Culture Is Everything With Garry Ridge

 

Culture is the cornerstone of any thriving organization, and Garry Ridge, former CEO of WD-40 Company and a purpose-driven founder, board member, advisor, and professor understands this firsthand. He joins Adam Markel in looking back to his incredible leadership journey and the valuable lessons he learned about building a thriving people-first culture. Garry emphasizes the importance of servant leadership, prioritizing employee well-being, and creating a positive work environment where everyone thrives. Get ready for a dose of wisdom as Garry reveals how his unconventional “dumbass” approach to leadership transformed WD-40 into a people-centric powerhouse.

 

Show Notes:

• 02:04 – Garry’s Leadership History
• 08:07 – The Culture At WD-40
• 12:25 – Challenges And Toxins Within A Company Culture
• 17:52 – A Challenging Leadership Moment
• 20:58 – Humility In Leadership
• 23:45 – Inflection Points In Business
• 26:13 – Evolving Nature Of Culture
• 32:22 – CEO Compensation And People-First Values
• 42:50 – Key Advice For CEOs

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Culture Is Everything With Garry Ridge

I’ve got a great guest. I’ve got somebody that is just an exceptional leader. He provides such tangible example of what great leadership is, and what it looks like, and he can articulate it clearly. Not everybody who’s really great at something that has tremendous acumen is also able to communicate what it is they do, how they do it, why they do it, and all that stuff that helps to make it clear to other people for their own understanding.

Garry Ridge is one of those people. Garry Ridge is a purpose-driven Founder, Board Member, Advisor and Professor with an impressive track record of leading, growing, and transforming global businesses and brands, including WD-40. His purpose, “I help leaders build cultures of belonging where love, forgiveness and learning inspire a happier, more connected world.” You’re going to absolutely love it. Speaking of love, you’re going to love what you hear Garry share with us. Sit back and enjoy.

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Garry, so I know this is not anything new for you to hear somebody read your bio and share your CV with the world. That’s not exactly new, but maybe this is one little question is new for you. What is something that is not included in that bio that right now in this moment you would love for people to know about you?

I have a new grandson. Isn’t that wonderful? That is really fun. That’s 3 grandsons and 1 granddaughter and that grandson is in Australia. I haven’t met him personally yet, but I will.

I feel like I have inside knowledge here to say this, too. You share a birthday with your grandson, don’t you?

The US date of his birth was the same as my birthday. It was a day later in Australia. As it is, you know that if you think the world’s going to end, Adam, you just call Australia and if they answered the phone, you know that the world’s not going to end.

I’m going to track back. I don’t think this is dating us too much, but the whole Y2K nonsense, I say nonsense now, but remember this paranoia, hysteria, I don’t even know, literally thought that the world potentially was going to end when we struck a second past midnight at the turn of the millennium. We know it didn’t happen, but what was interesting then was the fact that there was like the news cycle at the time was looking at folks in Australia to see what happened to you all. Whatever happened to you lot was going to happen to the rest of us. When you were all safe, then we all knew we were going to be safe. The rest of it just fizzled out like so many hysteria.

Garry’s Leadership History

I want to dive right into the fact that you’ve got a new book and I want to understand it, but there are some people perhaps that we need to create some context. If you don’t mind just, just share a little bit about your history as a leader. WD-40 is a company that many people have either heard of, if not have their products in their homes, etc. I think it’d be good just to create a little context around your leadership of that organization has informed your now sharing your ideas and your wisdom. I say wisdom because I know you so I can say that, but the wisdom that will be in this brand-new book that’s going to hit the shelves in just a couple of months. If you would.

I think my biggest learning moment for the 25 years that I was CEO and I was actually with the company 35 years, but I now say I’ve just completed my 25-year apprenticeship and leadership and now I need to put it to work. When you reflect back on the 25 years, it really is an apprenticeship. You learn the basics. The basic thing that was so powerful to me was to learn that leadership’s not about you. It’s about what you can do to bring out the best in others. When I was given the privilege to lead WD-40 as the CEO in 1997, we had a dream and that was to take the blue and yellow can with a little red top to the world. I and our marketing and folks in the company knew how to identify markets and then we knew how to build those markets.

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What we really needed was an organization that could operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week because the sun was never going to set on the can. Once we went out, I was unsure how to do that. The story starts on a Qantas 747 flying from Los Angeles to Sydney, 38,000 feet above the Pacific Ocean at 2:00 AM in the morning. As you do when you fly, Adam, is you take stuff to read and I read a quote that was attributed to the Dalai Lama and it was, “Our purpose in life is to make people happy. If we can’t make them happy, at least don’t hurt them.” I thought, “That makes sense.” No more than 30 minutes later, I read something else and it was from Aristotle who said, “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”

I thought, “Now that even it makes more sense.” I reflected on how many organizations that I knew where people just really didn’t enjoy what they were doing. Now here we are, this is 1999 now, two years after I was given the role and that kept swirling in my head. I came back to San Diego and I read an article in the Union-Tribune and that talked about a Master’s degree in Leadership at the University of San Diego. This program was put together by Dr. Ken Blanchard, The One-Minute Manager, the guru of servant leadership in USD. I went to an information session and Ken Blanchard said, “Most MBA programs get people in the head. We’ve got to start getting people in the heart. They outlined what this two-year Master’s degree would do and I enrolled.

Here I am, CEO of a US public company and I’m going back to school and it was the best decision I ever made because I learned the power of what it is to be a servant leader and, consequently, my dedication to bringing out the best in others. As you probably know, we wrote a book, Ken Blanchard and I, called Helping People Win at Work. The byline was, “I’m not here to mark your paper. I’m here to help you get an A.” Our role as leaders is to help people, not mark their papers.

My big learning has been it’s not about you as a leader, it’s about awareness of how your leadership behaviors impact others. Our role is to help those we have the privilege to lead play their best game. That was the journey. Hopefully, in the book, we’ve taken those 25 years into 26 chapters and talked about the significant hearts of that journey over time. That’s why I’ve called it Any Dumb Ass Can Do It because a lot of leaders I think that building great cultures is overwhelming.

I just want to again clarify for the audience, the new book is called Any Dumb Ass Can Do It. Some people might be looking at this on youtube and they see the book in the background, but others are reading. The new book is Any Dumb Ass Can Do It. I love the title, that’s why I just keep saying it.

I am the Dean of Dumbassery. As I said, it’s because a lot of leaders think that building cultures is overwhelming and but if you know what the ingredients need to be and you’re consistent and dedicated to it, you can do it. The results of doing that are incredible. Mostly because you end up with a highly engaged workforce who really enjoy what they do and they go home happy. Happy people build happy families and happy families build happy communities and happy communities build a happy world and we need a happy world.

The Culture At WD-40

Yeah, we need a happier world. We need a happier world. I don’t know that anybody’s going to push back on that statement at all. I want to dive into culture then. I think we all think we know what it means. We got a sense of it for sure, and yet it’s a bit amorphous in some respects as well. I want to get a take on this because you created a culture, and I don’t mean you. You and your team collectively, collaboratively curated, crafted a culture at WD-40, which was unique to that organization and has performed well. For the people who want to know from where the advice is coming from, how would you describe the culture at WD-40? Now you’re not in that seat any longer, and obviously, I know you probably had a big hand in the succession.

Culture, to me, is a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other. It’s based on culture plus values plus behavior times consistency. People want to know and feel like they belong in an organization. They want to know and feel like they matter and they want to be able to make choices to be able to have the independence, but they also want to be with a group of people that are there to protect and feed each other. It’s why I named our culture our tribal culture because we were there to just do that. If you think about culture, there’s a number of elements or a number of ingredients. When I was a young lad back in Australia, I went to a boy’s high school and one day I was in a science class and the science teacher said to me, “We’re going to grow culture in this Petri dish.”

 

there are two things that are important. What are the ingredients that you need to put in the Petri dish and then how are you going to care for that Petri dish? Caring for the Petri dish means you are going to feed the good elements, and I’ll put it in view of being a leader, you are going to be brave enough to treat the toxins. If we think about what needs to be in that Petri dish of culture, firstly, you have to have a people-first mindset as a leader. You need to be a coach, not a manager. You’re not there to manage people. You’re there to coach them into their best game. You have to have brave accountability and behavior. You have to have a clearly defined authentic purpose. You have to have a hierarchical set of values.

Your vision needs to be transparent and simple. You have to reduce fear by taking the word failure out of the organization as we did. We said we don’t make mistakes. We have learning moments. You become a forever learning organization. You have to have belonging, acceptance and connectedness within the organization. You have to care about your people. You have to be candid with your people. You have to hold them accountable and you have to really be responsible as the leader.

Now if all those ingredients from the Petri dish, your job as the leader is to feed the good ingredients and then don’t protect your own comfort zone at the expense of other people’s development by not being brave enough to treat the toxins and redirect behaviors when they’re actually polluting that Petri dish. I have a good friend, his name’s Charlie Malouf. He owns Broad River Retail, a retail organization in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has a great saying. He says, “Culture is not a microwaveable event. You have to take a crockpot approach.” That is so true because you’ve got to have the ingredients and it’s got to cook it up over time.

Challenges And Toxins Within A Company Culture

I’d love to talk about the toxins. I know it may not be the thing that we spend the most time talking about. In fact, I think it’s the thing we would least want to talk about if given our choice. Having coached as a CEO and building people up and looking after the culture at WD-40 for 25-plus years, you must have run into quite a bit of toxin. Maybe not quite a bit, but you ran into that. I’d love to get your approach.

Where it is that you made some mistakes when it came to that and where it is that you ended up in the end knowing and understanding it better when those things when those things are present. In my role as a CEO, I was often the last person to really, and I think this is both was a sign of certain things that are were weaknesses in my own leadership, but also just a sign of the way that I saw the organization that I was running.

I was the last person to see the toxins often. I didn’t want to see them. Not because I was looking to avoid seeing them, but I was always positively promoting the things that we wanted. The saying of put your eyes and your focus on where you want to go, not on where you don’t want to go. That was a blind spot to me is how I would describe it. Until those things became so prevalent or where they became such that I couldn’t ignore them anymore and then they were bigger problems than they might’ve otherwise been. That was my experience. It was part of it. I’d love to know how that was for you along the way and what were your learning, some of them anyway,

I think I introduced you to this person some time ago. I don’t know if I have or not.

In the office, yes. I remember that.

This is Alec, or it could be Alice, the soul-sucking CEO or the soul-sucking leader. I invented this person to talk about some of these toxins that exist. I’ll give you some examples of what they are.

Just got to tell my audience, too, that you’re holding up. What are you holding up, Garry?

I’m holding up a little doll with a big mouth and a big type A on their jersey. I invented this person or this avatar, if you will, to be able to talk about generically the toxic behaviors of leaders that kill cultures. I talk about him in the book. His name was Al. I had to change it to Alec, which I like better because it’s Smart Alec, because in the book, Al looked like AI and everybody says, “What is this AI thing?” We had to rename him to Alec. I do like it better because he’s now Smart Alec. If I think about these behaviors, number one is ego. If you can identify a leadership behavior where ego eats empathy instead of empathy eating ego, they tend to be a micromanager. They want to have their nose in everything, which means people aren’t making choices.

One of the ones that really play off, too is some leaders think they’re corporate royalty. They think they’ve earned some royal status when they haven’t. That’s when they should be in where I call the stinky locker room more often. They don’t go to the stinky locker room as much as they should because they think they’ve now got some royal status they’ve earned, which is absolutely not true.

They love a fear-based culture. They tend to drive fear. One of the toxic behaviors is let’s drive fear. We know that fear is one of the most disabling emotions we have in life. They’re a master of control. Not only micromanaged, but they want to be controlled. Here’s one that’s really a bad toxin in any organization. They have all the answers. If you are with someone who has all the answers, I’ll guarantee one thing, they have the wrong ones as well.

 

They don’t value learning. They must always be right. They hate feedback and they don’t keep their commitments. In the coaching work that I do now, Adam, and I coach seven ceos right now, the first process I go through with them is helping them be aware of what their late leadership behavior is like. If they’re not aware of it, they don’t know how it’s impacting people that they lead and how it’s either shutting them down or actually not allowing that person to bring their brilliance to the table.

The first part of my coaching is awareness, and the second part is intention. I will admit that I probably had all of these attributes at some level of abundance during my early time as a leader. I wasn’t aware of it until I really became aware of it and then said and was aware of how negatively it impacted other people.

A Challenging Leadership Moment

If you can recall one of those moments that, just looking back now, it’s easier perhaps to see the forest for the trees, but is there a pivotal time where your leadership change as a result of either an awareness that came to you? Maybe somebody held up a mirror and said, “Garry, with all due respect, sir,” which when I was a lawyer and standing in court and we would say to the judge, which I think is still said frequently, when you say, “With all due respect, your honor,” you really mean the opposite.

Absolutely. The first class that I did at the MSEL program was a class that was really about understanding who you were. My initial DISC profile was I was a turbo D and if you’d like a definition of a turbo D, it’s be brief, be bright and be gone. I had to learn that that wasn’t going to do what I needed to do. That first class at MSEL really cut into who we were as leaders and what our leadership style was. That was the awareness. I’ll give you an example.

That meant that you were also impatient. Impetuous. Maybe quick to anger, I suppose. Piss off and all of that.

Guilty, your honor.

My deposition is over.

You see, but I didn’t know. I didn’t really realize how negative that was. Now I had someone that worked for me who was one of my direct reports. He was the vice president that was a turbo I. Now if you think about the DISC profile, the definition of a turbo I is they’re labor meetings because they’re building relationships along the way. If the turbo D was to go to the turbo I’s office or to have a meeting with them, the turbo I would want to spend the first five minutes flourishing the relationship. The turbo D wants to get in, get it done, get out.

Me, I can’t change them, I can only change me. One of my big learning was that I’ve got to fix this. I would go to that person’s office with a cup of coffee and in my head was, “I don’t have to achieve anything here until this coffee cup is empty,” which really gave that person to the opportunity to be the turbo I they needed to be. I needed that reminder. I needed that prompt to remind me. It took me a while to get over that. I must tell you now, if I do my DISC profile, I’m now an I. Not a turbo I, but I’m an ID. That took work and awareness and intention.

Humility In Leadership

The word that came from me earlier when you began, among the first things you said, you talked about being an apprentice, being in an apprenticeship for many years, that felt like, to me, humility. That was the word that came up when I was listening to you speak about that. People that have long standing successful careers probably don’t consider themselves still to be apprentices, to be looking at problems or looking at the world with apprentice eyes, with beginner’s eyes. They rather see through a lens of expertise, acumen, intelligence, accolades and all those kinds of things. Again, you could say that’s ego, but there’s an element of truth in it. People have accomplished things. They have a right to their achievements, etc. To maintain that humility, even in the midst of knowing some stuff, I think that’s a different balancing act.

Yeah. I think there are a few things. I often ask myself these days, “Why do I believe what I believe?” The world is changing so quickly and we have to go back and test our beliefs and test them against, “Is this fact fiction or opinion? Have I really done my homework to understand that?” I think that is so important.

Interestingly enough, when I was in my role, I used to introduce myself often like this, “Good day, I’m Garry Ridge. I’m the Chairman and CEO of WD-40 company. I’m consciously incompetent, probably wrong and roughly right and I need all the help I can get.” I’d always use 90% of the time, “You know what? I’m probably wrong and roughly right. I’m not quite sure.”

What you’re talking about is over 25 years. From learning, we gain knowledge and when we put knowledge to work, we get wisdom. I think what we gained over a 25-year period is that I’ve gained some wisdom. There are roads that I don’t want to walk down because I’m wise enough not to do that now. I’ve got enough scar tissue. I’ve been beat up enough. I think the other side of it is that we need to be continuous learners. Organizations that are just insatiable learners are going to grow faster and be more successful than those that put on blinders and don’t want to do that.

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Inflection Points In Business

Do you think we’re in an inflection point in the world of business given, emerging from the pandemic, the changes that were catalyzed by what was necessitated by what was just forced upon the world of work? Even with the advent of AI, do you think we’re at an inflection point?

I think life’s journey is a series of inflection points. My dad was born in 1907. He went through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Industrial Revolution. There were just series of seasons. Yeah, we’re in a new season. You talked about Y2K. You think about Y2K, a friend of mine, Rebecca, she’s a professor of strategy and we used her at WD-40. She’s become a good friend. She says, “Uncertainty is a series of future events that may or may not occur. When you think about them, most of them don’t.” That’s what Y2K was. It was this huge uncertainty. As we went through COVID, huge uncertainty. As leaders in those times, that’s when we need to center ourselves and understand what’s our true North and where do we want to cope. We’re just in a different season now.

Evolving Nature Of Culture

It reminds me of some Mark Twain quote, “I’ve had many problems in my life, some of which actually happened.” We make up the narrative. We often do and frequently make that narrative about the worst-case scenarios that don’t materialize. There’s an element, I think, of resiliency that comes from being able to game out the what-ifs and all that thing for sure. It feels like there is a sea change that’s in the process right now. Let me be more specific.

The culture that got people through the pandemic, I feel that that was the culture of those organizations that were able to be resilient in the midst of that sudden and immediate change. The culture coming out of the pandemic has changed by virtue a number of things. I just want to get your take on that because, again, this word culture, it’s a perfect umbrella term for a lot of things, as you say, that allow people to collaborate, work together for a common cause and a common good, hopefully. What is the culture now?

There was a lot of conversation around the pandemic, about The Great Resignation. Do you remember that?

Sure. Quiet quitting.

I wrote an article. It wasn’t The Great Resignation. It was The Great Escape. People were escaping toxic cultures. They were saying, “I’m not putting up with this anymore.” Now, in organizations with strong cultures, people want to go back there and be with their people again. Sure, we’ve learned that we can split our workloads. Some stuff can be done virtually and some can’t.

I’m really concerned about this because people can’t lose connection. We’re human beings. We’ve got to be connected. It’s also very divisive. I’m on the board of a company in Cincinnati called Gorilla Glue and great company, great culture. There are 300 or 400 people working on a production floor making glue. They can’t do that in their bathroom and their bedroom at home. They’ve got to go to work every day. Yet there are people in the office who are given the privilege of not coming to work anymore.

What’s the great divide? Fortunately, they have a great culture and the people are coming back or did go back to the office because they value collaboration. They valued connection. Our role as leaders is to be able to what I say fill in the blank. “Adam’s leaving home this morning. He’s running out the door. He gives his husband, wife, or significant other a high five and says, ‘I cannot wait to be together with this group of people today because we are going to,’ fill in the blank.” What is the fill-in-the-blank? We can’t lose this connection. It’s something that we’ve really got to think hard about. That’s where some leaders have got to be brave. I think the narrative is wrong when they say, “People aren’t as productive when they’re working at home.”

 

They’re more productive, but what they’re not, they’re not more entrepreneurial working at home. They’re not as innovative as working at home. You’ve got to get together with people and you’ve got to have that conversation and kick the thing around and what if and this and that and whatever. Also, as leaders, I think about when I was in WD-40, I wanted to see my leaders perform. How did they interact with people in person? How did they motivate? That’s what they needed.

Yes, culture is more important now than it ever has been. There’s more positive conversation around it. I think organizations understand how important it is because if you come down to the dollars and cents, Adam, you and I could get together and write a really good strategic plan for an organization and we might take it to a smart professor and say, “Mark this up.”

He says, “Adam, Garry, good strategic plan. You’ve got a very clear path to where you want to go. You looked at the market, you looked at the kickers and the killers. Go and execute, thank you. 70 out of 100 for your strategic plan.” If only 30% of the people that are in our organization, Adam, go to work every day and positive about executing against that plan because they know they matter, they know they belong, they’re making choices and they’re getting developed, 30 times 70 is 2,100. If 80% of the people motivated belong, 80 times 70 is 5,600.

Leaders are spending a disproportionate amount of their time on what’s our strategy, but not enough time on how do we increase the will of the people to ensure we have a very effective execution. That’s it. It’s that simple. We proved it. I’m not an academic, I’m a practitioner and we proved it. We had 93% employee engagement, 98% of our people said they’d love to work at the company. We 6x-ed our revenue and we took the market cap of the company, a public company, from about $300 million to about $3.5 billion. A compounded annual growth rate, a total shareholder return of 15% a year. We never laid off one person over a 25-year period.

We’re a group of people that came together to protect and feed each other. We took the brand to 176 countries around the world. We just sell oil in a can. In fact, that wasn’t true. Our purpose was we were in the memories business. We existed to create positive, lasting memories by solving problems and helping people. I’m the dumbass. I am the Dean of Dumbassery.

CEO Compensation And People-First Values

I’m going to ask you a question and you can punt on this one. I’m questioning my mind even if I want to go here, but I’m going to ask anyway. I’m curious whether you think CEO compensation or comp packages for more than just ceos for other senior level executives, gets in the way of taking care of putting people first? There’s a lot of companies who are part of their values, their mission, vision, values. They talk about the importance of their people.

Yet when markets change, when they contract, when there’s headwinds, as we hear from time to time, the first thing that happens is that there are exercises, sometimes they’re called. Reorganization exercises that that amount to people losing their jobs. Back in the day when I was an attorney and practicing in the employment space, they were called reductions in force.

I don’t even know that they use those terms anymore, frankly. They’re constantly changing these terms to describe the incidents of people being brought on board, being told, “This is your home here. We’re a family. We’re all going to collaborate to create a result together.” We go through these cycles where people are routinely let go of and then rehired. I think it’s incredibly inefficient and ultimately tremendously more costly to those organizations because of what they lose in the way of innovation and engagement. So many other things, not to mention just the cost of replacing good people.

Yet it goes on all the time and it’s going on right now. I’m just curious whether you think somehow or another, there’s something structurally wrong in the way organizations are. I’m speaking of ones that have shareholders, that have stakeholders, public stakeholders in particular, that gets in the way of putting the people first when ultimately to keep people.

I don’t know whether you ever went through a period, Garry, where keeping that record intact of not letting anybody go that I’m sure you had disciplinary issues and things at times too, but to not have done it the other way might have gotten in the way of the bottom line, might have impacted shareholder value temporarily. I got to believe that was true. How’d you navigate that with your board of directors? You know what I’m getting at here and I don’t know whether we should go here, but it’s just one of those things I think about from time to time.

We were there to build an enduring company over time. We never gave quarterly guidance. We gave annual guidance. We’re not going to run our business on 90-day intervals. I can’t do that. I’m not that smart. We went through times and in 2008, 2009, the Great Recession. Option A, we lay people off because we don’t know what’s going to happen or we took a stance. We said, “We would much prefer that all of us suffer a little than a few of us suffer a lot. We’re all going to do something to protect all of us.” We did. We had a salary freeze, and we all did it from the top down. Everybody did it.

In fact, we had our top leadership probably suffer a little more than everybody else, but that’s okay. We all kept our jobs and when it was all over, we thrived. We came out of that and we were on fire because we were ready and we didn’t have to do what you just said, which is reeducate, reequip the brain drain that we would’ve lost.

You regained trust.

I was criticized or I got the most negative feedback I ever got at the company for our people were, “We don’t have enough people.” I said, “We may not have enough, but we have enough to guarantee that we can go through good times and bad times and you are safe.” Yeah, we are going to do it a little bit. Maybe we are doing a little bit more than we need to, but I think a lot of leaders get out over their skis and they over equip their people or the people.

One of the things that I did was approve every new hire because I said I was not going to let us be responsible for exactly what you just said. Someone joined us, and six months later, we had to let them go because we couldn’t afford them. We have no right to mess with people like that. No right whatsoever. If I thought we were going to go through a period of time where we may not be able to support the number of people we had, I would put a hiring freeze on and say, “We’re going to stop here for a minute and just make sure, but at the end of the day, if we go through a hard time, everyone’s still going to be here.”

Do you think Wall Street would put up with that? How do you think that would be met nowadays? How long have you been out of the seat at this point?

Two years. I think you’ve got to pick your shareholders. We picked people in the end. I have sat across from fund managers and said, “Please do not buy our stock because what you want, I can’t give you. We’re going to be in conflict.” If you look at the shareholders of our company that ended up being long-term shareholders, they were the ones that did accept what we were doing. A couple of our largest shareholders said, “I never look at quarterly results. What I’m looking at is strategy, culture and execution over time. Now you better deliver, otherwise they’re gone as well.” They give you the time to do it. If I was sitting with a fund manager and all they want to know is are you going to meet the quarter or buy a penny, I’d say, “Don’t buy a stock.”

I think the latest thing that made me think about this and why I asked the question was I finished the book Shoe Dog. I don’t know if you’ve read or heard about that, but it’s a memoir by Phil Knight and the founder of Nike. I won’t give it away. It’s really part of the book that it wasn’t called Nike in the first twelve years or something. I recommend the book.

At the end of the book, it’s almost a postscript. He says that of all the things that they did right, there were plenty of things they did wrong. The only thing he has, and I don’t remember he used the word shame, felt ashamed, but he definitely felt like this was a regret of his. During his tenure, he had one layoff that was substantial, like 1,500 people or something.

Even to that point, many years later, that was the thing that he looks back on and, and regrets that. He took responsibility, at least in the book anyway. He took ownership of the fact that had he been a better manager, he’d been able to operate in a more effective way that that might not have needed to have happened. I have not been in a role as with that many employees, but having a number of employees. I think the hardest thing in our business was not a publicly traded one, but there are times when you literally wake up in the middle of the night worrying about a lot of stuff

Every day. You know that your actions can affect thousands of people. Remember what the Dalai Lama said? “Our purpose in life is to make people happy. If we can’t make them happy, at least don’t hurt them.” Do you think that didn’t ring in my head every day? That means you had to make hard decisions. Leadership is a heart of gold and a backbone of steel. No good deed goes unpunished. You have to be like that.

Leadership is a pot of gold and a backbone of steel. No good deed goes unpunished. Share on X

It’s interesting that on September 1st, 2022, the day that I was not CEO anymore, it was that day that I actually realized what a huge responsibility I had up until August 31st. I woke up that morning, it’s like, “It’s different.” I did it for 25 years. Most CEOs don’t last 25 years. That was because I was a dumbass.

Key Advice For CEOs

Alright, we’ll all beg to differ at this point. The last question I just want to ask, I could keep you here all day and I’m sure people reading wish I’d do that, too. Garry, you’re coaching ceos. Our company WorkWell works on the organizational development side of things. We also work with senior leaders. Rarely do we work directly with the CEO. They are usually brought in by CHRO or in the learning development function or some other areas.

I’m curious because we’re always working at the level of culture. When you are speaking to a CEO and you’re coaching one and you’re trying to keep it simple for them, I know you have that beautiful list of ingredients that go into the Petri dish. If there’s one thing that you tell a CEO, this is the not negotiable here. You have to make sure you are looking in on this, that you have to be impeccable in this one area, is there one thing that just you harp on that you remind that you are redundant with them about?

It’s not about you. It’s about how you help those you have the privilege to lead. Be comfortable, but with being consciously incompetent and probably wrong and roughly right. Realize that you need all the help you can get.

Thank you for helping us out, Garry. I just so appreciate your time and your thoughts, your insight, just who you are. We appreciate it.

Thank you so much. Thank you for what you do and you’re helping getting the word out there, that culture is so important.

—

Yes. As promised, Garry Ridge. What a good human, as my dear friend Janine would say. We got to talk about culture at a deep level, a personal level. We really dove into the way Garry sees culture, his philosophy and why it matters, these ingredients that go into that Petri dish to create a culture, what that looks like. Ultimately, the through line of it all, I think, is making it about others. It’s not about you. That being the statement that he made to himself that he learned along the way, not initially perhaps, but in his own experiences in making mistakes as a leader, as a CEO of a massive organization, global enterprise, a publicly traded company that really took care of its people, but also took care of its stakeholders. It really fulfilled its mission on all levels, I would say, during his 25-year tenure and 35 years in total with the company.

Really, that place of humility that it’s not about me, it’s how I help other people. As a leader, how do I help other people be better? I think that’s the crucial question for all of us in our roles in any organized enterprise, whether it’s entrepreneurial, whatever it might be, whether it’s for-profit or not-for-profit. Whether it’s inside an organization of some size or even one that’s quite small, we have to focus on how do we make other people better.

I love the way he described this, that we’re looking to bring out the best in others, not to mark their paper, but to help them to get an A. It’s a very simple distinction, but for me anyway, I hear that and I understand it in an instant the difference between marking somebody’s paper, grading somebody’s paper is a part of your style of leadership or management and working alongside them next to them to help them to get an A, to get a better grade.

Just the difference there. Ultimately, how we do that and how we bring that to life, even through challenging times, is an art form. It’s something that requires practice. As with any other art, we must practice it and to ultimately perform it. I absolutely just loved this conversation. I’m sure you did as well. If you did, in fact, please share it with friend or family member, colleague, etc. Let us know what you think by going to AdamMarkel.com/podcast and leave your comments there.

Give us a rating on the platform that you’re consuming this show. Five stars is fantastic. We love that as well. All of these things are helpful. We appreciate you for taking the time to do them, to provide us with your absolutely invaluable feedback. I’ll just say once again, how much we appreciate you being a part of this community.

We’d love to support you in any way that we can. Let us know if you’d like to get access to any of our curated assessments. They’re very unique and special. One in particular, the culture assessment is one that we don’t make available just publicly. If you want to gain access to that culture assessment for you or for team or organization, just reach out to us at Team@WorkWellLabs.com. We can give you access to that.

The Resilient Leader Assessment is made public. If it’s for you, if it’s for a member of your team or others, feel free to share that as well. All you need to do is go to RankMyResilience.com and you’ll get a confidential report. It takes just three minutes. It’s truly remarkable. You’ll even get to see some changes, some trajectory changes, perhaps, over time where your resiliency levels are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually speaking. For now, anyway, I will just say ciao. Once again, thank you so much.

 

Important Links

• The Learning Moment
• The One-Minute Manager
• Helping People Win at Work
• Any Dumb Ass Can Do It
• Shoe Dog
• WorkWell Email
• RankMyResilience.com
• Garry Ridge LinkedIn

 

About Garry Ridge

Garry Ridge is a purpose-driven founder, board member, advisor, and professor with an impressive 35-year track record of leading, growing, and transforming global businesses and brands. His purpose? I help leaders build cultures of belonging where love, forgiveness, and learning inspire a happier, more connected world.