Patrick Adams  

Welcome to the lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. Our guest today is Richard shared and Rich is the co-founder of Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his team’s mission is to end human suffering in the workplace. His passion for creating joyful work environments led to his best selling and widely celebrated book joy, Inc, how we built a workplace people love and then in 2018, Rich released his second book chief joy officer. Rich, welcome to the show.

Richard Sheridan

Great to be here, Patrick. Thanks for having me.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. I have to say I am super excited to have you as a guest on the lean solutions podcast Rich, I’ve personally toured Menlo multiple times and I’ve met in person. And my team actually recently completed the virtual tour that you put on over the pandemic period. But my team was just as excited as I was the first time that I made the visit. And obviously, we plan to make an on site visit here eventually when things open back up. So I so much appreciate what you guys are doing and just the amazing culture that you’ve created at Menlo. Well, thanks for that. And

Richard Sheridan  

I’m glad you’ve gotten a visit to both versions of Menlo that are what I call the traditional menlo and now pandemic menlo.

Patrick Adams  

Yes, Every company has had to make some kind of adjustment, but I will say the Menlo experience. While it’s not exactly the same, it was really, really good to see how you guys have transitioned into that virtual environment and kept a lot of those same, you know, tools and techniques that you guys use to create that amazing culture that you have. There’s probably a lot of listeners that are here today that maybe don’t know about Menlo, maybe they don’t know who you are, or, or what Menlo does. So I’m interested, if you could just tell the listeners maybe a little bit about Menlo, who you are? And what value do you provide to your clients, your customers?

Richard Sheridan  

You bet. Yeah, I’ll use the Simon Sinek approach of starting with why do we exist? What do we believe, and we believe it is possible to return joy, to software to software technology, and there’s a lot of human suffering out there as relates to technology. We’re trying to eliminate it, but we can’t do it by ourselves. So that’s why we share what we’ve learned with the world. But we take this very unique approach. And well, I’m sure we’ll talk about pieces of it. You’ve seen it in action, we have opened our doors for our entire 20 years of our history, we celebrated our 20th birthday this past June. And the one of Menlo is we are a software design development firm. That’s what we do for a living: we design and develop custom software for our customers. And you know, it can be any kind of business, there are very few businesses these days that don’t need software is some component of their business either the way they interface with our customers, the way they deliver their results, or perhaps there have actually asking us to help them build a software product to bring to market to service their customers.

Patrick Adams  

Amazing. And it’s really neat to see a software development company that’s doing some of the things that you’re doing, visually and through your team members. And again, we’ll talk about some of that. But you know, the team itself, the menlonians, as they call themselves, right, your team, they’re amazing. By the way, always love interacting with your team, whether it’s over email, phone or in person. They’re amazing. You guys have done a great job. But what is the process for finding and onboarding these amazing Menlonians?

Richard Sheridan  

We have this very intentional culture, okay. We describe it as intentionally joyful, and we have a very particular way we work. And so for example, everyone here, as you know, you’ve seen it, people work in pairs, two people one computer, sharing a keyboard and a mouse all day long. Of course, this had to shift dramatically during the pandemic, yes, but we maintain the component, we just do it remotely, not as actually not actually as difficult as even I imagined it would be sure the team adapted very readily. Well, you can imagine in this intense, collaborative environment where two people are working together all day long on the same task at the same time, we actually switch these pairings at least every five days. So essentially, over time, everyone will pretty much work with everyone, at least within their groupings of programmers and what we call high tech anthropologists, QA team members and so on. That’s a different way of working. So we decided we needed a different way of interviewing, we had to figure out how we would adapt a traditional interview process which I now somewhat sarcastically say is a few people sitting across the table lying to each other for a couple of hours. That’s the way I used to interview and in and really try and figure out can we begin teaching our culture at the moment of first contact to set expectations. It’s not so much looking for a culture fit as much as it is making it very clear what our expectations are. Because it’s amazing how well we humans respond when expectations are clear. And so what we do is we bring in a group of people, sometimes 30, 40,50 at a time, all at once, over about a two hour period. And after giving them a few opening instructions, we pair them with another candidate. We have a Maloney and I’ve observed them for 20 minutes working together on a task, because this is the way we work at memo. That’s right. And we get these candidates, the weirdest instruction you will ever hear and we say, you know, Patrick, you’re paired with Jim today, and your job is to help Jim get a second interview, even though he’s competing for the same position you are, wow. Yeah, help your partner look good and support the human being sitting next to you. That’s right, they’re struggling, helping them out. If you know something they don’t know, share it with them. This is our expectation for your work life here. So this is the expectation during the interview. And because we switch pairs, at least every five days here at memo, we switch you in the pairings witness first interview, we have three times, so you will work 20 minutes each with three different people over the course of a couple of hours that you visit with us and a Menlo and is simply watching what they observe, you know, watching what they see, in these people working together, we actually want you to succeed. So we’ll tell you, the failure modes will tell you what we’re looking for that would be negative behaviors to see if you can avoid them. It’s not a hazing ritual like most interviewing processes these days, we actually do want you to succeed. And after those 320 minute exercises, we send all of you home. And if there were 30 of you, there would have been 15 of us watching the 30 of you. And we get together and we talk about what we saw. And the only decision we have to make after that first interview process is Who are we going to invite back for a second. And that process is an individual one you would be brought in, you would pair in the morning with one appear in the afternoon with another one probably go out to lunch with the team in between. And we’ll pay you for that day. It’s an actual day of work on real client projects. And in that case, now, at the end of that day, there’s sort of three more decision points, the two people you paired with in yours. Because you may find out, I don’t like this environment, this isn’t for me, I want the quiet office in the corner, I want to come in at weird hours. I mean, this is a very different kind of work environment. So we want to give you a chance to experience it. If that day works, we invite you in for a paid three week trial. And at that point, now you are pairing in real client projects, we’re again paying you and you are peering with at least three different people 40 hours each over the course of those three weeks. And in that way, we’re also starting to give you feedback. We’re letting you know where you’re excelling and what you need to work on. We don’t expect perfect menlonians after three weeks, but we do expect to see progress towards the goal. 

Patrick Adams  

I love that, you know that when it makes me think about it, it’s a development opportunity for everyone that’s interviewing for a job at Menlo. I mean, they walk out of there probably learning a few things so even if they don’t get the job, they have some skills that they’re actually walking away with, even for just two days, you know, and through the interview process. That’s amazing.

Richard Sheridan  

Yeah, we’ve actually had people tell us after even their first two hour trial, they said, You know what, I would love to get a job here. But even if I don’t, the interview itself has changed my life. I mean, I love it. Would you ever hear that from an interview process? No,

Patrick Adams  

not never never never. I can’t imagine that that would be the case for someone who didn’t get the job that walking away. But in what you’re explaining, I can see where that is the case for any, you know, software developer to, you know, coder and anybody to be able to go through that experience completely different than any other organization that they would ever interview with. Obviously, just like the pairing in a software development company, you don’t normally see a pairing like that. I’m curious to hear what would be some other reasons why you would put people together like that in pairs, I have to imagine that it gets expensive for the customer at some point, when you have two people on one project like that together.

Richard Sheridan  

Yeah, everyone asks us about that. And you can imagine our customers are particularly curious, why would you put two people on one task when you could split those people apart and have them look independently and their thought process is a very natural one? Wouldn’t that double productivity if he just pulled them apart? And that would be true. If in fact, programming was a typing speed contest. Programming is a problem solving contest and the problems we are faced with these days, the kind of problems we work on are very difficult challenges. And two people are always better at solving a difficult challenge together completely solidly, in a way that can be maintained for a long time. There are a number of challenges in the software industry. They’re well documented, they’re well understood. And they seemed for a long time to be simply intractable, firefighting emergencies, blown budgets, deadlines that are, are missed delivering poor quality. You know, we’ll all go back to our old days with Microsoft in the blue screens of death and all that sort of thing. And that was one of the most, you know, well heeled companies in the world when it came to building software. And even they couldn’t do it. Right. What I have discovered over the last now 20 years at Menlo, and two years before that, in my position, these last 22 years have taught me that increasing quality that occurs from some of the constructs we use, including pairing and the switching of the pairs, has quality skyrocketing. I’m proud to say we’ve had two software emergencies in 20 years, wow. My old life the 20 years before memo, it was two emergencies a day. And I think that was a good day. Right? And so the effect on quality is, is dramatic. And the interesting side effect on quality source like that is the effect on the team around. Imagine you go to work every day thinking you know what i have a chance as Deming like to say, to work with pride today, yes, I have a chance to do good work to get meaningful things actually done and done well, and in a way that I feel good about it when I go home at the end of the day, right? And for us, that’s critically important. And there are many other things we can talk about that we get benefits from peering, it’s probably the most powerful organizational construct I’ve ever discovered.

Patrick Adams  

I love that. And I have to also imagine that when you pair like that you think, okay, it’s double the cost for labor. But if you think about the number of quality issues that you just mentioned, if you had two a day, how much labor are you applying to fix those quality issues two a day, in comparison to over 20 years, your two people probably pays for itself pretty quickly.

Richard Sheridan  

Right? Yeah. Well imagine the insidious effect of these quality issues, not just on team morale and the resulting effort, right? And what is it being used for? And what is the human cost of software that fails later? Right? If you’re building a product that fails a lot, are you losing market share to the product getting pushed aside for a competitor that was delivering better quality? All those things matter so much. And, you know, I am not an expert at all in six sigma, but I’ve had six sigma people come here and look at us. And what they notice, first and foremost in the pairing is that we have moved source and inspection to the same point in space and time. So the source of the error is created when somebody Miss type something in a computer, either a simple typo, which is just as disastrous as a logic flaw or thinking fly in what way you’re approaching things in this discovery

Patrick Adams  

of that error by your partner. So immediate, though, right? It’s an immediate find. Yes, absolutely. It is. Yep. And then they can respond to that right away and get it taken care of. And it never, never even gets close to the customer.

Richard Sheridan  

Right. And you know, the other thing is in those immediate fights, and this is the other cost factor involved in software. Imagine a bug is introduced one day in a traditional environment, like the ones I used to be part of. And that bug manifests itself months later. Right? Because sometimes bugs aren’t readily apparent they don’t show themselves in their inSidious. No effects until perhaps a few months later, maybe after shipping. Now, how are the people who originally created that soccer supposed to like to read pieces together their thinking from three months ago? Right? Where is that error caught at the moment? All thinking is fresh, all thinking is current, all thinking is up to date? We’re right here where we’re looking at it together where we’re deciding as to whether we are taking the right approach? Is this going to work and the repair of that right then this is using fresh thinking that occurs when when the problem that you’re trying to solve is current and because of our open and collaborative work environment, which is obviously been, you know, changed a bit during the pandemic, yes, your peers will tend to overhear you when you’re working through a problem. They may come and lend a hand.

Patrick Adams  

I love that. And that kind of pulls us into your culture. Right and Think about it, I read your first book Joy Inc. You know, when I read that I was just amazed at, you know, just what you guys do, how you put together the culture and and also experiencing it myself, you know, being involved in one of your standup meetings and being able to sit with your pairs during our virtual virtual tour. So I was able to experience a lot of what your culture is all about. I’m curious to hear how you teach that? How do you teach the culture both internally and externally, to have the results that you’ve had?

Richard Sheridan  

Yeah, you know, I think our nature from the beginning, my co-founder and I, James Scoble, we just have this abundance, mental, you know, philosophy, about everything. And so we decided in the earliest days that we would share what we’ve learned, because in that sharing, we learn that process. So the tours of Menlo started. In our earliest days, now, we get between three and 4000 people a year who come and visit us from all over. And even during the pandemic, of course, those visits now are virtual and much less costly via terms of time and in travel. You know, it just takes a second to click on a link now, but in that sharing is teaching, and in that teaching is learning. And in fact, you know, I can see Katie Anderson’s book over your shoulder there. Yes. Learning to lead and leading to learn. I mean, I think that is a great summary of the mental approach. And, of course, the other strong component of teaching is what if you could build learning into your process where you could be learning every minute of every day? Right? Wouldn’t that be amazing that you could while doing work actually be learning? Well, this is one of the beneficial, tremendously beneficial side effects appearing. Because each of us as we come together and appear, has unique knowledge, has unique experience as unique ways of thinking. And we are sharing that together for at least five days, right? And so during that sharing time, if I’m staying open minded and curious, if I’m listening to you, if I’m willing to ask questions, if I’m willing to say, I don’t know how to do this, or I don’t remember how to do this, and you’re wired to be a teacher, in that moment, to share what you’ve learned with me, because remember, we’re doing this right from the moment of first contact in that first interview, you talking about help your partner succeed, there is learning every minute of every day. And then of course, what happens is, then we switch the pairs. Now you’re met with someone with different experience, different learning styles, different teaching styles. And so each five days here, you are getting a different experience. And that keeps your mind active, it keeps it fresh up, you stay in learner mode, the entire time. And I will tell you, it is tiring. People go home tired at the end of the day, but it’s a good kind of tire, huh, I got things done today, things that the customer cared about, I did them well. And I learned something amazing,

Patrick Adams  

It’s amazing to think about people learning while they’re working and, and on a continuous basis, I love that they rotate, you know, every five days, because you are absolutely learning when you know, every human is different, right? Every project is different. So they’re constantly having to shift their mindset and their approach and their behavior to match the customer project or to match the team they’re working with. And obviously the problem solving that you mentioned, you’re constantly problem solving and, you know, problems are coming at you and you’re hitting them right away immediately as they come. I love it. It’s amazing. You know,

Richard Sheridan  

if you think of the world that you work in, when the one of the key phrases often is continuous improvement, yes. Right? And how often is it actually continuous? Or is it a more little square wave pattern. So we’re improving for the next three hours, and then we’re not improving? And we’re improving again for the next two hours in the next two days. And then we’re not improving, it becomes a start and stop kind of mentality as well, while we’re improving, we can’t be working. What if we could? What if while we’re working on improving? What if you could actually get continuous improvement over a long period of time? What if you were growing your team by an inch every single day.

Patrick Adams  

And that is really the definition of a true culture of continuous improvement where you’re talking about that is truly improvement built into the culture, right? continuous improvement built into the culture. And I’m sure there’s people that are listening that are probably like, well, that’s not my organization, or, you know, I don’t find joy in the culture that I work in or, you know, my company needs a lot of work. we’re nowhere near that. Well, what would you say to someone that’s, you know, in that position or, you know, maybe they have a great culture, but they want to get better. What would you say would be, you know, those starting points For someone that is looking to have cultural change in their organization and move more towards being able to complete their day saying I had a really good, I’m tired, I had a really good day, I had a joyful day. And we were able to improve or solve some problems today, what would you say to those people?

Richard Sheridan  

Well, you know, we, when we entertain guests, you know, and they come and they visit with us, it is often the case that we will have companies come in and say, This is so cool. But we could never do this at our place, because we’re to fill in the blank, right? And we’re too big, we’re too bureaucratic, we’re too governmental or to regulate, I can,

Patrick Adams  

I can hear listeners saying it right now.

Richard Sheridan  

Like, I’m so glad, rich that you were able to do this, but it’s not available to any of the rest of us. And, you know, we would never work in our environment. And, and I hear that a lot, obviously, and I get it. And that makes sense to me. But then I confront them with some amazing examples. And because we’ve been doing this for 20 years, and because we influenced other people over 20 years, and because some of them actually had the courage, the tenacity, the gumption, if you will to try some things. They made improvements, significant improvements in their environment. And I can give you one of your companies that says we can’t do it, and I’ll find you one that has done exactly the opposite. And I’ve actually made it work. And one of my favorite stories is Massmutual Corporation, a 180 year old life insurance company that I talked about. The chief joy officer made a massive transformation within a significant unit of their company within six months. And I always tell people, if mass mutual life insurance company, 180 years old can do it. So can you. And again, lots and lots of examples. But what I would say is the easiest place to pinpoint a beginning location is actually the hardest place to start. And it’s with you. Yes, each individual has to change, I had to become a different kind of leader, the way I differentiate two managerial lives is, in the early days, I created hero based organizations, and I was the number one hero. And the trouble with hero based organizations is the only way to scale them is to scale the hero and the only way to scale the heroes over time. And then you start missing the best parts of being a dad, a husband, a neighbor, and you start to burn out. And so I had to become a different kind of leader. And so the stories I gravitate towards, and some of the ones I tell in my book, are those stories at the frontlines. How can we make change? Because we don’t have to change the world. We don’t have to change the world. We just have to change our world. Right? Because Menlo is a tiny company. You know, a lot of people. Oh, you’re small. That’s why you get away with like, really, you think being small makes it easier? Right? You think we have to pay less attention to expenses when we’re small and write less attention to details because we’re small, and we plug Menlo into some of the largest organizations on the planet, you pick any large corporation, we have probably worked with them, right. And so we don’t have to change their culture. In order to be us. They don’t have to change. Oh, maybe the interface point has to think a little differently. They get why our system of work is so important and so imperative to what they’re trying to accomplish. But we don’t have to change all of Pfizer, we don’t have to change all of General Motors. We don’t have to change all the Ford Motor Company. It just isn’t required. Right. And so I love this story from McDonald’s. I have this weakness at Detroit Metro airport, before the problem cheese, large fries and a Coca Cola and so I would go into this McDonald’s at Detroit Metro airport, you know, in a busy International Airport like crazy busy McDonald’s. And there was this guy named Mike. And he was hustling around this restaurant cleaning all the tables. I saw his name badges older guy. And every time he got near me, he leaned in, how’s it going? Have a safe? Like, can I get you anything? Can I get you a napkin? I thought every time I saw him like he did the same thing. It wasn’t just, I mean, it wasn’t like we knew each other. Right? It was behaving the same way everybody I thought, wow. Are they lucky to have a great guy? How does he bring that energy everyday in a place like this? Then one day, Mike was off shift and I was there. And here’s this young kid pulling garbage out of the back at McDonald’s and not to the dumpster. And as he rolls by my tape, he leans in, he says, how’s it going? Have a seat? Like can it get you anything? Can I get you a napkin?

And it was like, my mind was blown. I’m like, how are they doing this? This is one of the most relatively lowest restaurants on the planet inside of the one that most relations places on the planet International Airport. And here is the art of doling out kindness to Americans. So I went to the manager and I think he thanked me for the notice. And here’s the point of The story, I’m pretty sure that the manager didn’t go to McDonald’s corporate say, Hey guys, could you form a committee and write a policy and go out trying some napkins? No, he just did it. And so can your listeners, they can start where they are. Just change your world just a little bit. And you will become an influence. I mean, how many other people are telling stories about McDonald’s inside of International Airport, right, you can begin to have this ripple effect within your own Corporation. And I will tell you how it works. Because I’ve seen it. I’ve been there. I’ve worked in big corporations. Imagine you change your team. Because, you know, people look at men that were about 55 people, they’re like, oh, you’re tiny, you know, like, Well, tell me how many of your units are bigger than 55 people? And they’re like, Oh, yeah, you’re right, we have a bunch of 50 unit, you know, 50 person units inside of our multi unit 100,000 person organization. Let’s imagine you make a change in your unit. That looks like Sunday, like them. And then another person in another unit goes to their boss and says, Hey, I’d like to go work for Patrick’s team. And a boss like, What? What do you mean? Well, you know, they just seem to be getting more done having more fun, they seem to walk out the door at the end of the day with a little bit of a clicked on their heels. And I want that. And so their boss comes to you and says, Patrick, why are you trying to steal my people? They’re like, Well, I’m not trying to steal your people. Well, one of my guys wants to come work for you. Why is that? And then you invite them in? And you see, let me show you. Right. That’s why we do tours. That’s where we can have a tremendous impact. Because when I started this, I didn’t. I didn’t have any examples to go look at now people can come look at us. It isn’t about copying us. It isn’t about how we should make ourselves look just like men. No, no, that’s insincere, I think. But wouldn’t it be neat, you know, in the kind of work that you do the consulting you do? Where when somebody says, Patrick, could you show us at least one example of something akin to what you’re describing working? You’re like, Yeah, let’s go see Menlo. Right, this idea of industrial tourism can happen inside of corporations, too. If your unit starts outperforming all others, suddenly other bosses are coming and looking at how you do that? I mean, we can’t do that here. That’s against policy, isn’t it? I didn’t think HR would approve your approach to doing this. So like, why didn’t I ask permission, I just went and did it. And all of a sudden, you start to see change ripple out, I think that’s a true change really happens in any organization, large or small. Absolutely.

Patrick Adams  

Amazing. I love the analogy of the ripples and what you’re talking about, because rich, you You are one guy and you said memos, a small company. But think about you, you know, when you started out, and you know where you’re at today with the company, the tours that you offer, the books that you’ve put out the the podcast interviews, the you know, all these things, and this is a global podcast. So that is your story of McDonald’s. Now that now Mike’s story, now that’s going to be you know, outside of the US and it’s it’s going to be over in Pakistan and China, and people are going to be hearing it and and think about the ripples of that and where that could go and and again, you’re one person, right? So for the listeners, you can be that one person in your team, you know, so that’s amazing. I love that love that idea of the ripples and taking that and actually turning it into action for our listeners. So thank you for sharing that.

Richard Sheridan  

And I’ll offer one other encouragement. Yeah, and because I get the challenge people are facing because here’s what happens, somebody is going to listen to your podcast, and they’re going to be inspired. And they’re gonna read some book you’ve referenced, and not just today’s podcast, but any of the other ones that you’ve created, these great leaders that you have found over time, and they’re gonna come back to work someday. And they’re going to go into the office, and you’re gonna meet somebody and say, I’ve got a great new idea. I heard something yesterday. And of course, the people they’re talking to Kevin, read what they’ve read, haven’t heard what they heard having solid tips on. And that person, almost invariably will look at and say, well, that won’t work here. That’s against policy. We tried that 10 years ago, didn’t work then won’t work now. And usually right then in there, the idea dies. Because you’re busy, you got meetings to go to, you got emails to answer, you got problems to put out. And so at that point, most of those new ideas just get crushed under the weight of supposed bureaucracy. I arm people with a simple response. I said, look him in the eye and say get it. Let’s try it before we defeat it. Let’s run the experiment and see what happens. Because the things you’re imagining are going to happen. typically don’t. Right. And you may not work, that’s okay. This is where we get to continuous improvement. Continuous improvement. You know, as Mike rather would say in kata, it’s about trying stuff, learning from it and then adjusting the plan as you go. That’s right. I mean, that’s the mindset we need inside of our organizations. Right? We need To create a learning system inside of our organizations.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. And I just think about it, you know that one of the concerns that I hear from a lot of people is, well, I’m, I’m not the decision maker, you know, I’m, there’s other people that are above me that are making those decisions, and how do I influence them to make the change? I’d be curious to hear what your thoughts are on that. You know,

Richard Sheridan  

I had a significant learning moment myself, but 24 years ago, when I was a newly minted VP of r&d, and in my boss, Bob Niro, good CEO, still one of my best friends, I started telling him the kind of changes I wanted to make as a VP of r&d. And, Bob could tell I was excited, he could tell I was enthused, he could tell I had this dreamy Look in my eyes of something big, which ultimately, what I created in interface systems became the prototype for what we built here at memo. So it was a big, dreamy idea. And I was enthused, because I saw myself leaving behind just a mess of a career up to that point. And you know, one that had me going home tired and frustrated. And so as I’m describing everything I wanted to try and do to Bob, he started getting scared, he’s like, rich, how much is this going to cost? And I said, Bob, the cost doesn’t matter. This is so important. My programmers are going to learn next, my programmers are going to learn why. And he kept throwing me out of my office. And I wasn’t getting through. And Bob was a good listener. What I realized was, I was using my value system, I was speaking my vocabulary, I needed to put myself in Bob’s shoes, what’s important to Bob. And so one day, I went into his office with the same enthusiasm. And I said that, here’s the way I see things here are company interface systems. I sit in on the executive team meetings. And I know you’re counting on my team to build new products from the market. But I also know that I won’t get done in time. And we’re going to run out of money. And we’ll go out of business. And he said, Yep, that’s a good assessment, that’s exactly what’s going on. So I said, Bob, as far as I can tell, there’s only three ways out of this dilemma that we’re in. One is we go do a secondary public offering, we are a public company. Number two is we get acquired. Or number three, we go private with a private equity placement. And he said, Yep, those are the three alternatives. I sit down, any one of those, whichever one happens, there are going to be the key investment stakeholders are going to come visit us and they’re going to do due diligence, on my end of the company, because we’re a tech firm, they’re gonna look at my people, my process and my products, and we are not going to pass muster, that investment won’t happen, we’re gonna go out of business. That’s why I needed to make this change. He literally signed off on it that afternoon, it changed his life, and it changed mine. So my encouragement to your listeners is this. Learn to put yourself in the shoes and the chair of the person, you’re appealing to see the world through their perspective, what is the thing that’s most concerning to them? How do they see the world don’t look at it through your eyes, look at it through their eyes, communicate to them in their language, understand what their biggest challenges are? And then recraft, whatever you’re appealing to them in, in the terms that will help them succeed.

Patrick Adams  

And you mentioned challenges. And obviously, we’ve talked about a couple of those challenges. What would you say in all of your years would be one of the number one concerns or the greatest challenge that you’ve heard from your colleagues? And then what kind of advice would you provide as we start to kind of close out the interview today? What What advice would you provide to the listeners around those challenges and concerns that

Richard Sheridan  

that they hear? Yeah, you know, I would say that I’m sure this is true in your consulting practice. And it is true in all the companies we run into that, after all is said and done. It always gets back to the people with talent, and how do we keep them motivated? How do we keep them encouraged? How do we keep them energized over a long career, and often we lose that race, don’t we as leaders, and we start to get people who are trusted colleagues, great team members, and somehow they burn out and they lose their zest for whatever it was they were doing. And then we’re carrying this load of people with us and we give up on them. And I would encourage your listeners to never give up on people. You have good people on your team. They are. They are dedicated professionals. They have studied hard, they want to do good work. They want to go home that night, and tell their families about the good work they did where they are. They want to feel proud of their work. They want to share what they’ve done with their children and we need to as leaders. We need to create that environment for them. And so for me, when I look back on my old life, the biggest challenge I had was the way I organized my teams. Everybody was this tower of knowledge, nobody else knew what they knew if in fact, their tower was in high demand, they were working tons of overtime. And I never actually gave them a chance to work with prime. And I was taught early on in my career, don’t worry about quality problems, we’ll fix it later, later never ever come. And so I’m going to encourage your listeners, because I’m guessing the people who are attracted to your podcasts are themselves systems, thinkers, sure. Think about the systems that you put in place. They should be simple, repeatable, measurable, invisible. These are the hallmarks of men. This is what people can come in and tangibly see at work. And those systems should care for the people. This, you know, I think when lean is working at its best, it is a system that cares about people. When lean is at its worst. It’s a system run by spreadsheets, and graphs and charts. And, you know, how much cost can we extract from things? How much more work can we get out of individual people? That in my mind, that isn’t what lean is about? Lean is about respect for people. Lean is about creating a system of work that everyone can operate in, and operating in a fashion that has excess capacity when things do not go according to plan? Where will we reach into our team in order to deal with that? One of the most delightful things about our team here at Menlo is if we need to go get more work done on a client project for whatever reason, we can add more people. And we get more work done. So we work 40 hour work weeks. Now that sounds incredibly benevolent. You know, what a nice environment we’ve created. No, it is that too. But our purpose behind a 40 Hour Workweek is a sustainable workplace. We believe tired programmers make bad software, and we don’t want to make bad software. So we’re not going to have tired programmers. So I think creating these simple constructs in our heads about leadership, how we’re going to treat our people, what kind of systems we’re going to have in place to, to keep that work progressing steadily. And also, as I said, build learning into the organization as much as you can, without having to stop work and get back to learning. These are the things that we should be thinking about everyday as leaders

Patrick Adams  

I love it. Great advice to close out today. Rich, I so much appreciate your time. And just the amazing knowledge that you’re sharing with our listeners today. And obviously I’d love for anyone that’s listening. If they haven’t visited Menlo physically, and you have the ability to do what you need to do, I have the luxury of having you guys, you know, two hours away from my office. So I love to come visit and obviously plan to do that more once things open back up. But also, you mentioned the virtual tours, anybody can do that right anywhere in the world. So if someone was interested to schedule a tour with you to learn more about Menlo, how would they do that? wherever they go?

Richard Sheridan  

Yeah, go to our website. Right on the homepage, you’ll see tours and classes. On the top line, click on virtual tours and sign up for one there. We offer two to three tours a week. They are free. They last about 90 minutes. And you know the delightful thing you were talking about the ripple effect. And I was thinking about this, just in the pandemic time alone. People have come and visited from 63 countries in 39 states, wow, 2000 people from all over the world. And so that’s a delightful notion for me to think of the impact we’re having anywhere on the planet. And the beautiful thing now is the virtual tours have democratized our access. Right? Now. Anybody can come in the old days, it had to be somebody who could afford the time away who was right for the flight, the hotel rooms and all that sort of thing. Now it’s 90 minutes. We have people coming from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Malaysia. I mean, it’s just coming from everywhere. And it’s not at all inconvenient for them other than maybe they have to stay up a little later or get up a little early, depending on where they are.

Patrick Adams  

Right now that makes it so easy. And we’ll make sure that we drop a link for the tours into the show notes. The other thing is that I want to drop a link to his book. So chief joy officer is the one that you published in 2018. And then your first book, which was Joy, Inc. Where are those on Amazon? Is there a special place that people should go to buy those anywhere books are sold,

Richard Sheridan  

okay. And there’s also audio versions because I know a lot of people love that. I’m particularly fond of the chief joy officer audio version because I got to read it nice. And so yeah, they just anyway, They’re available in ebooks for download on any of your favorite book reading apps as well. Perfect. Well, rich,

Patrick Adams  

Thanks again for being here so much to appreciate you being a guest on the Lean solutions podcast. And I hope this isn’t the last time we’ll have you back again. Maybe we can dive into one of the topics in your book or or talk about another amazing topic that Menlo covers, love your high tech anthropology and there’s just so many things that we could talk about. So I hope I can have you again as a guest in the future. I have a feeling we could talk for hours. Thanks so much. Thanks, Rich. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined. Please give us a review. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai