246 Unlocking Growth through Purpose-Driven Leadership and a Culture of Engagement with Garry Ridge, Former CEO & Chairman of WD-40 | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Gary Ridge, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:00:05] Garry Ridge: Good day, Mahan. It's just a delight to be with you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

[00:00:09] Mahan Tavakoli: What a delight for me, Gary, having heard about you from Dr. Ken Blanchard, who talks about you every chance he gets, and also having read your book and seen. Your leadership at WD 40, so it's a joy getting a chance to have this conversation with you. Before we get into organizational culture and leadership, Gary would love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become.

[00:00:39] Garry Ridge: Thank you. If you haven't worked it out by my accent I am an Australian, a native Australian. I grew up in a little suburb just outside Sydney called Five Doc. I was the youngest of four children. In fact, there are about 12 years difference between myself and my next brother. My dad was born in 1907.

My mom was born in. 14. Mom actually lived till she was 99 years and nine months old. And she only passed away about eight years ago. So I think the influence of adult life was important to me. I really enjoyed learning back then. I was working from a young age, born in 1956. Of course then, I started my life working on the back of a milk truck.

I had a paper run. So mum and dad. Showed me the value of delivering work to people that was meaningful. Just an Aussie guy that grew up in the sixties and seventies in Australia.

[00:01:38] Mahan Tavakoli: So how did you end up then, Gary, working for wd?

[00:01:43] Garry Ridge: I've only ever really applied for one job in my life, and that was, full-time job. And that was my first job. And when I left school actually at the age of 16, I'd done my school certificate in Australia. I joined a big retailing organization in Australia called Walton's. And I did a management trainee program with them, and that was a four year program that was both on the job training and then I went to what best could be described in Australia night school and did studies on warehousing, distribution, and I was working for a company then that had a lot of work in the hardware, automotive industry and their departments.

One of the suppliers from our department asked me to join them. I joined them and from that I was asked to join a company in Australia called Hawker Pacific, who was actually the. Licensee for WD 40 in Australia. So fast forward now I'm in my late twenties or early thirties. And then in 1987 they decided to end the license in Australia.

I got to know the people at WD 40 and I got a phone call one day and it was we're going to open a subsidiary in Australia. We're really starting to think seriously about our global business. Would you like to join WD 40 Company and open our Australian subsidiary managing director of Australia and Asia?

My dad was an engineer. He worked for the same company for 50 years. And I said to dad, WD 40 company has asked me to join him. Why do you think about that dad? And he said, you can't go wrong with that stuff, son. So another lesson in life is listen to your.

[00:03:21] Mahan Tavakoli: Definitely do that. But when you joined WD 40 was a different era, Gary, and one of the things that I find to be incredible is that if anything was to be commoditized and competed out, it would've been a can of oil, but you were able to build WD 40 to something more than that. How were you able to do that?

[00:03:48] Garry Ridge: Well, Interestingly, we don't sell oil. We create positive lasting memories by solving problems in factories, homes, and workshops around the world.

[00:03:57] Mahan Tavakoli: I love, how you describe what it is that you do, that it is not just the product outputs, and I can see myself getting excited about how you describe WD 40, so if WD 40 can have that kind of purpose, organization can.

[00:04:19] Garry Ridge: I think what's important too is that the purpose has to be authentic. Authenticity is so important these days. So when you think about WD 40, the blue and yellow can with a little red top, and you think. About when you used it. So many times in my life when I've been asked what do I do?

 I say I work for WD 40. I don't tell them my role. They say, I remember when and we picked up on that very early and we said, we have an authentic purpose here that creates, Positive lasting memories. We've often been called a rocking chair brand because people tell us how they were working with their granddad or grandma or with their dad on something and WD 40 was there, and they remember the smell.

They remember the environment. So I think purpose has to be authentic and that you have to be able to link it to the product with authenticity. That's so important.

[00:05:17] Mahan Tavakoli: So Gary, were you seeing this as purpose from early on, or is that a way you describe it now because over the past dozen or so years, more organ. Have started talking about their purpose. Some, as you said, authentic purpose. Some find words that don't resonate at all with any of their employees or customers, but they still call it purpose.

Is this how you viewed it from the beginning or is this where you settled?

[00:05:47] Garry Ridge: I had a moment in life, like most people do, back in 1997 after I'd moved from Sydney in 1994 to San Diego in 1997, I was given the privilege. Of leading WD 40 company as the C E O CEO O of a US public company. Now, I'd never actually been to Wall Street, and I thought, wow, what a great gift and privilege this is.

I was flying from Los Angeles to Sydney. In a Qantas 7 47, sitting in the upper deck at 2:00 AM in the morning. Probably the only light that was shining down was mine, and I'm looking out over the Pacific Ocean and I'm reading some of the work of the Del Lama, and I'd read a quote of the Del Lama and the quote was, our purpose in life is to help people.

If we can't help them, don't hurt them. And I thought, wow, that. True. And I thought about it a bit further and I adapted and I said, our purpose in life is to make people happy. If we can't make them happy, at least don't hurt them. And at the same time I was amazed by a quote of Aristotle that said, pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

And I thought, my gosh, I've been given this gift to lead this company. What if we could make working at the company, a place that, imagine a place where you go to work every day, you make a contribution to something bigger than yourself. You learn something new. You are protected and set free by a compelling set of values, and you go home.

Happy people. Create happy families. Happy families. Create happy communities. Happy communities. Create a happy world. We need a happy world more today than we did in 1997, and I thought, this is my calling. I need to work out how to do this. So that's when I decided to go back to school. I searched around, I found this master's degree at U S D in leadership.

That's my first interaction with Dr. Ken Blanchard. He was one of my professors. This was all about servant leadership and purpose in life, and I was fortunate enough to be in a company now where I could actually take what I was learning and test it. So this journey of purpose started in 1997 in the upper.

Of a Qantas 7 47, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

[00:08:23] Mahan Tavakoli: What a beautiful journey, and I wanna underline the fact that this is not. Soft culture and thinking in that you are modest you were able to lead the organization as a servant leader to grow from about 300 million to way over 2 billion . So this is the culture. Making sure and enabling the organization to succeed.

It's not do it just to be nice. It benefited the organization and its growth.

[00:08:58] Garry Ridge: Absolutely. And actually it was 300 million in market cap, so the value of the company to over 2.5. Billion in market cap in actual value, but more importantly, what made that happen? The will of the people. We have employee engagement at 93.5%. 98% of our people globally say they love to tell people they work at WD 40 Company.

And here's one that is amazing. , 97% of them say they actually trust or respect their coach, who is their boss. So you can have the best strategy in the world. Let's write a strategic plan. Let's take the strategic plan over to Harvard. Let's get some smart professor to mark it up and they say, good job.

I'm gonna give you 60 out of a hundred for your strategic plan. But if only 20% of the people who go to work every day when they go to work are committed, engaged, passionate about working to achieve that plan, 20 times 60 is 1200. But if 80% of the people go to work every day and they're enthusiastic, passionate, excited about working on the plan, doing what they need to do, eight, six is a 48, 4800 duh.

It's the will of the people and strategy that delivers amazing outcomes. I am convinced that purpose-driven, passionate people guided by their values create amazing outcomes.

[00:10:28] Mahan Tavakoli: It's important to note that when you say 93% employee engagement, that's astronomical. About one third of workers are engaged. Engaged about 20% are actively disengaged. That means they want to do things in the wrong way or the organization or team to get in trouble. So 93% is astronomical.

And I understand your purpose drive. Gary would love to know. In addition to that, how were you able to do that? Because there is a balance with respect to the leader. In this case, the c e o, having a certain vision, certain direction, certain things that comes from the leadership and leadership team, and then the engagement of the team members.

How were you able to balance that?

[00:11:20] Garry Ridge: I mentioned to you that I grew up in Australia. I actually went to a school called Drmo Boys High School, and I had a science teacher, and the science teacher one day gave me a Petri dish and they said What we're gonna do with this Petri dish is we're gonna grow culture. So what's important?

and this is a true story. What's important is what are the ingredients that you need to put in the Petri dish? And then once you've put the ingredients in there, what are the behaviors or the actions you need to take to maintain and grow great culture? Let's talk about the ingredients, purpose, values, vulnerability.

The list goes on. Put all those in the Petri dish. Now, what's the job of the leader? The leader's job is to not only applaud and reward great behavior or good ingredients, but to be brave enough to be able to redirect behavior that's putting toxins into the Petri dish. And I think one of the huge downfalls of leaders and a very good friend of mine, Ron Carucci, wrote a book recently called To Be Honest, , I was chatting with him and he said, here's one of the things that we fail at as leaders.

We try to protect our comfort at the expense of someone else's growth. Now, let me repeat that. We protect our comfort at the expense of someone else's growth. So if we really love and care about our people, it's not only about rewarding and applauding, but being brave enough to redirect behavior around a core set of values so expectations are known. And I know you read our book, the book with Ken Blanchard. One of the key elements is what are you gonna hold me accountable for? And are you gonna have ongoing conversations with me about how am I performing and how am I as your coach going to help you get an A.

[00:13:23] Mahan Tavakoli: Gary, one of the major challenges that I see in working with a lot of clients and also hearing from some of the podcast listeners that write in, is an issue of a lack of accountability and a difficulty with accountability, and then the lack of. Coaching. That is part of what you're talking about in that it's not just serving people by being nice or kind.

Kindness is a part of it. There has to be that candor and that coaching on the other side with the clarity of expectations. So how were you able to. That the leaders and managers in the organization were able to systemically do that. What were some of the best practices that you ensured that this would become part of how people behaved, not just intentions.

[00:14:18] Garry Ridge: So firstly, we embedded the conversation in our talent development program. So we say that at least every 90 days you are gonna sit down with the people that you are privileged to lead, and you're gonna have a conversation about, I'm not here to mark your paper, I'm here to help you get an a, I mean you no harm.

But then also we needed to be very clear what a good coach looks like. So let me give you , a good coach in a sporting.  If you and I are coaching a soccer team as the coach, do we run on the field and try and kick the ball? No. Do we actually go to the podium and pick up the prize? No.

Do we want to go and interfere with the actual play? No. A great coach spends a lot of time on the sideline observing the play and. Most importantly, they spend a lot of time in the locker room after the game, understanding, communicating, and building trust within the team. And never ever do they go to the podium.

So unfortunately, a lot of leaders want to be micromanagers. And I think you know this person. This is, I'm holding up Al here. This is Al the soul sucking CEO of Fear Inc. And let me share with you some of Al's bad behavior, if I may. Al's ego eats his empathy instead of his empathy eating his ego, Al believes micromanagement is essential.

Al's corporate royalty. Al spent many years climbing the corporate ladder that shall bow down to Al. Al probably has the biggest office in the building, probably has a private parking space, and you would never find Al in the cantina sitting having morning coffee with all of the people within the company al's a master of a control.

He's a know-it-all. He has all the answers. He thinks learning is for losers. He must always be right even when he is wrong. He hates feedback and don't depend on Al to follow through on his commitments. They're the attributes of a bad coach. That's not servant leadership. That's not what we're talking about.

But if you think of the opposite of Al, someone Ken Blanchard would talk about they involve and love their people. They're always in servant leadership mode. They're expected to be competent. They are connected with emotional intelligence. They think leading is about learning. They have a harder gold and a backbone of steel.

They are champions of hope. They know micromanagement is not scalable. They do what they say they're going to do and they love feedback. So not only do you have to have accountability clear, but what's your role as our leader? Don't be an Al or an Alice

[00:17:22] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a. Campaign on a great bumper sticker. Don't be an Al or Alice I love the way you described it Gary. And part of what I appreciate most about your journey and your story is that sometimes I have people writing in and saying, These concepts, thoughts, with respect to leadership, make sense to the authors.

But I live in the real world, and the real world has other challenges. So I love your example because you lived it in the real world. It's not just hypothetical thinking with respect to what a leader should be. First, I wanted to start out though on that note about the fact. Absolutely incredible to me that you were selected as a C E O and at that time you decided to say, I need to learn more.

And you went to get your masters. Why did you do that?

[00:18:24] Garry Ridge: Oh, cuz one of the best gifts I've ever been given in life is I'm consciously incompetent and probably wrong and roughly right In most circumstances. The three most important words I've ever learned in my life are, I don't know. And today I continue to be a learner day after day. I love the quote. I think it's attributed to Michelangelo, but I don't know whether it was him, which is inor, which is learning.

I still am. So I think today more than. Companies who learn faster will grow faster. That's why I talk about the learning moment. I've just completed last year, my 25 year apprenticeship in leadership. I was 25 years as the c e o of a US public company. I have lots of scar tissue and I have lots of learning moments.

I've never made a mistake in my life. What I have is lots of learning moments, and the reason I call them learning moments is I wanna take away fear. And the definition of 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's throw this word failure out because failure is normal. Let's turn every opportunity into a teachable moment. And that's why I went back to school. I didn't know how to do it. , I wanted to learn how, I wanted to know, what was about this servant leadership thing that was so special.

And that's why I'm so grateful of the relationship that I've had with Ken for many years. He and I see each other often. He's 83 years old now and when we can, we play nine holes of golf on a Wednesday afternoon. He's just one of the most special people in my life.

[00:20:06] Mahan Tavakoli: He is a special person. Gary, as are you. I'm a big believer in the fact that leadership is example, and if you as the leader are willing to constantly learn constantly. Think about, talk about your mistakes and what you are learning from them, then you make it more likely that other people will approach it the same way.

Now, one of the challenges that I hear, Gary, I know a lot of great leaders including David Rubenstein, who I had on the podcasts. He still reads over a hundred books a year. But a lot of leaders say, Overwhelmed at this point. There is so much information, emails, text messages, everything else that I have a hard time.

Actively learning. Now, watching your journey over the past few years, it seems like you stayed consistent with that learning and growth. How were you able to keep that a priority when there were so many demands on your time as c e o and Chairman?

[00:21:15] Garry Ridge: I have a favorite saying. Opportunities are abundant, focus is a gift. One of my other dear friends is Marshall Goldsmith. I don't know if you know of Marshall, but he wrote What Got You Here Won't Get You there. I use that text in my teaching where I teach at U S D and he has a thing called the Daily Questions.

Did I do my best to today? And one of my daily questions is, did I do my best to learn today? And it's funny, I was coaching a c e O this morning and we were having the same conversation where we were talking about I do wanna learn, but I also want to exercise.

I said why don't you do the both of them together, put your headphones on and listen to a book as you walk in the morning so you can do it together. But what I'm really saying is you can make. It's just a what are you going to focus in on? And the more you learn, the better you are, the more time becomes free to you.

I think to be honest, that's a bit of a cop out excuse. It's like me saying I have the same cop out, excuse about losing weight. , when I sit down with my doctor and I have my physical and he says, your cholesterol's great, your heart's good, everything, but you need to lose 10 pounds.

And I go quack. Here's all the reasons. Quack. And I know in the back of my head, that little guy in the back of my head's going that's a pretty poor excuse. The other thing I wanna mention, and you said it before, culture is a shadow of the leader. , I want people to hear that culture is a shadow of the leadership.

And you mentioned that earlier, that, you have to set the example and if you want people to react, set the example. One of the things that I've always, been very deliberate about is making sure that what we want in the company I'm the one that could go first to do that.

[00:23:01] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that Gary, and there's a lot that listeners can learn from your experience. Most specifically that element. What I would love to hear some more of your thoughts on is that there. are hierarchical elements in all organizations. WD 40 wasn't and isn't a holocracy that was attempted in different organizations.

There are hierarchical elements. So what decisions. Go through the hierarchy. And then how are the teams empowered and the individuals empowered to make some of the decisions? Where is the balance in an organization like W D 40?

[00:23:45] Garry Ridge: So I say that anybody in WD 40 company can make any decision they need to make without quacking up the hierarchy, which causes churn and delay as long as they use our values in making that decision. So we have a set of six hierarchal values. Each one of those values has a written paragraph underneath it that describes what the behavior is around that value.

And anybody in the company can make any decision they need to make as long as they use our values as the key to making that decision, and I'll give you an example how that might work. Would you like that?

[00:24:32] Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. I just wanted to underline one point and then would love for you to shed some light on that, in that I heard you say the values are hierarchical in that the values are not things that people get to decide. On their own or within their teams. There is a hierarchy in the values,

so I would love for you to give an example and also shed some light on that, because the way you describe it is very different than how I had heard it before.

[00:25:02] Garry Ridge: Okay, so the example is actually going to illuminate that. So our number one value in the company is we value doing the right thing. Our number two value is we value creating positive, lasting memories in all of our relationships. Our number sixth value, and there's. Six in total is we value sustaining the w D 40 company economy, which is really about growing profitability.

So situation occurs. We have a mandatory in our N W D 40 company that nothing we make will have any cancer causing chemicals in it. So no prop 65 chemicals. So here's a situation. You are someone in the purchasing department, a vendor comes along to you and says, Hey, I have a chemical that I would like to present to you, and if you use this in this formulation, you can make another three and a half to $4 million a year.

Is that exciting to you person? Yeah, of course. It's exciting. However, It's a Prop 65 chemical, so you've gotta just put this little, few little words on the back of the can. Is that okay? Now, if our values weren't hierarchal, then they could go to the number sixth value and say yeah, that's a consideration.

Let me talk to my bossler. But because they're hierarchal, the answer to the question immediately is, Now, I'm sorry. Our number one value is doing the right thing, and putting cancer, causing chemicals in our brand is not going to create po. Oh, yeah. But you can make $4 million more.

I'm sorry. Don't you wanna talk to your boss about that? No, I'm sorry. I need to talk to your supervisor. You don't, because we all live by the same set of hierarchal values. The other thing that's really cool about hierarchal values is they allow you to be a great coach. And I have another example if you want it.

[00:26:55] Mahan Tavakoli: Yes, please. Absolutely. I love this.

[00:26:58] Garry Ridge: Okay, so our second value is we value creating positive, lasting memories in all of our relationships. So here's a simulation of an event that occurred sometime ago. So we're in a meeting one day and it's early in the. And there's someone in the room, one of our treasured tribe members, who is not creating positive, lasting memories.

It's obvious they've had a bad morning, and you've been in one of those meetings, Mahan, you know where the toxins start to come out. So as the coach, as the leader, what do you do in that meeting? Number one is option A. You stop the meeting, you reprimand the. And you continue the meeting, don't do that.

Why? Firstly, that person's embarrassed and everybody else in the meeting thinks, when am I gonna get shot? At what? Meeting next? Number two, you do nothing. That doesn't work either. Number three, what if we thought about our values? Our second value is to create positive lasting memories. So the meeting end.

We walk out of the meeting room, I say to this person, Hey, Moham, let's go for a walk. So we walk outside the building and I start looking around behind a car, under a tree, et cetera, and he says, what the hell are you doing? Here's my opportunity to enter as the coach. The person I know and love was not in that room today.

The person I know and love who uses our values every day was not there. What's on your mind? What's getting in your way? How can I help you? Which opens up a wonderful coaching conversation. The end of the story is we have a great conversation. I learned some of the things that went on that were insignificant.

The tribe member has a learning moment, goes back into the building, apologizes to a couple of people. They say, we know it wasn't you. So again, we can use our values as an opportunity to be great coaches because we've all agreed to them.

[00:28:56] Mahan Tavakoli: These aren't values as written on a piece of paper or put up on the wall. These are values that are lived. On an ongoing basis and form the basis of decision making, form the basis of coaching of the team members. So in order to be able to do that, Gary, . A lot of times people that especially come from other organizations and have different experiences need reinforcement and need training for it.

How were you, in addition to consistently talking about the values and showing it, how were you able to train it in a way that people. and the coaches were able to actually coach, because as you mentioned, if we were playing soccer, the soccer coach wouldn't come on the field, but there are capabilities that the coach needs to have in how to coach.

How were you able to do that at W D 40?

[00:29:58] Garry Ridge: We had to embed this in normal behavior of life in the company. The values part of it are embedded in this conversation we have where we ask everybody every 90 days to tell us how they've lived our values in real life in the last 90 days. Now this is simple. It's not easy, and time is not your friend.

So that's where in my Petri dish culture equals values plus behavior, times consistency. So you've gotta be consistent over time. You don't change culture in an organization with a big barrel of fairy dust. You have to have it and you have to embed it over time. So it's consistency, living the program.

Embedding it in the behavior, applauding and rewarding the people for supporting and doing the right thing. Redirecting people day after day.

[00:30:52] Mahan Tavakoli: And that's really important. The other thing I love, Gary, is the process of transition that you all have been going through. One of the interesting things is as people are reflecting on Jack Welsh ge, And how, for a whole host of reasons, GE started crumbling After that and a couple of months back, Disney decided to bring Bob Iger back, who had been a great C E O because the person that came after him didn't succeed.

I would submit that is. Something that the leader should have done differently. So I would put it on Jack Welsh for GE and Jeff email to have succeeded and would've put it on Bob Iger for his successor to have succeeded. How have you approached the transition so your successor can succeed? Rather than people saying, oh my God, Gary was awesome and when he went WD 40 fell.

[00:31:53] Garry Ridge: Good question. As I Refired not retired from WD 40 Company in August of 2022. My succession plan started eight years ago. I knew that at a certain time in the future, doing the right thing would be to hand over leadership of the company to the next generation. I had a promise that I made.

I said I wanna build in an enduring company that I'd be proud to hand onto others. So eight years ago, I spoke to my board and I said we need to start preparing for this. Eventually I must move on. We identified some people within the organization. My daughter, Is a dance teacher, and she taught me a lesson.

She said, dad, before you ever put anybody on Broadway, you need to have them perform off Broadway just to see what steps they have to improve in the dance. And I said, Kate, thank you. That's very good advice. So we picked some people in the organization and I watched them play in different roles off Broadway and eventually, One of the strong contender came forward, and that's Steve Brass, who is now our c e O.

And I needed to see whether Steve was committed and he was actually based in the United Kingdom. So first one is Steve, are you prepared to disrupt yourself? So we moved Steve and his family from the UK to San Diego. And the reason I wanted to do that was could the family settle into a new culture?

I knew how hard that was. And then Steve had won the trust of our European operation. Been with the company. As when he took leadership 31 years. So he's lived and actually contributed a lot to building this culture. He was then running our America's division and then about two and a bit years ago, I brought him alongside I said, Steve, I've got a motorbike here.

Get in my side car. We're gonna ride this road together for two years. So he was in my sidecar as my president and chief operating officer. Sometimes things happen for a reason and we rode straight into Covid together. So we had the roughest ride of leadership that anyone could have had. And we got through it.

And then September last year, Steve took over now Steve's not me at all. He's quite a different person. But what we both hold dearly is the fact that culture is a competitive advantage, and that culture is so important. I could have got anyone in the company who's a smart marketer and a good executor, but to me, I was not gonna leave the company until I believed I had someone to hand over the secret formula.

We have two secret formulas in the company, one's for the product itself and the other is for the culture, and I wanted to make sure that whoever got that secret culture formula, knew how to work that formula.

[00:34:42] Mahan Tavakoli: Such an outstanding leadership perspective. One of my favorite quotes is from Latza. The great leader when the leader is gone, people say, we did it ourselves. You are ensuring that the culture that you have built at WD 40, the people feel that sense of pride that they did it themselves and have been contributors to that success.

The other thing I would love to hear your thoughts on, Gary, is that. The brand WD 40. You have done an incredible job in a very competitive space in that brands come and go. , but you have been able to, and WD 40 has been able to maintain its presence. I don't think there is a single home, at least that I would know of where people wouldn't have WD 40.

And then when they go to whether the Superstore or Home Depot, wherever it is, they wouldn't reach for that WD 40. How have you been able to maintain that presence? Because especially over the past few years, a lot of iconic brands have fallen. How were you able to maintain it?

[00:36:01] Garry Ridge: It's an honest product. It keeps its promise. Why do you trust people? Because they keep their promise. So we don't make promises. We can't keep, we deliver above expectation performance at extremely good value. We help people's lives, We exist to create positive, lasting memories, solving problems in factories, homes, and workshops around the world.

We solve problems. We create opportunities. Now, the fortunate thing is, and this is where our growth has come from, and where the growth will be into the future. Today, around the world, hundreds of thousands of people will wake up and they will meet the blue and yellow can with a little red top. For the very first time, it will solve a problem.

and it will create a memory for them that will be embedded and consistency. If you look at our product, the blue and yellow can with a little red top. It looks the same today as it did in the 1960s. So we've embedded that image we can show you that blue and yellow cam with nothing written on it.

And in most markets where the brand's established, I'll tell you what it is. So consistency. Keep your promise, be honest. All of the things that are important. Great value. Create memories.

[00:37:17] Mahan Tavakoli: Those are great attributes for leadership as well as the brand. As you are transitioning, Gary, you are spending your time as a c e o coach, as a speaker, as an author. What I wonder is there have been conversations around the kind of leadership you're talking about and servant leadership, whether it's Ken Blanchard for decades has been talking about it or others.

Jim Collins, level five leadership. There are more books and thoughts about it. However, there are a lot of leaders of organizations big and small, and teams that are not behaving and are not leading the way all of the great authors are saying. we should lead. What do you think is causing that disconnect?

Where the thinking on leadership has been so much focused on engagements? Servant leadership, level five leadership, all of them capturing some of the basic core elements of what leaders need to how they need to behave. While the reality that we see in the world that we operate from some high tech entrepreneurs to a smaller organizations is continuing to be d.

[00:38:44] Garry Ridge: I think there's a couple of things. I'll name them greed number. Ego number two, and playing the finite game instead of the infinite game. You look at one of the best investors in the world, Warren Buffet. What does he do? He thinks long term, but unfortunately the public market. Doesn't appreciate that organizations are there to play the infinite game.

One of our board members, her name is Laura Lee she shared something with me some time ago. She said, nothing outs and an authentically purpose driven customer-centric values, align culture with people, feel like they belong. Now you can't do that in 90 day intervals. One of the biggest battles I've had over 25 years as a public company, c e o, is fighting Wall Streets, what did you do for me in the last 90 days mentality? And I've said if you follow us quarter by quarter, you're gonna jump off a cliff because we do not lead our business in 90 day intervals. And many years ago, at that time, one of our largest investors, I was meeting with them, I said, if you think that I'm smart enough and we're smart enough to run a company in 90 day intervals, you're wrong.

And he said, I'm glad you're not dumb enough to think you could. Because that's not what it's all about. It's greed, it's ego it's playing. The finite game instead of the infinite game. And it's showing up now. I wrote an article last year about the Great Escape, what Covid did.

It did many bad things, but one thing it did do, it slapped leadership up the side of the head and said, if you don't recognize that it's the power of your culture that's gonna drive your business, you are. Big trouble. And that's why people are escaping. This is not the great resignation. This is the great escape. They've been jailed in toxic cultures for so long and they said, I'm gonna set myself free. I'm escaping this. I'm not putting up with this anymore. Pay attention. It's all about the people, but it's not. It's not easy. It's much easier to be a C E O for three years and get three years of really good performance and then cash out than it is to be a C E O for 25 years, and to build a company with enduring culture. We had a compounded annual growth rate, a total shareholder return of 14% a year. If you would've bought a hundred dollars worth of WD 40 stock in 1998, it's worth $1,800 at the end of August when I was handed over. But more importantly, 93% employee engagement.

98% of people going home. Happy. Happy people. Create happy families. Happy families. Create happy communities. Happy communities. Create a happy world. We need a happy world, and business has the biggest opportunity to deliver that. So let's do it. That's what I'm committed to now, as I've now finished my apprenticeship of leadership for 25 years, I want to be talking to CEOs and saying, look, you can read all the books you like about people have never done it.

I wanna show you even, excuse me, even a dumb ass can do it cuz I did it.

[00:42:02] Mahan Tavakoli: Beautifully put with humility, Gary, and that's one of the reasons I love celebrating leaders like you because I know you are genuinely humble, and I believe who we choose to celebrate and what we choose to celebrate determines. People aspire to do and who they aspire to become. And one of the things that I find somewhat annoying is the celebration or over celebration of outlier entrepreneurs that.

Might have a breakthrough or do something big in the short term, leaving a wake of destruction behind them as opposed to people that, as you said, consistently over a period of time do good and do good. Not just for themselves as a selfie leader with their image imaging center, but as a leader that.

Other people thrive, their families thrive, and their communities thrive, which is why for me, it's such a pleasure and joy. This conversation with you, Gary Rich, how can the audience, Gary, find out more about you and follow your content and work?

[00:43:22] Garry Ridge: Thank you. Follow me on LinkedIn. Just look me up. G A R y R I D G E on LinkedIn. You'll find me. Please follow me. I post, I put blogs on there from time to time and I have a website, www the learning moment.net. So those are the best two places

[00:43:39] Mahan Tavakoli: what an absolute pleasure, Gary, and I have no doubt through you championing the kind of leadership that matters. We will have more leaders aspire to become more like you and do the good that you have done both with W D 40 in the organizations and the community. Thank you so much for this conversation, Gary.

[00:44:03] Garry Ridge: Thank you so much. Life's a gift. Don't send it back. Un.