 You know, I draw a picture these days comparing the forces that work on a human organization, the forces that work on an aircraft, the lift of human energy, the weight of bureaucracy, the thrust of purpose, and the drag of fear. And if we're going to get our organizational aircraft off the ground every day, we better create more human energy than bureaucracy and more purpose than fear. And that simple model has really resonated with a lot of people. But then I make it personal, and I say, look, when that pilot points the aircraft down the runway, gives it full throttle, and it hits takeoff speed, they make this very simple little move on the yoke. They pull it back just a little bit, creating an angle between the nose of the aircraft and the earth. And that simple angle is all that it takes to get your organizational aircraft off the ground. And the name that they use in aeronautical engineering is positive attitude. And this is available to all of us, literally the second you hear it. You get to choose your own attitude. You get to choose what attitude you bring to life. And you can choose a positive attitude or a negative attitude. If you want to get the people around you off the ground, be that force that you want to see in the world. Be that positive force. It's your choice. Richard Sheridan is my guest on this episode of Inside Ideas, brought to you by 1.5 Media and Innovators Magazine. Rich is CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations, which is a successful entrepreneur and author of two best-selling books, Joy Inc., How We Build a Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer, How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear. Rich's passion for inspiring organizations to create their own joy-filled cultures has led him to address audiences across the world, through four continents and 18 countries and counting, as well as throughout the United States. People motivate Rich to travel the world, speaking to tens of thousands of people in nearly every setting imaginable. What does he share with audiences that makes them jump to their feet with enthusiasm and return to their organizations on fire with inspiration? Simply this, joy. More specifically, that joy in your organizations in your life is not just possible but essential, essential to profitability, to productivity, to every measure of success. Rich and his message of joyful leadership have been featured in press outlets ranging from Inc., Forbes, New York magazines, to Bloomberg, U.S. News, and World Reports, MPR, On Point Podcasts, and all things considered. Harvard Business Review, his videos for organization, such as Gimba Academy, Vital Smarts, and Airbinger Institute continue to inspire audiences around the world. Rich doesn't just talk about joy in the workplace, he lives at Everyday and Menlo, the custom software and consulting company he co-founded in 2001 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since then, Menlo has received worldwide notice for its unique culture, including recognition by Inc. magazine as the most joyful company in America. Menlo has been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence and Workplace Flexibility for 11 straight years and has received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Freedom at Work from World Blue as well as five revenue awards from Inc. magazine. Today, people come to Menlo from all over the world, nearly 20,000 people in the past seven years alone to learn about Menlo and how they can create a culture of joy in their own organization. Welcome, Rich. It's so wonderful to have you to the podcast. I really, really appreciate you being here and speaking with us today. Great to be with you, Mark. Thanks for inviting me into your world. I'm so glad to have you and it's a sheer pleasure and honor and I know we're going to have a joyful discussion today. First and foremost, I mean, I could have went on much longer with your bio because you've been around the block, so to say, you've seen a lot of companies and organizations. You've written the books and you've motivated and helped people change their lives and their organizations for quite some time. That brings me to my real first question and that is, how has all that helped you to weather this crazy time, not just the pandemic, but Black Lives Matters unrest around the world, election on and on and I'm sure during this time you've had to come up with some real crazy new ways to give people tours of not only your books and what you do and things, but it's been different. Can you give us an update and kind of insight? Yeah, I'm reminded of, I don't know if this was an original quote, but something John Lennon of the Beatles once said that life is what happens to you while you're making plans to do other things. And I think that defines 2020 for just about all of us. We had big plans for this year. This was going to be our best year ever. We were going to ring all the bells of revenue and tour guests and all that kind of stuff and we were executing incredibly well on it through January and February and then all of a sudden everything just stopped in an instant. As you know about our culture, we value being together in a big room with no walls offices, cubes or doors and suddenly everybody's at home cobbling together their own home offices and I'll tell you it really knocked the pedestal out from under me. I think I hit the floor faster and harder than the rest of my team and I wondered would we survive? Would we make it through this? Would we be able to adapt quickly enough given everything that it hit us and of course back in March we thought oh my gosh the pandemic, that'll be the big thing and then as you said Black Lives Matter, broader social justice issues, the election, the climate onslaught that we've been going through. I mean so many things are hitting us this year. And I will tell you the thing I learned over and over again throughout the course of this year is how important it was for us to have built this strong foundation of an intentional and intentionally joyful culture and resting what we had to now do to adjust based on that cultural setting was critical. I used to think that having an intentionally joyful culture was important now it's critical and you know so that lesson has come home for me again and again and again particularly as I've watched our team adapt over this year and adapt so quickly and quite frankly adapt faster than I did which was a delight to watch and very comforting. That's beautiful to hear and thank you for sharing that honesty. A lot of people I speak to, I speak to a lot of innovators, a lot of futurists, a lot of people who are speaking about the future of work that were really caught off guard. The wind was knocked out of their sails you know it just they've had to shut down. They just didn't have that support or that resilience or that extra little bit in storage so to say to weather this long year and as you said it so nicely this year really started out with a bang for me I was at the World Economic Forum and had done this big tour at the beginning of the year and it was the decade of action. We were going gangbusters and there was things coming out and plans this year that were just amazing and then this really took the wind out of ourselves for everybody and it's very serious but I also think there was this microscopic view and bubbling to the surface of a lot of holes or problems in our systems and in the way we do things and where we could do better where we could improve more and truly those things that we speak about put those into practice and make sure we have this solid infrastructure this this safety net for to get through times like these because we'll probably be experiencing some more in the future. I don't want to say dystopian but we need to be prepared to change the way we work in the future and that really leads me to something I kind of tickled is how have you guys done it what kind of shifts have you done what what are there some positive stories that have come out of it I can tell you from my own experience because I talk a lot about sustainability about the environment climate resilience biodiversity food and those things when my phone the march was ringing off the hook my projects have tripled and people are saying we're sorry we didn't listen we want to can we get your help we've got to turn up some new new ways of working and things and so I'm sure you experience the same same same things as well. Well this is certainly a time to test leadership and I don't mean just top leaders like me but leadership throughout the organization you know when when all of this first hit I was fortunate enough to have heard about and then attended a virtual conference put on by Patrick Lencioni he called Emerge Stronger and in that conference as I listened to the messages he was delivering he he offered up a couple of almost trite but so powerful hypotheses said number one obviously as we enter into this headwind and strong one at that hurricane force headwind companies are either going to survive or they're not right kind of a basic thing you know as you said a lot of them have not unfortunately but those that survive the difference is going to be are you going to emerge stronger from this or are you going to emerge weaker from this and that is actually a conscious choice of leadership and when I heard that I thought wow what can we do to emerge stronger from this and we work together as a team to come up with a rallying cry of thrive again but not just a poster on the wall that says we'll get back to doing good things someday but a five-step model that we would be able to actually chart our progress along the way so the number one as probably almost all of us went through survive we had to make a lot of tough decisions together as a team to just simply survive because survival for a business literally amounts to cash in the bank what what can we do to just hoard cash which is what everybody does when they're in that kind of fearful place so we cut rates we cut hours we cut you know everybody back including the founders founders just went to zero pay and that sort of thing and so I think that spirit of shared sacrifice was very important in the early days and then second phase is adapt right we had to make changes so this work in one big room together sharing computers you know switching pairs because we work in pairs that meant all of this had to adapt to a work from home environment the work from home environments that people had to cobble together as quickly as possible so we could get back to our jobs so that adaptation phase happened within days of us all having to be pushed out of the office in an instant unexpectedly of course then the next step is sustain how do we get to that place where it feels like we're safe enough that hey we're not we're not cruising along we're not taking off like a rocket ship but boy we're keeping our heads above water and we're doing it sustainably and then finally emerge stronger which is the phase we're in right now and I'll talk about some of the things we're doing that are direct evidence that we are absolutely going to emerge stronger from this there will be things that will change at menlo going forward that are born out of this time that we will never go back to the way things were exactly we'll go back to some of the way things are but there's so many good things that are coming out of this it would be silly to ignore the things that were we've gotten stronger in this time and then finally at that point there will come a day we're not there yet where we will thrive again we we fundamentally believe that we see it in the numbers we see it in the activity we're by no means you know perfectly safe nor is anyone right now we don't know what else is coming 2020 keeps delivering one thing after another but but we've at least proven to ourselves with as hard as all the body blows have been through this year that we've hung together as a team and you know happy to talk about some of the very specific things we've done through 2020 that if you don't mind i would love to hear about those more listeners would as well and how you guys you know plan to emerge stronger and some of the specifics that that would be great as well we can touch upon them now and then i want to take a couple of other subjects as we transition a little bit into your books and kind of get into some other more deeper subject matters absolutely well one of the things that has been a hallmark of menlo since its founding in 2001 is the cultural intention of menlo to end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology literally return joy to technology to the people who use it that's what we do for a living is we create technology we want to delight the people we intend to serve and we think the things we're doing are so different and so interesting and fundamentally important to advancing the cause of our industry we had opened our doors to the world right from the beginning come in see us ask us questions we're not going to keep anything we're doing a trade secret if we want to end human suffering in the world is really technology we can't do it by ourselves we're not big enough for that so we will share what we've learned with everyone through tours and through classes so people would come as you mentioned in the opening remarks by the thousands every year we plan to host five thousand visitors this year at menlo alone people getting on airplanes traveling from all over the world booking hotel rooms right near our office spending anywhere from hours to days with us learning about our culture our practices taking ideas back with them to transform their own organizations we didn't have to do this this wasn't a necessity for our business to share what we're learning with the world but our purpose is beyond just the work we do for our clients we wanted to change the world and this ability to open our doors and do that with tonight just to interrupt you there for just one second i want you to keep going i don't want you to lose your train of thought but i don't know i know a lot of my listeners know but i don't know you know what what your affinity or your knowledge is on this i'm sure you've heard of that tony shea passed away over Thanksgiving zappos famous company for round culture they also produced a book i believe it was called the happiness book i have a copy delivering happiness delivering happiness i have a copy here on my shelf i have a couple of their annual book delivering happiness book i have here on my shelf and not only is tragic we lost him due to a fire during Thanksgiving but they also did that exact same thing gave tours of he left zappos in 2017 but as thought but was still involved but they gave tours you know every single day and they had a specific people involved and kind of give behind the same scenes and so those who who know tony's story you guys are doing the same thing you guys are doing on a different scale different different company but also in that same respect and so that's a that's a big thing it's important to get that behind the scenes views and there's many many companies who are doing it right they want to give back they want to show those examples to the world and i believe that's what you guys are doing as well and so i i'll let you continue but i just thought it would be appropriate to recognize that that that's the level of person you are a menlo is as well to rally around what you're doing good for the world to give examples of how business and workplaces can be different yeah and i will say that tony shea was a hero for me it was such a great example he changed the world in ways that will be felt long after his passing we lost him way too soon he had so much more to give us and i was just it really hit me hard when i read about it met him twice zappos actually invited my co-founder and i to come visit them to take a tour but also to ask us about our culture and what we had learned along the way because that was the that is the type of organization that tony created zappos is a culture that isn't just we've got all the right ideas they were always in learning mode they were always saying maybe we can find out something that can improve us from someone else and i appreciate that kind of humility because none of us have all the answers i mean we don't even know what all the right questions are most of the time as leaders and so the humility they showed in in honoring james and i when we came to visit and ask us deep questions about the things we've done at memel was just an incredible honor for he and i that's great i appreciate you touching on that i think there's just so many cross cuttings and as we get further after you explain what you guys are doing i want to kind of get further into that that thinking because there are pockets of groups people around the world with those similar missions or those similar projects and i want to kind of touch on how they've influenced you and how they cross collaborate absolutely yeah and i will say that um you know i think it was true at zappos and certainly true at menlo our tours in our classes that we teach about our culture are not in any way trying to tell anyone else in the world you should make your business look like mine that's not the intent it's not our heart it's not what we're trying to share but i think when you read books on culture if you read about company culture if you read about you know all the great academicians who talk about the importance of culture every once in a while i think somebody who's reading one of the book one of those books says to themselves you know what it'd be a really it'd be really neat to see an example right about now to dive in deep to be able to dig my hands in the soil of that organization look around every part of it and see how it operates see how it actually functions and that's really what the purpose of our tours are not to come see us let us show off how we're doing come ask us questions maybe you can take away a few ideas from us that you can embed in your own environment but the cultural journey is a very unique journey every company shouldn't get there by copying someone else's culture they should get there because they believe in something so deeply they want to create and custom fit a culture to their fundamental beliefs but seeing how others have done that like zappos and mellow i think is a very powerful way to inspire you because i think a lot of times when people are on that journey of uh it's a tough journey to build your own culture it's a scary journey you don't know if you're going should i go right should i go left which fork in the road should i take i feel alone here is there anybody else who's thinking like i am and until you see actual examples you might think you're crazy you might think that there's no way i should do anything like this i who else has done anything like that who else has thought the same crazy thoughts i have and yet when you come see a company like us or you can still go visit zappos the impact of toni's life and his thinking on that company still exists today you know fortunately the these kind of powerful concepts cannot live the visionary leaders and that's a powerful thing as well yeah i love this quote from toni he said for individuals character is destiny but for organizations culture is destiny and that is a strong reminder to all of us as leaders that we can actually choose our destiny by choosing what kind of culture we want to build and the way i differentiate it is every company has a culture it's the leader's choice whether that culture is intentional or what i call default which is who do we hire what behaviors do we tolerate what attitudes walked in the door this morning and that's your culture of the day but an intentional culture and i will expand it just a little bit in my context an intentionally joyful culture can be very powerful and so back to kind of the adaptations the emerging stronger for men though um you know we opened our doors to the world we were going to have 5000 visitors come through this year and all of a sudden you know by march everything stopped and it looked like it was going to stop for a long time and you know there's a lot of value in that we get from the tour guests that come we learn from them too and so it felt very unnerving both to be at home and not have anybody coming and visiting and then around about June 5th one of my friends from another organization called wanted to know how we were doing how have you guys adapted they knew that this had to be a big change for men though given you know all being apart and i asked him i said well would you like to see and he said what do you mean i said how about if we do a virtual tour of the virtual memo and he said you can do that i said i don't know we can try it let's run the experiment let's see what happens and so we did and on June 5th we did the first virtual tour of memo and it was so successful that they put a very nice blurb on linkedin about their time with us and we answered that with a reply that said by the way if any of your friends want to come in a tour click here here's the link well i'm happy to say we've done well over a hundred tours since June 5th we've touched since June 5th alone we have touched 40 countries in 30 states here in the united states just in five months it's incredible to think of the impact we've had just in five months all virtually stuff we've never done before and when i see that and if you'd ask me a year ago hey rich what do you think you think you should offer virtual tours like why bother i'm not even sure they'd work you know we've never done anything like that before and how many times as leaders have we ever said well we've never done anything like that before maybe we shouldn't try well we had to try we wanted to try our spirit now is turn up the experiment dial try new things see what works see what doesn't i'm so proud of my team for what they've accomplished during this time i'm so proud of how they just jumped in both feet and said no no we're gonna make this work and to see the impact we're already having and i know going forward when we can get back to the office when we can all be in close proximity one another the virtual tours will not stop we would have never had to we would have never had the opportunity to reach a worldwide audience like we have now people who can't maybe ever afford to get on an airplane spend the time it would take to get to the detroit metro airport drive to an arbor book a hotel room spend a few days with us and then go back but now i gave a talk in south africa this morning to 125 people i got up this morning in normal time walked down to the same office i'm sitting in now gave a keynote speech to 125 people in south africa and then back to work and i'm here with you today two hours later i'm in hamburg germany it's amazing what we can do now even if we'd never thought that it would work in the past yeah we we definitely are progressing more towards the future of work in some respects the future of possibilities of true global societies communities a different form of digital democracy in some some forms kind of a connectedness that we are having on a different level in some respects after joker tease a little bit i i've done so many zoom calls since way before the pandemic ever but now even more intensively i get the feeling sometimes of the hollywood squares or the muppet show type of with all these squares and boxes you know pages of pages of you know these brainy bunch type of squares of people sitting in this framed box speaking to each other but there are some been some really wonderful connections and i think that to to hear a voice to see a movement to be able to somehow look into people's eyes and in some respect that there is still that possibility to to make a shift to make an impact and to gain some knowledge in that and we're also learning how we work and when it's virtual when it's over a zoom or a video call and what some of the things we need to do to improve to kind of shift our attention and awareness uh well you know we've heard and i'm sure you've heard this as well is that people are working harder working longer hours they're not taking enough breaks they're not getting away from behind the screens and you know there's uh they're getting this closer look at their human zoo that they've created for themselves which have now become their office and they're like some people are going so crazy domestic violence or now they've got to figure out how to be the teacher to their children who are using the home computers and all this other stuff and so there's a lot of things that are bubbling to the surface that really interject to the bottom line of what your mission or goal is to show people to have joy at work to create joy in your life and all that you do not only because it's essential but also what kind of human zoos have we created is it a place that we want to be just a few hours a day to sleep and eat and then go back to work or is it a place that we could spend you know in a bigger time and and how good of a job have we done creating that and so there's a there's probably numerous things that that we're rediscovering but it's not going back to normal or going back to usual business as usual. It's a great reset and I like how you're emerging stronger and better and in a different way that we don't want to go back in some respects because we were we're doing it a little bit wrong and inefficient and also lacking in that joy or in that true thing I just had a conversation not too long ago that you know we used to have lifestyle and living combined with our work for for you know in history and then we separated the two we go work in an office we go work for the man and then there's this home time and they're almost competing jobs competing organizations in some respects and there's a lot of lives right we have a work life when we have our own yeah we tried to keep that bright line between them and we we lost a lot of our humanity in that. Yeah exactly and so with that and there's many many philosophies or thoughts trains of thoughts out there and that's kind of where I want to pick up and get your journey you know on how you wrote your books and how you decided there was some things that you were doing something you loved and then it shifted away from that but also in that journey I wanted to ask you did you belong or join any networks like the genius network did you read books like Napoleon Hill thinking go rich you know the science of gritting rich while Steve waddle so you look who moved my cheese or the fish books or you know you know there's some newer ones like business Romantic as in one from Tim Laborich which is new or reinventing organizations from Frederick Lulu or work rules by last little book are some kind of the newer ones but there's numerous books out there about changing the way we work how we play in teams and how we work in teams and how we see our work lives good to great etc teal businesses and then we mentioned that delivering happiness were any of those groups or thought leaders or those types of businesses and influential to you on that journey and I'll kind of turn it over and be like be kind of broad for you to take us on that journey as well yeah I I in my second book I talk about that leaders are readers and readers are leaders and I think for me there came a certain point in my career trajectory where my my escape route from the pain I was living was were authors and books I started out writing code as a programmer that was my that was my early life I touched a computer for the first time when I was just a kid in high school way back in 1971 I can't believe that was almost 50 years ago now and by 1973 I'd won an international programming contest so it was clear that I was excited about this I was pretty darn good at it and that contest when actually landed me my first job as a programmer before I was even old enough to drive a car and I couldn't believe that people would pay me to do this thing I simply love to do as a hobby I eventually got degrees from the University of Michigan and computer science computer engineering and a lovely career was launched one that by all world measures looked perfect raises promotion stack options greater authority bigger team sizes higher title went from programmer 1982 to vice president of r&d in 1997 and so it looked perfect but it was a big one I didn't want to be in it anymore by my mid 30s I literally wanted out the chaos of the software industry the bureaucracy that tried to tamp down the chaos was killing my spirit killing the spirit of the team who worked for me and the the really sad part was all of the attempts to fix the chaotic versions made it worse not better it demoralized the people who worked for me because now you're layering on all of these rules and bureaucracy on top of it and I was literally contemplating just exiting there was just simply a reality that I would come home to every night that says no you can't my wife my three girls my house my car payments I had built a nice life out of this career it just wasn't one I wanted to live in anymore and so in that moment of a deep trough of disillusionment I had to make a choice get out or change it and the journey out wasn't short it wasn't fast but it was inspirational and it did lead me to authors and books that were hot commodities at the time and there are still classics today books like Tom Peter's book in search of excellence and the ones that followed Peter Drucker's books on management Peter Senghe's book the fifth discipline on the art and practice of building a learning organization I knew I needed that but inside that book you talked about the importance of systems thinking and how systems if they're going to behave well need short communication and feedback loops and most of the communication feedback loops in the companies I worked in were inexorably long when the trouble with long feedback loops is they typically have the opposite effect of what you're desiring I mean let's pick an easy one that almost all of us have been subjected to somewhere in our careers the dreaded annual performance review process right we're going to wait one year to give you feedback on the previous 12 months and that's going to have some beneficial side effect on me as an employee no it's probably going to demoralize me because I'm going in thinking I exceeded expectations and you were like well only 3.7 percent of you can exceed expectations this year so we're going to make sure we find 18 things that you did wrong this year that we didn't tell you about six months ago like wow really so this journey out was a struggle for sure but at least gave me hope and the hope inspired me to stick with it and in around 1999 two years after I became VP of R&D I met a guy who's now my co-founder James Goval I brought him in as a consultant to help teach my program or some technical things and he asked me why what problem I am am I trying to solve I said well the problem is they don't know these technical things he said no that's a solution not a problem tell me what the problem is and when we got into deeper philosophical discussions he said the technical things you want me to teach aren't going to solve that problem much we have to take a whole different approach I blinked I listened we became peer partners and making a transformational change inside that tired old public company and over the next two years from my purchase of VP I reinvented that public company and I'd probably still be there to this day if the internet bubble hadn't burst in 2001 and everything got swept away the company I worked for had been purchased the California company that now owned us had to shutter every remote office they had and literally in 2001 I lost everything except one thing they could not take away what I had learned in those two years and they couldn't take away the relationship I built with James Gogle and I went to him and I said we can do this again let's pick up the pieces and parts let's take the things we learned over the last two years and let's start a new company we'll call it Menlo Innovations and that's what we've been doing since since 2001 with this incredible focus on joy and the joy message didn't really spring out fully until Simon Sinek started telling us to start with why and people who knew me well who'd heard me speak because I'd already been a public speaker at that point they sent me the video his TEDx Puget Sound Talk with his three simple pictures of you know most companies know what they do some know how they do it but almost none of them ever speak and when they shared that with me said Richie you do this and I was convicted because I thought to myself no I don't somebody came in to visit Menlo I'd say welcome to Menlo we're a software design development firm that's what we do we have some unusual practices this is how we do it come see it I probably inferred the why and people who heard my passion could feel the why but I never said it explicitly and more importantly I never started with why so after I saw that video I was convicted and I I lead I was at the time and we do one to three tours a day of Menlo at the time I was doing most of them this was back about 2009 or so and so this group's forming and I thought today's the day I am gonna start with why I don't know what I'm gonna say and I'm seldom at a loss for words but today's the day and I started pacing as this group is forming I'm thinking myself what am I gonna say what am I gonna say what's the first thing I'm gonna say and right there waiting for me like a gift was our mission statement and it said our mission is to end human suffering in the world as relates to technology and I thought there it is that's our why that's why we exist that's what we want to do I'm gonna share with them I want everybody who walks in our door to have the word suffering on their mind when they think of Menlo I'm like oh wait no that's that's not it I want suffering really that's what you want people thinking about and right down at the bottom just waiting for me like a gift I've never seen it in the way that I saw it that morning I said our goal since 2001 and our founding is to return joy to technology to the people who build it to the people who use it to the people who pay for it I thought that's it it's that simple so this group comes in I'm standing there in front of them some of them had probably been before because we get a lot of repeat guests maybe they brought their friends along and I said welcome to Menlo you've come to a place that is very intentionally focused its culture on the business value of joy and they are all looking at me like what are you talking about and I said he said rich we're here to learn about your practices how you do stuff your culture why are you talking about joy and I pointed back to the room we were about to go visit the room full of people and I said guys pretend like our customers do pretend you're bringing us a software project that you want us to execute really well on pretend for some odd cultural reason the right half of the room has joy in the left half doesn't which half do you want working on your project I said well we want the joyful half of course I said why what difference would it make why would you care I said well they produce better results they'd be more engaged they produce more value in a shorter period of time they'd be easier to work with it's a big deal in my industry and I said okay so you're with me there is in fact tangible business value to joy now let me take you on a tour and show you how we do it and anywhere you want stop me and say rich that thing you just described can you draw a short straight line back to joy and I said I will be able to do that trivially stop me wherever you want the things we do the things we don't do short short straight line back to joy and that changed everything eventually led to the book the second book all the tours we do now the thousands of people who come a year they want joy in their own work lives because if you have joy in your work life where you spend most of your waking hours the odds you're going to have joy at home increase dramatically that's so beautiful thank you for sharing that and there there are some things that you uncovered in that that really speak to my heart so I do a lot for sustainability resilience the united nations I'm an expert with the world economic form I present innovations at the world economic form every year at dollars this next year will be in lutsern and I take the systems view approach to life so I really see everything as the system our bodies our planet our businesses there and there's good systems and there's bad systems but no system can work really well for a long time exactly a bad system will outperform no system all any all the time and so we really need some good systems and and so when you you spoke about systems I really I really love it because in 2018 the entire world and all international organizations world trade organization the UN the world economic form etc world trade organization they all switched to systems dynamic modeling and the systems view approach to solving our global grand challenges they used this dynamic dynamic modeling systems were they even overlaid them in the old business value canvas that with you know seven years or so ago that we started to use that was really trendy and showing that you know we can really find out where the bottlenecks are where the feedback loops are where the the problems are in our systems and if we run out numerous amount of scenarios to see where the problems are and that this old linear lateral siloed approach to solving our global grand challenges just wasn't working it hasn't been working forever and and the book the limits to growth 1972 Don Alamedo's your grander Steve Behrens who wrote the book with the club of Rome was really the first world's model three which is a computer model from MIT that discussed systems thinking dynamic modeling to solve our global grand challenges but not only that just to tell us where we're going to be in the future which you know the second book was already beyond the limits to growth because we'd already kind of went over these limits and so when you speak about systems and feedback loops and long feedback loops you're speaking in my heart but then when you you combine it with your mission that you want to rate use technology to end human suffering to use that in good ways I am I immediately want to hear I want to know what okay what what projects have you been working on can you release some humdingers to me and say you know that get me excited because that that's really what we need you know where our human fallibility comes in as when we can't think in systems it's extremely hard and so if we could augment that with some systems or some dynamic models that already have it built in that that will get us where we try to break the system or we try to think too linear I really want to hear about those solutions I don't know if you can share those or get that excited a little bit of excitement for our listeners absolutely yeah well you know if you're going to break an old model you better be ready to invent a new one because you know it's it's that old adage of you know it's very difficult for the people who got us to this spot to be the ones to change us right the same thinking that got us here probably isn't going to get out of the situation we're in right now rhinestones problem theory yeah exactly and so we had to invent something brand new and you would look at it today and say okay so there's a little bit of sort of ideolite design thinking in this and so on but the change for us went right to the heart of the kind of purpose we have in this organization and when I talk about purpose in organizations whenever I talk about this to the world I ask every company to answer for themselves it's going to be unique and it's easier to ask these questions than answer even though they sound like they're easy questions to answer when you talk about your purpose it should answer two questions clearly for everyone who do you serve and what would delight look like for them and working backwards from that purpose kind of statement you start to design systems to produce that kind of delight in the world for us the people we serve are people who don't pay us for what we do they often will never meet us they won't even know who we are they are the end users of the software that we're designing and building typically we're doing projects on behalf of businesses some businesses I can tell you who they are and some businesses I can't because we're under strong non-disclosure with them but ultimately what we're trying to do is delight people we will never meet people who have to use the work of our hearts our hands and our minds every single day because here's the sad part of technology and we've all experienced it we've gotten so used to it it feels normal technology typically tortures us we know it because every once in a while we look at something like why does it work like this did they ever talk to somebody like me did they ever watch anybody use their products right watch some clerk at a retail store trying to figure out how to get your thing you want to buy into the cash register when it doesn't have the magic barcode label on it and we got all these people standing in line getting frustrated with the customer who brought the thing and didn't think how come you picked up something out of the rack that doesn't have a barcode label on it and the poor clerk said why can't you answer the question how much this is costing and all this kind of stuff right and we just see this every single day and every kind of technical thing we ever interact with and more than anything for my team and I will tell you this goes to the heart this goes back to the beginning for me I had to soul search and ask myself why why do I want to be in this profession anymore what is it that I was seeking when I went in the first time that I was so excited about lost sight of became disillusioned and wanted out but what was that thing at the beginning and I know what it is now it is that idea that as an engineer I will one day create something that people love and they love so much they want to find me and thank me for doing it that's it there's no other greater joy for an engineer than to have someone who uses whatever you created find you and say really you you did that thank you you made my life better because of how you did this and we get this all the time with the work we do I'll give you one example we worked on a scientific instrument a device called a flow cytometer most of your audience will never heard what a flow cytometer is we didn't know what it was when the customer was asking us to build the software for it was well it's a device that counts cells and fluid it's probably being used a lot right now as we try and discover some of the cures for COVID typically a flow cytometer is used for blood-borne pathogens cancers aids various other immunological disorders and the device pushes 10,000 cells a second past the laser imaging session the lasers fire the fluorescent compounds have been added to the cells give off a light if they're if they have certain characteristics and the scientists can use that data to figure out whether the therapies they're creating are actually having an effect on the cancer cells on the AIDS cells on other cells and all the devices up to that point were torturous to use they were fraught with peril they would often break down they people couldn't understand the software you required days and days and days of training to be able to do the simplest things with them and our clients said we want to create a personal flow cytometer we wanted on desktops not in central lab facilities we wanted easy enough for not just the principal investigators to use but their grad students to use that was a big challenge and i remember one time i was walking out of a hardware store on a saturday morning doing my weekend warrior work and i had that company's logo shirt on that morning just happened to be my work shirt that day but it was the logo of our customer and this customer in the parking lot sees it walks across points to my shirt and said i use that product every day i love that product and i said oh we did the software for it says you did you did a great job you made my life so much better thank you you that is joy that's how we can get to joy in our work and we can do that in any context my daughter bought this fan the other day from a company called vornado you just get it online and it broke she called up the customer service people and they treated her so well it was such a shock to her they sent her a replacement that day it showed up it was the wrong color they screwed up she called him up said hey guys thanks for the fan but oh by the way it's the wrong color there okay sorry well should be a new one by the way just keep the one with the wrong color don't even worry about it and she's like and you know what she does she tells all of her friends about it tells her parents about it i have a vornado fan now right it's a simple i mean it's like tony shea right tony didn't even particularly care for shoes i met tony at zappos when i was on our tour there he wasn't even wearing shoes he walked around the office barefoot he didn't care about shoes he cared about delivering happiness to the people he served that was his purpose in life and zappos takes off like a rocket right and deservedly so they took great care of their clients they knew what people needed they broke all the rules well we're not going to charge for shipping we're not going to charge for returns i can imagine all the business people out there are you crazy people will abuse that system i don't care that's how we're gonna do it we're gonna take a different approach because i know what my clients need and i'm gonna deliver that to them no matter what and if we develop those spirits and attitudes in our businesses we could change the world definitely you can change the world 100 i i love that your stories and the way you explain that so eloquently there there's more questions about you know you you made this comment or i did in your biography but you also touched upon it that joy is not just possible but it's essential it's essential to profitability productivity and every measure of success and i i use something very similar that sustainability or environmental social governance systems thinking and business is is essential to do the true value the true cost the total environmental cost and and those things and that is essential but it's also a measurement of success it's a measurement of profitability that if you apply those things those organizations and those companies that had applied them before the pandemic or applied them a few years ago before we started getting all this terminology and talk about the climate crisis and an environment and by our diversity loss that they were able to weather the pandemic and the storms and and the problems a lot better and then during situations like this like the pandemic they were able to pivot on a dime and deliver essential services digital services to people during the pandemic food services to create respirators to to do things and that their stocks believe it or not their sustainable index funds stocks and investments and divestments all went up during this time so it was you know before that you talk about sustainability or joy or or this you know these these core uh principles in business and how how you do uh that uh your organization run your organization oh that could be costly do we really want to switch to that model uh is it profitable you know it's hard to do we're going to have to make a lot of investments and now people are knocking down the door saying that that is a better model and and guess what my employees are still joyful happy there to sustain oneself means to be around for future generations to have enough to pay your employees to have an organization that is going to be around in the hard times and be not just around squeaking by but want to help your family your employees your organization to give them a better view and and your customers as well and so I hear when you when you speak about these topics I hear all of those things out and the very first way I started the podcast Inside Ideas this podcast was with the good friend of mine John P. Stralecki out of Florida he wrote numerous books he's really famous in in Europe but he lives in America he wrote the Y cafe or the cafe at the edge of the earth and big five for life and the big five continued big five for life continued and numerous other books and cells in in Europe anyway especially in Germany sells a book every 26 minutes and then in that book it's also falls in line with all these other books that we're talking about he has a thing it's it's not really the why or the how it's the who who out there is successful in doing what you want to do or the way you want to live and let's find that person that who and that's why I found you to give us the stories of how we can do it and how we can use that an example to follow you as a who who's doing it to not reinvent the wheel but to help us with that knowledge and that learning like the Tony Shays like the Tony Robbins and Richard Branson's or whoever are meant for our view of successful business people but also people who are successfully doing good for the planet doing good for business and that that in his book he's talks about purpose for existing he also talks about this have you had a museum day today so he looks back at certain amount of days on this earth and why you have these museum day moments and in the stories of joy and your company and men low I'm hearing there's a lot of those similar principles but in a different culture in a different perspective in a different own or wording the way they're presented and I love to hear those stories one thing that I would like to hear more of is what sustainability aspects what resilience aspects do you have in those models as well that you maybe could share with us that are are really what your thoughts and feelings are about being sustainable and resilient for the planet and the future of work in those things involved in this whole concept of joy and men low yeah and I think whenever the topic turns to sustainability right we think about the environment we think about energy sources we think about the systems at work around those pieces and I will tell you typically what we're most concerned about is needless waste of energy right that is typically what happens is is it renewable is it sustainable and are we simply wasting it right well I think one of the most wasted energy sources on the planet is human energy. Gallup has been measuring disengagement statistics for the last 50 years 60 70 80 percent of people disengaged at work I mean really like can you imagine the waste inside of that all of these people getting in their cars driving to their office parking in a parking place walking down the quarter sitting down going well it's just a job I'm here to collect my paycheck right and what if we could flip that equation what kind of efficiency could we gain in our human organizations simply by flipping that equation what if we went from 70% disengaged to 70% positively engaged now the delightful thing is I've actually seen this at work I give talks around the world and one of the messages I deliver when people hear me speak they can get excited they can they can walk away thinking I can change the world and they go to the office the next day and they say I have a new idea and somebody says that won't work here that's against policy we tried that 10 years ago it didn't work there it won't work now and the ideas typically die in the vine right then and there don't they and I arm my audiences with a simple message look them in the eyes I get it but why don't we try it before we defeat it let's run the experiment and see what happens instead of thinking of all the things that could go wrong let's try it and see if anything does go wrong and if it does maybe we correct it and move forward now that simple phrase alone can replace meetings and policy writing committees because now we just go run experiments and I would tell you I gave this talk to a 180 year old life insurance company named MassMutual here in the States big organization 30 billion dollars a year in annual sales and Amy Ferrero their VP of claims took that message to heart and she started running experiments with her team of thousands of claim processors and she invited me back six months later show me what had happened and she said rich we're going to go see claims this big 100,000 square foot facility half height cubicles everybody's sitting there processing beneficiary claims on life insurance policies every single day they pay out three billion dollars a year and claims a year and she said rich when we get there you're going to see helium balloons I said okay well are you celebrating something she goes no everywhere there's a desk with a helium balloon tape to it the person at that desk is making a declaration and an invitation the declaration is I'm running an experiment the invitation is coming ask me about it I'm like wow and I'm thinking of it so where'd you come up with that Amy you didn't hear that for me I didn't talk about healing balloons but there she does she ran the experiment right we turn the corner and mark and there are balloons as far as the eye can see you want to talk about evidence of human energy so I run up to Susan's desk I said Susan tell me about your experiment she says well let me tell you I'm in charge of quality I said what does that mean she says I'm the last stop before the check gets cut I have to do three checks to make sure this is the right amount the right person is going to and you know and everything's clearly paid up policy all that kind of stuff she says I got step a step b and step c which is the problem is what I saw was if I find an error at step c I have to go back and redo step b and step b is the longest part of the process and the order doesn't matter so my experiment is do a and then c and then b okay now not a big deal right I mean it sounds pretty simple and she is just beaming with energy telling me this she's so excited and I said Susan how long have you worked here she was 19 years and I said have you always been like this and her face literally turned into a skull she said no I hated my job before I hated coming to work I dreaded the drive-in I was counting the days to retirement I said well what's different now she says now we can run experiments I said what was it like before said rich every idea I ever brought to work I had to go up five levels over down five levels every idea I ever brought died on the vine after a while you know what you just stop bringing ideas you declare to yourself you know it's just a job find your joy elsewhere find it outside of work count the days to retirement says now I love my job I can't wait to get here I'm not even thinking about retirement anymore one human being inside that organization and there are balloons as far as the eye can see can you imagine a conservation not only of human energy but all the energy of the meetings the paperwork that would flow back and forth and so on the simplification of an organization of that size and nature and I have seen this happen in so many different places I've touched I think there's a huge upside to this not only for the human energy but for every other source of energy that drives our human organizations I totally I totally agree I mean I speak a lot about global citizens and it's really that it's about human capital we humans are the ones who are having this global society we transcend borders and nations and we take our value and the way we serve and act and enjoy our work all around the world it can't be done in any other way and so I really I like how how you express that and that beautiful story I just wish you guys had come over to Germany here we need a lot of help so customer service in Germany is hard hard to find there are a lot of German companies that have come to us it's a it's a tougher nut to crack with the German companies not impossible mind you but you know there's a I will say what I see is there is a lot of pride in German companies and I think that's well deserved and there's been a lot of things have been accomplished and to a great degree but I think there's also a lot of you know what I see is a little bit of spirit of well you know what we've got a job to do we we don't need to care that much about our people we just need to forge ahead and get the job done my message to them is you can get there a lot faster with even you know more efficiently more effectively deliver better results and have a happier workforce and wouldn't that be worth it because the other thing you're going to get out of this few or sick days your days where people just call in say I can't make it today fewer days where people are coming to work but they aren't actually there fewer people who quit in place you know they didn't actually quit they're still collecting a paycheck they're taking up space in your office but mentally they've left their brain on the pillow at home yeah I mean these are huge benefits organizations that have tremendous costs it's just hidden it's insidious cost right that's the same in john piece for lecky's book big five for life talks about the same thing businesses organizations don't realize the true cost to hire an employee but the true cost to lose an employee and to have someone continue to work there who is unsatisfied what detriment that can that have on your organization I want to get into just a few more questions kind of probably the hardest questions that I have for you today and that is the burning question wtf and it's not the swear word it's what's the future you know you you had mentioned in the beginning and it kind of caught my attention that some of the people you have interviewed over the years have been futurists one of the books that had a great impact on me back in 1982 was john naspit's book megatrends and the quote I grabbed out of that that I've given most of my talks today is from naspit and I think it is more applicable today than it's ever been he said he said the biggest breakthroughs of the 21st century when we're in right now now remember naspit wrote this in 1982 I just I gotta I I hope I get a chance to meet him someday because I know he's getting old and I would just love the chance to at least thank him for for this I just wrote a blog post about him actually that got published this week this week but he said the biggest breakthroughs that are going to occur in the 21st century are not going to occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human and I think that's where we're at right now I see it in our own team you know when we all went to work from home and and lost the part where we're all together every day I worried about the relationships of our team members I worried about the time we were spending together what we're still spending together this is what memo work looks like we literally pair people at memel so no one's ever isolated or alone and I think that construct of memo pairing two people together is more important now than it's ever been right because think of the loneliness and isolation that people are having in the work from home environment and we don't have that work we always have a pair of partner when we're working but what's more interesting to me is that now we're seeing into the lives of people we see their cats their dogs their kids the books on the shelf behind them the paintings from their grandfather they can talk about we're getting a better feeling for the humans who work for us than we've ever had when they were in the office as colleagues now they're humans now they're fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and dog owners and cat owners we get to see all of them we see their kids show up I was doing an interview or panel with a group included a CEO from a company in Düsseldorf that I know quite well and the CEO's there from this home like I am and his four-year-old son walks up to him and without missing a beat without even hesitating he just grabs his four-year-old son pop some on his lap continues the interview what a beautiful sight for a CEO to embrace his family like that front of a worldwide audience what a message to send to your team to say no it's okay you have a family don't be ashamed of it don't try and hide it embrace it I think I think this is the future this is the this is the opportunity that rests inside of a terrible event that's happened in 2020 and let's not lose it let's not lose this opportunity because it's right there for us to grab I love it so what you probably didn't know is I interviewed Doris and he's been John's wife last week on the podcast and it'll it'll air in about three weeks but John he's 91 years old he did he doesn't speak anymore so it's getting a big struggle but I will relay that message to him we actually send you the article I wrote can you forward it on to him I definitely will I'll forward it on to the end it just simply says thank you for writing and I apologize for how long it took me to understand the importance of what he had written back in 1982 yeah I definitely will so I mean Thomas Uly is the good friend of mine who I also out on the podcast he referred to you to for me to speak to you and have you on the podcast he also is a good friend that we know each other from Davos in the world economic form and some other organizations but he also in his book has that same quote from from John and and I mentioned to Doris that that there's a lot of people out there who really love the work that they did their stories and not just megatrends but there are other books and and their foundation and things works that they've done after that fact and in reality they're they're not only future us but they're trends think about the trends of the future megatrends and a good friend of mine Nils Miller from trend one who's here in Humber he's the one we speak about trends he does a lot about trends and he says you know we should contact John and and Doris and kind of have a time with them and speak to them about things and the interesting thing is the overarching theme of is not only these megatrends but the megatrends are really tied to culture of humanity how cultures work how human beings work and how the evolution of culture is the fastest evolutionary change that humanity can take for humanity to have an evolutionary change would take millions of years maybe billions of years but to have a human cultural shift are gained and can take us on another evolution type of a of a spring in a much shorter amount of time still takes a long time but they touch upon some of those things in the book and and I really it was so great that you mentioned that I'll definitely say say hello to you to him for you and pass that article on the last three questions that I have for you are actually self selfish takeaways and and I don't think you'll mind for my listeners because you have a lot of people come virtually now to your offices and and you're willing to speak to them it's basically messages that will they could take or apply words of wisdoms from you and from menlo that you could depart to them and the first one is if there was one message that you could depart to my listeners that was a sustainable takeaway that has the power to change our life what would it be your message you know I I draw a picture these days comparing the forces that work on a human organization the forces that work on an aircraft the lift of human energy the weight of bureaucracy the thrust of purpose and the drag of fear and if we're going to get our organizational aircraft off the ground every day we better create more human energy than bureaucracy and more purpose than fear and that simple model has really resonated with a lot of people but then I make it personal and I say look when that pilot points the aircraft down the runway gives it full throttle and it hits takeoff speed they make this very simple little move on the yoke they pull it back just a little bit creating an angle between the nose of the aircraft and the earth and that simple angle is all that it takes to get your organizational aircraft off the ground and the name that they use in aeronautical engineering is positive attitude and this is available to all of us literally the second you hear it you get to choose your own attitude you get to choose what attitude you bring to life and you can choose a positive attitude or a negative attitude if you want to get the people around you off the ground be that force that you want to see in the world be that positive force it's your choice and you know it's not always easy given all the stuff that's filling our main minds these days from twitter and facebook and all the other inputs of the terrible things that are going on in the world but guard that part of yourself guard your spirit be careful who you hang out with be careful what you fill your mind with yes there are stuff we shouldn't avoid looking at because it's too hard to think about and that sort of thing that's just like but don't revel in it don't make that your soul existence choose positivity choose that positive attitude and you can lift yourself and others around you beautiful what are two to three actions and every citizen every human being or decision maker can take to help accelerate the impact in their field or to accelerate an impact and what they want to do you know i was i was brought up in scouting and that was a big deal for me and one of the things we were taught was always leave the campsite a little better than you found it and so you know a lot of people get frustrated because they think i don't have the position to change the world you don't have to change the world you just have to change your world leave this campsite we call planet earth just a little better than you found it and if we all adopt that as individuals we can make a huge change in the world good friend of mine who runs an amazing company here in an arbor somebody you should also interview r.e. wine swig from zingerman's he's been at this entrepreneurial journey 20 years longer than me runs an amazingly cultural focused organization here in an arbor he said you know when he walks down the sidewalk and he sees a piece of litter he always picks it up puts in the garbage can he says why wouldn't you this is my home it's where i live i wouldn't leave this in in my living room why would i leave it on a sidewalk walking around downtown in arbor shortly after that i'm walking right near their deli that's very famous here in an arbor and there was this huge bag of trash sitting in the middle of the street i think what had happened is a garbage truck had dumped the canister in but one of them fell off and it was just sitting in the middle of the road filled with papers and napkins and plates and all that kind of stuff and the first car that hit it would have spread it out to the wind and here's this bag just sitting there and i thought of aria thought no it's my response we pick up that bag put it in the garbage can the beautiful coincidence of that was it was a bag filled with garbage from aria's company's increments and it's like it all came full circle for me this is our place this is the only place we got let's take care of it that's beautiful what have you experienced or learned in your professional journey so far that you say i wish i would have known that from the start you know i think what i learned over the years is when you have these crazy ideas that things can be better don't be discouraged don't let go of them hang on those things write them down because in fact they're probably the best ideas you ever have pay attention to those ideas you have just before falling asleep or just before waking away in the morning and starting your day because it's often in those cusp moments of end of day beginning of day that we have these dreams about how things can be better hang on to those write them down don't let go of them pursue them you can make that kind of change and it's it's not as unavailable as it seems at first you know um that's all the questions i have for you but i really want to kind of make it even a little bit more clear for my listeners you know i'm big on sustainable innovations i run the innovation hub at davos and and i i innovation is important um i haven't asked you a lot of innovation questions but i think the the the principles the joys the stories that you've told us applied to anything that we want to do for innovations for purpose and impact innovations for good purpose of for humanity to make things better are all things that come out in our journey and our discussion today but if you were to say one last thing before we end our conversation around innovation would you would you have anything to say that we haven't touched upon today that is important for my listeners to hear the biggest threat to innovation is the biggest threat to humanity and it is fear fear is the mind killer as uh frank Herbert said in dune fear is the part that shuts down the most human part of our brain when we go into fear we are turned into reptiles we are down to the amygdala we're we're in fighter flight mode we don't we're not thinking straight if we can as leaders create organizations that diminish that fear as much as possible and most of the fear we can diminish is the artificial fear we create in order to motivate other people right raised eyebrow to meeting the heave of us I thought you were the person to do this job I guess I was wrong all the things dumb things we say as leaders if we can back off from that fear equation we will keep the humans who work for us in that most human place and in that part of our brain that works when we're not afraid when we feel safe because we're creativity imagination invention and innovation come from and that's why again back to john nays but that the most important breakthroughs of the century are going to occur because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human that's where our humanity lies in creativity and innovation and we as leaders need to recognize that and recognize the things we're doing as leaders that diminish that ability for humans to innovate around us because when we innovate as humans it's the most delightful thing we ever see the music the dance the art the creations of humanity are delightful things to see and we know this we knew this when we were kindergarteners we know what today as adults was just a faint memory of what it used to be like when we were so young and creative and unafraid we need to get back to that place for all of us my uh podcast episode number 42 was uh jeff de graff i don't know if you've ever heard of him jeff wrote about me and his book creativity yeah the creative minds that and yeah there's so um i i knew we were in good company when we're discussing but i i just think it's it's really extremely interesting that i've you know within not even two months i've i've interviewed two people from michigan you know what's the coincidence of that i'm in hamberg germany i've also had a couple people on that keep mentioning john naysbett not only neils miller and um thomas huley but there's just you know it is it is amazing and it's been a sure joy i just wanted to to thank you um for your time and i hope we can follow up again when uh things don't get back to normal but when we can emerge from this much differently and stronger and kind of see how things are going and and touch bases with you again and get an update i really appreciate your time rich and i hope you have a wonderful day well this has been a delightful conversation so thank you thank you take care bye bye