GA 414 | The Characteristics of a Good Leader with Richard Sheridan

But the fact of the matter is you can be as optimistic as you want, but if you're not willing to deal with the actual reality of stuff that hits you every single day, you're never going to get where you're going. And so reality is a lot about that. One foot in front of the other.

Today, I'm excited to welcome my friend Richard Sheridan back to the show. Richard's been on four previous times. We're going to link these all up in the show notes and I would encourage you to go back if you can, and after you listen to this one and listen to these previous episodes with Richard, because he's, he's one of a kind when it comes to telling stories and, and just sharing his heart and what's on. What's on his mind and, and he goes into great detail on, on what Menlo Innovations, his company is all about. And one of the big topics that they're really honed in on is having a joyful workplace. And yeah, so it's actually the topic of a couple of his books and what we spent most of the time talking about today after I allowed him to gloat on his Michigan Wolverines killing my Ohio State Buckeyes this year, I allowed him, you know, the opportunity to get some, some good airtime on that. He deserved it. But then we dove deep into his book, Chief Joy Officer. So Joy, Inc. Was his first book, and Chief Joy Officer was more focused on leadership and what leaders who were trying foster this sort of a joyful environment. What do they need to be doing? And so we talk about several different sort of characteristics of these leaders. And again, I asked Richard to just sort of share some personal stories on what these all mean. One of them was humility. And he talks about a situation he had with an employee where he didn't handle things well and, you know, he ultimately needed to eat some humble pie, if you will. And so he goes into great detail on that. So, yeah, really, really good stuff. Richard, one of a kind, one of my favorite human beings, all the planet Earth. So show notes for this episode can be found over@gembapodcast.com look for episode 414. Again, gembapodcast.com, look for episode 414. Also, one thing he mentioned, he gets a lot of requests on LinkedIn from Gemba Academy podcast listeners. So let's definitely go find Richard Sheridan on LinkedIn. Tell him, he said if you say, hey, I listen to you on the Gimba Academy podcast, he's going to immediately accept it. So let's go ahead and flood Richard's LinkedIn. And so he. He can grow and you can. You guys can get connected because he's fantastic. Okay, enough from me. Let's get to the show. Richard, welcome back to the show. How are you, my friend?

Great, Ron. Good to see you.

Yeah, man, good to see you as well. So. Well, listen, before we get into important stuff like college football and all that, I want to follow the standard work of our. Of our podcast here and things Rolling with a quote. So do you have one?

I was just in a conversation with a customer today, Ron, and he reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, and that is that a company defines itself as much by what it chooses to say yes to as what it chooses to say no to. And my corollary to that one is, and the devil always comes carrying cash.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It reminds me of. Have you ever read the book essentialism by Greg McCallen? I think his name is.

I have not read that one.

Yeah, it's a really good. It reminds me of that quote because his whole big thing is like, if it's not hell, yes, you shouldn't do it. You know, and it's like, oof. You know, and there's a lot of.

It should be hell, no, right? And then there's. And then there's that pile of cash sitting there.

You're like, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Awesome. Awesome. All right, well, hey, Richard, man, it's been a while since we've. We've talked. We were. We were. We were chatting before we hit record. So this is the fifth time that. That you've been on. And we'll link. We'll get Jessica to link all the previous episodes up. But you were on first on episode three, way, way back, and then episode 70, episode 213, and then episode 300. We did. I remember we did that one live. And Ame.

Where were we?

Where was that Ame?

Chicago.

Chicago.

It was Chicago.

Yep. That's right. That's right. So that was the. I think that was the last Ame that. Did they have another one after? I don't know.

Anyhow, yeah, that's been it.

That's the. That was the one. So. But anyhow, man, yeah, it's. It's awesome to have you back on. I love. Always love chatting with you, and I want to just get something out right away. It's not that big of a deal, but, you know, for some people, it probably is. But, you know, you're a big Michigan guy. I like Ohio State and. Well, Somehow I don't even know what happened. But, you know, your guys finally pulled one out, Richard. So I wanted to come on here and allow you to just. I just want to congratulate you and, you know, hope you enjoy it because come next November, we'll see what happens. I don't know. I'm not going to say anything but congratulations, Richard.

Thank you. Thank you. I think your coach saying at one point previously, oh, we're going to hang 100 on those guys, might have, might have motivated us just a little bit, but who knows?

I know, I know. Boy, that was a shellacking too. But I got to give Michigan credit. They just beat that, you know what, out of Iowa State in every way. So, yeah, it wasn't even one of those games where, wow, if this would have went a little bit. Bit. No. Couldn't run, couldn't tackle, couldn't pass.

I was so glad about that particular point where you could. We couldn't be sitting here going, well, you know, if the refs hadn't made that call, it would have gone.

That wasn't a first down. That wasn't a first down. Yeah, yeah, no. Well, anyhow, yeah, I know we were joking after the game, texting back and forth that I told you that my 15 year old son, you know, ever since he's grown up watching the big game there, he's never seen Iowa State lose since he could remember. And then you like to remind me that I think it was your granddaughter was just born and she's never seen Michigan lose.

So that's awesome. Got a perfect record.

Good stuff, man. Good stuff. Well, you know what's refreshing is to be able to think about all the things that have happened over the, over the last last few years. And it's just nice to be able to joke about college football, which it's a big deal, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not that big of a deal. You know what I mean? So being able to have fun and get after each other that way, it's. It's awesome.

So the Gemba Academy podcast is a big thing.

Oh, yeah, totally.

I think back to episode three, Ron, we were both young men back in those days.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I might have had a little bit more hair. I don't know. Probably not. But anyhow. Well, hey, Richard, you know, in case people just, you know, aren't, Aren't. Haven't listened to the previous episodes or are new to our movement, tell us a little bit about, about you and just Menlo and obviously people can go back and listen to the previous episodes as well.

Well, Ron, we are in the business here at Menlo of designing and developing complex software systems on behalf of our customers. But we chose this really weird word to center our culture around weird in the context of work. That is the word joy. And we define joy very tangibly. It's very purpose driven definition. We want to delight the people we intend to serve, the end users of the software we're designing and developing. So we had to craft an entirely new approach to the way software is both designed and developed so that we can bring that kind of joy to the people we intend to serve. And it's so different, as you know and you've been here. We get 3 to 4,000 people who travel from all over the world every single year up until March of 2020 to come from all over the world just to see how we do what we do and what. I think what ultimately brought you and I together was the people from the lean community that were coming here said, oh, my gosh, you must have studied Lean. And we're like, no, tell us more. We didn't study lean, but the principles, the foundational principles of Lean are here, including that part of memo that makes us really special that we call high tech anthropology, which is literally our Go to the Gemba team. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. Well, you know, when we were. We've never, you know, you and I, when we do these podcasts, we don't ever have a plan, which is, I think, what makes him awesome. Sometimes I have a pretty detailed plan of what I want to talk about with someone. But. But, you know, I realized over the last few episodes, I think episode 300, we touched indirectly on. On. On your book, Chief Joy, How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear. But we didn't talk about it, you know, in great detail. And it's one of my. It's one of my favorite books. And I'm not just saying that because I'm talking to you. I mean, you're a wonderful storyteller. I think that used to be, or at least used to be your title. Are you still the chief storyteller?

Still on my business card. Run.

Good. Okay. Well, you're fantastic at that. And it comes through in your writing. You know, your books are so. It's like all of a sudden you look up and you're on page 50 and you feel like you just started. You know, it's like you can't really. It's hard, hard to put them Down, So you've really, really gifted that way. But in this book in particular, you walk through some really powerful areas that not just lean thinkers, but anybody. Human beings really, let's just call it that human beings should be thinking about, especially those of us that do work in business. But even if you don't work in business, you're stay at home mom or something like that. I feel like all these things play a role. And what I wanted to do, Richard, is just sort of walk through. There's two main sections to your book. There's. And I wanted. Obviously we can't go through every one of them. There's a bunch of different characteristics that you. That you list out, but I wanted to touch on a few of them. But before, tell us about Joy Inc. First, which was your first book. And maybe just high level, because I feel it's important that we sort of level set on that book. And then. Then maybe talk about why you wrote Chief Joy Officer before we get into a few of the characteristics that I want to hone in on.

Yeah. As I know you know, Ron, a lot of people in industry are looking for something. They're trying to figure out some equation for their culture. And most organizations operate in chaos. And if there's too much chaos, they have large negative events and then they end up in bureaucracy. Right. They try and put systems in place, but the systems usually look like big three ring binders. And we ended up in this odd place where we threw away the entire picture of chaos and bureaucracy and replaced it with something different. And I think what we are, what we represent to the world isn't some perfect answer to all the world's problems. I would never claim that whatsoever. And I don't think anybody should ever go look at another business and say, I want to make my business look just like that one. I just think that's inappropriate. But a living, breathing example that you can go explore, go peer into, go peek and poke at and talk to the people who work in it. Kind of a much higher level, just beyond industrial tourism, but industrial tourism taken to the level of saying I can ask any questions I want about this company's culture. I think a lot of people at a certain point read a lot of business books and say an example right about now would be really, really helpful. And I think a lot of the books about Toyota touch on that exact thing. It's just unfortunately, Toyota is a big thing and people can't quite get their hands around it. Minlo's a small thing. We've got 50 people here. And you can really see the whole culture. As people were coming here, learning from us, they started pressing. So you got to write a book about this. Dive deep into the culture, the practices. How does all this work? Why does it work the way it does? Why did you set it up the way you did it? Why do you believe that your approach produces such great results? And that's really how the book came to be. Those people were out looking for an intentionally joyful culture. Intentional and joyful culture. And that's how the book came to be.

Got it.

And that book still has a great run to this day. But then people started diving deeper. They wanted to know more about this unusual leadership structure we have here. I mean, one of the things that people come and learn about us, which is shocking, and I get it. We don't have any bosses here. There's no hierarchy. And a lot of people would see chaos just in that structure alone. And yet they don't see chaos here. And they're wondering, how on earth do you get that to work? And so Chief Joy Officer is more about what I would call the invisible part of memo, the leadership structure. Leadership over hierarchical authority.

Okay, so part one of Chief Joy Officer. We talk about what are joyful leaders. And then there's a number of different. Each chapter is on a different topic. Chapter one, authentic. Chapter two, humble. Chapter three, loving, and so forth. I want to hone in just on a couple of these that really jumped out to me and spoke to me when I was reading this. And the first one that I want to hone in on is humility. And you tore. You told this story about. I believe their names were Tracy and. And Matt, if I got that right. Oh, you know, without.

Bring that.

Are they there?

Yeah.

Let Matt come and tell a story. Right. But maybe you could just talk a little bit about what you learned about humility in that context, because it's pretty powerful.

Yeah, it's funny. Right over my shoulder here, Ron, right there in that pillar is this poster that says, it's okay to say I don't know. Okay. That's one of our most famous phrases, right alongside of run the experiment. Make mistakes faster. We tell our team regularly it's okay to say I don't know. And one day, Matt was working on a project that was really important to me personally. He was there with Tracy. They were doing QA on the project. And I asked Matt a question, and he said, I don't know. Right. Literally standing under that poster. And I dressed him down, and I chastised him for that. And I said, you know, Matt, that's something I would expect you to know if. If I was one of the clients, I would expect you to know the answer to that question. I didn't raise my voice, but I invoked my CEO mantle, and I let Matt know I was disappointed. He looked at me funny. Tracy looked at me funnier. Matt had only been here about six months at that point. Tracy had been here for over a decade. And he kind of looked at me funny, and he said, okay. And then they walked away. And I'll be honest, I felt bad the rest of the day. I knew I'd not handle that very well. I think I tossed and turned a little bit that night. The next morning, I came in. Tracy was. I'm an early riser. I get in early. Tracy, I think, was the second person in. And she pulled me over and she said, hey, could I talk to you now? Have you ever had a boss say, hey, can we get together for a minute? You're like, all your periodical go up, right? And this is what Tracy's doing to me. She's like, can we. Can we talk? So we go and sit down, and I looked at her without her uttering another word. I said, this is about yesterday, isn't it? She goes, yeah, that was. That was really weird. I was unlike you. Then. What does she do? She says, are you okay? Now, this is something we teach our team when we're in conflict with one another. Check in with the human before you check in around the conflict. And here she is, using all the rules I've taught her over the years. Right back at me. I said, yeah, I didn't handle that well. And I'm sure I could have come up with a dozen excuses as to why that was. But right at that moment, Matt walks in the front door, and I saw him. And there's Tracy and I talking about how I talked to Matt yesterday, and I just waved Matt over. I said, hey, Matt, give me a second. Have a seat. And he sits down. And I said, that thing that happened yesterday, I just want to apologize. I'm sorry. I didn't handle that well. And here's this guy who's only been with the company for six months, and without missing a beat, he looks at me, says, I forgive you. I think I felt about this big at that point, because here I was being taught by one of our newest team members about a lesson I thought I had imparted to everybody on the team, but apparently I hadn't heard the darn lesson Right. And so those kind of walks up what I call humble mountain are important walks, walks that will feel lonely. But if you have a pair partner there with you, you have somebody walking alongside of you, they can help you through it. Matt and Tracy helped me that day become a slightly better leader. And so that kind of lesson in humility can come from anywhere. I was more open to it that morning than I was the previous night, and I learned an important lesson about what it means to be a humble leader that day.

Yeah, it's so hard. I mean, it's so hard to say, be humble. And then just when you're in that heat of the moment, it's so easy to just go off the rails, you know, so. But good on you for recognizing it. And I'm curious, what do you think would have happened had Tracy not approached you? Do you think he would have done anything?

It's a great question. And I don't know, Ron, you know, I'm probably one of those conflict avoid people who said, oh, they'll forget about it later.

Just be nice to him next time, you know? Right.

What I am. What I will say, though, is that I think I feel like we've built enough guardrails into the system here. That wasn't the first time that Tracy pulled me aside around something like that. My wife works here, too, and I can guarantee you she won't hesitate to say, you didn't handle that well. My co founder is like that. And if you really. You know, I recognize that one of the challenges, even in our bossless environment here at Menlo is that my CEO title carries a lot of weight and therefore carries a lot of fear with it. And so by having a half a dozen people on the team who are willing to look me square in the eye and say, I don't think you handled that well, that's really valuable.

Yeah.

It's not going to be everybody, and I know it isn't going to be everybody, and I need to learn to listen better, to watch body emo, you know, to watch body language, to watch the emotions in people's faces and just be sensitive enough to realize I probably did something wrong there. And I should circle back.

Yeah, yeah. Chapter six was also another powerful chapter for me. And when this book was, what released? What was it? 2012. Yeah. 18. Grounded in reality. My question is maybe you could just. You could quickly explain the principle grounded in reality. But then my question is, given what we've learned over the last year, year and a half, throughout this pandemic, if you Were to rewrite this book or update it or something like that down the road, what would you, would you change anything? Would you add anything based on what we've learned?

Holy cow. Would there be stories? More stories? There's a whole, I mean, quite frankly, I can imagine a whole other book just based on the last two years alone. And you know, let's talk about grounded in reality as, as a, as the context of the book itself. I think the chapter, maybe right before it, I could go back and look. Is optimism.

Visionary.

Visionary, okay. But yeah, somewhere in the mix.

Optimistic, then visionary, then grounded in reality. Yeah.

And so, you know, I, if my business cards as CEO and chief storyteller, if there was a little bit more room on it, it would probably also say chief optimist. Okay. Now my co founder would declare and the team would agree with him that he is the opposite of chief optimist. And I often ask people like, so what would your definition, what would his business card say? And, and the wiser of the crowd will say, oh, chief realist as opposed to chief pessimist. Like, oh, no, Mr. Pie in the sky, head in the clouds, all that sort of thing. But we'll never get anything done if our feet aren't down on the ground dealing with the everyday stuff that happens in life and happens in business. Right. If we're not watching cash flow, if we're not getting invoices out every week, if we're not getting paid by our customers, if we're not dealing with customer service issues that come up every now and then, no amount of optimism is going to overcome all that. So I talk about optimism in a very interesting way because I think a lot of people think optimism is easy. It's actually a harder choice, you know, because you could be pessimistic all the time and you probably everything will come true. Or if you never set your sights high, you don't have to worry about having to explain to people why something didn't happen the way you expected it. But the fact matter is you can be as optimistic as you want, but if you're not willing to deal with the actual reality of stuff that hits you every single day, you're never going to get where you're going. And so reality is a lot about that one foot in front of the other piece. And of course, When March of 2020 hit, reality hit like a hurricane, right? That was, you know, for you and me, Ron, I'm going to guess it is the storm of our lives. It is our version of the Great Depression. You know, our business went from 2019, best year ever, to sagging 60% the next year. We were supposed, 2020 was supposed to be even better than 2019. And we were on track and then. And boom, we had one of our largest clients call us up. Largest in terms of the size of their company. Okay, this is one of the OEMs, one of the automotive OEMs, as big as they get. And they called us up and they said, hey, just want to let you know that three phase project that you're working on with us, that you're almost done with phase one, we checked. You guys have 12 billable hours left. We need you to cut it back to eight. I'm like, what, you're getting on the phone to call me to cut four billable hours out of a project, huh? Can you do that for us? You have to do that for us. And I'm like, how is this even worth the cost of the phone? Oh my gosh, this is going to get really bad, isn't it? And I realized in that moment, you know, we better gather the team together. This storm has arrived and it's going to be the biggest one we've ever seen. And it was. And so at that point, now what are we going to do? How are we going to circle the wagons? How are we going to protect ourselves during this kind of storm? And honestly, the part I would write about in the rewrite of this chapter, given the pandemic, is we set up a five step plan to getting back to what I call thriving again. Thriving again would be our rallying cry in 2020. And five step plan was, number one, survive. Batten down the hatches, cut expenses wherever we can, cut hours, cut pay. Every owners went to zero. We just said we're not taking any money out of the company. We had lots of money in the bank at that point because we just had our best year ever. But we didn't know how long it would last. And there was no talk of PPP loans or anything like that. This was the week of March 16th of 2020. Had no idea what was coming. Number two, we would have to adapt to this new environment, to working, you know, you know us, Ron, you've been here. We are this intensely in person company. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, everybody's going home. Everybody's got to figure out how are we going to get through this, how are we going to make it through? And then the next step in the plan is so we go from survive, adapt, sustain, because that was a key One, because we didn't know how long we were going to be in this phase. Right. We didn't know how long it was going to last. I don't know about you, Ron, but I thought the pandemic was going to last about eight weeks, and then we'd be out, we'd be done, and everything would be back to normal. I'm not even sure it'll be done eight weeks from now. And so here we are two years in, about to enter the third year, and we still had to figure out, how are we going to sustain through all of this? And number four, the most important, important part, emerge stronger. Actually got this out of a Patrick Lencioni talk that he gave around about this time, and he said companies are going to, number one, face that existential threat from the pandemic. So some will survive and some will not. But those that do have to make a leadership choice, emerge stronger. And if you don't make that choice, you will emerge weaker. And the ones that are going to pop out and are going to get back to thriving again are the ones that are going to choose to emerge stronger. And we did. Now we are back to thriving again. And frankly, when you get to that point, you're leaving a lot of people behind you who did not choose to emerge stronger. And so there are many, many things we've done in the last two years to set us up to be a stronger company coming out of all of this than we were going into it when.

When folks were all 100% at home, did you do. So one of the things that you guys do when you're working in person is two to a computer. One person driving, other person watching, and then they switch and the other person drives and the other person watches and they're. They're working with one another and helping each other. And. And you go through that in. In other episodes, folks can go back and listen to those stories. How did you do that virtually or did you.

We did. Yeah. We never missed a beat on that. Ron. It's kind of easy to imagine, just like you and I are doing right now.

Screen share and discuss. Yeah.

Yep. Everybody has two screens at home. On the left screen is the work they're doing together. If you're programmers, it's coding work. On the right screen is your pair partner that you can see, just like we're seeing. And maybe they split that screen between their pair partner and then a research panel, because, you know, a lot of work you need to go search Google or something like that. And so everybody Here pairs every minute of every day and. But you're doing it virtually. So the way we described it, Ron, was, yes, we had to be apart physically. Physical distancing. We did not have to be apart socially. We just felt social distancing was the inappropriate term. We could still be together socially, even though we're safe and healthy by being apart physically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I figured that's what you were doing. But I wanted to confirm because I thought. I thought about that. I don't know why. It was like, I don't know, like, six months ago.

Everybody does.

Yeah.

Believe me. And we started doing virtual tours in June of 2020, and we've had thousands come to those, and everybody wants to. How'd you make the pairing thing work? And we actually show people. Yeah, here's what it used to look like, and here's what it looks like now.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's. That's so cool. All right, let's transition now. Part two of the book. You then kind of go into building a culture of joyful leadership. And several. Several good ones in here that I wanted to up. And they're all good, Richard, of course, but the ones that I want to hone in on is learn together. Because obviously you guys are big on. On learning, but why is that so important? And there was a story. What was the story? Do you remember? Gosh, I gotta go back and. And look at that again. But there was also one with your father in camping that I wanted to talk about as well. But learn together.

Oh, yeah. The story I think I told was the Borders book story.

Oh, yeah, that's the one. That's the one. Yeah.

Yeah. Which, ironically, the very space we're sitting in used to be the headquarters, world headquarters for Borders Books, because it was. It was an Ann Arbor bookstore.

Yeah.

Loved it when I was it. And then, of course, they sold off to Kmart, and then they franchised and the headquarters literally right in the same room I'm sitting in right now. And. And then, of course, I mean, they had 17 years to adapt to Amazon. They failed, and they went out of business. But they had come to us. There was kind of this fateful moment where Borders decided, oh, we'll just turn our website over to Amazon. It was probably the dumbest thing they could ever do. But you can imagine back in the day, bookstore would be like, who on earth would want to buy a book online when you could go into a store to buy it? Right? And so they probably felt like, oh, that's just noise. We don't have to worry about that. Turned their entire online presence over to Amazon. And then one day they woke up and they realized, oh, we can't do that. So they called up Amazon and said, hey, by the way, guys, we're not going to do this forever. We're going to build our own website. Just turn them off, just like that. Literally, like, click, you don't have a website anymore. And then Borders is in a panic. They got to build a new website. So they sent their team to memo to learn about our way of working because they wanted to use a modern approach to building out their new website. And at the end of the day, my wife who works here came up to me. She says, how'd the Borders class go? I said, they're doomed. What do you mean? I said, mark my words, they will be out of business in five years. And she said, what? They got 20,000 employees in a thousand stores. There's no way they're going to visit. I said, mark my words, they will be out of business and gone in five years. And she said, why? What did you see? I said, they are so afraid they can't learn anything. Their brain, they are so much in reptile brain, they can't even think straight. And there was nothing I taught them today that will stick because they are just so afraid. Well, and one day they go out of business. I went back and looked at the day of the class and the day of the Chapter 7 filing that sold the last bookshelf to the last dealer. Four years, nine months. I was too optimistic by three months.

Wow. Ah, yeah. So you mentioned the reptilian brain kind of thing, you know, and so interesting. I'm fascinated with neuroscience. I really am. I feel like that was probably my calling that I missed, you know, but I was smart enough to study all that stuff in school. But, but that, that whole concept of not being able to get into our prefrontal cortex where we can think critically because we're trapped in that. In the, in the reptilian lizard brain, so to speak, right? Because of fear. Even today, like with, with the pandemic, you know, and just so many. There's so much uncertainty in this world, you know, like, what's your advice for people who are scared? You know, whether. And I don't even mean like scared of the virus or anything. I'm just talking scared about life and their job and all the rest of it. Like how it's easy to say, yeah, you should learn. Yeah. But when you're worried about, am I going to have a Paycheck, you know, let's you go into survival mode. Right. That's fight or flight. So it's easy to say learn, but how do you. How do you make that jump? And to be able to keep in that prefrontal cortex where we can think critically.

You know, I. I don't know exactly how to offer up a broad statement to everybody out there, but here's one thing I learned as we entered into the pandemic and ourselves got scared. I realized in that moment that all of that work we had done for 18 and a half years up to that point of building an intentionally joyful culture was just about to pay enormous dividends to us. It was as if we had been preparing for this moment, that we had no idea what was coming. And then you realize the benefits of building this strong foundation of an intentional culture, and we had to lean on that foundation, like a building has to lean on a storm in it or, you know, when the wind's blowing and winds howling. And that building stays because you built that strong foundation. Yeah. So I don't know if I could give some wise words in this moment to companies who didn't build that strong foundation, but as they say in life, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Start building for tomorrow. Start building for whatever the heck the next pandemic kind of thing is going to be. And the best way to do it, build a strong team, and build a team that's learning every minute of every day. Our pairing construct, Ron, and the fact that we switch the pairs every five days means that everybody's growing by an inch every single day. We built it into the very way we. That we work. Everyone should look for ways to do that inside their own organization, because I've never seen an effective way to simply stop everything for several days, go away and learn something, and then bring it back and start applying it right away. There has to be a natural element of your culture that's learning all the time. And quite frankly, you talked about the neuroscience of it. We can't learn when we're afraid. So as leaders, we need to pump fear out of the the room. If we don't pump fear out of the room, our team will be afraid constantly, and the learning just won't happen.

Well, and in circling back to our earlier story of Matt and Tracy, it's okay to say you don't know. And that's. That's what I feel like most people don't grasp is that they feel like if they don't have the answer. Or as we would say in kata, threshold of knowledge. There's always a threshold of knowledge. There's only so much you that you know. Eventually you're going to meet a point where you don't know, and that's okay. But that's experimental, way forward. Just learn, you know, it's all tied together. It's circular, Right? But if you're not learning, if you're scared of not knowing, boy, it's going to be tough, right? There's almost no hope, I would say, Right.

One of my other favorite quotes is John Naisbitt quote from Megatrends that he wrote back in 1982. He said, the greatest discoveries that are going to happen in the 21st century are not going to occur because of technology, but because of an expanded concept of what it means to be human. Now, this is really interesting in the context of the world right now because, you know, everybody's worried about, is AI, machine learning, big data, and robotics coming for me and my job, Are computers going to put me out of work? And I will tell you, Ron, the part that makes us the most human will never be replicated by a computer. Creativity, imagination, invention, and innovation are going to come from the human, humans forever. And the only way we get to those four things stay in that prefrontal cortex. The only way we stay there, stay out of reptile brain, stay out of fear. As leaders, we have to create an environment where people aren't afraid every minute of every day.

I love it. All right, I got a weird question for you, and I don't even know why. I was just kind of sketching down ideas of what I was going to ask you today. And I don't know why this. This came to me. And it sounds. I've never asked a question like this in a podcast. And some people like. Ron, what's wrong with you? Why would you ask that? It's kind of morbid, but I don't know. I feel like you can handle this question, Rich, and. And I just want to. I want to give it a shot, see how it goes. But let's fast forward many, many, many years from now. Okay, I won't put an actual number on it, but many years from now, and those a few of us listening are at your funeral. What do you hope people are going to say about you at your funeral?

Well, I have a strong faith walk, and I was actually just telling my wife this the other day that there's a passage in Philippians 4, Paul's letter to the Philippians, that that is very meaningful to me. And you know, it's where Paul writes to them and says, whatever you've seen in me, learned from me, heard from me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you. And for me, I hope people look back on my life, the books I've written, the talks I've given, the teams I've built, and they say, you know what, there was some things we learned from Rich that we can continue to put into practice to this day. That in fact joy is a worthy pursuit in business. You know, there's, I realized and this hit me, I maybe I'm thinking along the same lines you were. And oh, by the way, my kids are convinced they will one day pull a smiling but lifeless 95 year old guy at a Minlo. So I got 30ish years to work on this. But just a Christmas ago, my 6 year old granddaughter was looking at my bookshelf down in my office and she was kind of looking towards the two books you've been talking about. And I pulled one out and I handed it to her and she was looking at it and I said, you see that name there? Do you know what that says? She looked at me, she says, is that you pop up? I said, yeah. She goes, and she starts flipping through all the pages, she goes, you wrote this book? I said, I did. And in that moment, Ron, I realized that there is an immortality, particularly to writing books, because one day she might be able to hand that book to her grandchildren or even her great grandchildren if she lives long enough. Say I was there, I was with him after he wrote this book. I know he wrote this book. He told me he wrote this book. And you know, there are lessons, I think in both books. Nothing to do with technology, nothing to do with, you know, business planning or anything like that. They have everything to do with life. And I hope that when people look back and what I was able to accomplish over the last 20ish years and hopefully another 20 to go, that they can say he didn't just do it for profit, he didn't just do it for the glory of running a business or anything like that, that he created a great life for himself and the people that he worked with and the people that need them for what they did.

I'm also, as you know, I think person of deep, deep faith and don't mean for this to turn into a Bible reading podcast here, but I couldn't help but when you were just talking, one of my favorite verses is from 1st Thessalonians 5:16. And it says appropriately, maybe we'll end at this. Always be full of joy. Never stop praying. Whatever happens, always be thankful. So I feel like, hey, that. That could be maybe one day. Your granddaughter is listening to this and hearing her papa tell these stories and, you know, and realize this is. This stuff is all, like you say, it's all bigger than. Than work. It's. It's about human beings, you know, and. And helping each other and, you know, making the world a better place. So. So, yeah. Well, thank you, Richard. This has been awesome, as always.

Yes, I always enjoy our conversations.

Ron, what's the best way? If folks want to connect with Richard, and then if they also want to connect with Menlo, go on a virtual tour or whatever, whatever you guys got going on. What's the best way?

Yeah, number one, go to our website, right on the front page. You could schedule a tour. They're free. They last 90 minutes. We do two a week, so you can come anytime. Just click on the link that says tours and reach out to me. Probably the best way. Now, I wouldn't have said this in the past, but I've just turned up the dial on my attention to LinkedIn. Okay, so just reach out to me on LinkedIn and say, hey, Rich, I heard your Gemba Academy podcast with Ron. Just loved what you had to say. And I will just say accept. As soon as somebody mentions your name.

I'm going to just say, that's it, everybody, let's go flood Richard's LinkedIn. That's awesome. Very good. All right, my friend. Well, hey, let's not wait 100 and whatever, 14 episodes before the next one. But as always, it's a delight to get to talk to you. Ame is actually supposed to be in person here in Dallas this next whatever the next one is coming up. So we're planning to be there. So I don't know if you're there, man. Let's do a podcast or at least hang out.

Well, maybe I shouldn't. You know, it won't happen next year because it'll be down in Ohio State, but maybe, you know, two seasons from now, I should invite you up for the Michigan, Michigan, Ohio State.

Hey, man, I actually went to. To a game with a colleague, an old colleague of mine at previous company that I worked at, and he was a big Michigan guy, obviously, and. And he invited me, but he said the only rule is you have to wear, like, at least a T shirt or something. He made me. And I was like, okay, I feel like I get beat up, man. He's like, no, no, no, it's not. To Columbus, he said, which is true. Everybody was super cool when I was in Ann Arbor. It was, it was actually a really fun game, so. And yeah, Ohio State actually won, but, you know, whatever, you know, it was the Beanie Wells game. I don't remember that one. Yeah. But anyhow, yeah, it's. It's always good, man. We'll see what happens next year. But, you know, oh, hardball. Is he even gonna stick around or is he gonna go to NFL or what?

I don't know. Knows, you know, Nobody knows. Nobody knows. So we'll see.

He's a good dude, man. You know, I. I want to hate him. I really do. He's a good dude. He's weird, but he's a good dude.

He's a strange bird, that's for sure. Yeah.

Good family man. And, and, and he's obviously a great coach. So congratulations on your win. I know that's why you come on came onto the podcast. All right, Richard. Take care, my friend.

Take care. Ryan.

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