Episode 9 - Garry Ridge and the WD-40 Company Culture

I'm excited to introduce you to Garry Ridge. Garry has 25 years of experience as the Chairman and CEO of WD 40 company. Garry's philosophy on company culture is based on Aristotle's quote, pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. turning that into action. He believes that all leaders can create a workplace where you go to work each day, contribute to something bigger than yourself, learn something new, feel safe, are protected and provided freedom by a set of values and go home happy. He is passionate about the learning and empowering organizational culture he has helped established at the WD 40 company.

Check out these highlights: 
2:30  What is WD-40 Company Culture?
3:28 Imagine if work was about something bigger than you? It's about people, purpose and value. 
5:33  Importance of Trust and the Culture Petri Dish
10:12 Importance of leadership
13;35 Hire for values
19:34 Expressions of appreciation
22:06 Purpose in life it to make people happy
25:58 Accountability
28:46 Companies have the opportunity to make a positive difference in the world. 

Thanks for listening. Grab the book the podcast is based on at https://mybook.to/culturesecrets . Check out my website www.chelliephillips.com for more great content. Follow me on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Chellie Phillips: 0:06

If workplace culture is your jam, you're in the right place. Check out this episode of culture secrets, the podcast dedicated to creating workplaces for both employees and the company's thrive. Welcome to another episode of the culture secrets podcast. I'm your host Chellie Phillips, and this week, I'm excited to introduce you to Garry Ridge. Garry has 25 years of experience as the Chairman and CEO of WD 40 company. He's also an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego, where he teaches the principles and practices of corporate culture and a Master's of Science in Executive Leadership Program. Garry's philosophy on company culture is based on Aristotle's quote, pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. turning that into action. He believes that all leaders can create a workplace where you go to work each day, contribute to something bigger than yourself, learn something new, feel safe, are protected and provided freedom by a set of values and go home happy. He is passionate about the learning and empowering organizational culture he has helped established at the WD 40 company. In 2009. He co authored a book with Ken Blanchard outlining his effective leadership techniques titled helping people win at work, a business philosophy called don't mark my paper helped me get an A, he's a native of Australia, and he holds a certificate in modern retailing and a Master's of Science in executive leadership from the University of San Diego, I want you to stop for a minute and consider the WD 40 is employee engagement scores, they consistently remained above 90% 98% of their employees say they love to tell people they work at WD 41 99% believe their opinions and values are a good fit for the organization. 93% of their employees report that the organization encourages employees to continually improve in their jobs, another 97% indicate they're clear on the company goals and 93% say they're excited about the direction that WD 40 is in the overwhelmingly positive picture, WD 40. Companies employees love working there, they're engaged, and they're optimistic about their future with the company. So how can you replicate this same cultural experience in your workplace? I'm glad you asked, stick around for the next 30 minutes. And listen, as Gary shares a few words of wisdom with us. And just kind of a little nutshell, kind of can you give me the the overview of what the WD 40 culture is that you've created there? Now?

Garry Ridge: 2:30

Yeah, basically, it's a culture that's based on a couple of beliefs. One of the beliefs is that one of the biggest desires we have as human beings is to belong. And most organizations don't create cultures where people actually feel like they belong, making a contribution to something bigger than themselves. So it's based on belonging, purpose, values, and learning, which we believe are four of the most important elements of building a connection and culture. And that ties

Chellie Phillips: 3:01

right in with what we're seeing. Now, in a lot of the studies where people want to do meaningful work, they want to know their work matters. And they want to be able to see themselves as part of the success that an organization has. So when you first wrote this, what were some of the internal signs maybe that you realized, if other CEOs are looking at this? What are some of the things that they might see where they stop and think I might need to take a look at what's happening inside our organization.

Garry Ridge: 3:28

So let me make this statement. And then I'll kind of expand out, I heard me say it before, if you've listened to any of my podcasts, but imagine a place where you go to work every day, you make a contribution to something bigger than yourself, you learn something new, you're protected and set free by a compelling set of values, and you go home happy. So if I unpack that a little bit, you know, I think simply you need to look at what elements of that statement are not embedded or lived within the organization. So does your organization have a clearly understood purpose and when I say clearly understood purpose, you know, WD 40. Our purpose is to create memories, which is if you look at our purpose statement, We exist to create positive lasting memories. And we do that by solving problems in factories, homes, and workshops around the world. So we're in the memories business. Now. You might want to say that we're in the squeaks business, but that's not really a purpose. So again, you've got to take what do you do? And Simon cynics, your work is great about this. It's not about what you do. It's about why you do it and how you do it. So why we exist is to do what we did and how we do it is by creating a a culture of learning and teaching that delivers a highly engaged workforce who live our company's values every day. So I had a model that I put together and it's people Purpose values. And then you have strategy and execution, which is where most organizations spend most of their time. And then you have learning. And learning is so important because learning is the fuel to passion for everybody. So you have to create a safe learning environment,

Chellie Phillips: 5:17

one of the things I keep hearing is, is safe. It's a place where you feel valued and values are important. So that brings me back to this this element of trust that has to be there. How important is that? And how can you start building that into the fabric of your organization?

Garry Ridge: 5:33

Trust is extremely important. And number one, it comes from leadership in leadership, is the leaders ego, eating their empathy, instead of their empathy eating their ego. So your ego is the opposite to trust at vulnerability, are we comfortable being vulnerable? Do we care about our people, which means that not only in Word, but indeed, we love our people enough not only to applaud them and reward them for doing great work, but we're brave enough as leaders to redirect them when their behavior is working against growing great culture. You know, when I went to school back in Australia, many years ago, my science teacher gave me a petri dish, and the science teacher said, We're gonna grow culture in this petri dish. So what's important important is what are the ingredients that you're putting in the petri dish, are you putting in the right ingredients, those of which you and I have just been kind of talking about, that's important, then well, then what's important that you watch that petri dish every day, and that you feed the ingredients that grow great culture, and you extract the ingredients that don't great go a great culture. So I have an algorithm that I kind of adapted from some of Simon cynics work that says culture equals parentheses, values plus behavior, close parenthesis, times consistency. So you've got to have the ingredients, you've got to have the behaviors, and you've got to pay attention to it every day, every day, every day.

Chellie Phillips: 7:09

And I think in doing some of the research, that's kind of where people stall out, as far as they realize or recognize that there might be an issue and they want to do some work for it. So they have a lot of discussion about it. And they come up with some catch fake phrases, or maybe they give it a name. But after a couple of months, and they roll it out, it kind of goes by the wayside, kind of like our you know, all the mission statements that go on on the wall, and nobody reads them when they come in anymore. As a CEO and leadership team, how important and how do you go about adding that as a driver every day when you show up at the office?

Garry Ridge: 7:42

Well, two ways. One is, it's embedded in the talent development program, or what a lot of people would call our review system, you know, we have that our values as part of our regular conversations with our we call call ourselves a tribe with our tribe members on an ongoing basis. And we ask them, our people to share with us how in the last 90 days, have they lived our values. And we only have two measurements of values. You either live them or you visit them. And we say we don't want a lot of visitors when embedding this norm in the things that we do. Our values are not you know, this thing, as you said, framed up on a wall that people point to value should be on a very coffee stained piece of paper that is referred to and used all the time to help make decisions. So you know, people you've got to adopt, adapt. And a lot of people adopt something, a training program, they adapt it, I call that fairy dust, they sprinkle it over the business, but they forget that if they don't embed it in behavior, the fairy dust will evaporate. And it'll be on to the next, you know, shiny coin of what leadership program do we do? Because we think if we do this leadership program, it'll change everything. Well, it doesn't. And the reason it doesn't is because we live in a in a very fluid world, even more so than ever today. So you know, we're, we're, you know, if you're flying an aeroplane, you have headwinds and tailwinds. And you can you can maneuver through that, because it's either pushing you back or forward. But what we have today is a lot of turbulence and turbulence is unexpected. So you can't take your eyes off the controls any more around culture, you've got to be watching it all the time, because there is turbulence that's going to move it around.

Chellie Phillips: 9:37

He brought up something that made me think of when I was talking with Panasonic, one of the things that they talked about was making sure that their entire leadership team was on board with this and that they had to unfortunately make the hard decision to let some go after they they were not adopting the program and they were not living up to the standards that they had put in there with coaching and different things like that. How important is it going into that program to realize that you may actually have people there who are a detriment to your culture, and being willing to actually cut loose some of those and make those big decisions.

Garry Ridge: 10:12

Extremely important. And that's where it falls down. If in our leadership team, you either, you know, adopt, adapt and embed our culture, or we'll share you with a competitor. And you know, I don't know whether you read the article that I wrote on put on LinkedIn called The Great Escape, but you know, it's, it's people are escaping to or from cultures these days, this has been going on forever. And, you know, I think that and that's why our our measurement system, our employee engagement surveys, all of the work we do has been so important, because we have to be continually measuring. And particularly in the senior leadership group, if you know, if you don't want to be on this path with us, it's okay, you're a great person, it's okay. If you don't want to be you're not happy here. So go be happy somewhere else. But this is what we're going to do

Chellie Phillips: 11:02

that that's so vital, is making sure that everybody is speaking from the same same voice so that you know, everybody's hearing it, it's not, you know, it's not just being tongue in cheek, and it's just something we're checking a box and doing well.

Garry Ridge: 11:14

You know, when I talked about the petri dish, if someone in the leadership team that is not accepting the culture as a norm is a toxin in that petri dish. And if you don't pull it out real quick, it'll turn the whole petri dish sour. That's what I mean, by watching that petri dish, you've got to be brave enough, you've got to love your people enough. And Noah said, You've got to be brave enough to redirect behavior. And if that behavior in the petri dish is sending it sour, if you cannot redirect the behavior or corrected, then you have to take it out. Or you have to be prepared to look at that petri dish tomorrow morning, and see a big sour mess, because that's how quickly it can change.

Chellie Phillips: 11:58

I think, and one of the articles that I read that someone had written about you and the culture that y'all are creating, it said that when you started this, you had an HR department that was only three people. And I think sometimes people get hung up on that, oh, we have to have masses of people being involved in something to be able to make a an impact or make some kind of shift. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Garry Ridge: 12:19

You know, what you need to be as deliberate and focused, and we couldn't afford much more than we had at the time. And we built it up over time. So what did we start with? We started with measuring what we needed to measure, which was our employee engagement, we then looked at areas that we wanted to improve on. And then over time, you know, now we have, I don't know how many people globally in our organizational development group, probably 30, probably probably 10 times, but we're probably eight times larger as a company. But, you know, we just said, where do we want to start? And we started out, do we have a clearly defined purpose? And do we have a clearly defined set of values that protect people and set them free? That's where we started. And we worked on that. And we started to embed it in the organization.

Chellie Phillips: 13:05

And it touched on something a few minutes ago, when you were talking about people leaving culture, especially now we're talking like with the great resignation, or the you know, realignments, or especially this what's happened over the last couple of years, thanks to COVID, and different things like that. I think it really has made people very conscious of is this where I want to be for the next 1015 years down the road? And you also mentioned hiring deliberately, and and making some of those choices. So when you're hiring for culture, what are some of the key things that you look for in someone?

Garry Ridge: 13:35

Well, if you ever go to our careers page, you'll see that what it points you to is our values. So we hire for values alignment first. And we do that by having meaningful conversations with the people to try and understand what they stand for what they don't stand for. And so, you know, I can teach anybody with a certain level of competency to do something better in a function. However, it's the values alignment that's so important to us. And you know, in in later times, people are coming to us because they want to be in an organization that has been seen to be one where it respects their people, and the culture is strong. So you get referrals and redirections. And we didn't have the great escape, and we don't have a huge issue. Now having finding people to come and work in the organization because we have such a high reputation for having a culture where we come, you know, our cultural promises a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other. That's why we come together. And you know, over the many 25 years, we've never laid anybody off in any downturn at all. We've all been, you know, we've been able to maintain our position in fact, through COVID We have some of the best results we've ever had in our life. And it's because you know, people Well, we're work going home every night worried about, you know, am I going to be able to feed my kids or pay for my doctor?

Chellie Phillips: 15:06

I think that's one thing too. Sometimes management or leadership gets hung up on culture is maybe a fufu kind of concept, but it can have a dramatic effect on the success, profitability productivity inside an organization. Can you touch on that a little bit,

Garry Ridge: 15:22

we've proven it. We've proven it, you know, we've got a an employee engagement of 93% 98% of our people say they love to tell people they work at the company. 97% say they feel their values are aligned with the company's values. 97% of our people say that they respect their coach, who was actually their boss, because we don't have managers, we have coaches, because the job of a leader is to help those they lead play a better game. So we've got all those great measures. And by the way, over a 20 year period, we've taken the value of our company from about $300 million to nearly $3 billion. And we've increased our revenue more than six times. And we've been able to do that by taking our brand to 176 countries around the world. So if you think about it, all we do is sell oil in the can. So you know, why would anybody be passionate about selling oil in a camp because we don't sell oil. And again, we sell memories we sell, you know, a place where people learn, grow, and feel like they belong. And that's one of the biggest challenges as organizations, people, if people don't feel like they'll belong, they'll leave. You know, you, me and anybody else we know, has has, at some time in their life left the company, a relationship or a party. Why? Because they didn't feel like they belong. And that's our job is to help people feel and it's not about free pizzas, popcorn and candy. It's not about that it's deeper than that. This is simple. It's not easy. And time is not your friend.

Chellie Phillips: 16:54

Can you elaborate on that when you say time is not your friend? What do you mean?

Garry Ridge: 16:58

Consistency, you, you do not build a strong, enduring culture in six months, it takes and you've got to set the foundation and you've got to work on it every day, every day, every day. And once you start not working on the toxins get in the petri dish.

Chellie Phillips: 17:16

Speaking of that, we always like to look at what are some of the potential roadblocks that someone might encounter when they start looking at the culture inside an organization? Can you talk about any that you might have experienced as you're growing the culture inside WD 40?

Garry Ridge: 17:30

This won't work. This is all soft stuff. This is you know, you've been drinking too much of Ken Blanchard's Kool Aid, you know, it's really all about the numbers. You can't prove it. We can't afford this. This program? Yeah, we push the random excuse generator, because that's what they come up with. And the reason it's naivety really, because they don't really know. I mean, and some people, you know, it's the ego egos probably one of the biggest things that I think about, I don't know, if you've ever seen me with this, I invented this person. This is our soul sucking CEO, you know, an owl must always be right. He's a micromanager. He has all the answers his corporate royalty, you know, he's always you know, when things go wrong, that he blames others, he hates feedback, you know, all of the stuff that happens with leadership's in an organization are roadblocks, because it's the ego getting in the way.

Chellie Phillips: 18:25

Do you find roadblocks to be mostly in the management level or with employees? That were employees more afraid of the change? Or were they more willing to accept and kind of embrace it and go with it?

Garry Ridge: 18:37

In the beginning, it was, oh, I don't believe that you're going to continue this? I think it was doubt more than anything else, like, Sure, you'll get this? Yes, we've seen this before. So I think it was more doubt. That's why I say time is not your friend, you have to you have to show the people you lead, that you do have a harder goal. But you also do have a backbone of steel. You know, it's you've got to show care and Canada at the same time. Now,

Chellie Phillips: 19:09

I know there's a lot of people today that are looking at making career transitions and different things like that, because maybe they're not in a place where they feel that value or they feel that they have the role. If you were sitting down with someone who was looking to make a career shift, what are some of the things that you would tell them that these are what you should look for for a company where you will be valued or where you'll have input or where you'll feel like you can grow and develop as an individual.

Garry Ridge: 19:34

So the obvious things you would look for is true expressions of appreciation of the people practically I would go in and watch people coming and going to work at the organization every day and do they run in legally or do they limp in slowly and when they leave at the end of the day? Are they're smiling or are they speeding out of the parking lot? That's really the culture you know, what's the organ Association saying, but then what is the organization doing? What does the leadership look like? How do they behave? You know, those are the that's the sort of stuff. They'd be talking to people inside the company and say, What's it like to work here? You know, I don't I don't really believe things like Glassdoor, etc, so much, because you know, they can become, I call it people yelling from the bleachers with masks on, there's always going to be, you cannot please all the people all the time, and no good deed goes unpunished. So there are always going to be people yelling from the bleachers with masks on, but do they have a clearly defined set of values that are understandable? Is there a true purpose? You know, what are they doing as far as learning and teaching? Do they value learning? Those are the sorts of things that I would be kind of on my radar.

Chellie Phillips: 20:53

And one of the things that you mentioned, we're talking about through the survey that you've done over the course of time is, it sounds to me that the employees have become brand advocates for the organization themselves, which is a definite part that you would want to get out of, you know, a culture shift? How are you encouraging employees to have their voice and talk about the organization? I know, there's a lot of companies these days that, oh, I don't want my employees on social media, I don't want them doing these kinds of things. How are they having their voice and sharing the message for you?

Garry Ridge: 21:26

We don't encourage them, they do it because they're proud of it. So you know, we don't run contests and incentives to help people get out there and voice positively about it. But you know, our people, our tribe members genuinely love talking about the memories we create for other people. Because we do it with a sincere heart.

Chellie Phillips: 21:47

Hello, that I read somewhere about that you actually got so caught up in this, you actually went back and got your master's in leadership, what what is it about leadership itself that you think are is key and vital to being able to create a culture shift inside the organization?

Garry Ridge: 22:06

It's not about you, it's about the people you lead. And it's not about you. You know, when I was given the privilege to lead the company back in 1997, long time ago, 25 years ago, I was scared, but I wasn't afraid. But what I did, I was reading some of the work of the Dalai Lama on a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney, actually. And he made a statement, our purpose in life is to make people happy. If we can't make them happy, at least I'd hurt them. And what I saw around me, not necessarily in my company, but around in leadership was leaders hurting people. And I didn't understand why they were doing that I didn't have the answer. And at the same time, I read a statement of Aristotle, where he said pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. And I thought to myself, Okay, if we were able to create a culture where we didn't hurt people, we actually helped them and they'd liked what they're doing. My simplistic brain said, I think that's a good thing. But I didn't know how to do it. So I looked around. And I fortunately fell on to this program at the University of San Diego, which was a master of science and executive leadership. And it wasn't your typical MBA, I didn't need an MBA, I knew most of what I knew. But this, Ken Blanchard, who was one of the architects of the program, made this statement, he said, most MBA programs, get people in the head, we got to start getting people in the heart. And I thought, I think I like that. So I applied and I was submitted, and I did that master's program. And you know, Ken, who's a dear friend of mine, I ended up being on his board for 10 years after we got to know each other. I wrote a book with him, as you probably know, he's my he was my mentor. And you know, he's the, he's the guru of servant leadership. And I just took a lot of what he and the program taught. And I started to play with it in the organization. And it started to work. And that's where it all came together.

Chellie Phillips: 24:09

So you've kind of continued that, that same thought pattern from what I've, from what I've by creating your own internal leadership academy. Is that Yeah, can you explain a little bit about how that works?

Garry Ridge: 24:20

Yeah, it's called Tribology. Interestingly enough, tribe-ology is actually the scientific study of friction. But we liked the word because it applied to the product or the stop friction with our products. Tribe-ology- we call ourselves a tribe. It was kind of cute. And what we've basically done is taken from the MBA from the sorry, master's program I did, we've sent 30 plus people through the same program. So 30 people in the organization have drunk that same Kool Aid have master's degrees in leadership from the University of San Diego or something equivalent there where we found that so we've we've embedded that in the lead worship team and one of the requirements of doing have been granted that scholarship from the company is you will become a faculty member of our tribology leadership lab as we call it on graduation. And then we take elements of the program that are appropriate. And we teach it right through the organization in different classes, different ways. It's, it's evolved over time. Now, of course, a lot of its hybrid and virtual, but it's really become very much part of what we do in the organization. I read

Chellie Phillips: 25:30

somewhere that one of the big focuses of that is accountability. And accountability seems to be one of the hardest pieces when you're putting together these programs, because everybody assumes that there. In your case, their coach, or their supervisor was the one who's actually accountable. While they might have a chore to do, the ultimate outcome falls on someone else. So how do you go about shifting that mindset inside an organization where each person becomes accountable for their own piece of

Garry Ridge: 25:58

it? Well, first thing is to define what they're accountable for most people let people down, because we haven't been clear around defining what we're gonna hold each other accountable for. And it was the book that I wrote with Ken Blanchard, which is called Helping people win at work. The timeline is a business philosophy around not marking people's papers, but helping them get an A. And the first definition is what is an ad look like? So one of the things that's very important in our organization is that we define A's. So if I'm your coach, we'll sit down at the beginning of the year. And we'll say, let's look at you know, your role, what your key components of your role are, what are the three to five most important and what isn't a look like if they walked in the room today? What would it look like, and my job as your coach is to help you get that A. So if you think of a great coach, great coaches don't run on the field, great coaches spend time on the sideline, observing the play, they never go in and grab the ball, they never kick the ball, and they never go to the podium. And they also spend a lot of time in the locker room building trust and culture around the team. So if you're a coach at our company, number one, A is a very clearly defined with those that you coach, the responsibility of getting that A is the player, your job is to show them areas where in their play, they prove their play to help show help them get that I and to work with them in the locker room, if you will, to build that trust around those that they work with.

Chellie Phillips: 27:33

I love a coach analogy. And that is so true is you know like everybody having that that clear expectation from the from the get go from the onset of the program. We talked a little bit about measures, you talked about that you'd do employee engagement surveys, different things like that, what are the top five things that you think people should measure inside their organization?

Garry Ridge: 27:55

Well, maybe I would put these in more themes, trust between the groups that they work in, in levels of openness to learning, alignment with values, clear clarity around purpose, those come to mind,

Chellie Phillips: 28:11

all good things. And I know we're running short, because I wanted, I promised I would keep you at 30 minutes, because I know you're busy. But one piece of advice that you would give an organization who was beginning to do digesting what's happening inside their organization and looking at building their culture. Is there a piece of takeaway advice that you would give someone, it's all

Garry Ridge: 28:31

about the people, it's really you've got to start there. It's all about your it's all about the people? What are you going to do? How are you going to behave? To make sure that people go home happy?

Chellie Phillips: 28:42

Anyway, do that? Pretty much in life, we get that right?

Garry Ridge: 28:46

Well, the other reason why it's so rewarding if you think of if you extend that out a little bit happy people, paid happy families, happy families, create happy communities, happy communities, create a happy world. And by golly, we need a happy world. So business has a huge opportunity to make a positive difference in the world today. If we just create cultures that treat people with respect and dignity, that give them the opportunity to learn that they feel like they belong. We have a huge opportunity to make a positive difference in the world. And it's our responsibility. We better do it

Chellie Phillips: 29:26

couldn't agree more. And so, Mr. Garry, I really appreciate you taking your time today and talking with me, and truly appreciate the effort. And if nothing else, I hope they get the takeaway that people are what matters.

Garry Ridge: 29:39

Thank you. It's been my pleasure. Anytime reach out anytime.

Chellie Phillips: 29:42

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening to this episode of the culture secret podcast. Garry was full of advice and information, but he hit on two points that I think are really important. A feeling of belonging is so very key. People want to feel like they're going someplace everyday where they're contributing. into something bigger than themselves. They also want to trust that the company and leadership have their back and care about them as people. If you're interested in learning more about the secrets you can use to build a strong people centered culture in the workplace. Join the waitlist for my book, culture secrets at WWW dot Chellie phillips.com backslash waitlist. You'll be notified when it's available at your favorite bookseller is scheduled to arrive on April 29 2023. If you're listening to this after that date, go ahead and check me out on Amazon and grab your copy now. If you have comments or questions, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. If you like what you heard, I'd love it if you'd subscribe, drop me a rating and share a link with a friend. I'm currently booking for corporate training and workshop presentations. I'd love the chance to work with you and your company. If you're interested, please visit my website at WWW dot Chellie phillips.com That's ch E L L I E P h i ll IP s.com. And remember, building a value culture is your competitive advantage and the backbone of any successful organization.