251. WD-40’s Garry Ridge on leadership: "Any dumbass can do it"

0:00In 1999, about two years after being given the privilege to leave the company, I went to an information session for a master's degree in leadership at the University of San Diego. And I heard Ken Blanchard, who became my professor and still my long, long time friend and mentor, say most leadership programs get people in the head. We've got to start getting people in the heart. by learning the three most important words I've ever learned in my life, which I don't know, it gave me the opportunity to be the leader that really wanted to bring out the brilliance of others. I think there might be some people listening going, yeah, cool.

0:44That's lovely, Gary, but I've got too much work to get out there and do all the things you're telling me to do. No. Why would you say that? You know, I'm going to tell you a secret. I had most of those bad ladyship behaviors in a level of some abundance until I realized that they weren't serving me as a leader. And it was when I went back to school and I reflected on, you know, all of these. And I said, well, I'm now intentionally, because I don't like that person, I'm going to intentionally do something about being better. You create this amazing place where people really want to be. And then profit follows.

1:24Is that right? Profit is the applause of people doing great work.

1:29Garry Ridge:In January 2021, one year into COVID when the world was falling apart, Gary Rich, the then CEO of WD40, got engagement survey results that made him say this can't be true. A full 97 % of WD40's employees globally said they were excited about their place in the company's future. Not just satisfied, excited during the pandemic. When Gary dug deeper into why, the answer was actually devastatingly simple. Employees said, if I need to be anywhere right now, I want to be here because I feel safe. Today we chat to Gary Ridge, former CEO of WD40 for 25 years, author of Any Dumbass Can Do It, and now the Dean of Dumbassery on LinkedIn.

2:23Garry Ridge:His words, not mine. Today he's going to show us exactly how he built a culture where people feel more safe during a global crisis than most of us feel on a normal Tuesday. Hello and welcome to Truth, Lives and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne, I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. My name is Al, I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work. Today we're asking, what if everything you think you know about leadership is actually backwards?

3:00What if admitting I don't know makes you stronger? And what if putting yourself at the bottom of the pyramid instead of the top actually build better companies.

3:08Garry Ridge:Gary is going to introduce us to someone called Alec, the soul-sucking CEO of FIA Incorporated. And we'll discover why the opposite of fear isn't confidence, it's learning moments. Plus, we'll hear about the dumbass quiz. Yes, that's a real thing. And why being steady like a donkey might be better than trying to be the smartest person in the room. After this quick break, we'll join Al as he interviews Gary and discover why he went back to school while running a public company. This is honestly going to be brilliant. Does your experience with AI sound a little like this? You prompt for 20 minutes, the output is polished, is confident and is completely flipping useless.

3:49Well, that's what happens when AI doesn't know anything about your business.

3:52Garry Ridge:But you know what does know something about your business? HubSpot. HubSpot's AI. It works with your actual customer data, every interaction, every signal your team has generated over time. So instead of prompting and hoping, you ask once and ship it. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

4:17Right now, I'm the Dean of Dumb Arsery is what I call myself. But what people might know me better for is the wonderful opportunity I had to lead the WD-40 company for 25 years. You know, that little blue and yellow top, little blue and yellow cam with a little red top that's in everybody's, well, a lot of people's houses and garages and whatever. Today, my purpose is I help leaders build cultures of belonging where love, forgiveness, and learning inspire a happier, more connected world. And the reason that's important to me is that I think business has an opportunity and a responsibility to make a difference in the world.

4:55And we can do that if we really concentrate on building cultures where people know and feel like they belong, they know the work they do matters, there's a high degree of psychological safety, and instead of managing them, we coach them. So I re-fired three years ago, I didn't retire, and I completed my 25-year apprenticeship in leadership, so now it's time for me to put it to work. Let's start with the School of Dumbassery. I believe it's not just a random word, dumbass. I believe there's some meaning behind it. Tell us more about the School of Dumbassery and what it means. Well, yeah. I mean, the title of my book is Any Dumbass Can Do It.

5:31And, you know, you may, people may ask, well, why did you use the word ass? Well, the word ASS is not referring to anybody's posterior or bottom. It really refers to a donkey and people, you know, give donkeys a bad rap. They think they're just stubborn or slow, but there's more to the truth of that. Donkeys are steady. They keep going long after others give up. They're loyal companions. You can count on them when the road gets rough. They're practical, not flashy. They know how to conserve energy and get the job done. And while they might not always rush into things, that caution often keeps them safe.

6:17So when I say any dumb ass can do it, what I really mean is you don't have to be brilliant to be a great leader. You just need a bit of courage, a lot of care, and the humility to keep learning. Because like the donkey, leadership isn't about showing off. It's about carrying the load, sticking with the journey and helping others get to where they need to go. I think what you just said there might make a lot of particularly new leaders or insecure leaders feel a little bit uncomfortable because we have this idea that leaders should have all the answers, but often they're afraid to make a mistake because they're going to look dumb.

6:56Well, you know, I'm so glad that I looked dumb 30 years ago because by learning the three most important words I've ever learned in my life, which I don't know, it gave me the opportunity to be the leader that really wanted to bring out the brilliance of others. So my message to leaders who don't want to look dumb is you are. And if you think you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Our job as leaders is not to be the smartest person in the room. Certainly, we have to have a level of competency and experience. But our job is to unlock the brilliance of others. Because if we do that, not one of us is as good as all of us working on a problem, solution or opportunity.

7:45Is this someone who you looked up to when you were younger as maybe a mentor? Well, you know, I think there's not just one person. You know, as I write in the book, you know, there were a number of people as I grew up in Australia that I was exposed to on reflection later in my life, I realized what I learned from them. So, you know, I think that, you know, when I was given the opportunity to lead the company and I'd been with the company for 10 years before I was, you know, given the opportunity to lead. I started in Australia, opened the subsidiary there, then moved to the US in 1994 to head up our global expansion program.

8:28I knew with the help of the people we had at the company at that time, how to build the brand globally. We knew how to market it. But what kept going through my mind was, how do we build an organization now that the sun was never going to set on the brand? In other words, every minute of the day around the world, someone in the company would need to do something or make a decision. How are we going to empower them? And I didn't know how to do that. One of the reasons I found that to be important is when I worked in Australia, you know, I worked in an operation that was in a different time zone.

9:04And I found myself from time to time having to wait to talk to someone in San Diego to get clarity on something or get an answer to something. And I found that to be quite disturbing because I couldn't get my job done as I wanted to. And in 1999, about two years after being given the privilege to leave the company, I went to an information session for a master's degree in leadership at the University of San Diego. and I heard Ken Blanchard, who became my professor and still my long, long time friend and mentor, say most leadership programs get people in the head. We've got to start getting people in the heart.

9:51And I thought, wow, how do we do that? And I went back to school and for the next two years, while CEO of a public company, I learned from Ken and others the true essence of servant leadership, which was being able to lead to bring out the best of others. And overall, that was based on two things that I had read. Before going to that information session, I was actually on a Qantas 747 flying from Los Angeles to Sydney, 38 ,000 feet over the South Pacific Ocean, 2 a.m. in the morning. And I'm sitting there with that light coming down as it does from the headrest area. I'm reading and I read a quote from the Dele Lama and it said, our purpose in life is to make people happy.

10:37If we can't make them happy, at least don't hurt them. And I thought, what a wonderful thing to be able to do in a business. And then I read a second quote from Aristotle, who was born in 384 BC. And Aristotle said, pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. And I went, oh, duh. Of course, if you really like doing something, you're going to do it better. and then going to school and doing that master's degree, I was exposed to the leadership that needed to be in place to make those two things be true in an organization. What does servant leadership actually mean? Well, let's go back to the principles.

11:15If we think about the beginning of servant leadership, I think about it like a pyramid. And at this stage, the leader is on top of the pyramid. and the leader's role is to ensure that there's a purpose, a set of values and a strategic plan in place to take the organization forward. But then what we do is we turn the pyramid upside down and the leader goes to the bottom. And the leader's job now is to encourage, enable and coach those within the organizations to meet the objectives of the strategic plan. Success in an organization is the will of the people, time strategy. And this is where a lot of leaders get it wrong.

12:00You know, you can have the best strategic plan in the world. You and I could write a great strategic plan. Let's take it to some smart professor. Marks it up, said, congratulations. Great strategic plan, 70 out of 100. But if only 30 % of your people are going to work every day and passionately executing against that strategic plan, you're that you're getting a result much less than if 80 % of your people are going to work every day and doing that. And that's why it's the will of the people. And the will of the people is how engaged are they? And they'll be engaged if they know, feel like they belong in the organization and are treated that way.

12:40If they know that the work they do makes a difference, matters, and they're being recognized for that, if they're being coached, not managed, because you don't manage people, you coach them, and if they've got an organization that has a high degree of psychological safety and a low level of fear, which means there's learning moments, not failures. I want to theoretically push back on this. I believe you and I'm with you, but I think we intentionally say, oh, this person's the boss. they've made it to the top. What you're saying there is actually, if you want to be a really good manager, you're making it to the bottom.

13:23Then does that mean that you're going to have to switch off a bit of your ego? Because it sounds like that's not what a traditional boss does. They stand at the front and they tell me what to do. Did I ever introduce you to this person? I was just trying to remember his name. Is it Alec or Alan? Alec. This is Alec, the soul-sucking CEO of Fear Incorporated. And the first thing about Alec is he has little empathy. He has a big ego. His ego eats his empathy instead of his empathy eating his ego. This person, and it could be Alice too. I don't want to be gender specific here. This person is a micromanager.

14:02They've got their fingers in everything. They're corporate royalty. I've spent my life climbing this corporate ladder. Thou shall bow down to me. I have a nice big office. I never go to the cafeteria or the canteen. Someone brings coffee to me. That's if they can open my door because it's normally locked. They love the fear-based culture. They're a master of control. They're a know-it-all. They don't value learning. They must always be right. They hate feedback. Don't you ever give me any feedback now? And they don't keep their commitments. But if they're a servant leader, servant leaders love and involve their people because they know that's where the gold is.

14:41They're always in that servant leadership mode as a coach. My role is to help you step into the best version of yourself. They are expected to be competent and they love learning. One of the biggest responsibilities of a leader is to be a learner and a teacher. What are we learning and what are we teaching? They are connected. They spend a lot of time in what I call the stinky locker room. They love learning moments because they know a learning moment is one step away from a great opportunity or experience. They have a harder goal, but they also have a backbone of steel. They're champions of hope.

15:17They know micromanagement is not scalable. They do what they say they're going to do. They're very dependable. And they treasure the gift of feedback. There's the two comparisons between Al or Alec or Alice, the soul-sucking CEO of Fear Incorporated, or a servant leader who's there to help those that have the privilege to lead step into the best version of themselves. It sounds like finding the opposite of Alec is almost impossible. Is that right? No. Why would you say that? Because it sounds like what you're describing there is like a superhuman person who's got to have all of these different traits of being amazing and having no ego and not being an Alec.

16:03And it just sounds to me like if I've got a team of 30 people, I'm like, where am I going to find one of those people? Well, you know, those 30 people are there and they can be the servant leader. And what I've learned in the coaching work that I do now, and as you know, I like coach CEOs is most leaders do not get up every morning and put this up and say, I am Al or Alec. I'm going to be Alec today. They don't know how their behavior is negatively impacting those they have the privilege to lead. So my challenge is, are you aware of the leadership attributes you have that align with Alec. And if you are, then you can intentionally move away from those.

16:53You know, I'm going to tell you a secret. I had most of those bad ladyship behaviors in a level of some abundance until I realized that they weren't serving me as a leader. And it was when I went back to school and I reflected on, you know, all of these. And I said, well, I'm now intentionally, because I don't like that person, I'm going to intentionally do something about being better. So take us back to the classroom. You're walking into the classroom with Ken Blanchard. You realize at some point you've got all of some of Alex traits. What happens next? Well, the next thing you do is you decide how you're going to change that behavior.

17:37So you need prompts. For example, I needed to be better at recognizing and praising people. So for I don't know how long I had written on the palm of my hand, praise somebody. So I'm trying to change my neuropathways. In fact, even today in my little notebook that I have that I've been carrying around different versions of it for many years, I have a little placard on here. And this little placard says, am I being the person I want to be right now? And then it says, who is that person? And there's a list. And I said, it says, I want to be grateful. I want to be caring. I want to be reasonable.

18:16I want to be a listener. I want to be 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. I think I've been carrying that list around for I don't know how many years and I still need to, and I do refer to it when I don't think I'm being the person I want to be right now. And that can happen because the world impacts you. At the end of the day, we are just these basic human beings bumbling our way down this pathway of life. And in the bushes are these thieves that come and grab us and they take us into the bushes.

18:56Thieves of ego and greed and impatience and all of these things. And we're in there for a minute and we think, well, this is not so bad. But if we don't have a way of reminding ourselves that that's not who is our best person and move back onto that bumbling pathway, we will never get to our destiny. So it's awareness and intention that is very important. What happened to me when I went back to school is, and with Ken and others, they made me aware of how if I intentionally was going to change the way I led, I would be a better leader and I would be a better person. And they were right. I've got a note here saying that, and I'm going to read it, it says, WD-40 wasn't in the lubrication business, but the memories business.

19:46That seems like an odd thing for essentially a commodity or a sea of a commodity to say. What do you mean? Well, your product is not necessarily your purpose in life. In my book, I talk about a toaster. And I talk about a toaster being, you know, a love experience and machine and what it does, it turns a piece of bread into something that, you know, you enjoy your favorite spread on. So what's, what's the purpose of a toaster? It's not to necessarily, what it does is it, it makes bread toasted, but what its purpose is, is to create this love environment with you in the morning. So if you think about a product, if we said that our product was our purpose, it would be fairly boring.

20:30But if you think in the case of WD-40, we said we existed to create positive lasting memories, solving problems in factories, homes around the world. We solve problems and we created opportunities, which is a much more engaging way of making a difference to something bigger than yourself. You know, if I said to a group of people at the company, good morning, everybody, we are going to stop a squeak today. But if I said to everybody, you know what, what we're going to do today is we're going to create some positive lasting memories with people as they solve problems and create opportunities by using our product.

21:05And I will guarantee, even though you still have that old can, you can tell me a time when in a memory of when WD-40 made you a hero or you did something with it that created a positive position in your life. you yes you should put money on that bet because as you were saying this i got i got this really vivid image in my head of my dad's backside sticking out of a sticking out from behind a fridge or something and saying son hand me that i mean and he didn't say hand me the lubricant didn't say hand me the lawyer he said hand me that wd-40 exactly is that what you're talking exactly we have so many stories of people working with their grandpa or pop or father or whatever in the fields and whatever, and they still remember the smell.

21:52And it was that environment that was so important. And the great thing about it too was our second value in the company was we value creating positive, lasting memories in all of our relationships, whether that be a relationship with our customers and our end users, whether it be a relationship with the people within the company, with the communities that we lived in, and even in the environment that gave us the the permission to exist. So we would often ask ourselves, will this action create a positive lasting memory? Will this innovation create a positive lasting memory? Will this decision create a positive lasting memory?

22:31And that's what empowered people to make decisions in the organization. Because we said if they used our values, they could make any decision they want, any time they want, any place they want, any hour they want. So I want to put us in a situation where imagine that I am the CEO or MD of a web hosting company. It's Bytes. It's not a particularly interesting company. I'd be listening to you going, yeah, that's cool, but how are my engineers, how are my salespeople actually going to create memories when all we do is host ones and zeros and it's a website? Well, I don't know that that would be their purpose.

23:11They would have to create their own purpose within the organization. So if I was the CEO of this web company with ones and zeros, I would go to the people within the organization and ask them, what difference do you think you're making in the world today? How do you think what you do makes a positive talk about it? And I'm sure through conversation, what would come out of it was, we don't do ones and zeros. We create opportunities for people to communicate with each other or we create opportunity. You know, I don't know what it is, but there is there's there is a toaster somewhere in that company.

23:48What I would call the toaster theory. You know, if I said to you, I make toasters. Tell me what our what our purpose is. Would you tell me it was I'm a, you know, a lovemaking machine?

23:59Garry Ridge:We've heard about servant leadership. We've met Alec, the soul-sucking CEO, and we know that WD40 isn't really in the lubrication business. They're in the memories business. But here's a question. How do you actually build a culture where people feel safe enough to admit they don't know something, where mistakes become learning moments instead of career-ending disasters? After this short break, we'll discover what psychological safety really means. And hint, it's simpler than you think. we'll also learn why Gary banned the word failure from WD40. See you in a sec. Psychological safety, it's a word that, oh my goodness, is bandied around LinkedIn and most people have either no idea what it truly means or they're just using it to look like they do know what they're talking about.

24:48So imagine I haven't got a clue. This is the first time I've heard this term, psychological safety. What does it really actually mean? Reduction in fear. That's it. How do I create an environment where the fear of failure is not the dominant emotion? The fear of questioning your leader, the fear of a error that you made being discovered and therefore you being a failure. And that's why I invented the learning moment. A learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared to benefit all people. So, let me be clear, a learning moment is not a get out of jail card, but what it is is the ability for people to talk about, hey, this is what I was setting out to do.