Finding Purpose And Joy In Innovation With Rich Sheridan

Rich Sheridan discovered his purpose and passion in the software industry by combining his genuine desire to serve others and his expertise in technology. In this conversation with Tony Martignetti, he looks back at the story of building Menlo Innovations and how their custom software development helps solve not just people’s tech issues but their everyday challenges as well. Rich also shares valuable insights about what it takes to end the “ship it” mentality, the importance of fostering pride in the workplace, and how to change the world by changing yourself first.

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Finding Purpose And Joy In Innovation With Rich Sheridan

It is my honor to introduce my guest, Rich Sheridan. Before becoming the CEO of Menlo Innovations, Rich was disillusioned with the technology industry. He had an all-consuming thought. Things can be better, much better. He had to find a way. Why couldn't a workplace be filled with camaraderie, human energy, creativity, and productivity? Ultimately, Rich co-founded Menlo Innovations in 2001 to end human suffering in the workplace. That's a lot.

His unique approach to custom software creation is so remarkably different that 3,000 people a year travel from around the world to see how it's done. Many more read his two award-winning books, Joy, Inc. and Chief Joy Officer, two remarkable books, for sure. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife, with whom he has three wonderful daughters and many grandchildren. It's truly an honor and a pleasure to welcome you to The Virtual Campfire, Rich.

Great to be with you, Tony.

I've been following your work and reading your books for years. I'm so thrilled to be able to invite you to this space and to unpack the journey that has gotten you to doing this amazing tech in the world. Chief Joy Officer? Yes, please. We want more of that.

Who wouldn't want a little more joy in their life, right?

Serving Others With Joy

Exactly. I do have to share. I had a guest on. Her name is Bree Groff. She wrote a book called Today Was Fun, which was a wonderful read. I read the book. It’s this idea that we need to enjoy ourselves more in the workplace. We have to find little ways to tap into that. I hope you'll explore that in the process of doing the work we're doing. Like we always do in the show, we explore people's journeys through what's called flashpoints, the points in your journey that have ignited your gifts into the world. I'd like to have you share what you're called to share. Along the way, we'll stop and see what themes are showing up. Sound good?

You bet.

Rich, take it away.

When I think of a flashpoint, and this didn't come to me until much later in my life, it is when people started asking me about joy. Where does the joy come from for me? Where do I derive my joy from? Honestly, I got started with computers when I was young. I was thirteen years old way back in 1971. A long time ago, kids, there were computers back in those days. They were a little different. I used to equate my joy with those moments of learning about technology in my earliest days. As I deeply thought about it, I had to wind back a few more years.

I went back to the ten-year-old version of me. I was ten. My parents bought a shelving unit to go into the living room. For them, that was a big deal back in the '60s. It was like IKEA delivers. It was all a bunch of parts in a box. My parents went out to dinner and a movie one night. I was left on my own at home. I thought to myself, “I'm going to build that shelving unit.” I went out to the garage. There were 50 pieces of wood and 200 little nuts, bolts, and screws.

Over the next couple of hours, I put that whole thing together. It was 8 feet wide and 6 feet tall. I was so proud of myself for doing it. All of a sudden, I realized, “Mom and Dad want this in the living room. I built it in the garage.” Painstakingly, it probably took me 45 minutes to inch that thing out of the garage, down the sidewalk, through the kitchen, into the living room, right where Mom and Dad wanted it. I set up the stereo. I put my mom's knick-knacks and my dad's books.

When they came in after that movie, I had my mom's favorite album playing. She cried. I realized in that moment, joy is serving others with the work of your hearts, your hands, and your minds. That seared a memory for me as to why I do what I do now. It is this, to delight others with the work of our team. That became a real flashpoint for me to understand what drives me.

This is the whole premise of the show. It’s this idea of flashpoints. Sometimes we don't know it until we look way back and understand the source of what drives us. That story warmed my heart. It's a sense of understanding what it is about us that's inside of us that drives me to do what I do. That story was remarkable. It becomes the mission of what you do now.

I loved my mom. She loved me. The fact that I could do something for her that was so meaningful was so special. It created a memory that, at this point, is lasting a lifetime.

Finding A Career In Computer Science

There's something also about this, which is interesting. It is doing it with imperfection and knowing that there are problems that arise, and you figure out how to solve them. We don't have to come out of the gate with all things perfectly figured out. It's more coming from the reason. The why behind why we're doing it is more important than having all of the skills and understanding at our disposal. Where do we go next? What is the next moment that you had that early understanding? You have the computers that you started to play with that became a through line throughout most of your life. What did you do at thirteen years old with the computer that brought you into this field that you're doing now?

A lot of people can look back in the course of their lives and say, “There was this teacher.” That was certainly true for me. I could name a handful of them, but all of us who had something big happen in our lives can trace it back to some teacher who had a big impact. For me, it was Mr. Weits. He was my computer science professor in high school. This is 1971. Nobody knew, including him, exactly what computer science was anyway in 1971.

He encouraged me. I took a passion I had as a kid, which was baseball. The Tigers had won the World Series a few years before. I can tell you. I am thrilled that they are the number one team in Major League Baseball in 2025 because it's been a while for them. Tigers won the World Series in '68. I was a dyed-in-the-wool Tigers fan. I loved to play baseball. I was one of those '60s kids who got up in the morning. Grab your mitt, your ball, and your glove. Go knock on doors until you get at least three kids to play a game with.

I typed in all of the Major League Baseball players into the computer, and then created the software so my friends and I could play our favorite Major League Baseball teams against each other in the cold Michigan winter months. You're looking at the guy who invented Fantasy Baseball, saying. I always say my life is littered with lost opportunities like this. Mr. Weits saw what I had done. He said, “Rich, there's this international programming contest. You should enter it.”

Between his encouragement and my dad's legwork to get photocopies of all the things I was putting together done, because that was a big deal back in the '70s, I submitted this program. I won the gaming category of this international programming contest. The people who are supplying the computing power came to the high school to find the kid who won the contest because this was a feather in their program's cap.

Tom Hartsig was his name. He comes to me and he says, “Do you want to come work for me?” I said, “Doing what?” He says, “Coding.” I said, “You can get paid for this?” He goes, “Yes.” I started writing code professionally for pay before I could even drive a car, which was a mind-blowing opportunity for me. I was so delighted with that work, the creativity of it, the artistry of it, the effort, and figuring things out that I stayed working right through high school graduation. I eventually came up here to Michigan to get a couple of degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering.

By the time I was at Michigan, I had already been programming for seven years. I did well in the Computer Science curriculum here. In 1982, I graduated with a master's degree. At that point, 1982 was, comparatively speaking, probably one of the biggest years in the computer industry ever because the PC came out then. The world was about to change. I was right there at the cusp of it. I was well-trained. I loved it. I started this wonderful career at that point.

It looked perfect. Every year, raises, promotion, stock options, greater title, greater authority, bigger team, and bigger office. My wife was thrilled with the life I was providing for our family. My parents were very proud of me. Inside, I was dying. I didn't even want to be in the profession anymore. I was planning an exit. My wife would look at a tired me after long days. She'd say, “Honey, you look tired. Did you get a lot done at work today?” I looked at her, and I said, “I got nothing done today.” I was busy from one end of the day to the other, running from firefight to firefight, angry phone calls from customers, trying to quell the emotions of my team that was frustrated with the lack of quality we were delivering to the world. It was going wrong in every possible dimension.

My bosses were telling me, “You're doing a great job. Keep going.” I'm like, “No, I'm not.” I wanted out. I was considering a canoe camp in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota for a career choice. Here I have this, “You're doing great.” Inside, I'm like, “No, I'm not.” I looked around. I surveyed the industry because I thought maybe I got the wrong job. Maybe I'm working for the wrong company. I saw the whole darn profession is suffering from the same things I'm suffering. My internal optimist kicked in. I said, “I'm stuck in a room full of manure. There's got to be a pony in this room somewhere.” It ignited a fire in me that said, “There's a better way. Find it.” I went to authors and books, but not books on technology.

I was driven towards books on how to organize humans more effectively. That's what drove my thinking. I thought, “This is not a technology problem. This is a human organization problem. This is a systems thinking problem. We aren't taking the right approach. We're doing wrong-minded things. We're cutting corners too quickly. We're thinking we can get it done.” I had bosses who'd say, “Don't worry that it's filled with bugs. Ship it. We'll fix it later.” I'll tell you. Later never came, ever.

When I was in management, I was allocating 30% of my team to fixing problems we had created in the past. I wasn't doing 30% because that's what I needed. I probably needed 100% of my team to fix those problems. That's what I was allowed to do. We were constantly behind the eight ball. I thought, “I hate this. There's no way. This can't be right. There's got to be a better way.” That became the fuel for my fire. It took me another decade to figure out what that way was. Ultimately, that's what became Menlo Innovations, where we have this crazy good mission statement. It's a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but we take it deadly seriously. It is to end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology.

I love it. There is so much to unwind what you shared. My mind is exploding with all that you've shared. This is an interesting journey. It's a challenging journey.

Most great journeys, hero journeys, are born out of pain. Mine certainly was.

Most great journeys are born out of pain.

I often think about this idea of when people think of passion, which we're not going to dwell on too long. They think of passion. They think of that as delightful.

It is joy through the tulips.

Finding Passion And Beauty In Coding

Passion requires suffering for something we believe very strongly in. You had a passion for the work you were doing, coding. You said a word that hit me because I'm an artist at heart. It's not just science. It was art. You saw the art in the coding.

It's such a creative activity. It's a direct expression of how we think about a problem. There's no question, there are infinite ways to solve that problem. That's where the artistry kicks in. Most technologists I know want to develop a solution that is not only elegant in its implementation, but beautiful in its presentation to the users that it tends to serve. There is one thing alone that thrills the people who do what we do. That is to see their work get out into the world and delight the people it's intended to serve, so much so that they come back later and say, “You did that.”

I love that. I use that every day. “You made a difference in my life with the work that you did.” That's all we want. People in the software industry are servant-oriented. We build things to help others achieve the goals they want to achieve in their lives. When people come back to us and tell us they love what we did, that's all we need. We work for free if we can get that every day.

The interesting thing I come back to is also this idea of when you said this 'ship it' mentality. I get it. There's an element of that that works to some extent. When you're always in that mode, that is the death knell for software developers because you're like, “I want to delight people. I want to make it something that people will want to use every day. If it's got bugs and all these things that are not going to work, that's not going to be a good reflection of what I want to put out in the world.”

Quality guru Deming said it best. He said, “All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.” I coach people on this. A lot of people come to me and ask for advice and mentoring. I say when you go home at night, and you're talking about work over dinner in front of your children, understand how closely they're listening to what you say. If you go home, and all you're doing is complaining and saying, “I don't get a chance to do good work. I've got a crappy boss. We deliver crap all the time,” your kids are going to be sitting here saying, “I don't want to do what my dad does. I don't want to do what my mom does. I want to go do something else.”

My dad worked for one of the big automotive companies for 40 years. I will tell you this. As I listened to him describe his environment there, I thought to myself. I grew up in Southeast Michigan. Everybody was heading for the Big Three back in those days. I'm like, “I want nothing to do with those companies because I heard what it did to my dad.” My middle daughter got promoted to people management for the first time in her life. She's like, “Dad, I'm reading your book.”

I said, “Cool. What are you learning?” She goes, “I'm trying to figure out how to get where you are.” I said to her, “Lauren, did you read the fifteen years of pain pretty good?” She goes, “Yes. I don't want that part.” I said, “I don't know how to get there without the fifteen years of pain. There may well be a way, but I didn't learn it.” I said, “Look, here's the deal.” She's well along in her career. I said, “Go back and look at all the bosses you've ever had.”

I know because I've talked to her. “You've had good bosses. You've had not-so-good bosses. Make a list. What did the not-so-good bosses do that you didn't like? Make a list. What did the good bosses do that you appreciated? Don't do the bad stuff, and do more good stuff. That's a pretty simple formula. You already know what you need to do. You know what you need to not do.”

It's great advice. It's very sound. The key thing is to then put that into practice. The keyword is practice. It's not going to be easy to come out of the gates and always get it right. Sometimes, you're going to assemble the furniture out in the garage. You're going to have to take it apart.

My ten-year-old memory says I didn't harm it a bit when I dragged it down the cement sidewalk to get it into the house.

The one thing that is challenging when I think about the journey you've been on is that a lot of the things you experienced back then are the challenging situations and the 'ship it' culture. I think about the 'ship it' culture around people management, which is like, “We'll deal with that problem later. Let's continue moving forward.” No, we have to slow down and focus on the people. It still shows up now. We are still dealing with it, maybe even more so.

These are timeless problems. We have not solved these. In fact, in some ways, it's gotten worse. I don't mean to be negative about the world because that's not my style. A better way to phrase it is that it's more important now than ever.

Changing The World By Changing Your World

I agree. Maybe it's time for us to be thinking, how we are not learning from the lessons we keep coming back to? I'm not going to challenge you to give us the answers to all these questions. That's a thing that we need to pause and say, how are we to move forward in a different way from here? Back to the story. I know you come to this place of saying you started Menlo, which is an interesting word of phrase, because you're not located in Menlo Park. Tell me about the naming.

I love to challenge my technological brother. There are a lot of people who contact me. I had one guy once. He says, “I'm going to come see you over lunch.” I said, “Where are you?” He goes, “I'm right outside San Francisco.” I said, “So you're getting on a plane?” He goes, “No, I'll drive down to see.” I said, “You think we're in Menlo Park, California. No, we named ourselves after the real Menlo Park.” “What do you mean?” I said, “Edison, light bulb, phonograph, telephone, transceiver changed the world in ways we still feel to this day.”

They're like, “Yes, Menlo Park, New Jersey, but you're not in New Jersey either. Where's that connection?” I tell them the fun story. Edison and Ford were great friends. Edison was a mentor to Henry Ford because Henry Ford was much younger. As Henry Ford became quite successful and very wealthy, he went to his friend, Thomas. He noticed that his original Menlo Park, New Jersey, lab was falling into disrepair because Edison had already moved to his West Orange facility in New Jersey. Ford said, “What happened in that lab was so special. We need to preserve it for future generations.”

He said, “I'm going to build a historic park around this lab in Dearborn, Michigan. I need your permission to move every brick of this lab to Dearborn and rebuild it.” Edison wagged his finger at his young friend Henry and said, “Over my dead body, that building is to remain on New Jersey soil.” Henry Ford says, “Okay.” He sent the rail cars to New Jersey, dug the dirt up from under the building, put the New Jersey soil in the rail cars, shipped it to Dearborn, Michigan, dug a hole, put the New Jersey soil in the hole, and rebuilt the lab perfectly in Dearborn, Michigan in a park now called Greenfield Village or the Henry Ford that I got to visit every year as a kid. If you grew up in Southeast Michigan, every summer you made at least one trip to Greenfield Village.

I would see this lab of Thomas Edison. I don't even know why I got goosebumps every time I went in it. To me, it represented the mix of science, technology, human energy, camaraderie, teamwork, invention, and changing the world, all those things combined in this one little room. I thought, “This is where I want to work someday.” What's cool is I get to work in it every day now for 24 years because we recreated the spirit and energy of Edison and the Menlo Park, New Jersey lab.

That's beautiful. It is on so many fronts. It also has you thinking about recreating the spirit of a place. It can be embodied anywhere. It starts with understanding the thing that you want to create and how you can create that mentality and the culture that you want, wherever you are, whether you're in India, California, or you name a place. We can be innovative and creative wherever we are. We've got to make sure we put the right fundamentals in place.

What I like to say to that point, Tony, is this. The world has issues. It always has. It always will. Sometimes, those issues can feel so overwhelming that you don't know where to begin. I tell people, you don't have to change the world. You just have to change your world.

You do not have to change the world. You just have to change your world.

It is much more manageable that way.

It is something you have some contact and control over. Change inside first, looking inward. I had to look inward and figure out how do I become a better leader, and then you begin to affect the people around you.

Origin Story Of Menlo Innovations

There are so many directions I want to take this conversation. We could probably spend days having this conversation. I'd like to start by speaking a bit more about what Menlo Innovations does and how it is that you've gotten to such a broad reach. Feel free to share any potholes along the way that you experienced in building this out. We'll then tap into some of the ideas in the book, if that's cool with you.

One is, I got the unusual opportunity that most business people would never have. I built the prototype of Menlo Innovations at my old employer. I was a VP of R&D at a company called Interface Systems, where I was as frustrated as can be. I got a new boss who could see down the pathway I was looking down. He encouraged me and supported me. Again, like those teachers I talked about, or that first boss, every once in a while, this magical person enters your life. It's everything you needed him to be. For me, it is Bob Nero, who was the CEO of Interface Systems.

I still credit Bob to this day that I would not be doing what I'm doing, and I wouldn't be here talking to you about joy in Menlo, were it not for Bob's influence in my life. He's very humble. He's like, “No, Rich. You would have done it anyway.” I don't think so, Bob. In those early days of reinventing a tired old public company, when I was a VP of R&D, there were stumbles, fumbles, bumbles, doubts, and self-doubts because we were doing something nobody had ever done before.

Every time I got tired, slowed down, and self-doubted, Bob's gentle hand was on my shoulder. He whispered in my ear, “You're doing the right thing, Rich. Keep going. I got you covered.” That's all I needed. For two years, I reinvented that entire public company because the effect of the technology team inside a tech company has far-reaching effects on the rest of the organization. Within six months, it was rocking and rolling. Within two years, I was back to joy. I didn't use that word back then. I got back to what I wanted for my career.

In 2001, everything was taken away from me when the Internet bubble burst. We sold the company to a California company. They shuttered every remote office they had, including mine. I was out of work for the first time in my life. I went home and told my wife that I'd lost my job. She looked at me with tears in her eyes. She said, “You're unemployed.” I said, “No, honey, I'm an entrepreneur now.” It took her six months to figure out that entrepreneurship pays less than unemployment. While I lost everything the world measures, they could not take away what I learned in those two years.

That became the basis of my motivations. What I learned was that this is not about chasing the perfect setting dial between chaos and bureaucracy, like I was trying for some years. This was about taking an entirely new look at the fundamentals of an organization. These days, I compare it to the forces at work on an airplane. As leaders, we need to make sure that we keep high the lift of human energy of our team. Lighten up the weight of bureaucracy, meeting load, and all that stuff.

Make sure people understand the thrust of our purpose and overcome that drag of fear. If we get those forces in the right balance, like in an aircraft, our little corporate aircraft will get off the ground safely and successfully every day. If you're going to change the world in the way we want to change it, ending human suffering in the world as it relates to technology, you're probably going to have to do some things differently than the rest of the world does. We do. For example, those 3,000 people a year come from all over the world to visit. I can tell you, we've got a number of visitors coming.

While we were sitting here, I was watching my team set up all these chairs in this room with name badges and everything. There are some people coming in to see us. What they see when they come here, other than the physical space itself, is reminiscent of that Edison Menlo Park, New Jersey lab, a big open room. These days, it's unusual. They see people in the office five days a week. I know that's weird. We're counterculture that way. What they look at closer, they see two people and one computer. All work here is done in pairs.

We switch those pairs every five business days. The human energy that results from that construct alone is cold fusion energy. It is amazing. We had to figure out how we are going to delight those end users. The way we do that is with a set of specialists in our team whose title intrigues everyone. It is a high-tech anthropologist. People look at us like, “Why would you need anthropologists on a technology team?” We're like, “Let's assume your technology one day is going to be used by humans out in the real world. Wouldn't it be neat if we understood those humans the way an anthropologist would?”

If we study humans in their native environment and learn their vocabulary, their workflows, and their habits, you know what you have a chance to do? You have a chance to create software that delights them and works the way they work. Remember, we're the industry that, through almost our entire history, has called the people we serve stupid users. We write dummy books for those poor people. We then get them to self-deprecate.

You or I even said from time to time, “You know me. I'm a stupid user.” Excellent, we have you right where we want you. You realize that my beautiful technology that should be perfectly understood can't be for you because you're too dumb. No, it doesn't have to be that way. We can design software that honors the people we intend to serve. The only way to do that is to understand them in their native environment, the way an anthropologist would.

Bridging Anthropology And Technology

First of all, anthropology is one of those things we often forget as a field that is powerful for us to tap into because it allows us to see things through a different lens. It's a great frame of what you shared and the ability to empower people to see that we have more control over the experience when we look at it from that angle of understanding the human in the interface.

Think of all the things that have ever frustrated you about some piece of technology. I don't care what it is. I always go after the stupid chip-reading credit card machines that blink at you, don't remove your card, and then stop blinking, then blink at you again. You think it says remove, and you pull it out. It says, “No, we changed the screen to say, don't remove it.” You've got to start the whole thing over again. In any of those moments of frustration, you or I, or anybody else on the planet, you know what they want to say? They want to see.

Did the people who designed this ever watch anybody actually use it, or have they ever used it themselves? The answer is probably not. We worked on a project with an automotive supplier once. His comment to us was, “You guys are so lucky.” We said, “Why?” He says, “You get to go out and talk to our end users. I've been here eleven years. I've never even met one.” If you ever wonder why products are so frustrating, that sums it up right there.

It comes back to what we said earlier. It is this idea of “Just ship it. Get it out the door. We need to start making money.” That's great, but then a frustrated customer is going to be like, “Never again am I going to use that product. It's so frustrating.” The cycle continues. You burn somebody. Building back trust with that customer is going to be a whole lot harder than building trust in the first place. The story you shared earlier about the way you think about the lift off on a plane is a masterclass in leading a team. It's such a wonderful way of explaining it.

It's funny you mention that because I lead a two-day class here at Menlo on that very thing. We call it Lead with Joy. It is looking at those four forces over two days with the students to have them realize how important leadership is in affecting all four of those quadrants.

Gaining Rewards And Transformation Through Pain

If we only look at it from the perspective that leaders are there to control us, or leaders are there to tell us what to do or how to, then it becomes a sense of an us versus them. When it becomes a sense of enablement and togetherness, it becomes a whole different ball game. It reframes the situation. That's what we need to embody those things in a different way. It removes the barriers. Let's move into the books for a little bit. Both are amazing books. You've talked a lot about some of the concepts already, but maybe share some of the things that you think are important, some high-level items that you want to share that people can expect when they go pick up either of the books.

I will say writing books was bucket list territory for me. The fact that I've got to do it twice feels miraculous. I love to write. I always tell people these two fingers wrote those books because I'm a two-finger typist, and my team makes fun of me about that. In Joy, Inc., the subtitle is How We Built a Workplace People Love. It's the history of how all this came to be. The first third of the book describes those trough of disillusionment days and how I broke free. I remember my editor at Penguin was pushing me. She's like, “Rich, I'm not sure people want the backstory.”

I said, “Believe me. I've spoken to enough people on the planet. They want to know where this all came from.” When they come and I see them, they're like, “How did you think of this?” It's like, “Let me tell you about the pain that we were having and what problems we were trying to solve.” Part of it is that it is a book describing the transformation of an old team and then the creation of this new one.

A lot of people think, “You're so lucky you built this from scratch. You could build this culture.” No, remember, I did this twice. The first time I did it inside of a tired old public company, and I had to transform that team. One of the lessons that I talk about early on in the book that is important for any leader who's struggling with getting his or her team to change the way they think or know that it needs to change is to understand that in those moments of transformational change, you are messing with existing reward systems. Our reward systems as humans can be so weird sometimes.

For example, you go home tonight. You see your next-door neighbor over the fence. “Tony, how's work going?” You're like, “I can't even see straight. I'm working so hard. I don't think I can take a vacation this summer. I was looking forward to spending some time with my family, but there's no way.” It sounds awful because you're working lots of overtime and everything. The message you're beaming out is one of great reward. You're saying, “I'm so important. They can't live without me. I am the linchpin and everything that's going on around here.” That is a reward.

Pain-filled work systems are rewards in their own right. Imagine a week later, you come back. You're later in there. “How's work going?” “It's going great. I'm taking a couple of weeks' vacation. I only work 40 hours of work a week. Everything's going smoothly.” Your neighbor's thinking in their head, “He's going to lose his job soon. If he can take that much time off, they don't need him.” It's so bizarre how we do this.

Jeanenne LaMarsh wrote a great book called Changing the Way We Change. In that book, she said that if you're going to change something, realize number one, you're taking a reward away, even if it's a painful one. If you don't replace it with a reward of equal or greater value as quickly as possible, people will revert to the old reward system. That's why you see most transformations. You can pick agile as a transformation in the tech industry, for example.

You find out when you go back a year later, and it's like, “It looks like it's the same as it used to be, producing the same results it always did.” You seem to have a new vocabulary for things. You use different words to describe the same old processes because everybody reverted to the old reward system. There was no replacement reward of equal or greater value. I spent a lot of time in the beginning part of the book talking about that and how you move people through to a new part, and then walking through the rest of it, which is what the specific things are.

Why do we pair? What is it about this high-tech anthropology that's so important? How is the leadership over hierarchical authority? Why is that more important? It is all the things that people need to know. What effect does physical space have on a team's energy, which is a big deal these days as people think about work from home versus in the office and all those things? Chief Joy Officer is more about the invisible leadership systems that are in place here at Menlo. It's often the invisible systems that have the greatest impact.

What you're sharing is so spot on. It makes so much sense. We need more people to tap into that idea of moving people through change. One of the things that came to mind as you were sharing that is this idea of Gleicher's formula for change. Have you heard of that before?

I haven't.

It's simple. It's similar in terms of the way you're thinking about it. Instead of the reward system, it's the resistance to change that we're moving against. Your change effort has to be greater than the resistance to change. I like yours better. It's much better.

We'll call it something. We have to give it a name, the Joy Change Equation or something like that.

Rich’s Book Recommendations

It is all branding. I know we're coming up on time, but I want to ask my last question, which is one I'm very curious about because you've shared so many great insights on this so far. What are one or two books that have had an impact on you and why?

A couple of my favorites come out of a couple of companies I admire in Salt Lake City. The Arbinger Institute wrote a couple of great books called Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace. They followed it with an underlying description of how these two fables work because they're written as fables like a Lencioni book would be. All the Lencioni books are favorites of mine. Those books in my mind, the way I describe them, are they're describing the operating system of the soul.

Every leader should read those. When I read them, they rang me out like a dishcloth. There's a story in the books about a guy named Lou. He's a wonderful leader. When you read about Lou in the first book, you're like, “I wish I could be Lou. I'll never be like Lou. He's this great guy. He must have come in and landed on the planet as this wonderful leader.” The second book is the prequel to the first book, which tells you how Lou became Lou.

You found out Lou was a total jerk. That one convinced me anymore because it's like, “If that jerk can become Lou, then what's stopping me?” I would highly recommend those books. There is one by the folks at what used to be called VitalSmarts, who wrote the book Crucial Conversations. Now, they're called Crucial Learning. They wrote a far more impactful book called Crucial Influence. It's about the science of behavior change. It's well-researched and well done. We use that a lot here in our thinking about how we get from where we are to where we want to go. What is the resistance? Quite frankly, the resistance is inside all of us.

The way they describe it in a pretty six-source model, as they call it, is you have three sources of motivation and you have three sources of skill. You have sources at the personal, the social, and the systemic level. If you don't get at least four of those sources working in your direction, because all the forces are at work all the time, they're either working for you or against you. If you don't tip four in one direction, you'll never change.

My simple version of this is for twenty years at 11:59:59 on December 31st, I kept saying, “This is the year I'm going to get in better shape.” I was always motivated on New Year's Eve to get in better shape. By January 14th of the subsequent month, I'd say, “Next year's the year. I'm a little busy this year.” We know that personal motivation by itself is not enough. We need these other sources to get us over that change curve.

You shared so many great insights from those books. I love each one of them. I've never heard of Crucial Influence. That's one that I will want to go check out. We may think about these books as being old, but some of them are timeless. They continue to show up as being full of things that never lose touch with what's going on right now. It's wonderful.

Like the old saying goes, “There's nothing new under the sun.” Most of the issues we're dealing with are simply human issues that have been here time immemorial.

Most issues we are dealing with right now are issues that have been here time immemorial.

Rich, I want to start by thanking you so much for coming on the show. This is a wonderful, insightful conversation. Thank you for saying yes.

Thank you for inviting me, Tony. It's great to have this conversation. I hope your audience gets a lot out of it.

Get In Touch With Rich

I'm sure they will. Before I let you go, one last thing I'd like to do is ask, where can people find you if they want to learn more about your work?

The one place I decided to be very active is LinkedIn. Feel free. I always appreciate it when people say something like, “I read your episode on Tony's show. I'd love to link in.” I'm a little bit discerning in terms of who I accept, but if you give me the reference point as to why you connected, I say yes. You can come to our website, MenloInnovations.com. One of the delightful things about our tours is that we offer three free tours a month. Tour virtually, so you can come from anywhere on the planet with the click of a button. You don't have to get on an airplane. If you happen to be coming to Michigan sometime, we do one free public tour a month as well.

Next time in Michigan, I'm coming to check you out. Wonderful. Thanks again. Thanks to the readers for coming on this journey. I know you're leaving completely inspired and ready to change the way we're showing up in the world in different ways. Thank you so much. That's a wrap.

Important Links

• Menlo Innovations
• Rich Sheridan's Website
• Rich Sheridan on LinkedIn
• Joy, Inc.
• Chief Joy Officer
• Today Was Fun
• Bob Nero on LinkedIn
• Changing the Way We Change
• Leadership and Self-Deception
• The Anatomy of Peace
• Crucial Conversations
• Crucial Influence

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