Richard Sheridan: Dig-Out Your Basic Kindergarten Skills to Become a Better Team Player

Richard KAsperowski:

Hi Rich. Thanks for joining us today. So good to see you.

Richard Sheridan:
Yeah great to see you again, Richard.

Richard Kasperowski:
I really miss you. It’s been a while.

Richard Sheridan:
It has. I remember our delightful breakfasts at the wonderful Kendall Hotel in downtown Cambridge.

Richard Kasperowski:
I love that hotel. It’s the one that used to be a… it’s like an ancient firehouse fire station and it was rehabbed into a hotel.

Richard Sheridan:
Actually one of my favorite hotels in the planet. I love it.

Richard Kasperowski:
Not so many hotels in our lives lately.

Richard Sheridan:
No. A lot of theoretical hotels. I travel all over the world like I always used to, I just never leave my house now.

Richard Kasperowski:
So on top of that fine introduction, is there anything else you want to add? Anything else you want to say about yourself to our listeners and viewers?

Richard Sheridan:
It’s been obviously an interesting year. I’ve learned a lot in this last year about what the importance is of creating an intentionally joyful culture. You think of that as a foundation to a building. You want a strong foundation when the storm hits and boy did the storm hit and the house stood. I learned a lot about our team, about adaptability in this time. You know enough about Menlo to know that working from home and working apart from one another is a profound change for the way we’ve organized the company.

Richard Kasperowski:
Yeah. I’m really curious about this. Actually the first time I encountered you, I didn’t even know it was you. Long time ago I read something that was, I don’t know if you would call it a… it was like in the style of an academic paper that Menlo had… You published something that was about extreme interviewing.

Richard Sheridan:
Yes.

Richard Kasperowski:
And it was this idea… You explain it. And how are you adapting that?

Richard Sheridan:
Yeah. Good news we’ll know exactly how we’re adapting that within a couple of weeks or because we’re about to do one virtually much of the first time we’ve ever done that. To understand our interview process let me just tell a little bit about Menlo so your listeners have a context for why we would interview the way we do. For 19 years, this is our 20th year, we operated in one big open room, working cheek to jowl, as they say in pairs at individual computers so people are sharing a computer doing pair programming as Kent Beck would have espoused in Extreme Programming Explained. Is it the book he wrote back in 1999? We embrace that from our first days and so everybody at Menlo works in pairs. Not just our programmers, everybody at Menlo works in pairs, working on the same task at the same time and the pairs rotate at least every five days, sometimes more frequently.

Richard Sheridan:
So you’ve got this kind of noisy environment because people are talking to each other all day. A lot of human energy in the room you can actually feel it, it’s palpable because there’s so much activity, people working on their tasks. They’ve decided for all the years we’ve been in business to push the tables side to side and front of front. They actually want to be close to one another. So you can imagine that interviewing people who’ve never worked in an environment like this might not work if you do the traditional type of interview. The kind I used to do, two people sitting across the table, lying to each other for a couple of hours type of interview.

Richard Kasperowski:
I talk about it like if you’d imagine what is it? The Detroit Pistons or the Boston Celtics, they’re looking for a new power forward or something and they’re like, ” Hi, welcome to the office. Tell me about being a power forward.” He comes in dressed in a suit and they sit across a table from each other and they ask him questions about being a power forward.

Richard Sheridan:
“What do you love about being a power forward?”

Richard Kasperowski:
“What’s the biggest challenge you’ve encountered and how did you overcome it?”

Richard Sheridan:
Exactly. So we jettison that in our earliest days. We never have done a traditional interview at Menlo. We exchanged it for this thing we call it an extreme interview which probably sounds scary to people here at the first time. But the word extreme just simply is honoring our roots from extreme programming. This idea of working in pairs, for example, there are many other aspects to extreme programming, but working in pairs is one of the sort of central features of a team that embraces extreme programming. And what we do is we simulate the working environment for the candidates. They come in 30, 40, 50 people at a time because that’s the way Menlo is, one big open room. They come in all at the same time, we pair them together with another candidate, and then we give them the weirdest instructions ever. Your job is to help the person sitting next to you, who by the way is probably competing for the same spot you are.

Richard Sheridan:
Your job is to help them succeed. Help them get a second interview. Make your pair partner look good. If they’re struggling, help them out. If they’re stumbling for a word, help them. And so right there in the moment of first contact, we are teaching our culture. Most interviews don’t teach culture. You maybe get a one day class sum in the future if you get hired and that’s it but we’re actually intentionally teaching our culture in the interview. 20 minutes in, we switch the pairs because that’s the way we work, we switch pairs. So we want to see how you work with other human beings, how you adapt to them, how you communicate, how you respond, how you work through perhaps an idea where maybe at the beginning you disagreed or you had different approaches and how do you work through that. Now, while you’re working together in this pair, a Menlonian is watching, taking notes about what they see. Answering any questions about the task, but they’re really a silent observer. Pair switch, different pair partner, different observer.

Richard Sheridan:
We do that three times send you all home. That was the first interview. That’s an audition. We’re looking for good kindergarten skills. Do you play well with others? Do you not hit? Bite? Scratch? Swear? Run through the room with scissors over your head? That sort of thing. And then the Menlonians who watch, so if there was just 30 interviewees, the Menlonians who watched would gather, because there’d be 15 of them and then they talk about each individual person, what they saw and it’s a deep exploration of our most dearly held beliefs and values about what it takes to build a great team. And of course there’s a lot of self-effacing in that review because as we’re talking about perhaps the laughable bad behaviors that we see, team members are like, “Oh my God, I do that too. I need to get better at this.”

Richard Sheridan:
And so the interview process for Menlo is a very exciting day. Typically we’ve done a couple of these a years. We need to add people. We haven’t done one since pandemic times because the businesses, most businesses did took a big hit in 2020, but now we’re growing again. Now we need to add people. And of course we’re adding them in a virtual Menlo environment. We still do all the same pairing and that sort of thing, but doing it virtually. So we’re going to run the experiment in a couple of weeks to run a virtual extreme interview with Zoom breakout rooms and there’ll be pairs and observers and then we’ll gather them all back together and process what happened and then put them back in their breakout rooms for the second pair so stay tuned. It’s going to be a fun experiment. I’m sure it will result in some blog posts and articles and so on because I’m going to be fascinated with how this all works.

Richard Kasperowski:
I can’t wait. And I love hearing you tell the stories, I love the whimsy and your job title, Chief Storyteller. It’s cool. And you are a wonderful storyteller. Is part of why I like to hang out with you. Just to listen.

Richard Sheridan:
We always have great conversations.

Richard Kasperowski:
Thanks. So this is a podcast about teams and about great teams. And so what I like to ask guests is what was the best team of your life? And then sometimes I’ll elaborate a little bit what I mean by team. Any group of two or more people aligned with a common goal. That’s what I mean by a team. And any group of two or more people. So this isn’t constraint to work. This could be mentioned NBA basketball teams, it could be a sports team, a project team. Oh you’ve written a couple of books, probably had a team of people helping you with that. A musical group, fishing friends, friends that you go fishing with. Anything, any group… What’s your best team of your life?

Richard Sheridan:
It’s funny when you first said it, of course, I was thinking about the Menlo team and we have a great team right now. We’re just as good as we’ve ever been and the response to the pandemic has just been phenomenal. And I also remember a time probably that set me up for even pursuing something like Menlo back when I was just a kid. I was very fortunate to have touched computers in high school back in 1971. And by 1973, I got my first job as a programmer when I couldn’t even drive a car yet. And then things just started to take off. They started hiring these high school kids to write educational software for the McComb County schools where I grew up. And I can remember this just phenomenal experience.

Richard Sheridan:
I’m not even sure I remember what project we were working on at the time, but we were all in a room together. These young kids, just as curious as can be, kind of wowing the adults around us because when you were in 1973 or 74 or 75 and you knew how to work computers, all the adults had no idea what you were doing. It might as well been magic as far as they were concerned. But there we were having this heady experience. We weren’t even out of high school yet and I just remember we had a stereo system, we were playing probably like Supertramp or something like that and we were all just programming together and just having the time of our lives. And I remember thinking in that moment, “I want this forever. I want my life to be… If this is work, this is fun. I just want to be like this.”

Richard Sheridan:
And of course career follows and it was nothing like that. It was trough of disillusionment days most of my career. And that was probably what set me up for yearning to create what we’ve created at Menlo. We have that now. I’ve had that again for the last 20 years and it’s just delightful. But if I think of the best team in my life, I can’t help but think of the team of Mr and Mrs. Sheridan and the family that we’ve raised and the home that we’ve put together and the good times we’ve had together. I am just so blessed to have Carol in my life and we are just such a great team being parents together, being husband and wife together. She works at Menlo. Most people are like, “You guys can work together?”

Richard Sheridan:
No it’s even better now. We can wallpaper together. We can [inaudible 00:12:57] together. So I realized, that is rare. To be able to work with your spouse and she, right now she’s actually the only person in the office at the moment and I’m here, so we’re not together, but usually on a given day, we’re just a few feet from one another. And for me, that pairing in my life is beyond compare as a team.

Richard Kasperowski:
Oh, that’s beautiful. Now so this team, you and your wife, if you could… This is current, this is now, what does it feel like within your body? What’s a word you could use to succinctly describe the sensation of this team you and your wife?

Richard Sheridan:
The first word that comes to mind is singularity.

Richard Kasperowski:
Singularity?

Richard Sheridan:
I think it drove our daughters crazy. They’d run to mom and say, ” Mom we want this to happen or we want to do.” And then if she said no, then they’d run to me and, “Did you and mom talk? You’re using the exact same words.” And that consistency between us was effortless. And I think that’s the other part of it. We worked hard together as all couples do raising a family, keeping a roof over our heads, obviously working hard together to run a company and it’s been a tough year for that for sure, but there’s a part of it that just seems and feels effortless in the relationship. We don’t have to pretend to be something we’re not, we just get to be who we are. And we joke with one another, we get annoyed with one another every now and then like all couples will. But it’s a playful annoyance it’s accepting of the other person and realizing that there’s strength in that, in the differences, I guess.

Richard Kasperowski:
Yeah. I love that and when I explain what I think a team is, I often use my wife Molly and me as an example and say something like what you said, I love the way you said it, singularity and effortless. I love that word effortless. Now we got a couple of words there. This is often about work team so I ask about measures or metrics that this was the best team of your life. Actually I’m really curious. A marriage, is there any way to know? How do you know that it’s the best team of your life? Is there anything like a subjective, qualitative, quantitative, anything objective you could measure or observe so that somebody else would know it was the best team?

Richard Sheridan:
Obviously the word that comes to mind first, at least on the subjective side is love. And how do you define that? It’s different for a couple versus love for your fellow human beings, that sort of thing. But we got married very young. I think I was 21 she was 22 and it was just one of those things where… I look at our kids now and we have three daughters in our thirties, one is married, two are, sorry two are married now. [Inaudible 00:16:32] now I’m going to get in trouble. My youngest daughter got married last Valentine’s day. Maybe one of the last in-person weddings of pre pandemic times. And, but they got married later in life. My kids are astounded that we got married so young.

Richard Sheridan:
And to us, we just, it just felt we were ready. And I think that, that feeling of just blissfulness, I guess, is probably the way I would describe it in terms of subjectiveness that you just know it’s right. You know you were meant for one another and I think that’s… Every high performing team that I’ve been a part of, that it just feels right. There’s a human energy to it that’s palpable and it’s not like you know what I mean, Carol and I have this saying, everybody has their stuff in their lives and typically we don’t get to know that about other people. You think that whatever burden you’re carrying is one that is unique to you and everybody else has this blissful life like it looks on Instagram or HGTV or something like that, but everybody has their stuff and how you carry that, how you support each other through those tough times it’s just… You just knowing there’s somebody there with you for you, that you can be there for them when they need you.

Richard Sheridan:
And she has this thing she’ll say to me when times are tough and she looks at me and she says, “I just need to hear you say it. Tell me it’s going to be okay.” And I know it is, it’s going to be okay. And I know that part of her needs that part of me.

Richard Kasperowski:
Yeah so and I feel this within me as we’re talking and I [inaudible 00:18:44] I can’t wait to go upstairs and see my wife Molly, and tell her how much I love her because we’re like this too and it is palpable and it is wonderful and I don’t know how to define love either.

Richard Sheridan:
It’s funny just this morning as she’s leaving and she’s going into the office, I’m giving a talk later today and I got some kind of raspy voice this morning and she’s walking out the door, I open the door and she’s going to her car and I said, “Honey, I love you.” And she’s like, “Hey you need to take an Allegra. You got something going on there. You’re giving a talk today.” I said, “Honey, I love you.” She’s like, “Look, you need to get…” I said, “Honey, I love…” She goes, “Oh I love you too.” I’m like, “I’m not letting you get in that car before you go and we don’t exchange at least one I love you back and forth.” But there she is helping support me in her critical way to make sure that I present my best self to you and to the talk I’m giving later today.

Richard Kasperowski:
Right. So we got it. So here is my next question. Concrete behaviors that go into making this the best team ever. We’ve got supporting each other like that as an example. We’ve got, “Say everything’s going to be all right.” What else is going? What are some of the concrete behaviors that you have?

Richard Sheridan:
Again, it’s funny, my mind’s going back and forth between my marriage which is what we’re sort of focusing on and then the Menlo team, because we have a great team at Menlo. And I think it boils down to some pretty simple basic life behaviors. And we call them at Menlo, good kindergarten skills. Do you play well with others? Do you share? I think beyond that, the deeper parts are the ability to see the world through the other person’s eyes. I remember one time I… This is really ironic. One of my favorite books of all time is, Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute and they actually teach a class on what they call The Outward Mindset which is, stop focusing here, look out into the world, understand the world through the eyes of others and see other people as human beings not as objects, not as employees, not as colleagues, not as customers, but see them as people.

Richard Sheridan:
And I went away and took this class and three days out in Salt Lake City and I came home, it was Saturday morning I had just gotten home and the thing I’m most focused on in my life is, I want to keep up on my email because that’s how a lot of people reach out to me so I usually have maybe less than 10 messages in my inbox. I think when we got on the call this morning I had two. So I’m an… yeah it’s a commitment. There’s a lot of other LinkedIn messages, Twitter messages, if you leave me a voicemail you may not hear from me in months but if you want to contact me and send me an email you will hear from me. So there I am Saturday morning and I get up early, I get my coffee and I’m on the deck and I’m working through emails. And remember, I had just taken this class on Outward Mindset.

Richard Sheridan:
Carol gets up a little later than me she pops out and she, “Hey Rich. Got a few things I want to get done today.” She usually has her weekend list and I said, “Absolutely honey. Happy to help. I just got a few emails I want to get through.” Two hours later.

Richard Kasperowski:
I laugh because this is me too. It’s not emails, but it’s this kind of focus that actually gets in the way of connecting with the people I love the most.

Richard Sheridan:
Two hours later she pops head out, “Jesus! Rich. You’re killing me.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, honey I’m so…” She’s like, “I can’t believe. You’ve been.” Now here’s the moment. Two different mindsets. I’m thinking she’s got to understand I’ve been gone for three days, I’m way behind on emails. I got to get through this. But then miraculously and I will say uncharacteristically for me, I remember the class, and I looked at her and I say, “You’re right honey.” And I very gently start closing my laptop in that instant. Not slam it down, just very gently close the laptop. And she says, “I can’t believe you’re doing this. You’ve been gone for three days. Do you know how behind we are and things around the house?” And I just looked here and I said, “You’re absolutely right honey.” And she just wanted to keep going.

Richard Sheridan:
And I said, “What can I do for you? What’s the first thing on your list?” She says, “I got all these things I want you to do.” I said, “Great. Name the top three.” She says, “Well, I want you to do this and this and this.” I said, “Awesome.” And it just completely stopped the conflict. Because I was able to think of her and say, “Gosh, she’s right. I’ve been gone for three days. She’s behind on things she wants to get done. I can get the email anyhow.” Now, it was really funny. Later that day, we were going to a Detroit Tigers baseball game and we’re driving down I-94, we’re going to Detroit from Ann Arbor and she said, “Hey. That thing that happened this morning, that was really neat. Did you learn that in that class? Were you just toying with me?” I said, “No, I did learn that in the class, but it was real.” And she said, “That was really neat.”

Richard Sheridan:
So it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks. But I think this is the key. Is that ability to empathize with other people, to see the world through their eyes, to think of them as another human being, to try and figure out what’s the story in their head right now about me? Because we always think we’re right don’t we? I mean, at least us guys do and-

Richard Kasperowski:
Wait. Think we’re right? So okay that is an excellent example of a concrete behavior. These are things that I forget to do. I’ll close the laptop, but I forget to look at her lovingly and do it slow. What other advice could you add on to this so that anybody listening or watching could have the best team of their lives, any kind of team whatsoever?

Richard Sheridan:
I have this phrase I use at Menlo about the culture we’ve created and my role in it. And as CEO, as Co-Founder, as a leader of this team, I tell the world that my job is to pump fear out of the world. And I will tell you, that is the opposite of the way I was raised as a leader, as a manager, as a director, as a vice president. I was taught by the people who were above me at the time, “Oh no, you motivate people with fear. That’s your job. You raise an eyebrow at a meeting, you cross your arms, you get…” I had one time, you’ll love this. I had a boss once who told me, “Rich.” As I was just getting into management, he says, “Let me give you a few tips.”

Richard Sheridan:
He says, “If you’re ever walking down a corridor and you see two of your people talking to one another, just walk up to them and stand there and they’ll get back to work.” And he would have this annoying thing. Now I really admire Tom Peters who wrote the book In Search of Excellence so many years ago. And Tom has this thing he calls management by walking around. Just go out be with your people, get to know them, that sort of thing, very noble thing that Tom had but this boss adopted that. But I called what he did management by walking around and annoying people. He bumped into your [inaudible 00:26:59], “How’s it going? What you working on? You almost done? You coming in this weekend?”

Richard Sheridan:
There was only one answer to that question. And fear goes up, adrenaline and cortisol start filling your veins, shut down the most interesting part of your brain and the trouble of fear is, fear doesn’t make bad news go away, it makes you go into hiding. And so in terms of what all of your listeners can take away from this, wherever they are in a leadership change, whether they’re at the front end or the top end, or however you want to characterize it, you are in control of how much fear your bringing into a conversation. You can decide to double down on fear, you can decide to bring a even slightly optimistic voice to things. Yeah, it’s tough right now. It is going to be okay because we’re going to work hard together to do it. That is an attitude that we all have control over.

Richard Kasperowski:
Is there anything else you’d like to add on? Anything to share or anything interesting happening at Menlo and in your life? Writing projects? I don’t know.

Richard Sheridan:
Yeah. This has been a year of adaptations for sure, for all of us. Everybody in the world for that manner. And one of the things that has been a tradition of Menlo for all of its 20 years is we open our doors to the world. People come and visit. They come on tours. We usually host between three and 4,000 people a year. Come from all over the world just to see us. And last year, January, I’ll say last year, we thought we would host 5,000 people at minimum. Was with our sort of big goals. We’d never had that many. And of course, February that all shut down and then it looked like we had already hosted quite a few by then and we were actually on track to host 5,000 people based just on simple number of people per month metrics and then of course it all disappeared.

Richard Sheridan:
And that was sad. It was unnerving. It felt like we’d lost something really important and special to us. And then in June, one of our good friends called up and said, “Hey, how are you guys doing? How did you adapt? How’s this thing at Menlo? How’s this pairing working? How’s this everybody working together in big open room? What are you doing now that you’re all home?” I said, “Well would you like to see?” Says, “What you mean?” I said “How about if we tried doing a virtual tour of the virtual Menlo?” He says, “You can do that?” I said, “I have no idea. We’ll give it a try. We’ll run the experiment.” Which is a famous phrase in Menlo. Well since June, we’ve hosted people from 45 countries and 37 States.

Richard Kasperowski:
Wow.

Richard Sheridan:
They’re coming by the hundreds. Last week I told the team, I said, “You got to slow it down a little bit for me. I did three tours in one day and that was about six hours of touring.” But they’re coming from all over the world. It’s neat because it’s democratized now. There’s no airplane fee, no hotel, no time commitment. They just come for 90 minutes then they go. And the majority of them we do are free. And so if your listeners want to come see Menlo in it’s virtual form, just go to our website, click on tours and sign up for one. We do two or three or four public tours a week for free.

Richard Kasperowski:
That’s amazing. And I haven’t been on the tour. I’ve always wanted to. I think I will.

Richard Sheridan:
Yeah. It’s easy now it’s literally… The other day I was giving a talk in London and I-

Richard Kasperowski:
In London.

Richard Sheridan:
In London. Yeah and I told the crowd, I said, “Hey, I got to run. I’ve got to talk I’ve got to give in Brazil.” And they said, “Oh, have a safe flight.” And I said, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be right here in this room. I got to be there in 15 minutes.” And it’s kind of one of the neat things that I think we’ve all experienced is while we’re isolated and separated from one another, we’re also drawing together in a way that we haven’t seen. I don’t know about you, I actually think the voice call is going to be one of those quaint reminders of the past. I think we’re going to have a lot more of this.

Richard Sheridan:
It’s really weird now to just talk to somebody in your phone. It’s like let’s see each other. I haven’t seen you for a couple of years and now here we are together just like we were at a breakfast at the Kendall. And it’s really delightful. And I think the other opportunity that we can’t miss in this time, and I’ve noticed it at Menlo and I’m sure others, if they think about it harder are seeing the same thing. We are seeing more of the human in our people. When we connect with one another at Menlo I see that Sarah has three cats and I didn’t know that about Sarah. And she has unique names for her cats that give a sense of the kind of science fiction book she likes to read and that sort of thing. And we see the paintings on Josh’s wall in his basement that were done by his grandfather.

Richard Sheridan:
We see George with little Elsie draped around his neck. She’s 20 months old and she just wants to be where dad is. And so we get to see not only his growing daughter, but how he is as a dad when he’s working. And so I think this peek into the humanity of our teams is just such a grand opportunity that we can’t let slip by because too often in our work lives we have this bifurcation. There’s the Rich Sheridan at home and the dad and the husband and the neighbor and the community member. And then there’s CEO Menlo pres. No, it’s the same guy. So we have an opportunity to really get to know our people. Understand what’s going on in their lives as much as they’re willing to share of course and that is a great opportunity that we just can’t let slip by while we’re so worried about all the real stuff that’s going on in the world right now.

Richard Kasperowski:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. So we’ve got… You can see on the wall behind you at Menlo pres, we’ve got the Menlo divisions website. Is there any other ways that people could contact you if they were interested in chatting, striking up a conversation, anything?

Richard Sheridan:
Yeah. Come take a tour, just go to our website, click on tours and visit. If you want to write me an email, oursheridan@menloinnovations.com. Guaranteed I’ll respond.

Richard Kasperowski:
I heard you’re good at email.

Richard Sheridan:
I’m good at email. Link in with me. I’m getting pretty good at staying up on LinkedIn stuff too. Mention this podcast just because I get a lot of weird LinkedIn requests that I’m a little bit I guess discerning about who I accept so if you say, “Hey, I saw you I’m Richard Kasperowski’s podcast and really love to connect.” And I’ll just say, “Yes.”

Richard Kasperowski:
Cool. All right. Rich Sheridan, thank you so much for being on the show today. I am so grateful that we had this time together. Thank you.

Richard Sheridan:
You bet. My pleasure.

Richard Kasperowski:
And remember listeners to support this podcast, visit my website. kasperowski.com.