In today's rapidly evolving landscape, where organizations face unprecedented challenges—from AI disruption and climate change to shifting work attitudes and heightened stakeholder expectations—successful leadership requires a new approach.
In an interview with Dr. Regis Chasse, Garry Ridge shares how to embrace a “learning moments” mindset and cultivating a culture of growth, experimentation, and shared knowledge. He emphasizes the leader's role as a coach, empowering teams to find purpose, drive innovation, and build a strong, values-based culture that fuels both business success and personal fulfillment.
About the interviewer
Dr. Regis Chasse (rchasse@heidrick.com) is a partner in Heidrick & Struggles’ Washington, DC, office and leads leadership development solutions initiatives for Heidrick Consulting.
I want to come back on, on the learning moments, you know, I, I, I, I, I quoted you calling those, those failures learning moments. Can you expand a little bit and and share with you how, how that was taking place within your organisation? Yeah, thank you. Um, I, you know, I, I, the the learning moment or the learning mindset, as you rightly said, Regis, is the accelerator of all of the other elements, and I was interested when I looked at the poll, it, it, it came in as the The 2nd lowest number, but if you don't have an organisation where people go to work every day, they make a contribution of something bigger than themselves, they learn something new, and they're protected and set free by a compelling set of values, and they go home happy, you won't maximise your opportunities. So we operate opera, operationally impacted our thinking about learning many years ago where we said, What is the biggest negative to learning, and the biggest negative to learning is failure, and the word failure isn't a very comfortable word. So we said we're going to take the word failure out of our organisation and we're going to replace it with learning moments. And the definition of a learning moment is a positive or negative outcome of any situation that needs to be openly and freely shared with all people. So you can say you have a learning mindset. But if you don't put it into action or operationally be able to explain it and then live by it, people will live in fear, and fear is paralysing. I, I, I so agree with you and, and, uh, um, you know, for, for, for, for, for me, success is already to come up with an experiment whether, whether the the the outcome that we, we expect or other outcomes that we would be able to learn from and, and, uh, that, that resonates so much, so much with me and you know as we were preparing this, uh, this session, uh, you know, we, we, we, we mentioned that our model, you know, the bottom side of the model is, is very human centred and. And, and, and you mentioned the, the importance of purpose in the organisation for, for, for our employees and our colleagues. Absolutely. You know, people want to make a contribution to something bigger than themselves. And if you talk about experiment, let me just remind everybody that WD-40 was an experiment. Back in 1953, the company was called Rocket Chemical Company. There was a problem with condensation and corrosion in the umbilical cord of the Atlas space rocket. The chemists got together and started to mix up formulas, and there were 39 learning moments. There were 39 formulas that didn't work. The 40th 1 worked. That's why it's called WD water displacement 40th formula. So I'm so pleased they didn't give up at 39 and that we allowed them to have those 39 learning moments. But then if you think about purpose in our organisation, you would think, what is the purpose of that blue and yellow can with a little red top? Well, in reality, there it is. In reality, we said we are in the memories business. So our purpose was to create positive lasting memories by solving problems in factories, homes and workshops around the world, which is much more exciting than saying our purpose is to stop squeaks. But if you think about memories, these memories are the things that we always have in all our lives, so we wanted to create positive lasting memories for our end users, for our shareholders, we're a public company, for the environment that we're given the privilege to live in, for the communities that we, we, we get to play in, and for the as we used to call them tribe members or the employees that come to work every day. Who come together because they know they belong, they know they matter, and they are able to make choices. Yeah, that's, that's uh quite colourful. And, and, and in that context, um, Uh, what is the role of the leader. Yes, the there's only one role of the leader. There's only one. Be under no misunderstanding as a leader. The only reason you exist is to help those you have the privilege to lead step into the best version of their personal self, and that's why we took the word manager out and we called everybody in the organisation a coach. And if you can imagine if I was, had the privilege of leading you and I came to you and I said, Regis, I'm not your manager, you manage bank accounts, I don't want to manage you. I'm here to be your coach. And what does that mean? It means, well, I know the game, but I'm gonna stand on the sideline and observe the play. I'm never gonna run onto the field and try and micromanage you and kick the ball. I'm not gonna go to the podium and try and take your prize, but what I am going to do is help you play the best possible game you can play, because if you play your best game, and everybody else on the team plays the best game, the team is gonna win. So, Let's get rid of this word manager. Let's replace it with coach, and let's be dedicated to just one thing. We get up every day to help those we have the privilege to lead to play their best game. Now, I learned something really early in my life is 3 most important words I ever learned, I don't know. And when I got comfortable with those three words, and I looked at our organisation in 1997, and we had the opportunity to take the brand globally, I needed all the help I could get, and in fact I used to introduce myself, and you may laugh at this, I used to say g'day. I'm Gary Rich. I'm the consciously incompetent, probably wrong, and roughly right, chairman and CEO of WD40 Company, and I need all the help I can get, please help me. And that's how we engaged our people, and I, I thought that was wonderful because in one of your, your tips of the learning, you say, um, take an interest in the people and the best way you can take interest in people is recognising their brilliance and letting them play their brilliance. Absolutely, absolutely, and, and, and also the, the, the, the, the power of, of bringing every single voice into the conversation. Uh, for me, I, I, I, I use this all the time. It's 1 + 1 equals 3. None of us individually could have come up with, with a solution, uh, that we came up with individually, but as a team, we were able to, to come up with, with, with a completely different solution that is even better than, than uh than what any of us could have come up with. Yeah, my mentor Ken Blanchard often says not one of us is as good as all of us. Exactly, exactly, exactly, and, and that, that's inclusive mindset that uh that seeking that diversity of thought and experience and background is, is, is so enriching as well I think for, for, for teams. Uh, the, um. I, I, I like also the way you started because you, you, you, you mentioned, you know, the results were good. You, you are very human centred, I think we can say. But, but the organisation was, was performing very, very well and not only from an engagement standpoint, but also for the shareholders and, and the shareholder value, um, uh, and, and, and you know why, uh, in our model we, we, we, we have value creation focus at the top and human centred at the bottom and I think you have your own formula. Uh, to, uh, to go up with the outcomes and business outcomes. Yeah, I think culture equals equals values plus behaviour times consistency. But I think the other formula is this, you know, every, most people who are on this call today, if not all, are very, very intelligent. We can write a great strategic plan. Let's write a great strategic plan. Let's take it to some university and get someone to mark it up. Let's take it to Heidrick and struggles. What do you think about the, the strategic plan? Very good strategic plan. But if only 20% of your people go to work every day. And are going to work align with the fact that they're making a contribution to something bigger than themselves, learning something new and are protected and set free by a compelling set of values. If you've got 70 out of 100 for your strategic plan, 20 times 70 is 1400. But if 80% of your people are going to work dedicated because they are purpose driven, they know they belong, they know they matter, they're they're learning every day, the coaches there helping them, 80 times 70 is 5600. So it's the will of the people times the strategy. I think when most leaders get it wrong is they get out of balance. They spend a disproportionate amount of time on the strategy, but not what they should be balancing that, which is building a culture, building a, a team of people who are getting enjoyment out of what they're doing. Remember, Aristotle, who was born in 384 BC said pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. Our job as leaders is to put pleasure in the job. Now, That doesn't mean it's all about popcorn, pizza, and, you know, margarita parties. You know, it's a balance between being tough-minded and tender-hearted, and the genius is in the middle in the end. So, great strategy, but we have to have the power of the people, the will of the people, and that's where leaders need to focus. Excellent, excellent. And so, so we love the people times strategy equals outcomes. Yes, very good, very good. Uh, then there are some questions trickling in and, and, and I encourage the the audience I should have done so earlier I encourage the audience to, to post questions. There is one and it's quite timely to the the the the the election results in, in, in the US, but you know, one of the, of the societal forces that we have, we have seen, uh, is the lack of trust in institution from, from consumers in general and which elevates, uh, elevates the expectations of, of, um, of the public, uh, towards corporations and, and, and their leaders. uh I remember uh. One of our colleagues, Dan Pacifico, who is, uh, doing some podcasts, uh, uh, was interviewing some CEOs who had to take a stand for their own employees on, on, on, um, societal decisions or, or even engaging in the in the environmental initiatives, uh, besides uh the lack of movement of their government. Do you have any point of view on that? What is your compass, uh, on, on, on whether to or not to engage on on political uh. Or societal Topics like that. I think it's really hard for, for you, you can't please all the people all the time, but what you can do is respect people's point of view. And you know, if you understand where they're coming from and you know, you treat them with respect and dignity, everybody's open to their own point of view. Now, you know, whether they've done the homework to validate their point of view is accurate or not, that's not for me or anyone to question, they have to live with it, so. But I think you know trust is doing what you say you're going to do, uh, and speaking with truth, um, and you know people have to make up their mind that way. And, and, and also, I think combined to that, you know, a brand represents values, right? And, and as a consumer, we buy the brand and the values associated to that brand, right? Uh, so, so that that's also a lens to look at this. Yeah, well, WD40 is an honest product. It does what it's supposed to do. It creates positive lasting memories, it delivers value, it solves problems. Um, so, you know, it, it, it, that's why people buy it. I mean. If the company is 70 years old and still growing and very, very successful, um, and it's because we have a great we had a great product, we have a great product, but, We also have values that we stand on, uh, that ensures that we protect the brand and the product. Um, you know, our number one value is we value doing the right thing. Our #2 value is we value creating positive lasting memories in all of our relationships, which really means treating the people in the organisation, the consumers, the environment, and the world that we live in with respect and dignity, and that's what it's really all about.