Latest / Humanity Working / Interview: Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It, featuring Garry Ridge

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Interview: Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It, featuring Garry Ridge · Humanity Working

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why, you know, the values are so important.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in our values in the organization, we used to sit down at minimum every 90 days and ask our people to share with us how did they live our values in the last 90 days?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we didn't, we only had two measurements.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: We either lived them or you visited them, and we didn't want visitors.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: So for those of us that care about creating human-centric organizations, uh, one of the most worrying statistics that we see every year is this one around employee engagement, which for years now has been hovering around 30%.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, companies are spending huge amounts of money trying to fix that, but a lot of those investments apparently don't seem to move the needle.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I wanted to invite a friend of the show back today to talk about exactly that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_03: Um and specifically what does work in this area because he really understands his field and also because he has a new book out, which if you're watching on YouTube right now, you will see a big poster of behind him.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um the book is probably my favorite title for book ever.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: Any dumbass can do it.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Learning moments from an everyday CEO of a multi-billion dollar company.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_03: So welcome back to the podcast to Gary Ridge.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, g'day, Paul.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a delight to be with you.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for inviting me.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so for those of you that don't know Gary, uh he has been on the pod before.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: We'll include a link to that uh to that previous episode.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_03: And we had a really good discussion there, so I'm hoping we can kind of uh um follow on from that discussion.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Gary's the chairman emeritus of WD40 um and was its CEO as well for about what, 25 years, right, Gary?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: 25 years, yep.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Gary's won a ton of awards for his leadership approach uh and style, which he describes as simple but not easy.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: And uh there's a lot, there's a lot to get through there.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I want to start, Gary, with that issue of um employee engagement.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um in the book early on you talk about your own realization when you're on a you're on a plane that a lot of people on that plane probably didn't want to go to work.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: Uh talk about that.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's you know, I think it's sad.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I truly believe that business has both an opportunity and a responsibility to make the world a better place.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they could do that if we send people home happy.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the reasons I titled the book the way I did was, you know, this doing this is not overwhelming, it's pretty simple.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there's just a few basics around it.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, on a continuing basis, does leadership show people in organizations that they belong, that they feel like they belong and they're treated like they belong?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: Do they show them that the work they do matters and makes a difference?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do they have a set of values that allow people to make choices?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: And do they take failure out of the organization by having every interaction as a learning opportunity?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then finally, uh the leaders acting as coaches, not managers.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's as simple as that.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's simple but not easy.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it's simple as those, you know, those elements being in place on a consistent basis.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so those stats that we that we talk about, that that you know, 30% engagement, sometimes you hear a little bit more than that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um I guess that going back to that that moment when you started thinking about that.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: You had a lot, uh, according to the book, you had a lot of realizations on that one flight, right?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: You you you talk about Aristotle there, you talk about the Dalai Lama there, you talk about, as I say, the the the feeling that you could you could just sense, uh, just a sense on that plane.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um and as I hear you break down what it takes to solve those problems really fundamentally, why do you think that as a society, as a set of leaders, as a set of organizations, we we put up with the fact that so many people don't want to go to work?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I I think there's a I don't know whether we actually put up with it or or is it that that the the the leadership of organizations don't really understand the value of having high and highly engaged people.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I have a theory that outcome equals the will of the people time strategy.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you know, business leaders spend a lot of time on strategy, which is really important, Paul.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's really important.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: But you can have, you know, let's write a strategic plan together, right?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: We write a really nice strategic plan about a business that we're going to develop.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We take it to some smart professor and they look mark it up for us and they say, Congratulations.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'll give you 70 out of 100 for the strategic plan.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: But if only 30% of the people are going to work every day, executing against that strategic plan passionately, 30 times 70 is an outcome.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: But if 80% are going and executing passionately about it, 80 times 70 is a bigger outcome.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think that leaders get a disproportionate amount of investment in the building of a great culture and writing the strategic plan.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because the culture side is really hard.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Writing a great street strategic plan isn't that hard.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You can get a lot of help to do it.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're dealing with building a great culture, you know, I have a good friend of mine, he owns a chain of Ashley furniture stores out in the Charlotte area, and he shared with me one day, he said, culture is not a microwaveable event.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a crock pot approach.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that's Charlie Malouf.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so true.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Leaders think that you can sprinkle fairy dust on an organization, bring in one training program, you know, put in a cafe bar machine and a ping-pong table, and we're going to have better culture.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not that at all.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is a commitment to the things that I shared, which are belonging, people mattering, learning, values, and coaching.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's fascinating because the um, as you're describing strategy, oftentimes organizations, now whether they should or not, is another matter, but oftentimes organizations don't even think of strategy as something that's living, right?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: They'll think of it oftentimes as a we'll build a strategy document and then we've got a strategy.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: That in itself is is problematic.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: But there is one thing that is attractive about that, right?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: Which is that it is just literally a you do a body of work and then you've completed that body of work and then it's done.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um, the way you describe the culture work inside an organization, it's really never done, is it?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, it is never done.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's consistent, you know.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Culture equals values plus behavior times consistency.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, when I was a, I think I I don't know if I shared with you when we're on our last podcast, but when I was a young lad going to school in Australia, my science teacher gave me a petri dish.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, what we're gonna do is we're gonna grow culture in this petri dish.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: So there are two things that are important that you need to know.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: One, what are the ingredients you need to put into this petri dish to grow a great culture?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the second thing is you are the owner of the petri dish.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to watch it every day, you have to feed the good ingredients, and you need to be brave enough to attack the toxins.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't do that every day, the toxins will easily eat the good culture.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't feed the good culture, it won't continue to develop.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: So as an organization, you need to know the ingredients to put in the petri dish, and you've got to do it consistently.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do that, you'll get the sort of results that we were we got at WD 40 because we lived it every day, where you know, 93% of people were engaged and 98% of our global tribe said they love to tell people at the comp uh they love to tell people they worked at the company.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so let's get let's get into that specifically, because I think that that's one of the most um going to be one of the most interesting things for many people.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um if you if you follow kind of uh LinkedIn's view of what makes uh of what makes a good culture or LinkedIn's view as to what makes good leaders.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: And when I say LinkedIn's view, I mean the sort of collective stuff that you hear on LinkedIn every day, of which I'm as guilty as anybody to contributing to.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_03: When you think about that, we often see as leaders held up that we should we should model ourselves after, or as being leaders of what I would refer to almost as sexy companies, right?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: So companies that um that maybe they're high-tech companies, or maybe they're companies that have you know had a a long period of very, very public growth because they're they're in an area that people find uh people find really interesting.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um But when I think when I think most people think about WD 40 from the outside, having not read your work, they would think of WD 40 as a very utilitarian type company, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_03: You don't have the you don't have the sex appeal of some of of say, I don't know, uh Apple or a Google or something uh or something along those lines.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um so one of the things I think that is most fascinating about your work is the fact that you manage to turn something in the minds of the people that work there, and in the minds of your customers, and in the minds of your investors.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_03: You manage to turn something that might feel quite uh utilitarian on the surface, but into something that really actually was about an experience, about something that that would excite people, excited employees to say that they work there, right?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: Excited people to customers to talk about their experience with it.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um how did you how did you personally make that transition yourself in terms of of oh I I work at a company that makes lubricants to no, I'm I'm in a different business to that?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, we write about it in the book that your product is not your purpose.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And really that's what it gets down to.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And our purpose was we were in the memories business.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: We created positive lasting memories by solving problems in factories, homes, and workshops around the world.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: We solved problems and we created opportunities.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: So when you think about the product itself, um, the way the product performs, it actually creates an environment where a positive memory is generated.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: For example, you know, your your husband, wife, or significant other, you know, complains about a squeaky door, you go and fix it and suddenly you become a hero.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you've you're working out in the field with your granddad on a on a tractor, and he uses it to you know lubricate a plow.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the memory is not just the plow, but being with grandad.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a rocking chair brand.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I used to remember when I was traveling around the world, you know, I'd say to someone, you know, someone say, What do you do?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'd say, I'm in the memories business.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they say, What do you mean?
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Oh, well, I'm with WD-40.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they would immediately come back and say, I remember when.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when this happened.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly enough, back in the year 2000, we actually ran a contest where we wanted to uh help our end users help us identify all of the memory uses they had for WD40.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And we got 200, over 200,000 entries of people telling us, uh, just in the United States, on how the product had solved a problem and created a positive outcome for them.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and our second value at the company was we we value creating positive lasting memories in all of our relationships.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the purpose of the product migrated across how we're creating a positive lasting memory for our end users, for the people who work in the company, for the communities in which we live in, for the for the environment that gives us permission to exist, and for our shareholders.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it was all about cutting across all of those constituents who had an investment or we had an investment in to make the brand what it is today.
• 13:43
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: And do you feel, Gary, that this is applicable almost to any organization?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: I asked the question because I hear a lot from leaders who will say, oh, this sounds great for consumer brand X or consumer brand Y.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_03: They can see why, for example, that Coca-Cola looked at through one lens is brown, sweet, uh fizzy water, right?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_03: But then look through another lens at something entirely different that is related to people's experiences.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um but do you think this applies even to, I don't know, a company that processes insurance claims or manufactures industrial parts, do they have, can they find the equivalent of what you were able to find?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think so, but they have to be careful not to be cute.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be authentic.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So yes, I think they can.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you think it through, you know, even if someone is making industrial parts for something, that's providing some meaningful outcome for something.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a matter of thinking, because remember, I've I often said, imagine a place where you go to work every day and you make a contribution to something bigger than yourself.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's where purpose plays in.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Stopping a squeak is not bigger than yourself, but creating an environment where you bring a positive memory to somebody, that's bigger than yourself.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so and this is the power of where it is, right?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_03: Because basically what we're saying here is that the moment that you can do that, you're creating a baseline, if you like, a framework for which people that are coming to work every day are feeling like they want to be there.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you can identify how what they do has meaning.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, do people know and feel like they belong and are treated that way?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do people know and feel like they matter, which means they're doing meaningful work that can be identified.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Can you can you think of a situation where that entire purpose of creating these positive lasting memories changed a business decision in some way or or resulted in something different than it would have been under the old you know, squeak smell and dirt kind of mindset?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I we used to use that question of creating positive lasting memories in our product design opportunities.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the reason that we developed what ended up becoming the easy reach delivering delivery system, which is basically the basic can of WD40 with about an eight-inch flexible delivery hose on it, is we went out into the trades and we asked our end users, how could we be better for them?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: What would be a great memory that we could create for them?
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it became very clear to us, and these were mainly main tradespeople in the trades area, they said, you know, we would love it if we could get the product to hard to get places easier.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, but that would be a positive lasting memory, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, from that piece of feedback from our end users and multiple millions of dollars, we created the easy reach delivery system, which has become you know unbelievably successful.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: And now I I remember when uh I was working at the company and I was at the house here one day, and in fact, we had a trades guy come in to do some work, and it was uh someone who was a uh uh a plumber, and they were actually installing a um a heater system.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I I had a can and the the new delivery system hadn't yet actually been fully launched, but I happened to have a can and he didn't know what I did.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I picked up the can and I went over to him and I lifted up the the the delivery system so he could see it, and I said, What do you think about this?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked at it and he was computing what it would, he went, Oh, oh, and he used a couple of interesting words to explain to me how excited he was about where he could get this because it would make his life easier.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, so this underlying uh understanding of of the nature of the business that you're in allows you to connect more effectively to your customers.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: It probably allows you to it does allow you to tell a better story to your investors.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously it gives people as we as we say that that framework in which they can uh excel in inside the organization.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um but you there's a term you use a lot and from speaking to you before, I know this has has been part of your thinking for a long time of the tribe.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'd like you to talk a little bit about how the idea of thinking about WD40 team members as part of a tribe.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_03: I'd like you to talk about how that came about.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And then also the advantages, the the advantages that you see of thinking about um the workforce in that way.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, it goes back to my initial statement is you need to belong to something that's meaningful.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you could say you belong to a team, but a team plays a game, gets off, it changes.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I was really intrigued, and I was reading some of Sebastian Junger's work on tribes and thinking about, you know, the the whole attributes of tribes.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, if you belong to a tribe, it's enduring over time, and it has a just cause.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And our just cause was a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that works.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it was interesting how that actually played out so powerfully during COVID.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, well, what's if we think about a tribe, there's it normally a leader, and what is the responsibility of a leader?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, the responsibility of a tribal leader is to be a learner and a teacher.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because as a tribal leader, you are responsible for the continuation and the life of the tribe.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if I were to think about it from an indigenous point of view, and this was not about indigenous, because tribes went back to Ug the Caveman, right?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: But if I did think about it, you know, I thought about you know the Australian indigenous uh people, and if I was observing them at a tribal meeting, the tribal leader would be teaching the tribe members to throw a boomerang.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because a boomerang was the tool of survival.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So by having a tribe that had a just cause, I could talk to leadership very clearly about your number one responsibility as a tribal leader is to be a learner and a teacher and a great coach because that's what we are here to do, to help those we have the privilege to lead step into the best version of their personal self.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, tribes had other attributes.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I I interviewed the Fijian, uh, Fijian Islanders and other tribes, and I learned from their behaviors that values were very important within a tribe, that belonging was.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, a very important part of a tribe.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: That future focus was very important as a tribe.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: If we weren't thinking about what was going to come at us in the future, then we may go extinct.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: There were specialized skills within a tribe.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Some tribe members were better fishermen and hunters, others were better succession planners, salespeople, marketing people.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: We were warriors.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: We had a warrior spirit.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then there was celebration.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the attributes of a tribe were learning and teaching, values, belonging, future focus, specialized skills, warriors, spirit, and celebration.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And all of that together was what is the essence of or the formation of a tribe with a just cause of a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other.
• 22:51
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• 22:55
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• 23:46
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• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, one of the things that really occur to me when I was reading the book and thinking about this as a as a frame of reference, um you don't mention it directly, so I'm curious.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um it feels like there's almost a humility that comes along with it as well, by definition.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_03: Because if you think about many CEOs today, and assuming that the CEO is in quotes equivalent to the tribal leader, many CEOs and many leaders in uh for that matter consider themselves to be so important that the company cannot possibly survive without them.
• 24:34
  unknown: Right.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_03: And almost to an extent that they if the next CEO comes in after them and fails, Gary's holding up a uh a doll here, which it'll get into in a moment.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_03: But if the person they hire after them or the person who comes after them fails, it almost justifies and fulfills that that theory that they have of themselves.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_03: But the tribe isn't like that, right?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: The tribe lasts longer than the current tribal leader.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: And frankly, if the tribe ceases to exist under the next leader, then the last leader's failed.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: So did you think much about the sort of humility dimension that comes with that concept of thinking about the organization as a tribe?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And from nilly day one, I said, I want to build an enduring company that we will be proud to hand on to others.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what we did.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the doll I'm how holding up is in the book.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is Alec.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, the soul sucking CEO of Fear Incorporated, who, and why I'm holding him up, and I know I brought him into the conversation, is one of the challenges CEOs have is their ego eats their empathy instead of their empathy eating their ego.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's not about me, me, me.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's about who are we here to serve and how do we help those we have the privilege of serving step into the best version of their personal self.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what I'm very, very proud of is our succession at WD 40, and I've been out of the business now for coming up to three years in August, went so smoothly, and the company is doing so well, and the and the culture uh measurements are as equal to when I was there, is because we were deliberate about that.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted to build an enduring company that we're proud to hold to hand on to others.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And our new CEO, Steve, who is not new, he'd been with the company for you know nearly as long as I had been, um, just a bit younger when he started, um, you know, he was committed to the fact that culture was an absolute foundation that had to continue within the organization.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so it has.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I am extremely all I want them to be is successful.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I want the people within the organization to um continue to gain from the culture.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: So part of the culture there at WD 14 um is espoused in something that you referred to as the the Maniac Pledge.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um and uh I was talking to our producer Matt before uh before we started here.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_03: Matt has read the book as well and is in in love with this maniac pledge.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: A couple of other folks that I've spoken to about it are as well.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: So I wonder if you could just share what it is, uh share the origin of it, and we'll spend a little bit of time going through the the the individual details of it, because I think that's one of the most interesting aspects.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the Maniac Pledge and other things we had in the company were our efforts to make things easily easy to understand, but also to have permissions to do things.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the origin of the Maniac Pledge was uh, you know, I'd been flying around the world doing something, and I got back to my office in San Diego, and one of the leaders just couldn't wait to see me, and it wasn't to greet me and hug me, it was to tell me how disappointed they were that they didn't know something and that you know that had frustrated them over time.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of said to the person, well, you know, if if you had um gone out of your way to find out what you know you didn't know instead of storing it in your backpack and carrying that anger around for two weeks, you'd have the answer and you know you'd feel better.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: But my learning moment from that was we had to give people permission to do that.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or we had to challenge them to not use what I call the na na ni na na disease, the finger pointing disease, as an excuse.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because na the na na ni na na or finger pointing disease is running through all all companies.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: So let's f let's find a way of not giving people the excuse to have that na na ni na na disease.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why the maniac pledge was drafted and uh ended up becoming and still is a really uh powerful thinking part of the organization.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: So take us through the elements of it, if you would, please go.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am responsible for taking action, asking questions, and getting answers and making decisions.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I won't wait for someone to tell me.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: If I need to know, I am responsible for asking.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have no right to be offended that I didn't get this sooner.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm doing something others should know about, I am responsible for telling them.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_03: And this is something that applies at every level of the organization inside WD40, right?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Every level of the organization.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_03: How long when somebody comes in and they're new to the culture, how long would you say it takes for them to absorb the full meaning of something like that?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's a good question.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, we did, we did, and they still do a lot of work uh as we uh employ people.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, if you were to go to the website and the careers page, it talks a lot about values and who we are.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you would find that you know, people who actually end up joining the company have done a lot of work to understand who we are because they they need to get comfortable with it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, it is a bit scary sometimes in that initially they have to feel like they're safe.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: So our job as leaders is to ensure that they do feel safe.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and the way they do feel safe is seeing us, the leadership, and people within the organization, use tools like the Maniac Pledge, the learning moment, our values, our coaching philosophy on a day-to-day-to-day basis, and it becomes kind of natural.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not sure I'd be able to accurately tell you, Paul, how long it takes.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's it it really does become something that people get comfortable with pretty quickly because they see it's the normal activity within the organization.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what you're highlighting here is something that is that is really important, and it's one of the reasons why I would urge people to not just pick up the book, but pick up the book and do something people almost never do with this type of book, but read it from cover to cover.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um the reason for that is because when you talk about this being simple but not easy, where it really starts to come through that it is simple but not easy is that there are a whole bunch of things that are interrelated to each other.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: So in other words, if you treated this as like a smorgasbord of of options and you just grab one and you grabbed another and you grabbed another, this isn't going to work.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_03: And I think, for example, the Maniac Pledge is a classic example of that, because the maniac pledge, as I interpret it, is a form of accountability and it's accountability that runs throughout the organization.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: It's not just about managers being accountable to their employees or employees being accountable to their managers or people being accountable to shareholders, it's about everybody being accountable to everybody else in this ecosystem.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_03: And that kind of accountability only works if it's accompanied with a strong amount of psychological safety.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: So that's presumably when people start to really understand that.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_03: The only way they really understand is when they see it in action, right?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_03: When they see that they did something that in another organization they would be actively punished for.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_03: And in this organization, maybe because of the way they did it, maybe because of how they did it, maybe because of what they learned from it, it might even be being actively celebrated.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's what presumably when it hits them.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is that right?
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why, you know, the values are so important.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in our values in the organization, we used to sit down at minimum every 90 days and ask our people to share with us how did they live our values in the last 90 days.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we didn't, we only had two measurements where you either lived them or you visited them, and we didn't want visitors.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: But then there would not probably be I I don't recall there being a s a conversation where somehow or another we wouldn't introduce our values into the conversation.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um to dive a little bit deeper on that idea of simple but but not easy.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um one of the other things that I've been thinking about over the last few days has been the nature of the challenge that you that you took on when you when you joined the company.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um so just briefly for the you know for folks that haven't read the book yet, um your role was the the biggest part of your role was to basically help transform the the company from a highly US centric organization to a truly uh global company.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_03: Stock price uh went up accordingly during that period of time, and many of the uh things that you're that you're talking about putting into place, you attribute as a huge part of the company's overall success.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: But if I can kind of play I'm not sure if Devil's Advocate's the right term here, but if I can challenge you a little bit on one thing.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: It feels like in reading the book that you were not taking on a let's say an actively toxic culture and having to turn it around.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_03: Um it feels like from how you describe it, you were taking something that had a lot of promise and turning it into everything that it could be.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: Do you agree with that uh assessment?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_03: And if you do, what advice do you have for leaders that are really truly are facing dysfunctional cultures where trust is broken and cynicism is running deep and all those kind of things?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think, Paul, uh what we had was a culture that was built to be a domestic-driven organization.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was very insular, it was very inward-looking, um uh and it wasn't unhappy, right?
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't progressive.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't have, we couldn't have done it, and it was very, honestly, it was very autocratic.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh, you know, because uh when the company was in its small state, you you could you could kind of gather everyone together pretty easily and distribute the the marching orders.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh an autocratic organization was not going to work globally.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: We had to become more democratic and we had to distribute the ability to make choices.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that was really the key to it.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and remember, we we went to different cultures and places where we never existed before.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we we virtually had 17 startups because we opened 17 offices in 17 countries around the world from scratch, from base up.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: So they were 17 startups.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, one of the things we did was we we were very early on the early stages, we transferred people around.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: For example, you know, when we opened our operation in mainland China, uh our goal was eventually to have most of, and if not all, of the people there, nationals running the business.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I actually transplanted the managing director of our Asia Pacific operation and his family from Australia to Shanghai for four years to actually set the stage for the culture.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we did that in a number of different ways.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, the company could have survived as a US-based company, probably would have been about a I don't know, seventh of the size it is now, and it would have been okay.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, to answer the question about dysfunctional cultures, um the fish rots from the head.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are going to impact the culture per uh uh in a positive way, the leadership has to be convinced that that is what needs to happen, and they have to put the elements in place to do that.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, firstly, they have to have a people-first mindset.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: They have to be brave about their accountability and their behavior, they have to have a clearly defined, authentic purpose, they have to have a hierarchical set of values, they have to have transparency and simplicity, they have to have learning moments that reduce fear, they have to treasure belonging, acceptance, and connectedness, and they have to care about their people, be candid with their people, hold their people accountable, and expect them to be responsible.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: You have to put all the infrastructure tools, elements, and theories in place in the organization to make all those things happen.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: But if the leader is not a leader who understands that damassery is their superpower, then you know you're gonna have this guy, Al Alec, the soul-sucking CEO or leader in place.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_03: We'll get on to that damastery being a superpower in a little bit.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really interested to talk about that.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: The um but you talk about that CEO, the soul-sucking CEO.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: Let's say that we pulled that CEO out of place, and now we have the new CEO in place who truly understands this.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um it's often said, and I'm just curious as to whether you agree with this statement, but it's often said inside larger organizations that middle management is where culture goes to die.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um and so there's gonna be remnants of the of the old system, and there are gonna be people throughout an organization that have been hired based on behaviors that that under the new world are not behaviors that are gonna be successful anymore.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_03: What kind of work do you think organizations need to do once that new leadership is in place in order to make sure that these values truly are infused?
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_03: When in some cases they will conflict with what has made people get to the level that they are now at?
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's gonna be messy.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely not gonna be it's simple, it's not easy, and time is not your friend.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you've got to start, you know, making sure that the the foundations are in place.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, then you've got to start to build psychological safety and you've got to start to build you know the trust in people that you know we are here to be a better place than we were.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so it's it's gonna be messy.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh some people you'll need to share with the competitors.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, some people will actually feel very uncomfortable.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, some people won't be happy.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the conversation is I want you to be happy.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this culture is not gonna make you happy, but let me help you get somewhere where you are gonna be happy.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: So there's gonna be some uh some you know, some disruption and some uncomfortable times.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I admit that early on when I was helping implement some of this change, I got some of that, you know, backlash.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Gary's drinking too much of Ken Blounchard's Kool-Aid, you know, what's all this stuff that he wants, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I I did have some interesting conversations because I was committed to the fact that after being through the learning that I'd been through, that this was the way to go.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a lot of support within the organization from people who actually believed it.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then I really topped that up in I started sending senior leaders through the same master's program that I did.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: So by the time you know we were 10 years into this, I had 10 or 12 people with master's degrees in leadership on sprinkled around the organization that had been through the same, you know, master's program that I've been through, where I'd learned all this servant leadership stuff.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I had I had cheerleaders, and that's what I needed was cheerleaders.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and I think that's a a place where we very closely align, Gary, because we feel very strongly that these are, yes, there's a mindset element to this, but these are also skills that people can learn.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um and courses like your uh like the one you're talking about, or programs like your one you're talking about are absolutely absolutely critical for that.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um and it which leads me actually to another question that I have of situations where I've seen this almost work and not quite.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the one of those situations I think is where um the lot of the language, a lot of the language that you bring up in your book, a lot of the language that you'll often hear discussed on the periphery of topics like servant leadership end up being used but misused, misused inside organizations.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: So when we survey employees across organizations, unfortunately in many organizations, we see a ton of fatigue around terms like servant leadership, around terms like radical candor, even around terms like growth mindset.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because in so many cases, those terms have become frameworks for for poor behavior, like radical candor becomes.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: Being a dick and getting away with it, right?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: The seven seven leadership you discussed in your book, like what CEO is going to say, well, actually, I don't believe in any of that.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a comm command and control guy.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: You mentioned that, uh, you mentioned that in the book.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: And and we hear a lot of mistaken uh attempts to put growth mindset inside inside an organization.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: And it ends up being used as a cudgel.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_03: A manager will ask an employee to do something that's completely unreasonable, the employee will push back po completely appropriately against it, and then the manager's response is you're not exhibiting a growth mindset.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_03: So this can these things can go wrong if they're not actually uh accompanied by A, a full understanding of what they are, B, how they work well together, and C a full understanding of what the benefits are if they're implemented in concert with each other and in the right way and according to the values that that you talk about.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: So have you seen that sort of pattern yourself whereby they just become buzzwords with no with no meaning?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_03: And if you do, how do you encourage people to address that?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, I I often think we I often say sometimes we camouflage issues with confusion to make out how smart we are.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and we don't have to do that.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I said transparency and simplicity is so important.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and, you know, it gets back to my theory of dumbassy.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um, you know, you you need to show vulnerability as a leader because we're not perfect.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, a lot of leaders, it's not about them learning these new behaviors, it's being aware of the behaviors that they have that are not producing what they want.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I think that's the flip side of it.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in the first class that I did at the MSEL program, it was about understanding who you are as a leader and how your behavior impacts someone else.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because you cannot change anybody else.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can only change what you do to help them be successful.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's an interesting place to be.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I love Marshall Goldsmith's work and I love his book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, Marshall's whole premise is if if you're unaware of how your behavior is impacting someone, then you will not be able to create an environment where you know you are enhancing your leadership style and their ability to perform.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's you know, uh a lot of what I learned is was about me not being aware of how what I did impacted others.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: Talk about that a little bit more.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, uh if I was to look at the disc profile in the early stages, I was a turbo D.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Be brief, be bright, be gone, right?
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, yep.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: And and put me in a room with a turbo eye, you know what has happened.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: You're in one right now, okay.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I had to learn to um appreciate that I and and and respect the I side of someone.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that took practice for me.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: And now if I do a disc profile, I'm an ID, I changed.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, uh but it was deliberate.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I used to walk around with praise someone written on my hand for weeks and months.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I and then even today, Paul, you know, I I have a little notebook and I don't know where it is right now, but um I know that I have a a sticker that says, Am I being the person I want to be right now?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And who is that person?
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it lists who I want to be.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be curious, I want to be a learner, I want to be fact-based, I want to throw sunshine, not a shadow.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there has a list of who I want to be.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and that's where I had to continue to remind myself of that in my leadership role, because the world will drag us off this path that we're on.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we we have no right to take our leftovers to anybody.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why this thing of leadership is so deliberate.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be have to keep thinking, I am here to serve.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if I was in a situation with you, Paul, now, and you know, we had a conversation and it disrupted my thinking, and I was going to meet Fred over here later.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have to center myself before I meet Fred, because he doesn't deserve my leftovers from Paul.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of stuff to have that, you know, I think you have to be deliberate and think about, but it's it's practical.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I think I told you before, I used to introduce myself as Gaday.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Gary Ridge, I'm the consciously incompetent, probably wrong and roughly right, chairman and CEO of WD 40 company, and I need all the help I can get.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: I got a lot of help.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, which brings us beautifully to my last question, which is centered around the title, right?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you've alluded to a couple of times in the conversation, the sort of idea of kind of embracing the the damastery and reflecting that demassery can be can be a superpower.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: Um the title of the book um I mentioned at the start is is probably the favorite title that I've uh that I've ever heard from a book.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and in part because it is easy.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry, it is simple, but it's not easy.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: And you really do a beautiful way of articulating it.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: But you also cover this idea that that being the smartest person in the room is not always helpful.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: And you don't have to fake it because often you are not the smartest person in the room.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_03: So talk about explicit examples, if you would, whereby the act of not being really smart actively helped you.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll give you a clear example.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: I write about it in the book.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was early in my time at WD40 in San Diego.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a meeting room, and uh there was someone giving a presentation from a consultant group, and I'm sitting there and they're comment camouflaging the issue with confusion with what they're saying.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're using all these buzzwords and terms, and I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, I have no clue what you're talking about.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I wasn't CEO at this time, and I was you know head of international, and I'm thinking, all right, I can go through this now and walk out of here and have no value, or maybe I can have a career-limiting move here and put up my hand and say something.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Okay, I put up my hand.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to use what I often use, which is a little of my Aussie style, where I said, sorry, not long in this country, but I have no clue what you're talking about.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think happened?
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone in the room went, yeah.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because they didn't know either.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we could have sat there.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, and there's you know, occasions like that where you know uh we we as leaders need to get bleeding tongue syndrome.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: We need to bite our tongue and and let other people you know deliver their knowledge and their their thinking and and accept that that we you know we're not the smart.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we still have to make decisions and we still have to you know move forward, and that's fine.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: But let's get let's let's benefit from you know the collective you know brain power that we have, um, which is so important.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: And when you when you reach out to people for that, they really do feel like they matter.
• 52:07
  unknown: Yeah.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, they will give you more than best effort because they feel appreciated and they feel like they matter, and they feel like they've been heard, which they have been heard.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_03: All right, that's a perfect note on which to end it.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for your time today, Gary.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_03: Again, the title of the book is Any Dumb Ass Can Do It.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I would strongly, strongly recommend that actually anybody who is interested in organizational dynamics or who's uh interested in leadership, uh whether it's leading a team or leading a group or leading an organization, or really anybody that wants to understand kind of how all this works and how an organization should work, um, it's a very, very good book to help you understand all those things.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_03: Plus, it's really entertaining too.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: So thanks again for thanks for writing it, Gary, and thanks again for your time today.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a delight, Paul.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me on.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I couldn't have written it without my co-writer, Martha Finney, too, who did a wonderful job helping me weave this together.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: So um she deserves some credit as well.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you so much.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Music is by Dolo Records.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you like this podcast, please subscribe, like, and recommend us to others.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: It helps us reach more people.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.