Episode 10 - Richard Sheridan from Menlo Innovations on Culture

Welcome to the latest episode of my podcast, where we dive deep into the nitty-gritty of workplace culture with the one and only Richard Sheridan! He's the co-founder and CEO of Menlo Innovations, a software company that's famous for its unique and quirky approach to work culture. If you've ever wondered how to make your workplace more productive, fun, and downright delightful, you won't want to miss this episode. So sit back, relax, and get ready to hear Richard's insights on everything from team building to office design, all with his signature wit and charm. This is one podcast you won't want to miss!

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: 0:04

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 the culture secret podcast. I'm your host Chellie Phillips and this week I'm excited to introduce you to Richard Sheridan Rich is an entrepreneur, business leader and author and is best known as the co founder and CEO and chief storyteller of Menlo innovations, a software and IT consulting firm that has earned numerous awards and press coverage for his innovative and positive workplace culture. He's also the author of Chief Joy officer and joy Inc. How he built a workplace people love which I highly recommend you add to your reading list I learned about rich from another guest you've met on my podcast, Kevin Munroe, several years back, Kevin had a book club, and we gathered virtually and chatted about books that made an impact. Kevin even got rich to sit in with the group and talk about his book, that book club made quite an impact. Not only did I begin thinking more intentionally about gratitude, thanks to Kevin's influence, but it opened my eyes to how we view work. Thanks to my introduction to rich and his work rich shared how he'd become disillusioned in the middle of his career. He had an all consuming thought that things can be much better, much, much better. He wanted to know, why couldn't a workplace be filled with camaraderie, human energy, creativity and productivity. He ultimately co founded Menlo innovations in 2001, using a unique custom approach to custom software creation that over 3000 people a year travel from around the world to see how they do it. He's proven that a positive and engaging leadership style can build a culture that is actually good for business rich and his message of joyful leadership have been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, US News and World Report. NPR is onpoint podcast, NPR is all thing considered, and the Harvard Business Review. And now he's here today on the culture secrets podcast, welcome, Rich. The first thing I wanted to talk kind of bring you out was when did you realize that culture is a key element to the success of an organization? You know, I think for me, it was a career path journey where as I went from, you know, direct contributor as a programmer, back in my early days writing software, as I rose up the management ranks, every time I moved up the career ladder, I thought, Oh, here's my chance, I can get things right now I don't have to do all the same stupid things my boss did. And then I'd get up to that perch, and everything looked different from there, suddenly, everything looked a little more difficult. Suddenly, everything was more complicated than I thought it was. And so it may be I had even a little bit of empathy for the person I was calling stupid last week, now that I'm up at the same level and get a different perspective along the way. I think my eternal optimist said, Richard, it's got to be a better way of doing this stuff, right. And so I was drawn to authors and books, and I appreciate that you're writing a book, I've written two of them. And I know how impactful the right kind of books can be to change the world. The books I was drawn to are books, like Peter Drucker's books on management, Peter Singer, his book, The Fifth Discipline on the art and practice building a learning organization, Tom Peters books, you know, all the excellent books that he wrote along the way, I could start to see this pattern. Because a lot of those books would basically do storytelling about other companies that had amazing results. And you could start to see the pattern of oh, it's about the people, the teamwork, the collaboration between those people, I don't know if the word culture back in the 80s. And 90s was actually really a thing back then maybe it was, it was clearly yearning, for creating an atmosphere of camaraderie of human energy of collaboration with the people who work for me, I've had moments like that every now and then. And when they happen, they're magical. And the question I kept having was, how do you get to that point and keep it there? And I think roundabout? Well, 1997, I got promoted to kind of a big leadership position, I was now a VP of r&d for a public company. And

Richard Sheridan: 4:19

my first stupid instinct at that time was just to work harder, just try harder, just do more, you know, be more of a hero than you were, you know, last year. And all I found out was I just got tired doing that. And then route about 9099, after a couple of years as VP and just running as hard as I could trying to heroically move this organization forward. Because now if anything was going wrong in the part of the company I was working for, it was on my plate, and I was never inclined to say, Oh, if we only had better people, I could get them like No, you're the leader. You should be able to do this kind of a moment happened at a click moment, literally where I say So I read a book and I saw a video and I met a guy. Think guy is now my co founder here at Menlo. He was I brought him in as a consultant. The book was the differently organized soccer teams. Jeff's intrigued by it. But the video is really what captured me. It was on an industrial design firm in California called IDEO. And Nightline had done this 30 minute segment on them to watch them as a team, do a fictitious project to redesign the shopping cart and just five days the standard wire basket shopping cart five days, you can actually still watch this video, you can just go on to YouTube and and Google, Ted Koppel, Nightline, the deep dive IDEO and if you just do that you can watch 310 minute segments of this. I'm not even sure I quite realize that what I was watching was a culture. I mean, I came I'm not sure the word hit me yet. But what I saw was what I wanted. I saw this teamwork, this collaboration, the diversity of the thinkers, the energy, the innovation, the new creativity, creative ideas, and everything. And I wanted that I want to dance. So I mean, it just like it just my heart was just aching for that compared to what I've had sort of the previous almost 20 years of my career. And again, you know, I describe my first 20 years of career as my personal trough of disillusionment. But it wasn't horrible. Every day, it was just that when things happen, and they seemed to like clicking, you know, and everything was working, couldn't sustain it. It may be was personality based maybe it's partly my personality. Maybe it was my mood of the day where it was the right combination of people, right combination of projects or something. But I kept thinking there's got to be a better way to make this all work together. Right, like all the time, like, in without heroic effort for me like that I couldn't I could step away for a week's vacation and not come back and have it all broken in pieces on the floor. Like what happened? Did you guys let this happen? That guy was telling you about James Scoble, who is now my co founder was consultant and he started, what we realized was we were reading a lot of the same books, he was going into an MBA program at night. He was a consultant, I brought him to help me do some technical things with my team. But he kept throwing out these really weird ideas. And I kept saying, yes, and then we watched the video together. And he saw what I saw. And he wanted to help me move my team into that direction. And over a two year period, we did it. We created this amazingly energized team that was sustainable, didn't require heroic efforts. For me, it, it was working, it was a process. It was teamwork, it was collaboration, it was trust in it was amazing. And then it was all taken away. In an instant 2001, the internet bubble burst, and it all disappeared in an instant, literally, I lost my job, but they couldn't take away what I had learned in those two years. And what I learned was, you can be intentional about your culture. And one way to do that is set very clear expectations for the people who work for you. And those clear expectations. Aren't the typical bang your fist on the table type expectations, the expectations that we communicated was how are you guys going to behave with each other as peers? What will your relationships be like? What are our expectations for how you treat another human being, and we crafted this in and one of the things I learned along the way through this is and I didn't come to articulate this until just the last few years, maybe five or six years ago that if you're going to create an intentional culture, and I'll just use my word and intentionally joyful culture. And you don't take a deep, hard look at every traditional step of HR, and rework every one of those steps. For instance, recruiting, interviewing, selecting, onboarding, promoting, you know, giving feedback, maybe even firing, if you don't look at all of those components, and rework them to align with your cultural intentions. You'll never accomplish the goal your people processes must match your cultural intention. And so for example, you know, one of the odd things we do here, maybe the strangest thing we do here that, you know, people are just marvel at we get we get three or 4000 visitors a year come from all over the world just to see how everything is happening behind me actually works and how it fits together. We were two people to one computer. They work in pairs. Everybody here works in pairs, and we switch the pairs every five business days. So if you and I pair together for five days, we wouldn't pair again. They're next week, we might come back together again later. But we're going to keep almost like square dancing, we're going to work together all day long at a computer together. So you can imagine, that's a very different way of working, especially for people in the software field. You know, we usually put programmers in what I call sensory deprivation chambers. Headphones on turn the lights down low, be really quiet, because they're thinking, really deep thoughts right now. And you know, here, it's a noisy environment, people are collaborating all day long, they're talking to each other all day long. So we thought, well, you know, the standard interview isn't gonna work, which I described as the way I used to do, it was two people sitting across the table lying to each other for a couple of hours. That was my standard. And then I make some big decision for both of us, you know, I decide to bring you on my team, you decide to quit wherever you are, and come here and work. And it's like, it's all based on a fiction, right? And so then we both hope it works out. And often it doesn't. Well, here, we don't ask any questions during the interview, we make an audition, we pair two candidates with one another. And we have them work together. And we set very clear expectations from the moment of first contact, your job is to help the person sitting next to you get a second interview, and oh, by the way, they're competing for the same position you are. So imagine your brains are like twisting in the wind, like what? No, I want the second interview, why should I help this person succeed? Like, we're teaching your culture from a moment of first contact, our expectation are clear, we believe rational and reasonable expectation is you're here to help another human being succeed. And oh, by the way, it's going to start right here in the interview. And if you can demonstrate good kindergarten skills, if you can play well with others, if you can support another human being, you will get invited in for the second interview. Again, lots of lots of things to probably unpack there. But, you know, for me, I realized people started asking when I wrote joy, that one of the famous things that just because it got repeated over and over again, it was these people come here from all over the world, three or 4000 of them a year. And I believe they're coming to see what does it take to create an intentionally joyful culture. And it's the people processes. It's the actual work processes here. It's no onerous fear based management, system overloading everything it's not, it's an overtime free culture. So we weren't seeing work hours. So we're not and we don't, when people go on vacation, we expect them to cut themselves electronically off from the business, and just enjoy time with their family or whatever. They're doing lots of very different approaches, but all with this really focused mindset. And what would it take if you wanted to create that kind of culture and enjoy the results? What kind of culture produces one of the things you said that really stood out? I mean, you were talking about your partner now that you brought in, you said that you kept throwing out these weird things. And you kept saying, Yes, I think, if you could kind of unpack that a little bit, because I think that what is the role of the leader of the organization, when you are developing a culture and you're trying to create this culture shift that how do you get out of your own head saying, This is what we need, versus Let's try these things and see if they were, you know, like, the, the Russian Matryoshka Dolls that nest in one another after another. I think there's some element of that in this, I got really excited about some new possibilities after I saw that IDEO video. So part of my job as a leader was I had to elicit because this is a public company, I was one of the executives out of many, there were shareholders, there was a board there was, you know, quarterly reports that we edited, deliver to the public, all that sort of thing. So there was a great business responsibility. And we were a tech firm, and I was leading the technology part, the r&d part of the tech firm. So the majority of money that was being spent in a company was being spent on my team, they were counting the shareholders are counting on the results my team produced. So there was a great responsibility on my part, I couldn't just wave a magic wand and say, Okay, we're gonna be joyful. Now, you still got to produce results. And so and I felt like I wasn't really producing the results. So I think the first element of leadership is kind of an active discontent. Just not being satisfied with what's status quo, what's normal, you know, or simply accepting, you know, it's just the way I always think things have to be right. It's just the way they are. So I think that active discontent that says, things can be better. I think that's a really big first moment for any leader is to say, You know what? Yeah, of course you get to translate. Okay, great. Things can be better how? And how are you going to do that? Right? How are you going to make the change. And what I realized the next step was, I had to sell this idea to my peers on the exec team, to my boss, to the board of directors, and actually do a couple of shareholders. The next thing I had to do, and this was a learning moment, for me a big learning moment is I had to stop talking about what I wanted. And I had to start speaking in the language of the people I was selling to. So in other words, I wanted to do some technical things with my team, I wanted to create code in a different way, my boss really didn't care about that, he wanted to see results for the corporation. And so I had this translate my vision, into something that aligned with what he would support. And so that was kind of my next big moment was, when you go to create a cultural transformation, you have to turn into salesperson, you have to communicate its value. You have to communicate why this matters to others, what results you're going to produce for them. As a as a result of whatever culture transformation you're going to go through, then the delightful part happened. And this is the Metro Chanel thing. Let's talk about my boss and how he behaved once I broke through the barrier with him learn to speak his language, he became my most ardent supporter. And I would say I wouldn't be talking with you today. I wouldn't have read written two books on this idea. I wouldn't have created Menlo innovations were it not for Bob Niro's role in my life. Because as soon as I crafted the message in a way that Bob understood, Bob did two things. One, he became my biggest cheerleader. And whenever I slowed down, whenever I doubted, self doubt, because when you're making big changes, it isn't a smooth journey. And it's not a snap your fingers and everything works, right tomorrow. It's a long, tough, hard journey with a lot of unknowns. And you don't know if you're succeeding or not every minute of the day. And Bob would put his gentle hand on my shoulder, and he whispered in my ear, you're doing the right thing. Rich, I've got you covered. Keep going. And I will tell you, I really, really needed that. So what I learned in animal, but from a leadership perspective is if you have someone who's working for you, that's trying to lead some kind of big change, become their heat shield, because change agents are under attack, always. Because the attack is that's not the way we do things here. You know, I was still the new kid on the block at that company interface systems. I'd only been with the company for 16 years at that point. They were like, oh, rich, you don't know how things go here. Because you've only been here for 16 years. And it was absolutely true. I was still pretty much the new kid on the block. I was the youngest executive on the team. Many of the people had been there 2530 years and I still had stuff to learn about how the company work. You know, that was really key. And then I think the really big moment for me happened when I brought my daughter into work with me one day, the my eight year old, that was a take your child that workday moment. And she was eight, she's gonna watch her dad, the VP work. And can you imagine more boring day than that? What on earth would an eight year old see, you know? Is she really going to be inspired to a career run by watching her dad, the VP work right? You know, she cleverly and wisely brought her coloring books, crayons and stickers and sat on my test table all day. Well, I did the work of a VP. But at the end of the day, I thought, well, I better ask her because if teachers can ask her tomorrow, I said, So Sarah, what did you learn today? She said, what I learned and as you're really important here, and what she goes, what I learned is nobody here can make a decision without asking you first. And she was absolutely right. I had created a hero based organization. I was the number one here, the way I got into my position was hero based leadership. And so I had to learn to step back from that. And I think that's another key point for a leader of changes. Let your team leader become their heat shield, right, I had a heat shield microcircuit, right. I had a heat shield above me, I had to build a shield above them. I had to give them the latitude to try things run, as we would call. Now. Here's a memo. One of the most common phrases here is let's run the experiment. Let's try stuff. And let's not get too upset if this stuff we tried doesn't work. And what I love about the word experiment is it almost gives you permission to not succeed. Because you can later say Well, yeah, it didn't work, but it was just an experiment. And I think if we sometimes there are simple ways Language things we can do as leaders to defuse the fear of trying stuff that doesn't work out. And for us that phrase, there's two phrases, but three phrases we use here a lot. One is make mistakes faster. And the real emphasis is on the word faster. Because nobody likes to make mistakes. But if you make them quickly and find them out when they're small, you can correct them before they kill. You know, number two is let's run the experiment. So let's try new stuff. And number three, is, it's okay to say, I don't know, acknowledging that there's a ton to learn. We're not gonna know everything, and we're gonna go run experiments and do things we don't know how to do. And that's okay. And yep, mistakes are gonna happen along the way. And I think by setting ourselves up with repeated language from leaders, all the way down to frontline, you created a spirit, attitude and energy within a team. That basically becomes that thing Carol Dweck talked about in her books, the growth mindset, you know, there's the difference between the people say, I can't do this, versus the people say, I can't do this yet. And as soon as we get to the ability to add the words yet, on the end of every sentence, when we say I can't play piano, yet, I'm not an artist, yet, right? It opens up a whole world of possibilities in the system. I wonder what it would take. And then I will tell you just recently, the last year or so I've learned an important a huge lesson about yet. From my now two, almost three year old granddaughter, Colette, who we call Coco. Two year olds try stuff all the time, right? She is, she's a wild child. She climbs stuff, he does crazy things, but she keeps trying stuff. And as soon as like if she gets on a scooter, and then she, you know gets it to work, right at the end, she'll go, I did it. And I watch her do this. And I thought, that is an amazingly important phrase for all human beings. Because there's always stuff that we do as humans, or like, I learned how to do that. And if we just at the end, when we tried something new, and it worked, oh God as soon as I did it, and that has actually become a mantra for me in in things outside of work. I bought a pontoon boat this summer, I've never had a boat before. And you got to learn how to do things with a boat. And when I learned how to do things, I'm like, I did it. And it just it's like, it's an amazing sort of release of that learning tension that happens all the time where you're like, I don't want to do this, I don't know how to do that. And it just increases your confidence, for trying to learn new things, which is ultimately what I think all leaders need within their organizations. If you're going to move an organization forward, you're going to create an intentionally positive culture, joyful culture in our world. You need people trying stuff and celebrating those small victories every step of the way.

Chellie Phillips: 23:07

I love that in my in my first book that I did I talk about inserting celebration into life, because we focus on get it done, get it done, get it done, get it done, get it done. And then it's on to the next thing, and you don't take that moment to really Oh, what did I do? What did I accomplish, and let's celebrate it before we move on. I have this story in there about beating the impossible for me, it was a half marathon. I am clearly not a runner, but I did it. And it's funny how it makes that shift in your mind, have you beat one thing that you call impossible for you that it becomes that, oh, if I did that I can do this. I can try this I can move forward and that kind of thing. So I just love that that. I love that. I love that I did it. I can see her in my mind just jumping around going. I'm just excited that I did it. I'm definitely gonna focus on that a little bit in this

Richard Sheridan: 23:55

stillness, natural, right. And so the question is that somehow is becoming an adult? And can we get back to and I will just simply say, there's these things that have happened just in the past year in my life that I had to figure out how to do something I'd never figured out before. And when I switched to I did it, the learning moments became a joy, not a burden. I love that. One of the things I hear a lot too is like when I'm talking with some different people about what is culture is that they seem to confuse their mission statement with what culture is, you know, your culture, isn't that phrase on the wall? How do leaders make that shift from Oh, we have a culture this is our mission. This is what we do to really getting focused on what's happening inside the organization day to day. I love my co founders definition of this. He says a culture is a summation. Remember the old summation symbol of all of the relationships inside your organization, put them all together and that should culture and the way I describe it is our culture is how we choose to treat one another. Right? How are we going to be means spirited are we going to be demanding and fear based? And that becomes your culture? Or are we going to be encouraging supportive growth mindset? Are we going to are we going to try and focus on the personal professional growth of our team members along the way, while we're getting work done? You know, I think, you know, mission and vision and all that are important too, and we have those things, but you accomplish those things. With a culture you've created, you know, and quite frankly, I mean, you know, if somehow tomorrow, software development became, you know, illegal, or just everybody figured out how to do it on their own, they won't need us anymore, we still have our culture. And we would look and say, so what else can we do? We could, you know, could build play structures for children or something, and we'd figured out how to do it, but we wouldn't have the same culture here. Yeah, so those those two are, you know, I would say there's probably a lot of companies who can't achieve what their mission statement is, or what their goals are, because they don't have the culture. But when you do have the culture, you want them, particularly positive culture, you can kind of do anything you want. You can no Part A

Chellie Phillips: 26:12

you call yourself a storyteller, and I'm a storyteller. And so I think that's a piece that gets left out sometimes as the CEO as leaders in the organization is, what is the role of stories and how can it impact leadership? And how can stories help drive your culture and help it take root inside and keep it spreading?

Richard Sheridan: 26:32

One of the lines in my book is if, if culture eats strategy for breakfast, famous Peter Drucker line my belief is storytelling sets the table for that meal with story is what connects heart to mind body to spirit concept of reality stories make it real because like everybody says, in life, it doesn't matter what you said, Celli. It matters how it made me feel. And quite frankly, a boring PowerPoint with graphs and bars and spreadsheets and numbers. And we won't improve revenue by 3.2%. Net inspiring. People kind of shrug their shoulders, they I'm not sure how I'm involved in that. They can't picture themselves they can't imagine the connect the dots point between what the boss just talked about what these charts and graphs and goals for the year and all that sort of thing. To what how should that impact me personally. But when you can translate that into a story about what in one version of storytelling is using it to tell a story of a vision for the future, and inspiring vision. And when you do that kind of futuring storytelling, that visioning kind of process, people can start to put themselves in that picture they can imagine where where am I in that story? What contribution Am I proud of that I made? Now the stories we tell from the past should be stories of both triumph and defeat. We need to curate both stories, because we need to remind ourselves, why are we here? How did we get here? What was the difficult journey that got us here? Where did we have to overcome a big obstacle because that's a really important thing to remember. Because a lot of times, you know, like you say, you work, you work, you work, you get something done. And you just go on to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing and you just kind of get tired, you kind of get exhausted. Again, my co founder has this beautiful metaphor for those moments. He says, you know, when you're climbing the mountain, and it's hard, and you get up to a certain like a little sub peak and mountains still way up here, right? Stop, Turn around, look down. Revel in the vision in the in the scenery, revel in how much work you expended to get here, reflect on how far you've come, and then turn around and start climbing again. Right. And those are the stories from the past. Right? Because in that moment, what are you recounting the success that got us to where we are today. And the difficulty of the journey along the way. And that Bond's people together? That shared sacrifices, what binds us together? Right that we did this together? We did it just identity. And I think that's where storytelling plays a key role. And now I will tell you here because we get up between three and 4000 people a year travel from all over the world is to come visit us and see how all this works. Because they've read the books they've heard about us. They want to come see it. And what do we do on the tours when they're here we tell stories. And I used to think the stories because I would often lead the tours because I'm not I'm billing work and that sort of thing. So I'd be walking people around the room telling stories. And I used to think the stories I was telling were for our guests for the visitors because that's where they would come in. And then I noticed as I get a team of PE no group of people nearby a certain part of tables in the space and I'm telling stories. My team is listed Come in, what are they doing? They're hearing the same stories over and over and over again. And then I realize to stories are actually holding me accountable, because I would never want anybody to come up to me after tour on my team and say, Hey, rich, that company we're describing the tour sounds amazing where it is. So you, you darn well be better telling the truth, because otherwise, they'll all be like, it's much BS. And so there's so many facets of storytelling, but ultimately, it is that most human part of us where we all want to believe Chellie that we are like, logical, sensible, rational creatures, and we're anything but that we are emotional, we are irrational, we are driven by our feelings far more than we are by our logic. And that's just a simple truth of humans. And so if if, as leaders, we're trying to get people to move with us, there's no better way to do it the story,

Chellie Phillips: 31:07

what are the roadblocks that people will probably encounter when they start trying to make a culture shift? I know one of them we talked about as the attitude of that's the way it's always been? Don't you know, don't break it. It's not broken. Maybe if you could, what are the three biggest roadblocks that you might encounter as you're trying to create a culture shift inside your organization?

Richard Sheridan: 31:27

Well, I think number one, the belief that, you know, you can just click your fingers, you can put up a poster, you can do a rah rah speech once a year, and at someone else going to change your culture, culture change is, you know, there's we have a poster here metallosis technology changes quickly, people change slowly. And then another poster, this is people don't resist change, they resist being changed. And one of the reasons people resist any kind of change is because it threatens an existing reward system. Right? And I'm not talking about compensation that is the least effective kind of reward system. What's my job? What's my title was my span of authority. Can I tell people I'm working really hard today? Can I tell them I'm working crazy overtime hours, and they can't live without me and all this kind of stuff, right, which ultimately isn't healthy for an individual, but it's still a reward. I work on really crappy projects, and I work on them all day long. And I work on through the weekend. And it sounds awful. But there's this reward of like, I'm the only one who can do it. And so when you start messing with how things work, you have to understand, you are actually pulling rewards away from people. And as Janine Lamar says in her famous book, changing the way we change, if you don't replace the existing reward that you just took away with a reward of equal or greater value, people will revert to the old way of doing things, even if it's pain filled. And so I think that's and then finally, the thing you and I just discussed, which is, you know, somebody reads my books, and we read your book, somebody goes to a conference, or one of us speak, somebody speaks to a colleague, and they get a brand new idea. And they go running up to the first person they know in the organization who hasn't heard what you heard, asked and thought we thought he hasn't read what you've read. And you could have like, this great new idea. And they're like, well, I won't work here. We tried that 10 years ago, it didn't work, then it won't work now. And when I arm people with the response, because I think sometimes having a pre programmed response is really valuable. I tell him, I said, Look, committee, I'd say give it. Let's try it before we defeat it. Let's run the experiment. Let's see what happens. One thing with a book that I want to really accomplish is that culture change does not have to start at the CEO level. It can start inside your cubicle, whether it's you and your co worker, whether it's you and your team, what advice would you have for someone who might not be in a quote unquote, leadership role at the organization? If they want to see a culture shift? How can they get started? I know you mentioned one thing about learning to speak the language of who you're trying to convince. I love that. And I think that kind of applies there, too. But what else would you tell them to encourage them or maybe show them that culture can culture shift can start occurring at any level of an organization? hardest place to start is the easiest place to I place to identify a beginning spot and it's in here. humbly admit you have to change start to change inside of you. First. That eight year old who told me you're the most important person here. Nobody can make a decision without you guess who had to change. I had to change. And I always tell people, you don't have to change the world because that's where people get stuck. That's another place culture change. Oh my gosh, we're so big. We're so old. We're so bureaucratic. We're so regulated. There's no way I mean, it's just I nervous, like, I always tell you don't have to change the world. You just have to change your world. Change you be a different person when you walk in the door and repeat more than Hardy Good morning, bring a positive attitude, assume good intention and the people around you, and then start to change the people around you. Invite them into your world, say, hey, you know, we can't change anybody else. But let let us be this, you know, band of brothers and sisters who can, you know, start to change our little world here. And what's interesting that happens is you begin to be the change you want to see in the world. And then people want to be more like you.

Chellie Phillips: 35:42

I truly appreciate your time today. And this has been a great conversation. I know you're busy. I know, people are always clamoring for your time. And I appreciate the fact that you took some time to spend with me today. Well, you know, I think maybe that's my final bit is, you know, I think if each of us adopted an attitude and an energy that says, You know what, I'm gonna leave the world a better place. And I found it, we find a way to make time for others, and to inspire others with our journey, which is what you're doing is what I'm doing working with you on this, because somehow our conversation today is going to change somebody's life in a way that we you and I would have never anticipated which is the joy of being an author, I think. Thanks for listening to this episode of the culture secrets podcast. There were so many golden nuggets of advice here. I don't think that can pick just one from rich. I hope you got a list full as well too. 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 the link with a friend. I'm currently booking for corporate training and workshop presentations. I'd love the chance to work with you or your company. If you're interested, please visit my website at WWW dot Chellie phillips.com That ch e ll ie pH I ll ips.com. And remember, building a value culture is your competitive advantage and the backbone of any successful organization.