Relentless Customer Leader Podcast

Intro:
What if I told you that the secret behind turning a humble can of oil into a global powerhouse worth $3.6 billion wasn't about the product itself, but about how the company treated its people? Today we're diving into leadership wisdom that transformed WD-40 from a niche product into a household name across 176 countries.
My guest is Garry Ridge, who spent 25 years as CEO of WD-40 and literally wrote the book on building exceptional cultures—with the delightfully Australian title "Any Dumbass Can Do It." Garry shares practical insights on turning managers into coaches, reframing failures as learning moments, and creating what he calls a "tribe" where people genuinely belong.
Whether you're leading a team of five or five thousand, you'll discover actionable strategies for balancing tough-mindedness with tender-heartedness, measuring cultural health, and building the psychological safety that drives both innovation and financial performance.
Ready to learn how leadership culture directly impacts your bottom line? Let's dive in!

Dr Chris L. Brown (00:00.0)
Fantastic. Well, I'm here with Garry Ridge and it's great to see you again, Garry.

Garry Ridge (00:07.2)
G'day Chris, good to be with you mate.

Dr Chris L. Brown (00:09.174)
Yeah, look, I thought this would be a great opportunity to talk a bit more about your journey. You and I first connected when I was doing my doctorate, if you recall, and we had a great conversation then. It wasn't a public one, but now we've got an opportunity to talk a bit more publicly. And I thought a good place to start actually is you've spent an incredible career at WD-40. And I'm curious actually where that name, the name WD-40 actually comes from, because it's such an iconic brand.

Dr Chris L. Brown (00:38.806)
around the world. Everyone's got WD-40 in their garage, I'm sure. But what's the origin of the name?

Garry Ridge (00:46.284)
Well, great question. And it's really, you know, an underpinning of some of the culture we ended up with in the company. But back in 1953, there was a problem with condensation and corrosion in the umbilical cord of the Atlas space rocket. And the company was a very small company based in San Diego called Rocket Chemical Company. And the chemists got together and started to look at formulations that might solve this

Garry Ridge (01:14.252)
problem of condensation corrosion. And they got to work and formula like the formulation started and formula one didn't work and 10 didn't work and 12 didn't work and 15 didn't work and 27 didn't work and 35 didn't work and 39 didn't work. But guess what 40 did. So it's got its name from WD water displacement 40th formula, which

Garry Ridge (01:41.481)
is really, you know, kind of the backbone of some of our thinking and my thinking is that, you know, life is about maximizing learning moments. Failures turn into successes if we look at them that way. So I'm really glad they didn't give up at 39 because if they did, I wouldn't be talking to you today, Chris. And I'm glad that 39 didn't work because I don't think WD-39 sounds anything as good as WD-40.

Dr Chris L. Brown (01:59.8)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (02:05.58)
No, that's right. That's right. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? When you think about, I mean, that business, what would you, how would you describe its unfair advantage in the market?

Garry Ridge (02:09.396)
Absolutely.

Garry Ridge (02:19.904)
Yeah. Well,

Garry Ridge (02:22.305)
two things is, you know, the product itself is an honest product. It does what it says it's going to do. I've often said we want to deliver above expectation performance at extremely good value. The other side of it is as it was built as a marketing through its marketing, it was a product that created positive lasting memories in that it made heroes of people either for themselves or those that around them. You know, they had a problem.

Garry Ridge (02:48.48)
They used WD-40 and they fixed it. And then in the end, it kind of became the product of last resort as well. You know, if something doesn't fix it, try WD-40 and it may work. So it was very forgiving. And then the other side of the marketing is it was about discipline, Chris. We were very disciplined around the trade dress, you know, the blue and yellow can with a little red top. Wherever you go in the world, it looks the same except for the words under the shield.

Garry Ridge (03:18.198)
So that was very, very deliberate. And finally, we did something very unusual. We never positioned the product. We never said it was an automotive product or a hardware product or a sporting goods product. And we didn't limit its distribution to one particular department in a store. In fact, in the US, if you were to go into a Walmart store, you'd find it in the hardware department, in the automotive department, in the sporting goods department. And you'd also find it in the promotional clip strip department. So it was...

Dr Chris L. Brown (03:45.89)
Mm.

Garry Ridge (03:48.628)
multiple use, wide distribution, make the end user aware, make it easy to buy.

Dr Chris L. Brown (03:55.276)
Yeah, yeah, it's like the Swiss army knife, isn't it? Of lubricants. So yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Garry Ridge (04:03.444)
Interesting you should say lubricant,

Garry Ridge (04:04.882)
you know, we don't say lubricant on the can

Dr Chris L. Brown (04:08.236)
No, okay, okay, so yeah.

Garry Ridge (04:09.588)
It says stop

Garry Ridge (04:10.361)
squeaks. So we talk about outcomes, not functionality.

Dr Chris L. Brown (04:13.358)

Dr Chris L. Brown (04:14.298)
Yeah, yeah, well, that's this my technical nature coming back in here, isn't it? That's great. So switching gears a little bit, you've got this great new book that's just been released and we're talking before we started the the podcast about it being now in the top 10 on the book sales charts, which is a great achievement. And, you know, it's got this great title, Any Dumbass Can Do It.

Garry Ridge (04:17.174)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (04:39.602)
And that's a pretty bold statement. What's the story behind how you came up with that title and how you think about that?

Garry Ridge (04:46.838)
You know, I am the Dean of Dumbassery. And the reason the title is the title is I want to get people's attention to the fact that I truly believe and have witnessed the negative impact of bad cultures on organizations. know, people who don't enjoy going to work aren't given the opportunity to deliver their best. And it's really all because of toxic leadership. And, you know, if

Garry Ridge (05:14.942)
If we could just create places where people go to work every day, they make a contribution to something bigger than themselves, they learn something new, they're protected and set free by a compelling set of values and they go home happy, happy people create happy families, happy families create happy communities, happy communities create a happy world. And I don't think I'd get an argument from anyone that we could use a little happier world right now. And what I observed, you know, in the

Garry Ridge (05:43.341)
privileged time I had of leading the company and then in times after COVID was leaders think that building great cultures is daunting and it's not. Any dumbass can do it if you understand the ingredients that you have to have in place and you are consistent about executing around those, which is exactly what we did at WD-40 Company. So I thought as an Aussie, I could get away with any dumbass can do it on the title.

Garry Ridge (06:12.95)
But really the story behind it is that building great cultures is simple. It's not easy. And if you know what you need to do, you can do it. But by doing it, you make an incredible impact on people's lives and on the world that we have around us, which needs a little improvement right now.

Dr Chris L. Brown (06:30.466)
Yeah, yeah. One of the ideas in the book, and you've talked about this before, is this idea of a tribe rather than a workforce, right? And how does this tribe mentality differ from maybe a normal sort of corporate environment, corporate workforce? And was there resistance in terms of trying to create that inside WD-40? Or how do you think about that?

Garry Ridge (06:54.112)
Well, yeah, you

Garry Ridge (06:54.823)
know, call it a tribe, call it a clan, call it a family. The principles are the same. It's a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other. And the number one responsibility of a tribal leader is to be a learner and a teacher, to be able to help those they have the privilege to lead or the people that are in the tribe, continually increase their skills and competencies.

Garry Ridge (07:23.294)
and to be able to play a better game. So, you know, there's a difference between a tribe and a team. A team is something you play on and it has a starting time and a finishing time and you're going to win or lose. A tribe is enduring over time. So I think that if we think about the core elements that are needed in organizations, they're pretty simple. Does the organization

Garry Ridge (07:50.815)
create a culture where I know and I feel like I belong, that I know and I feel like I matter, and that I can have the opportunity to make independent choices without fear. And that's the third part where the learning moment comes in. obviously people gravitated to this environment where we could say we were this, but if we didn't live the principles of tribe, clan,

Garry Ridge (08:19.84)
whatever you want to call it, which is a place where you belong, a place where you matter, a place where you learn, a place that's safe because of the values, a place that we celebrate, then it would have been hard for them to come together. But because we lived that, and the end result was, you know, 98 % of people globally said they love to tell people they work for the company. 97 % of the people globally said they respect their coach. And as you may know, we changed the name of managers to coaches.

Garry Ridge (08:49.632)
which I think is very powerful. You you come to work on your first day of work with me, Chris, and I say, G'day Chris, I'm going to manage you. Really? What about if I say, G'day Chris, I'm your coach and all I'm here to do is help you win, help you play a better game. I'm going to be on the sideline when you need me. I'm going to spend time with you in the locker room. I'm going to understand the game with you. I'm not going to run on the field and steal the ball from you. I'm not going to go to the podium and take your prize. The only reason I exist is to help you play your best game.

Dr Chris L. Brown (08:49.827)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (08:56.962)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (09:19.822)
Yeah, yeah, it's a powerful shift in the way in which you're thinking about the relationship, right, too, and that dynamic. yeah. When you think about, you mentioned learning moments before, what does a learning moment look like in practice and how would leaders identify some of those opportunities? How do you sort of think about that?

Garry Ridge (09:29.086)
Absolutely.

Garry Ridge (09:43.199)
Okay. Yeah. Well, the basis of the learning moment was taking out of the organization, one of the most disabling emotions we have, which is fear, you know, fear and failure are not positive. And when you really reflect on anything, anything great that's improved or developed is a outcome of continual learning. So, you know, if you're, you know, if you played baseball in the U S

Garry Ridge (10:12.46)
You get thrown a thousand balls. If you hit 300, you're a hero. So there were 700 learning moments, right? So we said, let's take the word failure out of our organizations and call them 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 to benefit all people. So it reduces the tendency for people to fake and hide because I

Dr Chris L. Brown (10:18.446)
Hmm.

Garry Ridge (10:40.916)
I think in organizations, most people don't lie. They fake and they hide. And the reason they fake and hide is because of fear, the feedback they're going to get, or they just don't want to admit they made a mistake. So we were very, very vocal about the fact that we're going to reward and applaud people for positive learning moments and for what are negative learning moments, because we can all learn from them. So that was really important for us.

Garry Ridge (11:26.828)
Yeah, and the reason we hide it is because people tend to make us feel ashamed of it. But what would have happened if those chemists 70 years ago stopped at 38? There'd be a lot more squeaks in the world.

Garry Ridge (12:12.374)
Well, they can be tough and competitive. You know, we love our kids, right? But, you know, love in an organization is that next level of care. And, you I've often said that great leadership is a balance between being tough-minded and tender-hearted, or, and which is so important. And I think, you know, we have to have a heart of gold and a backbone of steel. And love is also about, you know, being that great coach and helping someone, you know, play a better game and

Garry Ridge (12:42.028)
and be the person we need to be for them. So, you know, the love of the person is I really care about them. And one of the things I talk about in the book is, you know, we protect our own comfort zone sometimes at the expense of other people's development. And that hit me pretty hard many years ago where I needed to go into a conversation with someone and I was protecting my comfort zone because I knew that this conversation was probably not going to be the most comfortable one I've ever had.

Garry Ridge (13:12.33)
And I kept and I challenged myself and I said, Garry, you say you love these people. So why are you so afraid of having this conversation when you're doing it from a place of care of really high level care? You're not going in to punish them. You're wanting to redirect or really bring them, make them aware of a situation that if we can improve on it, their life is going to be better. So.

Garry Ridge (13:40.104)
Alan Mullally, one of the greatest CEOs of all time, he turned Ford around and his signature is love him up. But that doesn't mean you're not tough minded or you don't have a backbone of steel as well. I love my kids and grandkids so much. I didn't really like the time when I had to take something away from them or redirect them, but that didn't stop the love.

Dr Chris L. Brown (14:08.484)
know, one of the challenges, I think, for a lot of leaders is to think about how culture initiatives and culture shaping and leadership, how that connects ultimately to financial results and business performance. How do you think about that? How do you think about measuring what you're doing from a culture point of view and how that ultimately translates into the

Dr Chris L. Brown (14:32.131)
the bottom line for the organisation.

Garry Ridge (14:34.729)
I'll go back and rely on an old friend of ours, Aristotle, born in 384 BC. He says, pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work. So if I bring that forward and say, you know, Chris, you and I can probably get together and write a pretty good strategic plan. You know, we could identify a market, we could identify a route to market, we could identify, you know, the ups and downs. That's great.

Garry Ridge (15:03.997)
But let's say we go to execute that plan and only 30 % of the people in the organization who go to work every day are getting pleasure from their job, really giving themselves, enjoying what they're doing, feeling like they matter and feeling like they belong. So 30 times something is something. But if 80 % of the people go to work every day and feel like they matter and know they belong and enthusiastically executing against the plan,

Garry Ridge (15:33.674)
80 times something is something more. So I truly, and I think we prove that a great economic outcome is the will of the people times the strategy. And I don't think anyone can argue with the fact that a group of engaged, enthusiastic, passionate people who are executing end up doing better work than a group of people who are not.

Dr Chris L. Brown (15:48.133)
Mm.

Garry Ridge (16:04.177)
So I have a friend of mine who owns a chain of Ashley furniture stores in Carolina, North Carolina, Charlotte, and he has a beautiful statement. Culture is not a microwaveable event. It takes a crockpot approach. And that is so true. So if you think that you can sprinkle fairy dust on an organization with one training class or, you know,

Dr Chris L. Brown (16:24.709)
Mm.

Garry Ridge (16:33.595)
some high powered speaker at one event and it's going to change the culture and you're going to get a better result tomorrow, that's not going to happen. But if you're prepared to actually work on putting in place the fundamentals that it takes to build a highly engaged workforce, absolutely over time, you will build an organization where the outcome is much stronger. It's enduring.

Garry Ridge (17:02.341)
You have lower employee turnover, lower absenteeism, and a higher results than if you don't do that. But it's not going to happen overnight.

Dr Chris L. Brown (17:13.157)
Hmm. And I mean, you've proven that in terms of what you've done with WD-40. I mean, the numbers sort of spell that out. I mean, the business, I think you grew to over 400 million in revenue. 600 million, was it? Yeah. Yeah.

Garry Ridge (17:25.321)
600.

Garry Ridge (17:28.177)
And a market

Garry Ridge (17:28.837)
cap from 300 million to 3.6 billion. Now, tell me who gets passionate about oil in a can. It's really because that's not what we were all about. And when you said I did it, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I'm the dumb ass. I helped put a, a environment in place that allowed people to perform their personal magnificence. And they were the ones who did it. I was just, I didn't play any music.

Dr Chris L. Brown (17:32.569)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (17:57.512)
I was just doing this, keeping the beat going on.

Dr Chris L. Brown (17:59.171)
Mm-hmm.

Dr Chris L. Brown (18:03.301)
creating the right environment for it to happen, right? Yeah. Just on that, one of the tools that we've got, I think we've talked about a little bit before, and I know you've got some tools with your heart count business. It's important for leaders to be able to uncover what's going on in their organizations and really get some measurement around that. How do you think about that with some of the tools that you use to kind of...

Garry Ridge (18:06.461)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (18:31.733)
a sense of what's going on in the organization.

Garry Ridge (18:34.013)
Well, once upon a time, a long time ago, those that really cared got that feedback by actually walking around, talking to people, asking them, you know, as the first chapter of my book, are you okay? And, you know, seeing the way they feel and behave in the organization. Well, the world's changing. We're becoming more dispersed. You know, there's certainly a value for a dispersed workforce, although I'm sincerely concerned about

Garry Ridge (19:01.757)
the big disease of loneliness that's going on if we don't get together as human beings, we need connection. But you need something in the organization to regularly take the pulse, to take the beat of the heart of the organization. And whatever tool you use, there are many out there. But it's really important that you are ensuring you're hearing what's going on and you're seeing the behavior in some way, in some shape or form.

Garry Ridge (19:30.907)
So you know where you need to go to find out if people are okay. So again, I think that in these times, it's more important than ever to be able to predict through data what's going on in an organization, whatever tool you use.

Dr Chris L. Brown (19:49.839)
Yeah, yeah. What about, you know, I know you've done a lot of teaching at the University of San Diego down there as well. And when you think about that, you know, what sort of some of the big disconnects that you think are between what is taught at university in terms of leadership programs and what actually works? there, is there a disconnect there or are they sort of similar things?

Garry Ridge (20:16.009)
Unfortunately, not a lot of leadership is taught at university. That's the challenge. mean, we don't, you know, there's not a lot that is actually done to help people prepare to be great leaders. So I think it's an ongoing process of learning. But, you know, I, that's why I love the program that I was involved in for so many years is, we really taught the foundation of leadership and the first foundation is who are you? You know, you can't lead till you know who you are. So

Dr Chris L. Brown (20:19.514)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (20:46.185)
You and you can't make anybody do anything and then sustain it. They have to want to do it themselves. So leadership is about creating that environment of, you know, where people actually see that the work that they're doing is making a difference and that they're learning along the way. You know, my purpose now is I help leaders build cultures of belonging where love, forgiveness and learning inspire a happier, more connected world.

Garry Ridge (21:16.289)
And I think that's what's really important. you know, we, at, when I was at WD-40, and I'm sure it's continued is we actually created the leadership laboratory where we would actually teach leadership within the company. And so many companies don't do that. They again think that that one time training course or that, you know, that one time speaker or that one time event is going to teach it. No, it's not going to do it.

Dr Chris L. Brown (21:43.193)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like going for a run once and then expecting to run a marathon, right? It's not going to work out. I was reviewing sort of, I was reviewing your book online and there was a story that sort of I was intrigued about related to riding a horse to Wall Street. Can you tell me a bit more about what was going on there?

Garry Ridge (21:47.955)
Doesn't work.

Garry Ridge (22:08.913)
Yeah,

Garry Ridge (22:09.494)
that was fun. It was our 50th anniversary as a company and we're in a meeting one day and we're talking about what are we going to do? And I said, well, you know, we, we should do something that recognizes the uniqueness of the brand, but the people in the organization as well. And I need to do it. We need to do something in a way that shows people even, you know, me as the CEO can be completely vulnerable.

Garry Ridge (22:38.791)
So someone came up with this crazy idea and it sort of developed in a conversation. Well, you know, we could do this. And I'd actually read a little bit about when Richard Branson was launching Virgin Cola. I happened to say to in this meeting, well, Richard Branson took a tank and took it into Wall Street. And well, that wasn't going to work. 9-11, you know, had been around and someone said, well, you know, what can we do? And I said, well, we have the formula.

Garry Ridge (23:08.741)
secret formula that's written on a styrene notepad and maybe we could take it to Wall Street and open the NASDAQ stock exchange to show the value it's created. And someone says, well, what's vulnerable about that? I said, well, not much. So maybe I could get dressed up in a suit of armor as the knight that was actually protecting the formula. And said, well, can you ride a horse? I said, well, yeah, I'm an Australian.

Garry Ridge (23:38.218)
You know, my family, my cousins had dairy farms down in the Keywall Valley of Australia, and we used to go there, you know, holidays, and I fell off a horse a couple of times. So, well, what about if you rode a horse into Times Square with a suit of armor carrying the formula? And I said, Do you think we can do that? And someone said, Well, I think we'll make it happen. And they went off and made it happen. And people in the organization said, You are going to do what? Why? said, Well, because it's important. I want to show the world.

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:03.225)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (24:08.349)
how proud we are of the formula, but I need to do something to show you our people that, you know, I'll go out on a limb to show my vulnerability. So luckily I rode the horse, I didn't fall off and it was fun.

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:17.295)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:20.901)

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:22.262)
You pulled it off. That's a great story. Great story. what a great experience in memory as well, I'm sure.

Garry Ridge (24:29.373)
Yeah, the thing that got me,

Garry Ridge (24:31.274)
Chris, is that there's a guy that's known in Times Square to be sitting on a corner in his underwear playing a guitar. You know, he probably he probably got more attention than I this stupid Aussie bloke on a big old horse riding in the Times Square. But that's the way it was.

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:39.226)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (24:46.809)
Yeah, that's great. Another sort of prompt in the book is related to really this idea of staying humble. Can you share, I guess, a humbling moment that you've had that sort of sort of reinforce that principle, or where does that come from?

Garry Ridge (25:09.821)
Well, you've

Garry Ridge (25:10.434)
read the chapter, even the queen sits down to pee.

Dr Chris L. Brown (25:14.125)
Yeah, yep.

Garry Ridge (25:15.869)
That was my mom. know, my mom lived, she was 99 years and nine months old, born in 1914. Dad was born in 1907. And, know, I remember my mom often telling me that, don't get too big for your boots, but in Australia, it's, the tall poppy syndrome. You know what it's like in Australia, you get a bit full of yourself and your mates pretty quickly remind you that, you know, even the queen is sitting down to pee, but

Garry Ridge (25:43.474)
I think that's where it came from. And my upbringing is, I sold newspapers as a lad and worked on milk trucks. And, and you just learn that, you you're not, you can't, you're not corporate royalty when you get the higher you get up in the organization, the more you need to realize that it's not about you and your position. I joke now, you know, someone tells me, how do you feel? said, well, I've gone from a VIP to a PIP. they say, what do you mean? Well, I was a

Garry Ridge (26:12.229)
People thought I was a VIP. Now I'm a previously important person. But I hope that during my career, I was never really a VIP. I always wanted to be Garry.

Dr Chris L. Brown (26:24.719)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's right. That makes a lot of sense. Great, well, look, that was all the sort of questions that I had listed here, but is there anything else that we would want to share with people listening right now? Any other gems of advice or other ideas?

Garry Ridge (26:43.911)
I just go back to the summary is that if you're listening to us today and you're an emerging leader, you can make a difference in the world. No doubt by understanding that your role is to not only continue to develop yourself, but to do whatever you can to help others step into the best version of their personal self. Cause at the end, life is a gift and you don't want to send it back unwrapped. And we can make a difference in the world. You know, one leadership movement at a time.

Garry Ridge (27:11.633)
I hope that the work that I've done in the book might help people understand that this dumb ass from Australia can do a little bit to help others make the world a place.

Dr Chris L. Brown (27:22.877)
So Garry, your career has taken you from Australia to this global leadership role at WD-40. What sort of cultural differences have you noticed, I guess, moving to the US and then also running a global organization where you're in, I think, 176 countries around the world?

Garry Ridge (27:42.935)
Well, culturally, they drive on the other side of the road over here.

Dr Chris L. Brown (27:47.941)
Yes!

Garry Ridge (27:49.727)
It's interesting,

Garry Ridge (27:50.518)
know, reflecting on when I first moved over here and you've been through the experience as well is that there are just these little things. Everybody thinks that the US culture and the Australian culture are pretty similar. Yeah, but no, I mean, I think, you know, we in Australia, you know, when we say have a nice day, we probably mean it.

Dr Chris L. Brown (28:16.081)
Yes, that's right. It's not just a turn of phrase.

Garry Ridge (28:18.253)
Yeah, exactly.

Garry Ridge (28:20.434)
And just little things, I think I mentioned this in the book. I when I first got here, driving on the freeway, not only did I have to learn to drive on the other side of the road, but I kept missing the exit off the freeway all the time. And it took me a little while to realize that in the US, the exit is on the top of the site. In Australia, it's on the bottom of the site. So I'd be...

Garry Ridge (28:46.517)
along the freeway and they go coming up to me, I've gone past it. Why? so the but then around the world, I think one of the things we have to be aware of is cultures are different. And, know, are they direct cultures, indirect cultures? You know, is it about the relationships first or is about making the deal? And I think it's really important. And one of the classes I did in my master's degree was really valuable where we actually looked at, you know,

Dr Chris L. Brown (28:50.311)
Yeah, yeah.

Garry Ridge (29:16.267)
what are the different behavioral styles? You know, I've often said the worst thing you could ever do, not the worst, but one of the things you could do that probably won't be successful is even though Walmart is the same company, is sending the sales rep who goes to Walmart Bentonville to the sales, to the buying office of Walmart Mexico. Because in Bentonville, it's be brief, be bright, be gone. 15 minutes, you're done.

Dr Chris L. Brown (29:40.432)
Mm.

Dr Chris L. Brown (29:45.799)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (29:45.964)
In

Garry Ridge (29:46.244)
Mexico, it's you've to build a relationship first because that's what's important. And that's what happens around the world. know, if you go to different cultures and, you know, if you go to Japan and you think people are agreeing with you, they're not. They're acknowledging you. You know, not so many people have left there thinking, oh, I got it. No, you didn't. They're just acknowledging you. In China, it's about building the relationship first. So, you know, in so many countries around the world, I think it's about awareness.

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:00.402)
Yes.

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:06.139)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (30:15.82)

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:15.858)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (30:16.381)
and understanding whether they fit on this scale of relationship versus direct sort of culture.

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:23.525)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's important nuances aren't they for sure, for sure.

Garry Ridge (30:26.944)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (30:27.605)
And people in global business step into these unknowingly. You've got to take the time to really, you know, okay, I need to understand this.

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:31.975)
Yep. Yep.

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:36.337)
Yeah, yeah. Often you learn the hard way, right? Where things aren't working.

Garry Ridge (30:39.784)
I did. did.

Garry Ridge (30:41.986)
Many times I left Japan thinking I've stitched that up. No, it took me a while.

Dr Chris L. Brown (30:47.845)
Yeah, yeah. You spent 35 years at WD40, so that's a really long tenure for a CEO. What kept you engaged and prevented, I guess, some staleness from creeping in and that sort of thing? What was continuing to energise you about the role there? Yeah.

Garry Ridge (31:06.827)
Opportunities were abundant.

Garry Ridge (31:09.678)
Opportunities were abundant. Focus was a gift. And, you know, I was 35 years there, 25 as CEO. So I'm actually, they tell me I'm the longest serving Australian as a US public company CEO. And honestly, it was about opportunity. You know, we were taking the blue and yellow can with a little red top to the world. And although we may have had some sort of developed or markets in some countries,

Garry Ridge (31:36.342)
you know, just to think that we could walk into a country where that can had never been before and dream and plan about how it would be coming, become the product of, you know, first call for what it did. So the opportunities were just, they're there and they're just continuing. we, opportunities were abundant. Focus was a gift and every day we had new, you know, new things to be able to keep us motivated and challenged.

Garry Ridge (32:04.032)
I think that was the other thing too, because every market we went to, you said, with even cultural or distribution, you you, look at a, at a country like Spain and you have to work out what's the best, most economic way to get the can to the end user. And it'll be different in Spain than Germany and different in Germany to the UK and very different than being in the U S you know, here it's a very homogenized market. If you've got.

Dr Chris L. Brown (32:29.351)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (32:32.524)
Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe's and a bunch of others, you're okay. But in Spain, it's a whole bunch of little hardware stores. So how do you get to them? So all of that was something I used to say to our people, when we go to different countries, you've got to take the old country disc out of your head and put a blank disk in and let's fill it with the local knowledge.

Dr Chris L. Brown (32:41.201)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (32:51.197)

Dr Chris L. Brown (32:52.802)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a new puzzle each time, isn't it? New puzzle.

Garry Ridge (32:57.258)
It is the pieces are.

Garry Ridge (32:59.862)
Pretty similar, but the puzzles a little different.

Dr Chris L. Brown (33:02.513)
Yeah, yeah. You mentioned, I mean, being the CEO of a publicly traded business is challenging because you have such, you you've got the investor side of things to deal with. How did you manage your time in terms of being able to spend enough time with your employees, with customers, and then obviously also with investors at certain times? How were you able to sort of balance that?

Garry Ridge (33:26.06)
Well, just have to, you just have to, you know, a lot of the time, you know, there were times when, you know, around earnings and when we're out, you know, talking to either current, you know, there's two types of investors with the ones that you have and your job with them is to keep them all informed, in a very disciplined manner. And then the ones you don't have that you may want, because, know, people trade in and out of your stock.

Garry Ridge (33:53.76)
We were very lucky in a lot of ways is as we were very focused on who was a good investor in our company. had a lot of long term investors. So, you know, they were really great because they understood our business. We just had to plan your time. But I was talking to someone, you know, just today actually about being a CEO and being in the four corners of the room.

Garry Ridge (34:20.372)
And you're the only one who can see the impacts of all four corners. And one corner is the board of directors. you know, they have their thoughts, their wants, their needs, their desires, their ideas. And then the other corner, you have the investors and they have the same. And then in the other corner, you have the people who use your product. And then the other corner, you have the people who are in the organization. And you're the only one who can actually see all four corners.

Dr Chris L. Brown (34:50.595)
Mm. Mm.

Garry Ridge (34:51.092)
And you can't

Garry Ridge (34:51.703)
necessarily explain each corner to everybody else. it's a very, CEO of a public company, in fact, is a very lonely place. I mean, it can be very lonely.

Dr Chris L. Brown (34:55.153)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (35:01.244)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (35:03.803)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's the only role where you need to have that unique insight across those four dimensions, And so you're not able to share that as effectively with others. Yeah.

Garry Ridge (35:16.855)
That's why I always had a coach. You know, I

Garry Ridge (35:19.527)
had someone that I could, you know, without fear and just go and say, Hey, I need to talk about this. Help me, help me think this through. And that's what I love doing now. As you probably know, Chris, I coach now I have seven CEOs that I coach right now, three are public company, four are private companies. And I really enjoy that work because my role is not to impart on them any, you know,

Garry Ridge (35:44.766)
advice, but it's to help them think and just to let them feel comfortable that, particularly the public company ones, that those four corners do exist and you have to approach them sometimes differently.

Dr Chris L. Brown (35:47.42)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (36:00.379)
Yeah, yeah. That's a great segue into my next question actually on, you you've been called the culture coach. And, you know, if you could go back and coach your younger self on, you know, an approach to building organizational culture, I mean, what would you say to yourself?

Garry Ridge (36:19.436)
Dharmasri is your superpower.

Dr Chris L. Brown (36:21.787)
Yeah, okay.

Garry Ridge (36:23.692)
Yeah,

Garry Ridge (36:23.932)
I mean, it goes back to the point that, you uh, when I first was given the privilege honor to lead WD 40, you know, I, probably was too confident in what I thought I knew. And once I really learned the fact that I really need everybody else. And that was my learning moment, my pivotal moment. And that happened when I went, you know, I was only two years into the role, as I think, you know, and I went back to school.

Garry Ridge (36:53.261)
Here I am the CEO of a US public company and I went back and did a master's degree in leadership and people in the class saying, why do you need to do this? You're already the CEO. I said, that's why I need to do it. And that's where I learned the, you know, the true aspects of servant leadership. was more than lucky to have and still have, you know, Ken Blanchard, the one minute manager is my mentor and my personal friend. And he was so influential.

Garry Ridge (37:20.641)
And then I just learned from other people, you the other advice I would give to anybody is continue to learn, be curious and don't be afraid to disrupt yourself. If I look at anything in my life, you know, when I was comfortable being disrupted, moving from Australia to the US is a huge disruption, but it brought great opportunities. So don't be afraid to disrupt yourself.

Dr Chris L. Brown (37:44.273)
Yeah, when you think back to that, you know, your leadership journey as well, mean, are there some sort of failures that you can think of in your own sort of leadership journey that really stuck out to you that helped you develop yourself?

Garry Ridge (38:00.716)
Yeah. And I think they

Garry Ridge (38:01.696)
were all around this, this whole theme of thinking I knew, or, you know, I can remember particularly, there's a couple of things we talk about in the book, but, know, I can remember early on, someone would come to me with a problem or a situation and I'd want to dive in and try and solve it. Well, number one, I probably didn't have the answer, but I thought it was my job. If you are the CEO, you should be able to solve this. But then also,

Dr Chris L. Brown (38:07.377)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (38:27.195)
Yes.

Garry Ridge (38:29.098)
I didn't help that other person learn. And guess what? They probably knew more about what they were trying to solve than I did. So I think you become the ultimate kind of orchestrator. know, if you think about an orchestra and a conductor, you know, a conductor gets up and does this and the orchestra plays. The conductor isn't making any music, but he's helping the orchestra stay in tune and in

Dr Chris L. Brown (38:52.626)
Yeah.

Garry Ridge (38:58.902)
tempo. And I think that's our job as a leader is to, okay, let's play. And to ensure that we're helping all of those musicians get the training and the competency they need to play the particular instrument that they're going to play.

Dr Chris L. Brown (39:04.125)
Yeah.

Dr Chris L. Brown (39:16.956)
Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a great analogy. I'm teaching a course at the University of Technology, UTS, down here in Sydney at the moment. And this past week, we were just talking about this concept of psychological safety, which I know you know a lot about and talked about.

Dr Chris L. Brown (39:35.095)
And it was interesting, I asked the students, know, how many of you have actually heard of this concept? And I got no hands up in the class, which I was quite surprised of, right? Because it's certainly something that I've been familiar with for a long time in business and certainly in the academic world, we've been talking about that for a while, but maybe hasn't transformed into other contexts.

Dr Chris L. Brown (39:56.753)
But how do you think about this idea of psychological safety and how to foster that in organizations, how to make it real?

Garry Ridge (40:05.174)
Well, it's, think there are two, two aspects of it, trust and fear. So, you know, what environment you need to put in place that, that people will trust you and trust means that you can have that open conversation. often say that in organizations, most people don't lie. They fake and they hide. And the reason they fake and hide is because of fear. So how do you demonstrate the fact that you are willing to listen and you are willing to take in and

Garry Ridge (40:34.668)
You know, I think that as a leader, you really need to get a very clear fact that you need to get bleeding tongue syndrome, which means bite your tongue and listen to people. So I think it's trust and fear. And if you can do whatever you can to lower the amount of fear and increase the amount of trust and trust comes from doing what you say you're going to do, you know, being acceptable, being open, showing your vulnerability.

Garry Ridge (41:04.888)
You're only human. We're just these basic human beings bumbling our way down this pathway of life. And we're not perfect, but we know where we want to go. And in the bushes are these thieves that run out and grab us and they take us in the bushes. And they could be thieves of greed and envy and impatience and short-term thinking. And sometimes when we're in those bushes, we feel kind of safe, but it's not going to get us to where we want to go. So we've got to get back out on that path.

Garry Ridge (41:33.356)
So I think an awareness of who you want to be is very important.

Well, that wraps up our fascinating conversation with Garry Ridge. What stands out to me is how Garry transformed WD-40's culture through his refreshing approach to leadership—turning "managers" into "coaches" and reframing failures as "learning moments" that benefit the entire organization.

I was particularly struck by Garry's insight that "culture is not a microwaveable event, it takes a crockpot approach." This patient, consistent dedication to building an environment where people feel they belong and matter clearly paid off, helping to grow WD-40's market cap from 300 million to 3.6 billion during his tenure.

For those of you leading teams or organizations, consider these actionable takeaways:

First, examine how you respond to mistakes. Are you creating a culture where people feel safe to share both successes and failures openly? Remember Garry's wisdom that "in organizations, most people don't lie—they fake and hide" when fear is present.

Second, reflect on whether you're balancing what Garry calls "a heart of gold and a backbone of steel." Outstanding leadership requires both compassion and accountability.

And before I sign off, I should mention that we had a little technical hiccup at the end of our recording. My internet connection failed spectacularly just as Garry shared his final wisdom. I guess even my Wi-Fi wanted to demonstrate a practical example of a "learning moment." Fortunately, unlike those WD-40 scientists, I didn't need 40 attempts to get back online!

As you return to your leadership challenges this week, I'd like to leave you with Garry's powerful question: Are you creating an environment where people can deliver their personal magnificence?

If you found value in today's episode, please subscribe to the Relentless Customer Leader podcast wherever you get your podcasts and share it with a colleague who might benefit. You can also connect with us on LinkedIn for more leadership insights and updates on future episodes.

Until next time, this is Chris Brown, reminding you that exceptional customer experiences start with exceptional leadership. Thank you for listening.