People First! with Morag Barrett

There we go. Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And I'm excited to reintroduce you to my friend and colleague, colleague Gary Ridge, who, as you will see from his title, if you're watching the YouTube video, is the dean of the dumbassery. And dumbassness is what we will be talking about today. But Gary and I know each other through our friendship and work through One Hundred Coaches, the group formed by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. And I had the opportunity to invite Gary onto the podcast a couple of years ago now. But I was excited to pre-read and endorse your latest book, Any Dumbass Can Do It., which showcases the damasserie that you have brought to your career, but also that you've observed in leaders throughout your career as now chairman emeritus of WD-Forty Company. So, Gary, welcome to People First. Yeah, thank you so much. It's great to be with you. It's a delight. And I'm so honored that you pre-read the book and were able to give your views on it. Because you know how much I love your work. Well, there are some synergies between the two for sure. But what I love is the directness. Maybe it's the Aussie style. Both of the title of any dumbass can do it. But also the chapters. I mean, you've got chapter seven here. Even the queen sits down to pee or maybe sat down to pee. Actually, I'm going to pause right here. There is banging going on from your end. Hang on a minute. Just hang on a second. Let me shut the door. Hopefully that will stop it. We happen to have. OK, let's give it a second, because I'm going to just redo the intro and it will be easy enough to then snip everything out because we're so early into the conversation that we might as well do that. Alright, yes, that's quite so. Let me redo the introduction and we'll go from here. Just hang on one second. I'm going to tell them for one second. Alright, thirty minutes. Are they gnashing their teeth? We've got work to do. Well, there's a story behind that as well. We'll get to it. All right. So we'll do take two from here. I'm just going to do the introduction again, hopefully a little bit more fluently than I did it. And we will go into the conversation. Great. Welcome to this week's episode of People First. And I am so excited to invite back Gary Ridge, who, if you're watching the YouTube video, you'll see he describes himself as the dean of dumbassery. However, if you're listening, you're going to learn more about dumbassness as our conversation unfolds. Gary was the previous CEO and now retired and is the chairman emeritus of the WD-Forty company, the little blue can with the little red top. We all have fond memories from that smell and the use of that can. But we're actually here to talk today about Gary's fantastic new book, that I was honored to be invited to pre-read and give my endorsement to. And the title of it is Any Dumbass Can Do It. So Gary, welcome to People First. Let's talk about dumbassery. G'day, it's great to be with you. Thank you for inviting me back and for reading my new book and for your endorsement, because you know how much I truly admire the work that you do. So great to be with you. Thank you. I mean, to be a dumbass, one has to have a relationship with somebody. The key here is can we overcome our innate dumbassery, because we're all capable of it, in order to strengthen those relationships and become true friends at work. But I love the book. In your true Aussie style, even from the title, it is direct and to the point. And the chapters, too, just pique curiosity. But one of them, I'm going to start here, because I'm going to ask you about your own personal dumbassery. And in one of the chapters, the heading is, grab the chance to make a spectacle of yourself. So come on, Gary. Wen, give me one of your ripe spectacle of yourself that you have made in your career. Yeah, I think I probably refer to that one as riding into Times Square on a horse in a suit of armor, which is what I did for our fiftieth anniversary, which was about twenty one years ago. But it was a great opportunity to really display to the tribe at WD-Forty at that time that you know you if you can display your vulnerability um in a way that is authentic um to really live the cause of the organization and you know I had the secret formula of wd-forty with me and I wrote into times square and I opened the nasdaq stock exchange and uh um and that was really quite an event uh to be able to pull that off but uh you know you got to do those things Okay, so definitely making a spectacle of yourself, a grand entrance by any description. And I remember when I got to that story in the book, I immediately stopped and went Googling, looking for photographic evidence of it, and I did find it. So I'm sure that the NASDAQ still remember that day as you clanked in and parked your horse outside. But tell me about the book then. What was the inspiration behind Any Dumbass Can Do It? yeah well thank you um you know I was I I'm grateful and I was privileged to lead wb-forty as the ceo for twenty five years and one of the things and probably the most important thing that I learned from that journey was that It's our role as a leader to really create an organization where people go to work every day. They make a contribution to something bigger than themselves. There's a true purpose. They learn something new. So you're a place where people can continually learn and grow. They're protected and set free by a compelling set of values and they go home happy. And happy people build happy families and happy families build happy communities and happy communities build a happy world. and no more in my life than this time do I think the world needs to be a little bit happier. And I think business has a responsibility and the opportunity to make a positive difference in the world if we build cultures where people know and feel like they belong and know and feel like they matter and not be the soul-sucking CEOs who create toxic workplaces where people go home and they talk about how they hate what they do. So I wanted to put all that learning into one book, if I could, in a hope that leaders out there would say, you know, if this dumbass can do it, any dumbass can do it, because dumbassery is your superpower. Ooh, so many threads I want to pull on that one, but I'm going to go with that one. Dumbassery is your superpower. So which particular flavour of dumbassery was or is your superpower then, Gary? Getting comfortable with the three most important words I've learned in my life. I don't know. Which really gives you the ability to unlock the brilliance of the people that you have to work with. You know, if you think that you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And, you know, I learned over my period of leadership that you're really tapping into and unleashing the learning and the power that's in the room is really where your opportunities for growth are. So that's why I say that Dhammasuri is your superpower. So many leaders think that they have all the answers. Well, sometimes they do, even the wrong ones. And ego gets in the way. Great leaders, empathy eats their ego instead of ego eating their empathy. They don't have to always be right. So that's really what I learned was my job, if I was doing it right, was to ensure those I had the privilege to lead played their best game and learned to play the best game, but also had the opportunity to bring their best self to the table and were treated with respect and dignity. So how do you go breaking that habit of not necessarily implicitly recognizing that you want to be the know it all or the I will just not say anything until I know it all to admitting explicitly, I don't know. How do you break the former habit and move more to the new habit? So one of the what I've learned over the years is one of the most disabling emotions we have is fear. And fear in an organization is really built around the fear of failure. Now, in reality, failure is the key to innovation success so why do we talk about failure so one of the keys to unlock that was we took the word failure out of our vocabulary and we replaced it with learning moments we said that you know a learning moment was a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people And we promoted that through the organization, which in the end increased psychological safety. So now people felt that they could not only talk about what worked and amplify that in the organization, but talk about things that didn't quite go the way we wanted to. And what did we learn from it? And interestingly enough, the heritage of WD-Forty came from that. Back in nineteen fifty three, there was a little company in San Diego called Rocket Chemical Company. And it was making, formulating products mainly for the aerospace industry. And there was a problem with the umbilical cord of the Atlas space rocket. and they had condensation and corrosion that was building up. So they asked industry, can anybody make something to fix that? So a couple of chemists got together at Rocket Chemical Company and started to formulate solutions. Solution one didn't work, nor did solution two or fifteen or twenty-seven or thirty-two, or neither did thirty-nine. but voila after thirty nine learning moments the fortieth solution worked and that's how it got its name water displacement fortieth formula wd-forty so I'm really happy they didn't give up at thirty nine because if they did I wouldn't be speaking to you today and that would be a bad thing and I'm glad thirty nine didn't work because I don't think wd-thirty nine sounds anything as good as wd-forty Isn't it funny how you get used to it? But that gets my next question, which is semantics. We are used to saying WD-Forty, WD-Forty company. We are used to thinking about how and where we use it, even if it is not actually a lubricant. It's a water displacement lubricant. What did you call the last word? Water displacement. But when people are listening to you talking about mistakes aren't mistakes, they're learning moments, it's going to be easy for some to sit there and go, well, yeah, just semantics. That doesn't actually change anything. It's still actually a mistake. So how do you start changing the behaviours and the cultures, the reaction to those learning moments to make sure that they are forward-looking and positive versus not? backward looking finger pointing and blame well again it's really creating that atmosphere of rewarding and applauding both the positive and the negative when I first introduced the concept of learning moments into wd-forty back in I think two thousand and one or two thousand and two I said you know I I want you to come forward and tell me you know what works and what doesn't work and we're gonna you know really treat those respectfully and I could hear the rumblies in the background yeah sure you are yeah no of course you know that's no that's not going to happen so I had to really create the behaviors around that and in fact I I started a little project where I said to everybody I'd like you to email me or send me your learning moments positive or negative and we're going to have a monthly prize and at the end of the year we're going to have a big grand prize we're going to send two people around the world first class to visit offices and whatever So in the first month, I got four people who were brave enough to send me their negative learning moments. So what did I do with those four people? I made heroes out of those four people. They were the employees of the month. I rewarded them and applauded them. And the next month I got eight and the next month I got twenty. Finally, I built the trust around the fact that we were going to use these opportunities as true opportunities to learn, not to punish. And if you were to go to WD-Forty company today, I'm sure it's still the same. It would be very unusual to be in any group setting and not hear the word learning moments or the word learning moments several times. I had a learning moment about this. I had a learning moment about that, positive or negative. It's impressive. So you talk there about learning moments. We've touched on the courage and vulnerability to take informed risk to whether it's wearing a suit of armour or trying a different approach to solve a problem. What other flavours or themes emerged in your research and life experience that are examples of dumbassery in action? other one is you know getting rid of the word manager um and this was an amazing change in our thinking you know it's day one of work you walk in and I say good morning moraga I'm your manager how do you feel about that but what about if I said good morning I'm your coach And my job here is to help you play the best game that you can play. And here's how I'm going to do that. Number one is I know what it takes to win this game. You know, let's think about I'm a great soccer coach. So I know the game of soccer. I know what great fullbacks are and what great forwards are and how they play. So I know how to play the game. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to help you play your best game. We know where the goalposts are. We've defined what the desired outcome is. I'm going to spend a lot of time on the sideline observing your play. I promise you I will never run onto the field and steal the ball from you. That's called micromanagement. That's what bad leaders do. I will never go to the podium and steal your prize because the prize is yours. I will always make sure that you get the prize. And I'm going to spend a lot of time in the stinky locker room with you, which means I'm going to understand your business. I'm going to spend a lot of time with you and the team. I'm, you know, I'm not corporate royalty. Hang on, I've got to get someone to introduce you because what I think about that, you know, this is the person I'm thinking. Oh, my goodness. Yes. So this is Alec, the soul-sucking CEO. He's the, or she, or Alice, the ultimate micromanager. That's why I just went and got them. And I write about Alec in the book, as you know. And I carry him or her around the world with me and talk about the behaviors of this toxic leader. So talking about then being this coach who was there to support the person to play their best game was absolutely mind changing in the organization. So we threw the word manager out and we said, this is not your boss, this is your coach. So therefore I could have conversations with leads and saying your job is not to manage people. Your job is to coach them to their best game, which really also said to the person, the employee or the tribe member, as we described them, that you matter. You know, I want to do something to help you. So that was another dumbassery moment for me was don't think about managing people. Think about coaching them to their best game. So in preparation for this conversation, I went to your website, The Learning Moment, and I took the dumb assery quiz. And I encourage everybody listening and watching this episode, go take it. It takes minutes. Now, I'm kind of proud because my score resulted in the moniker. I got eighty out of one hundred. Hey, winner, winner, chicken dinner. But you therefore describe me as a wise dumbass, fully embracing dumbassery as a leadership strength. So I'm not sure that that necessarily is a good thing or a learning moment thing. I nearly said a bad thing. A learning moment thing. So help me understand. I'm a wise dumbass. What do I do with that? Well, it means that as you took the quiz, you identified behaviors that within your leadership style was creating a platform within the organization or those that you lead or your leading attitude, helping them be their best self. So, yeah, you're a wise dumbass is a great place to be because you are now using dumbassery as a superpower. And a lot of, you know, again, the whole title of the book was meant to really slap people and say, listen, you don't have to be the, you know, don't overcomplicate things. basically the opportunity to build great cultures in an organization. And I think a lot of people overcomplicate it. That's why I love your work. Your work just brings it down to simplicity. Here are the things that you need to focus on. And it's pretty straightforward. And I think a lot of people camouflage issues with confusion to make out how smart they are. And that's not what we need to do. So dumb yourself down. Be your authentic, vulnerable self. Show people that we're just human and we can do things, great things together. You know, I often talk about, you know, don't take your leftovers to people. And a lot of... It means I could be in a conversation or an interaction with you and we get through something. And in doing that, we're both emptying our plate, right? We're giving energy around. And now we've got a meeting with someone else afterwards. We have to recenter ourselves, bring ourselves back to where we need to be so that when I interact with the next person, I'm not taking my leftovers. I'm taking the person I want to be to that. I have a little notebook here. here somewhere. Here it is. And I have a little list on this notebook. And you would wonder why that a guy that's, you know, in his sixties now and has led companies needs to be reminded of things all the time. And this little notebook has this reminder on it. And it says, am I being the person I want to be right now? And this is my way of filling my plate. And it says, who is that person? so if I'm going into a another meeting or into another conversation I look at it and I say I want to be my best self so who is that I want to be grateful caring empathetic reasonable a listener fact-based I want to have a balanced opinion I want to be curious I want to be a learner and I want to throw sunshine not a shadow and I've been carrying that list around for I don't know how many years I do love myself of what I want to be because that aligns to the work that we've done in my book you me we which I wrote with my friends at work eric and ruby and we have a three-step process look up show up step up and it aligns to that reminder list that you have and look up is how do I feel in this moment so am I leaving this conversation with gary energized maybe he's just giving me some uh candid feedback that helps me to learn and be less of a dumbass and maybe it's stung a bit so maybe I'm feeling a bit miffed well that's fine just acknowledge it who am I in this moment and then show up the second one is all about how do I want others to feel in my presence so in that next meeting to your point do I want them to get the ripple effect of me being miffed or do I want to leave them feeling confident and capable And then the third piece, step up, is where you make that intentional choice as to what behaviors or what you need to explicitly say in that conversation so that you can set the right tone for success moving forward versus carrying the baggage behind. Absolutely. And that makes me think of another key piece when I was reading your book, where you differentiate between the question we're often asking is, are you okay? And what that actually means and what we should be listening for and answering for when somebody says, are you okay? So tell us about that. Yeah, that's actually the first chapter in the book is asking someone, are you okay? Or what's on your mind? And you know, there's a So many times we run into situations and we're being critical or we're probing about why didn't you get your sales target? Why isn't this? Where something's going on in the background that's really not allowing that person to be their best self. So as a leader, asking that question, hey, are you okay? What's on your mind? Really taking that interest in why they're not performing not just looking at the outcome. One of our values at WD-Forty Company was we value creating positive, lasting memories in all of our relationships. And it was actually our second value. And our values, as you may recall, were hierarchical. So the first value was we value doing the right thing. The second value was we value creating positive, lasting memories in all of our relationships. It was a wonderful value because It really did reflect everybody that we worked with. Now, that doesn't mean we didn't have crucial conversations. Of course we did. But there was an example of that that I love and I shared the story and I'll share it with you if that's okay. I was in a leadership meeting one day and it was early in the morning and there was someone in the room that was not creating a positive lasting memory. And it wasn't the usual behavior of that person, but that person was sucking the energy out of the room. You've been in those meetings before. So as a leader, I could choose to not react to that behavior or I could live our values and want to react to that behavior. So option one is You know, I stop the meeting and I say, hey, you know, this behavior is unacceptable. Please stop it. And that may do something. The person probably will get a bit miffed that I, you know, embarrass them and everybody else in the room will say, when am I going to be publicly executed? Well, that's not a good thing. Second thing is do nothing. And that's not good either, because, you know, fish rot from the head. And if the leaders aren't living the values, then who is? So at the end of the meeting, I said to the person, hey, let's go for a walk. So we walked outside of our building and I waited a couple of minutes and I looked in a trash can and I looked behind a car. So I'm adding a little bit of, you know, casualness to this conversation. And the person, what the hell are you doing? I said, I'm looking for you. What do you mean? The you I know and love was not in that room today. You live our values every day. And today you didn't. Are you okay? What's on your mind? What's getting in your way? And then we opened up the conversation and the person basically just had a crappy morning. They got up late, kicked their foot on the bed, spilled. There was nothing substantial, but it really repositioned them. And I said, you live our value of creating positive, lasting memories. I see it all the time. And today you weren't okay. And I wanted to make sure that, you know, you know that I care about you. And I wanted to remind you that that's not the way that we behave around here. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. I'm sorry. You know, okay. I had a big hug and off the person went. They went back in the building and I saw them kind of popping around to a couple of other people that were in the meeting and they said, yeah, I'm sorry. What did they ask? Are you okay? Is everything all right? That wasn't normally you. The next morning I noticed people going to them, taking him coffee and saying, hey, here's some coffee. Is everything okay? So again, you know, having a powerful value and living it. and being able to have that conversation and ask, are you being okay in an authentic, sincere way, bringing it close to a real interaction is very, very powerful. I mean, again, that goes back to everything that you've shared around creating that sense of belonging, the tribe, creating the psychological safety where we can both share what's truly happening for us, but also call each other out. And that's what we get to in our research here at Sky Team around the ally relationship, that best friend at work, because if you don't have that. then whilst you may get good results, great results on the good days when everything's easy, when things start to get rocky, when opinions differ, when the market is shifting, that friction, that false sense of harmony is what's going to undermine your team and your organization at potentially great cost. Because you can get labeled as the dumbass or the jerk or the adversary. And then I'm not going to bring you the proactive warnings of impending disaster or the creative ideas or acknowledge mistakes for fear of how you're going to react and what that impact might be for us. So this is powerful. Exactly. You know, I talk about candor and my definition of candor is no lying, no faking, no hiding. I believe most people in organizations don't lie. I believe they fake and they hide. Why do they fake and hide? Because there's a dominance of fear, of control, very low psychological safety, no vulnerability, no authenticity. So they fake and hide. And exactly right. They know that the time bomb is ticking, but they're not going to say anything about it because they don't feel comfortable because their leader hasn't admitted that they're a dumbass. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the fear of being judged and found wanting, the ultimate fear of am I going to get fired? And there are still going to be cases where dumbassery is so extreme that being asked to leave the building is the appropriate next step. But there are warning signs along the way. invariably, that if we are, again, working as a coach to ensure each other's success so that we can be better together, that we can head that off long before it becomes that giant issue. I mean, it seems like such common sense. Why is it such an uncommon experience, Gary? Well, you know, again, I think it's because leaders... have their ego eating their empathy instead of their empathy eating their ego they want to always be right you know the things that I talk about in the book around alec the soul-sucking ceo you know they love micromanagement they hate feedback you know they you know they live a fear-based environment all of this is really sad and that's why again I came back to writing the book is we can do better than this you know the world needs us to do better And we can if we just admit our dumb assery and see it as a superpower and that will unlock authenticity and vulnerability and create just a wonderful place, which is what we had at WD-Forty Company. Ninety eight percent of the people at the company said they love to tell people they work there. know and by the way we had an amazing financial result over the period of time we the market cap went from three hundred million to three point six billion dollars and we took the can to a hundred and seventy six countries around the world um and it's not a sexy product well maybe I think it is but um you know it's again It's ubiquitous, that's for sure. And I think what you've just shown there, it may only be one case study, the WD-Forty company, of the impact it can have for the bottom line. But there are others if you choose to look. And it doesn't matter where you are in your career, whether you're just starting out on the leadership management journey, choosing to be that coach mentor of your team versus the whip cracking boss of the team can shift the dynamic. And if you're at the senior, the more experienced end of your career, showing the courage and vulnerability to say, yes, you may have made it, but that doesn't mean that you are making it. And what are your ongoing opportunities to learn, flex and grow and create that culture shift at all levels through the organisation? Absolutely. You know, since moving on and refiring, not retiring because I didn't retire, I refired. You know, I have a clear purpose. I help leaders build cultures of belonging where love, forgiveness and learning inspire a happy, more connected world. And I know by doing that, you not only create great companies with great cultures, but you send people home happy and happy people can help us make a happier world. And that's not a bad thing. Oh, I get goosebumps just thinking about it. So that's prime. Say again what it is that in your refired, this new next chapter of your life, the work that you're doing and how can people find out more and do that work with you? Yeah, please go to my website, www.thelearningmoment.net. Take the dumbass quiz and see where you are. And as you know, once you take it, I'll send you a little playbook that you can start work on. Follow me on LinkedIn. I'm there often on LinkedIn sharing some of my learnings. I have the School of Dumbassery on LinkedIn as well. There's a group that I've formed. which you can join. And I'm hoping that other of my dumbass associates will join in and share some of their learning moments for the benefit of all people. So there's work to be done. Well, Gary, I will go and seek out that school of dumbassery after this conversation. I appreciate our conversation. Congratulations on, was it USA Today? Bestseller for the book. Number ten, yeah. Number ten. Look at you. So continuing that powerful message and impact, not just for organisations but for each of us in our work life, it also has an impact in our whole lives. Gary, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for joining me. It's been my pleasure. Life's a gift. Don't send it back unwrapped.