so in those two questions, when you're looking externally, right? And I think this is a big deal right now for all of us. It is so easy. And I know that's what was happening when I was doing what is today? It's Tuesday. And I'm not. What am I doing? I'm all internally focused. This was, that day was all about me. I'm panicking. Help me out. I'm scared. How can I get through this? Right? But when we can swing our attention to others with those kind of externally focused, purpose driven questions, it's amazing what people will do, right? And so that was the reminder every step of the way. Why are we here? What do we believe? What's our purpose behind what we're doing? How are we going to execute that purpose in this crazy new world? Can we still do it?

And that emerged stronger piece. I would have never guessed. It sounded almost trite when we said it the first time. When I look back over the last year and a half to see how we've emerged stronger. Holy cow. I would have never guessed it would be that.

It's funny because when this first started, when the pandemic first started, I was lined up to have Mikhail Haggerty on the podcast, Tom Walter. And I also had Porter Moser, who at the time was the head men's basketball coach at Loyola. And I said, you, culture is either going to be revealed or it's going to be exposed. And yours was absolutely revealed. And you talk about the purpose driven in the last two questions and how magical was it when everybody at Menlo started operating with those two questions in mind?

Yeah, well, it's still magical to this day. You know, I've hit an interesting spot in my life. I'm 63 years old. I uttered the word retirement a couple of times last year with my co founder.

Was it. The canoe camp in Minnesota again?

No, it's not there. Maybe someplace up north. Maybe I'll come join you up in your place. Up north. But for me, I reflected on a couple of moments during this pandemic. At the beginning, I thought to myself, you know, what if it all goes away, which was a significant possibility. I mean, the fact that we survived, there's a miracle inside there somewhere, right? I thought to myself, you know what? Don't lament. You did what you set out to do. You achieved the goals you set out to achieve. You didn't. You couldn't see this coming, the depth of it, the breadth of it, the impact of it. But we did. And now what I've seen happen is. I guess maybe the simplest way to put it is I can feel the legacy in what has been created during this time. The team didn't.

I mean, did they need James and I? Of course they did. Were we central? Were we central every minute of every day? No way. I watched a team emerge from this stronger than the one that went into it. I saw a team of people who just. Their energy welled up, their energy resolve. And I've always said that there's two things that keep Menlo alive day to day. Number one is our team believes in how we do what we do and why we do it the way we do it. And number two, they believe in it so much, they don't want it to die. And so they don't want to go work somewhere else. They don't want to go to another company. They want to be at Menlo.

And the number of people that have been with us since they graduated from college and now they're. They've got kids of their own. They're. They've been with memo for 15 years, and this is where they want to spend their life. And that doesn't happen very often anymore. Right. That's unusual in this day and age. It not just like, well, we want to be near Rich and James because they created a great company. I can feel their ownership now. I can feel that sense of, like, this is our place. Rich and James are here with us, and we're still going to lean on them, but this isn't theirs, and we're helping them. This is ours together.

Isn't it amazing? We talked on the first podcast in episode 16, and you said there was a day when you were walking across campus in Ann Arbor and you were trying to envision what you wanted your career to look like, and one day you walked into Menlo and You took a step back and you're sort of observing what was going around, and you realized, holy cow, like, I'm living that vision I had back when I was a college student. Like, I'm living that right now. But yet here we are. And it takes a pandemic. Think about it. It took the greatest adversity you've been through with Menlo, okay, To all of a sudden take that to the next level when we start talking about legacy, because you've created a team which is something else. We talked about that.

A team that's in essence, running themselves. Yes, they need James and you, but in essence, they are a player, coach, team. They are running themselves because they are so bought in, they're so emotionally attached because of the way you folks do things, because of what you stand for, right. Because of the culture you built that they refuse to absolutely let anything happen. And we talked about this. They had. You have built this culture worth fighting for. And, man, did you guys fight for it.

And, you know, and you know this from the sports analogy, sports world, right? When you do that, it changes the team members.

Yes.

Right. I mean, you now believe you can do anything. Right. This is a team that truly believes in themselves now. And that is such a powerful force. That's not one you can, you know, you can manage, you can control. That's. That is a gift, you know, and they are so proud of themselves for what we've accomplished, you know, in terms of just, we did it. We did it.

Yeah. Yeah. How about it? Now you. You feel that much closer. You feel that much more powerful. So the experiments you run now, where you take greater risk, will you get more creative, where you look for places you haven't really ventured before, how will that look to you?

So here's what I'm convinced of personally, and I think this is true of probably a lot of Mellonians. When I went in, you know, I had those panicky moments and, can we do this? And will it work? I mean, it's dismantling everything. Number one, we all need to acknowledge when we come out of this, whatever that even means, and whenever that actually happens, it's not going to be easy. Oh, getting back to normal, getting back to post pandemic. No, that's not going to be. It's not going to be any easier than going in. Right. Because we've all established a whole new set of patterns in our lives. This is where I come to work every day. It's down in my basement, right. It's like I get up and Five minutes later, I'm at work. So it's not going to be easy.

But here's what I know, and this is my personal change in this. I'm not trying to predict it, and I will be very open to what happens next. And I have no idea. There's no way I could know what the right thing to do next is. What I do know is we will adapt again, and we'll run more experiments. We'll keep trying stuff. You know, I mean, there's things we're learning. Like right now, we're learning how to hire remotely. We're learning how, you know, Nathan and his girlfriend decided we want to live in Seattle, and they left. But they didn't leave Menlo. They're still working for Menlo out in Seattle. And we're like, huh? We wouldn't have done that before now. It's like, of course we'll run that experiment.

We don't know if it'll work in the long term for Nathan in terms of, you know, there's a lot of jobs like ours that he can find out there and probably make a lot more money. But right now, he's loving working for Memo. So he's still there, and he's still doing that. So now all of a sudden, it's like, okay, suddenly not everybody has to live, like, within an hour of Ann Arbor to work for Memo. They could maybe live anywhere. And so I'm wide open to what comes next, and I'm excited about. I feel like an entrepreneur again, like I haven't felt in 20 years.

That has to feel pretty good.

It does. It took me a while to get there, though, because I fought that tooth and nail. I'm like, no, no. It's the same.

Well, you mentioned you didn't know if you had the energy again. Like, you didn't know if he really wanted to do that again.

I knew I had the energy. I just didn't know if I wanted to conjure the energy, you know? I mean, it's like. It's hard work, right? It'd be like, you know, it'd be like a heavyweight fighter saying, I'm gonna get back in the ring again. And all of a sudden, you're like, boy, that's a lot of work.

Yeah, we've seen how that's worked for. Worked for a couple of those guys. I remember the day sitting there. It was my first experience at Menlo Innovations. It was the coolest thing. The alarm on the dartboard goes off. We got the Viking horns going. We got There's Baby Menlo, baby number 22. It was the baby's first day at work that day. It was so much going on. These people, they love each other, they get each other. Look at this. Look at the way they communicate. But yet again, this took it to a different level, because as they're on the zoom calls, they're sharing their individual lives, their personal lives, or getting to know and getting to share their own personal stories. Talk about that deep connection and what that's meant to you folks.

There's been a quote I've used for probably every keynote I've given the last 15 years, and it's John Naismith's book, Megatrends. He wrote in 1982, and he said, the greatest advancements that are going to occur in the 21st century. Remember, he's writing this in 1982. He's talking about the time we're in now. He said the greatest advancements we're going to make in the 21st century are not going to occur because of technology, but because of a greater understanding of what it means to be human. And I think that's what you talk about. That's what I write about. That's what I speak about. That's what we live at. Memo is what. What does it mean to be human? And, you know, this isn't some ethereal thing.

The part of us that cannot be replaced by computers will not be outmoded by AI is the human part of us, which is creativity, imagination, invention, innovation. Those are the things we will never be able to teach a computer today. And so how do we craft a culture, a set of experiments, a way of working a relationship with one another that allows us to be even more human? And I have been telling people on our virtual tours, guys, don't miss this. You realize that as much as it feels like we're apart, yes, we are physically distanced. We do not have to be socially distanced from one another. You and I are not socially distanced right now. We are together, right? You're safe in your home, I'm safe in mine. But we are together. We are connected.

We get to peek into the lives of our people. We see Sarah's cats every day. We see little Elsie Menlo, baby number 25, who's two years old now, draped around George's shoulders because she, like the cats, wants to between Melonian zoom camera, right? They want to know what's going on. We see Josh's grandfather's paintings on the wall, and he tells us stories about it we have a better chance as leaders to see into the lives of our humans than we ever have before. And if we blow it, shame on us. Let's embrace the humanity of our teams. That's going to pay off for us later.

It is. And it talks a little bit into what you said before. When things go back to normal, whatever our new normal will be. But how do we replicate that now that we're back in the office, now that we're back together physically? How do we replicate the things that we're able to learn about each other because were forced into this technological setting, so to speak?

Yeah. When we do the tours, we bring two Melonians just to come visit for about 15 minutes during the tour, so we get to hear stories. And I ask questions of the people coming in. This morning, I asked George, Elsie's dad, and I said, george, what are you thinking as we get to a point where you could come back to the office? What are you hoping for? And it's interesting to listen to George, and I think this is a microcosm of Menlo at large. George says, I miss the office. I miss the camaraderie. I miss the human energy. And then he looks down, and there's Elsie just right next to him. He said, but I have so valued this time with her, to see her grow up like I never would have been able to in the past.

And he said, so I think what I want is, he says, I want a little bit in the office, and I want a little bit more at home, because I want to see her grow up. My attitude is, why on earth not? Let's give him that opportunity. What a great opportunity. Right? I'm an old guy. I went through that baby boomer work generation that was like, don't even pretend you have a life outside of work. Don't pretend you have a family, because you work for us and we own you. You're going to work overtime. You're going to have to pretend your family doesn't exist. Right. And when we started, you know, when people like me got into managerial positions, it was hard to hear about parental leave, because you know what? I didn't get that. Neither should you. I toughed it out.

You tough it out, too. I mean, that was the attitude. That's a tough nut to crack right now, of course, we got nutshells all over the floor at Menlo. We've cracked every nut there is. Right? I mean, we're letting the newborns come into the office, and they. They come in all day Every day they're with the parent. This is a daycare, you know, and then none. They go off. Well, now, I was looking at George and Elsie, I'm like, of course I want that for you. What a great thing. Heck, I brought one of my grandkids to work with me now, virtually by a zoom call, I was down there in North Carolina visiting, and there's Pop with little Kiki in my arms. Like, if you can do it, I can, too. Yeah.

And I bet everybody loves seeing that, too. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's funny you say that, because when we had both kids at home, and of course you get frustrated, right? You're doing the homeschooling, you haven't home. But there is that awareness. There's my wife Nancy, and I would talk about. It's like, this is the coolest thing about this, is we get to see them struggle with math, we get to see them struggle with reading or whatever it is. And. And where are the moments that they shut down? Where are the moments that the light bulb goes on and they love learning, and those are moments that you're never going to have again. Now, I'm still trying to convince my daughter that her favorite teacher the last year has been her father.

And she refuses to acknowledge that, but I know one day she will. Okay. At least I keep telling myself that. But, yeah.

Bill Rogers, quote, I Left home at 18 convinced my dad was the stupidest guy on earth and came back 12 years later and was amazed at how much he'd learned.

She'll never admit that, though. No, but it's. I mean, that's so powerful for Menlo moving forward. And that is the trick. And the fact that, to be honest with you, what you said that George had stated was not what I was expecting. I didn't know what to expect. But think about that. That's something that never would have been uncovered had this not happened.

Yeah. Or would he have been afraid to say that in normal times because he would have seen. He would have been seen as less committed to the company or. The language we've learned over the years in business is so stupid. Like mommy track or daddy track. Right. As if raising a child is somehow diminishing you as a human being.

Right.

I was once counseling, coaching a college student at U of M who came in for mentoring, and she was somebody who had a. A child from her own perspective too early in life. Right. Happens. And she's talking about graduation. She's talking about going out into the work world, and she's talking about how will she be viewed because she has this young child. And I looked at her, I said, don't you dare. She said, what? I said, are you kidding me? Any employer who's worth their salt and looks at you and says, wow, you got through a degree at the University of Michigan while also taking great care of a young child on your own. I want you, I want somebody who can figure out how to do all of that and come out as good as you did. And it just opened her eyes.

And I don't think she's been the same since that conversation. Right?

Yeah. Think about the power of those words. That's fantastic. I mean, I can remember that was kind of the mindset, that was kind of the thought process, right? Well, they have a young one, you know, or they have two young ones or, you know, at what age are they going to get pulled away too much? But the way you just described it and the way you just viewed it, people should want to hire her.

Of course, like, raising a human being is an easy job. That diminishes you.

No, it is not. Well, you know, speaking of that, what type of folks do you look for and do you like to hire? And I know you mentioned that you have the normal turnover, but you have an incredible retention rate. Like, you have Mellonians that just love where they're at. So how do you find your people?

You know, my standard joke, but it is absolutely true, is people regularly send us their children. And I've said this to people and they look at me like what I said, yeah. Imagine parents come through on a tour. They have college age kids who are about to graduate. They see memo and they're like, oh my God, my kid would love. Can I have them send you Risme? The number of parents just now who are sending their children direct to us say, please take my child. Right? I always liken it to that desperate scene on the deck of the Titanic. Parents like, here, I've lived a good life, but take my child, you know, take care of them, you know, and this has happened so often. So when you have a culture that beckons and beacons out like a lighthouse, right?

In a dark world, people come, they want to see the tours we lead. That's where people in. And then what we tell people is, we don't care about where you went to school. We don't care about what you learned. We don't care about what you study. Are you a good kindergartener? Do you play well with others? Are you still curious Are you still willing to learn new things? Because whatever you've learned up to this point, that's neat. We will take advantage of it. But let me tell you, where you're going from here is going to be in a tremendous amount of new learning. And if you're not ready for that, you're not ready for us.

Does that catch some people off? I love. I mean, I absolutely love that, because to me, that's what it is all about. But the way that we somehow. Our education system somehow shapes the minds of the young, does that catch some people off guard? I mean, they've got their transcripts, their resume, everything in hand, like they're here to. To impress you with what they've done and what they're capable of doing. And then you throw that at them. Do you ever get that? Like deer in the headlight looks like what?

What?

Repeat what you just said.

I think what we get is people are like, oh, yeah, whatever. I don't believe you. And then they see again and again. This is the way it works. I remember one gentleman on our team, Scott, who's just one of our favorite Menlonians. Now, somewhere along the way, we're doing a tour, and I pulled Scott over, and I said, hey, Scott, people want to know how people come to Menlo. And he's got an interesting story. Actually, tell Scott's story and Chief Joy officer of how he got interviewed and hired. It's an interesting journey for him. But I'd asked a question on this tour I'd never asked him before. I said, scott, you really tried hard to get into memo. Why was that? And he said, well, you. You're an unusual place. You guys don't look at resumes. And I'm like, oh.

Hold on a second, Sky.

What would I have seen had I looked? He says, rich, the only educational certificate I had was a welding certificate. He says, I never studied computer science at school. It was a hobby of mine. I was really good at it, and I loved it. But he said no other employer worth their salt was willing to take a bet on a guy that had a welding certificate. And Scott is just an awesome person. I just literally had a customer tell me the other day, thank you for putting Scott on my project. We love him. He's great. And so that ability and willingness to take a chance on people like that is the definition of grandma.

So many stories I have to ask you. All right, we have Joy, Inc. Book number one. Checked it off your bucket list. Had so much fun. You come back with Chief Joy Officer, which really focused on leadership. Right. That really. And the values around leaders. I want to ask you about that in a second. Is there a third book in you because you have so much to write about from the last 13, 14, 15 months. Is there a third book in there?

Well, I have imagined a couple. Let me take it in a couple of different.

Let me get this straight. There's a third and a fourth book.

Exactly. Percolating in my head. But here's Joy, Inc. Right. How we Built the workplace people love. And I thought, you know what? I think I could simply rewrite this book with Joy, Inc. And you know the number two written on it just in crayon, how we rebuilt a workplace People love. That. Yes, that would be number one. Number two I have used since Chief Joe Officer came off my talks. I don't know if it's a metaphor or analogy. I'll let the English majors tell me which one. The forces at work on an airplane are analogous to the forces at work on a human organization. I draw this little picture because I'm a pilot and I draw a picture of an airplane. I draw lift and weight and thrust and drag as the four forces that work on an airplane.

And even if you don't fly like me, everybody understands the basics of what it takes to get an airplane off the ground. And I compare this to a human organization, the lift of human energy, probably one of the most squandered energy forces on planet Earth. The weight of bureaucracy and meeting load. The thrust of purpose and the drag of fear. And if we as leaders are going to get our little corporate aircraft off the ground every day, we better have more lift than weight and more thrust than drag. So we better have more focus on our purpose and less fear. Never get rid of all of it, of course. We better have more human energy and less meetings, less bureaucracy, less policies and committees. Let's create a culture of take action versus take a meeting.

I think as I brought that message out to the world, it is clear, it has resonated, it is simple, it's easy to understand. And there's so many ways you can go off of that. I think there's a whole behind that.

Oh, there's no question. There's a whole book behind that. I love that. And you had mentioned it on the previous podcast, but the way you talk about that, the lift of human energy, that's it. And that goes back to everything that we're talking about in that book. Chief Joy Officer, the values of great leaders. What are some of the values that you look for to be able to successfully execute on that airplane analogy.

Well, some are surprising to people. For instance, systems thinking is critical in our businesses. We can either go down the hero route, we'll build a team full of heroes. We won't have an intentional culture and it'll all be personality defined. And a lot of companies work like that and can work very well for a very long time. But even in the sports world, we know, we've talked, you and I talked about this, that the idea you build a sports team around a hero, it's interesting what happens. So with the Patriots, for example, the Lions, we don't know.

I wasn't going to go there.

Yeah, you can go there.

It sounds like you can throw the packers there now.

Well, maybe. Yeah, exactly. And so hero based organizations, when something goes wrong, they blame the heroes, they blame the people. They look for somebody to blame. In a systems based organization, the leadership asks how did our systems allow this to occur and how could we make them better? And systems should be like that airplane, simple, repeatable, measurable, visible, lightweight. No bureaucracy, no committees. I love when Mary Barra, when she was in HR at GM before she became CEO and she sent out this edict that replaced the 14 page dress code policy with dress appropriately.

Boom.

You think anybody was looking through a 14 page dress code policy as they went into their walk in closet in the morning to decide what they're going to wear to work that day. There's no way. So if we as leaders, as systems thinkers can think like that, I use this dangerous word in the corporate world that joyful leaders are loving, that there is actually love between the leader and the people. And I actually use the first Corinthians chapter that's written like in every wedding you know about. Love is kind, love is patient, love does not envy. You know, you could replace that word with love leader. Joyful leaders are kind. Joyful leaders are patient. Joyful leaders do not envy. They don't remember wrongs. Right. All these things that we look for in joyful leaders and I'm still learning many of those lessons.

I'm not there yet.

I hate the fact that we're running out of time, but the listener is interested in having Rich Sheridan talk. Where can they find out more about your speaking engagements. Find out more about doing a virtual tour, you name it. Now we'll put links to everything in our show notes. But sometimes folks don't want to go to the show notes. So what you can tell us now would be fantastic.

Yep. So menloinnovations.com right on the homepage. There's a tour and classes link they can click on to sign up for a virtual tour. It's easy. They're free. They're 90 minutes. There's like three of them. We do a week. So just come. We've had almost 2,000 virtual visitors since we started this last June speaking. We actually put together a separate speaking website for me, which is Simply my name, richardson.com. And you can go book me for a speaking engagement with that.

Now, I have to ask you are one of the most brilliant storytellers I've ever. And I've met some great ones. Right. I have some folks in my orbit that I think are incredible storytellers. Are you going to. Are you already sharing your skill set of becoming a great storyteller? In other words, do you have any workshops? Do you have anything in the making?

Yes, actually, we do. Thank you for that reminder. We. I just did one of those the other day for a corporate event and it was just on storytelling and it got great reviews. So, yes, we do a workshop on.

Storytelling and I have that link too. And we will put that in the show notes as well. Okay. Yeah.

This is one of those emerge stronger things like. Oh, yes. And thank you, Ed.

Yes, I'm there for you.

Rich talked about that. Yeah.

Yes, I there for you. Hey, Rich, I cannot thank you enough. This was phenomenal. I need to get out there and take in a Tigers game with you sometime this summer. That would be fantastic. But I really, I appreciate you so much. I appreciate your time and the incredible work that you do and the folks at Menlo Innovations do well.

I appreciate that, Ed. And you know, and you know, my Wolverine football team is one is in my heart always. I hope there's some.

Yeah, we're still recording, but I give you my condolences.

I hope there's some coffees being shared about leadership.

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. We could talk for hours and we will soon. Yeah. But Rich, thank you so much for everything.

Thank you for listening to the athletics of business. Be sure to give us a rating and review so we know how we're doing. For more information about the show, visit theathleticsofbusiness.com now get out there. Think, act and execute at the highest level to unleash your greatness.