Brandon Laws and Tyler Meuwissen discuss the book Joy, Inc: How We Built a Workplace People Love by Richard Sheridan.
In the episode, Brandon and Tyler discuss some of the most unique human resource practices Menlo Innovations is implementing in their business, such as hiring, recruiting, office set up, how people work together, purpose, and much more.
Brandon: Welcome to the HR for Small Business podcast, my name is Brandon Laws. Today I have Tyler Meuwissen with me, he’s a returning guest. Tyler, what’s up?
Tyler: Hi, good to be back!
Brandon: We’re going to talk Xenium book club.
Tyler: Book club! Joy, Inc!
Brandon: We read a book called Joy, Inc, as you just mentioned. It was written by a guy named Richard Sheridan, he is the owner and founder of a company called Menlo Innovations. They’re a bunch of programmers, software developers, and they have quite an interesting workplace.
Tyler: Very interesting, yeah.
Brandon: What did you think of the book—for one, how it was written and a lot of the storytelling that he has?
Tyler: You know, I thought it was a unique take on a kind of business book. I’ve been a part of the book club for a few years now and it was a little bit different from the normal fare that we’ve been reading. I thought the content was great, there’s lots of useful nuggets in there and tidbits, and it’s just a really interesting perspective on how to run a company, how to run a business and create a company culture.
Brandon: Yeah, he’s been at companies where it wasn’t such good culture. It was very hierarchical and then he’s running his own company and he just totally flips it on its head. It’s a very flat organization; their workplace is very different.
In this book, he talks about all those things. It’s kind of funky, the way it’s written is a little different because it’s not—you know how you’re used to business books where there are bullet points?
Tyler: Yeah!
Brandon: It’s very methodical.
Tyler: Run through them, objective-based, here it is.
Brandon: Yeah, it’s really boring. The way he writes it is very much a storytelling situation, and he kind of spends each chapter on a different part of the business, whether it’s the work environment or seating arrangement or the building itself or company philosophies. Not policies, it doesn’t have to do with policies; that’s not what this is really for.
Let’s start talking about the work atmosphere in general, because I thought that was probably one of the most interesting things.
Tyler: It almost seems like it was like, chaos reigns there, you know what I mean? Everybody’s talking, they outlaw headphones, they want that commotion, they want a collaborative atmosphere, which I thought was very striking to read that in the book.
Brandon: Very different from the cubicle world.
Tyler: Yeah, very different, and very different from how you perceive normal office operations at a company, you know? It’s kind of flipped on its head. So it’s a very unique approach.
Brandon: Talk about the no headphones thing.
Tyler: I think his theory is that headphones create silo-ing with individuals. You get in your own headspace and you tune out from the rest of the team. He’s very much team environment, he wants you to be collaborating, engaging with other people, working with other people, because he feels that that builds the most development and growth. I can see it at the same time. For me, I enjoy listening to headphones, because I think I can develop my own rhythm with the music, but I can understand his point as well. It definitely silos some people.
Brandon: It’s a little different. In their environment, they’re working in pairs, and we’ll talk about that in a second. But to go back to the no headphones thing, when you’re working in pairs you really can’t wear headphones.
Tyler: No, you can’t.
Brandon: Because then how do you communicate with other people?
Tyler: Yeah, exactly.
Brandon: The other thing that’s interesting about the work environment is he’s talking about like, if you’re going to talk to somebody or try to get somebody’s attention, you’re basically yelling across the room. It’s a very open environment, so you’re yelling across the table to somebody else as people are working. So the way he described it, it’s loud, it’s almost like an aura of loudness but the energy picks up because of it, and that was sort of intentional.
Tyler: I liked that, too. It definitely had kind of like the vibrancy versus silence kind of nature. When you go to an office and everything’s just pitch quiet, it’s silence—
Brandon: You could hear a pin drop.
Tyler: You could hear a pin drop! You get that eerie feeling of Ooh, this is some real serious stuff going on here. But if you have more vibrant, vocal, engaging, it may take you back at first, but you get the feeling that things are happening here. There’s movement, there’s excitement, there’s a lot of cultural stuff going on. I like that aspect of it.
Brandon: Speaking of culture, their environment is a little unique in the sense that there’s babies at times, I think there’s dogs… it’s just a different environment.
Tyler: It’s very different. To me, I’d find that a little bit distracting, but I mean, it’s working over there and in a lot of other companies it brings a more personal sense to the work you do, and you don’t have to divide your time between working on a certain aspect and getting stressed out and not having to lose focus on your personal matters, but here you have kind of a calming like, Oh, we bring in dogs, we bring in babies, it can bring you back to reality on the culture side of it. I think it’s very interesting.
Brandon: There’s a whole section dedicated to the working in pairs and the reasoning behind it. Could you just talk about that a little bit, what the thinking behind that was?
Tyler: It kind of stems from his theory on the “towers of knowledge.” A lot of companies have these individuals who are so pivotal to the company and they have the information, they hold the very critical information, so your company needs them in order to operate successfully. And I think the working in pairs is a way to kind of circumvent that and say, Ok, we want to share the knowledge. We want to share the wealth of information that’s being held here.
Brandon: Versus it being in one person’s hands, holding the company hostage.
Tyler: Yes, so you’ve got these teams of subject matter experts, and they’re passing their knowledge on, and it’s a fluid cycle where you can learn from new people. And I think they change out partners or teams every week, and they bring in new people every two weeks.
Brandon: That’s what it sounded like, every week or two. So they’re working on projects and they’re constantly rotating.
Tyler: Yeah, so I think that is a way to combat the whole tower of knowledge, which seems to plague a lot of companies.
Brandon: Yeah. I can just think back in my work history and the towers of knowledge is a real problem.
Tyler: Oh yeah.
Brandon: Because there are some people who could be so good at what they do, but nobody else knows how to do it and the reason why is because that person works in a silo, they’re one of a very unique role, and so they don’t have anybody to share that knowledge with. That’s partly maybe that person’s issue with not being able to train others, but more importantly it’s probably just the setup of the company and the fact that they don’t work in pairs or they don’t have multiple people in the department.
Tyler: Is there an opportunity or option for that individual to share their knowledge? A lot of companies don’t, they kind of pigeonhole that person into one area and say, Hey, he’s just going to do his job because he has the knowledge. We’re not going to share that knowledge with anybody else, because that’s really his business, his job.
Brandon: And the reason I think their culture is so vibrant based on, of course, this guys is the one describing it, but the reason it seems so vibrant is because of the professional development opportunities that exist. I don’t know about you, Tyler, but I love having opportunities to learn. I think that’s what engages me and makes me passionate about what I’m doing. And those opportunities to learn are, you know, I either have to go out and find it on my own or if my employer puts me in a position where I could do a mentorship program or I can pair up with somebody and shadow them. Or, in this case—
Tyler: Book club!
Brandon: Or book club, too! I mean we’re talking about this right now, right? And hopefully other people are learning a bit about the culture just from listening to this podcast, but I think it’s very unique the way Richard Sheridan is doing this, as a CEO. He’s putting people in pairs, he’s saying, Ok, you work on a project, you’re working with two people. And you’re going to share that knowledge back and forth, you’re going to figure out solutions to problems and you’re going to rotate.
Tyler: And see how it goes!
Brandon: So interesting. I think it could work.
Tyler: And he’s not afraid to try it out. I know he mentions in the book, simple experiments, you know. His pitch to everyone else is, Hey, just try it out! Try it for a week. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work, and you can move onto something else. But what’s the harm in trying a small experiment where you’re working in teams or working in a group or having an open office environment where people can bring in their pets, they can share their lives outside of work, because who knows, maybe that’ll gel something and there’ll be a catalyst to new development in other employees. I mean, who knows? You don’t know until you try it.
Brandon: When I was reading this, I’m sort of thinking in my head, like, I’m pushing back against the argument for working in pairs and just the environment in general. I’m a skeptic when it comes to some new things, but then I’m open to them. In this case I was like, Ok, well, if they’re working in pairs, doesn’t that increase the cost of doing whatever business? And the answer is yes to a certain extent, especially the ‘something new.’ He even said in the book that clients are well aware that they’re working in pairs, but I think the solution long term is that they learn through rotating that the pairs actually work faster and more efficiently long term, because they can get things done either faster or they’ve been through a situation where they already have that knowledge.
Tyler: Yeah.
Brandon: So they don’t have to try to go to an external resource because they’ve worked in those situations where now they have the knowledge to do it. So overall I think long term, you know short term raises costs for sure; long term though, now you have a knowledgeable business place.
Tyler: I think he wants employers to kind of view it as this is a long term kind of deal. You can try it out, see how it goes, there’s going to be some costs upfront in changing the way it’s operating that way, but you know, long term, you want the long term benefits for your employees, long term benefits for your company. I think the long term benefits outweigh the short term costs.
Brandon: There are some really cool things in the book. One that kind of stuck out to us as we were talking about this before we started recording was the age-old mantra of “the customer’s already right.” Talk about that and what he said about that.
Tyler: I think when he was speaking about the customer is always right even though oftentimes with the business we’re so geared towards customers, what the customer wants the customer gets, a lot of times though, the customer doesn’t know what they want. They’re coming to you to seek that guidance of what they want, what they need, and it’s up to you as an employer to give that to them.
Brandon: As a service provider.
Tyler: Yeah, as a service provider. You’re the one that has that knowledge, that power. So the customer is not always right in that instance, because they don’t really know what they want until you can help guide them into that path.
Brandon: And I think that’s what working in pairs and just the environment that they have set up, it is conducive to figuring out what the customer needs because if they’re listening to the customer’s needs and what their vision is, even if it’s very vague, these people have been through enough situations that, they’re programmers, right, so there’s how many different languages to program in, there’s tons, right? He even said in the book that they’re going to do whatever language is conducive to getting the job done the right way based on what they think the client wants. So I thought that was pretty interesting and it holds a lot of weight, I think.
There are some other parts in the book, too. It talks about purpose and passion quite a bit in the book. I remember one section where he’s talking about Samuel Langley. Do you remember the story?
Tyler: Yeah, the Wright Brothers versus Langley.
Brandon: Yeah! So back in the 1930’s or before that?
Tyler: Earlier than that.
Brandon: I can’t even remember what date it was, but basically, Samuel Langley and the Wright Brothers were sort of like, I mean they’re trying to figure out how to fly. The difference was Samuel Langley had a ton of capital from, I think, backing of the government, and the Wright Brothers just had a passion for trying to figure out how to fly and they just tinkered and probably did all that stuff. Well, the difference, according to the book, he says The Wright Brothers wanted to fly, and Langley was trying to build an
airplane. So there’s a difference because, trying to build something, it might not even work, the outcome’s not necessarily—Tyler: To his point in the book, Langley was going about it the wrong way. He wanted the glory, the accolades from developing the first plane, I want that kind of recognition for building the first plane! The Wright Brothers were like, I want to fly! I want to be able to fly. They didn’t put a monetary value on it, like I want to make X amount of dollars from my invention or I want praise to us for inventing this thing. They just wanted to see if they could do it and they wanted to fly, you know what I mean?
Brandon: Exactly. I’m drawing a lot of comparisons right now, I mentioned earlier I’m reading the Elon Musk biography that just came out, and there’s a lot of parallels to the story we just told about Langley versus the Wright Brothers in that Elon Musk went through a lot of struggles but his vision is basically to colonize solar systems.
Tyler: Yeah!
Brandon: Colonize Mars first, I think is what he really wants to do, but he created SpaceX to try to get to that, but there’s all these steps along the way, but every step that he’s doing isn’t to build a rocket, it’s to get to Mars, to put people on Mars, whether it’s colonizing it or just to get there to say we did it. But he has to do all these things because that’s the purpose at the end is to, whether he wants to be recognized for it or he just thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s just very interesting. To go about your work because of passion and purpose is very different than just going to work and doing your job.
“To go about your work because of passion and purpose
is very different than just going to work and doing your job.”
Tyler: Yeah. I think in Joy, Inc’s instance it’s that you should do what you love to do, you should have that passion, it should be infused in your culture because that’s the way your company’s going to grow rather than doing it for some kind of gain, some monetary gain.
Brandon: Nothing wrong with that.
Tyler: There’s nothing wrong with it, but I think you might learn a little bit more if you go at it from a passion point of view. So I definitely liked that, passion versus purpose kind of analogy.
Brandon: It’s funny because one of the books we read probably six months ago, maybe a year ago, was Start With Why by Simon Sinek. And he even mentions that book in this, that book is everywhere in terms of like, a lot of these innovative thinkers and business leaders, they are starting with passion. They are starting with the why—like, why are we doing what we’re doing? Simon Sinek’s book Start With Why is all about why you should do it. This guy puts it into practice. He basically takes what Simon Sinek did and actually gives it all to you in a tactical level. Is that kind of what you think?
Tyler: Yeah, I completely agree. And back to the earlier point, when you go about something with the passion point of view, after you do that, the accolades will come. If you’re doing it for the passion, if that’s your integral purpose, then things will come naturally after that. You start with the passion and the purpose.
Brandon: Do you remember, going back to the people, because that’s what makes up the company, do you remember the story about the person that was interviewing with the CEO? He talked about how another employee of the company referred somebody in, and went through the interview process; it was going great, this guy was a perfect fit for the company. About halfway through, something was off. Something wasn’t right, and the guy says, I think he even calls him out and says, What’s going on? And the candidate says, Look, if I wanted to do what I was doing at my old job, and make just a few more bucks, I’d probably just stay where I’m at and keep doing the same thing over and over. But he’s like, I heard that you guys are doing innovative things. I want to do something I’m passionate about or that’s going to make a difference. And I thought that was interesting.
Tyler: Yeah. And I think a lot of times employers, when they see a resume, they kind of make hiring decisions based off of the criteria they pitch in a resume, line item by line item. I have a B.A. in so-and-so, I have X amount of experience in this program. They never really talk about their passions and how they fit culturally, like how the individual acts around others and works with others. I think that’s starting to become more and more commonplace now, they’re hiring more on cultural fit rather than the line item I have a B.A. criteria. I think it’s more culturally focused now, and I think that’s where it should go, because you can always teach skills but you can’t really teach someone how to interact with others. You know what I mean?
Brandon: Yeah. And I feel like they probably have a set of criteria that they’re looking for, so obviously who’s a good culture fit, but somebody who’s willing to learn.
Tyler: Yeah, willing to learn.
Brandon: Because that’s what their foundation is on, like pairing up so they can learn a bunch of new stuff. So yeah I thought it was pretty interesting, and the fact that they’re leading with the culture part of it, I think that’s the reason why they have so many people that are organically trying to work for them. They’ve built up what sounds like a great employer brand. So he said in the book than when they have a new position open up, they have 50 people lined up at the door, already ready to interview and probably would already be good fits. So it’s almost like people are self-selecting in that are really good fits and they don’t have to do a lot of recruiting or they don’t have to spend a lot of time on it.
Do you remember the other part where he talked about the turnover?
Tyler: Attrition? Yeah.
Brandon: Yeah, the attrition. He said it’s not a bad thing.
Tyler: Yeah.
Brandon: And we would normally think, in HR, like, Oh we need our turnover rate to be at this level or try to reduce their turnover rate. But he’s saying there’s a healthy amount of turnover that’s good, because some people are just not a fit for the company, and you do want people to leave because of that. But I don’t know where I sit on that. It’s just, it’s interesting.
Tyler: Yeah, I thought it was interesting too, I’m kind of on the fence with it. You always want to keep your turnover as low as possible, but at the same time you also want to give the employee the chance to make those decisions, and if they don’t feel that they’re a fit and they want to try something else and grow from it, that’s good, because they’re going to grow from that experience.
Brandon: I have a quote for you, I’m going to read straight from the book. “Some of the worst cultures I have come to know are those from which no one ever leaves. Low attrition is not a sign of a healthy culture. Remember, not many people left East Berlin before the Iron Curtain fell. When it was time, they were all ready to leave, with sledgehammers. Ironically, in a low attrition culture, the highest paid people are likely the ones who tried to leave and were walled in with a counteroffer they couldn’t refuse. They are still trapped. Higher pay doesn’t erase that feeling.” Very powerful, right?
Tyler: Yeah, that was a powerful analogy!
Brandon: There’s some truth to that. Because you can get sucked into staying in a place where you’re not even happy, you’re not passionate about it anymore, you’re not aligned with the business objectives anymore. And that’s when it’s probably time to leave, but to that quote’s point, higher pay can keep you there.
Tyler: It’s like, who’s benefiting? Is it really benefiting the employee? I would make the case that no.
Brandon: They’re unhappy.
Tyler: If they’re unhappy, they’re unhappy.
Brandon: And how do you become your best self at work when you’re not even passionate about what you’re doing, and you’re walled in, so to speak?
Tyler: Exactly. At that point, you let them make a decision. If they want to venture outside of the company, then let them do so. I think that in the case there they actually did that with one of their employees and she actually ended up coming back.
Brandon: Yeah, they mentioned that many people do come back.
Tyler: Mhm. And I think she kind of learned more about herself and that, Oh, I actually enjoyed my time at Menlo, I enjoyed this company. There wasn’t anything else like it out there. I think you’ve got to let employees make those decisions. You can’t just keep making counteroffer after counteroffer to kind of hold them in if they’re unhappy, 
because that’s just going to create, for one it’s going to be bad for the company, for two it’s going to be bad for the employee. It’s like a no-win situation there.
Brandon: Yeah. As we kind of wrap up, I wanted to mention one more thing that I thought it was interesting the way the book was written—very much storytelling, very much broken into parts about how he created his business through people, through recruiting, the work environment, all those things; it’s all very much positive, right? And it’s like, here’s what we did, it’s amazing. The last chapter’s pretty interesting because he actually says, Look, not all this has worked! It’s not all positive! We’re still working on it, we still want to learn and grow. And he just flat-out says, Here’s where we’re at with this, here’s what’s going wrong, but we’re trying to fix it, and he basically just gives out paragraphs of what’s still going wrong or what they’re working on. I thought that was really admirable the way he did that. But you never thought it was coming until you got to the last chapter.
Tyler: [Laughing] You’re like, this is so great, this is amazing!
Brandon: Let’s model our company right after this one!
Tyler: Yeah! I love that sense of candor and transparency that he expresses in the last chapter. I think a lot of times with business books you get an author writing a story about his company or his experience but under the guise of some other fictional characters or fictional storyline with some elements of truth. Here he kind of says, this is what we’re doing, I’m laying it out here, some of it’s not working but that’s okay. We’re still growing, we’re still developing, we’re still learning. So I loved his sense of transparency in that, I like that a lot.
Brandon: Out of 10 stars, what do you give this book? Putting you on the spot!
Tyler: You know, for a business book I very rarely go over 8, but I’m going to give it a 9, actually. I’m going to give it a 9. I just thought it was a very unique perspective on the way he’s running his business and the culture they have. I think that there’s a lot of good information to take from it, a lot of good nuggets as I mentioned earlier. It’s worth a read, definitely.
Brandon: I definitely agree. 9’s pretty high, I’ll go 8. It’s good. It’s a short read, it’s a quick read, well worth the time. So again, this is Joy, Inc written by Richard Sheridan, and he’s talking about his company Menlo Innovations. So I think we definitely agree, you should definitely pick this up. What we did was we read the full thing, and then we discuss it as a group, and we had, I think, about 12 people discuss the book. And that actually sparked a really good conversation because we talked about what could work in our organization and what are some things we could do differently, what can’t work, those sorts of things just to keep the dialogue going about being open to change. I think that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to become a great organization attracting great people and this is one of those books that I think just sparks a great dialogue. Whether or not you take any of these practices and put them into practice, I think it just sparks a good conversation. And it’s definitely one that leaders and all the employees should definitely read.
Tyler: Everyone. Yeah, everyone.
Brandon: Well thank you Tyler for being on the podcast! Next time we do another book, you’re welcome to come back!
Tyler: I would be happy to!
Brandon: Alright, thanks for listening!