GARRY RIDGE
Garry Ridge and I got to know each other shortly after he had become president at WD-40 Company, when he was a student in the masters in leadership program my wife, Margie, and I cofounded at University of San Diego. Garry is one of those people who, when he has a powerful learning, begins to implement it the next day. His journey to make WD-40 Company a great servant leadership company motivated me to write a book with him entitled Helping People Win at Work. After all, one of the key aspects of servant leadership is to help people win—accomplish their goals. Garry’s story is well worth replicating in your company. —KB
AT THE AGE of forty, I decided it was time to expand my learning. Although I had long ago earned a diploma from Sydney Technical College and was serving as CEO of WD-40 Company, I wanted to confirm what I thought I knew and learn what I didn’t. So I enrolled in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership degree program at the University of San Diego, a joint venture between the university and The Ken Blanchard Companies. That’s where I met Ken and heard him talk about his philosophy, as a college professor, of giving his students the final exam at the beginning of the semester—and then throughout the course teaching them the answers—so when they got to the final exam they each would get an A.
Ken feels that life is about helping people get As—not force-fitting them into a normal distribution curve. Yet, in most organizations, managers are expected to rate a few people high, a few people low, and the rest as average performers. Even when a company doesn’t have a normal distribution curve evaluation system, managers are afraid to rate all their people high because then they would be rated low. They would be accused of being easy—or soft—managers. As a result, the normal distribution curve is alive and well throughout the world. Ken’s philosophy resonated with my own personal values. That’s when I became excited about implementing his final exam philosophy into our performance review system at WD-40 Company.
To make a significant change in something as important as an organization’s performance review system, you first have to focus on the culture. Culture refers to the assumptions, beliefs, values, customs, and behaviors of the organization’s employees, supervisors, and leaders. According to Edgar Schein and others, culture is “the way we do things around here.” Impacting the WD-40 Company culture I inherited was not a quick fix. It required several steps before I could revamp our performance review system.
First, we needed to create a learning environment. What keeps people in organizations from wanting to learn? They look at mistakes as career-damaging events rather than opportunities to learn. Therefore, they cover up mistakes in the hope that no one finds out. What I needed to do was to help people realize that mistakes were inevitable but not necessarily fatal. To do that, I had to redefine the concept of mistakes. I needed to teach people not to be afraid to fail. As a result, we determined that at WD-40, when things go wrong, we don’t call them mistakes; we call them learning moments.
The second thing I tackled was clarifying the company’s vision and values. A vision gives you a sense of direction, and values give you a compass to keep you on course. Having a clear vision and values is just as important as having a learning culture.
Our WD-40 vision is clear: we’re in the memories business. Our products solve problems in 176 countries. In essence, we are in the quality-of-life business. By solving everyday problems in an almost magical way, we make people’s lives better and, in the process, create positive, lasting memories for our customers.
Once the vision is set, values are needed as principles that guide our behavior while we’re scaling the mountain we have set out to climb. Values need to be simple yet strong, and they need to be clearly communicated as the only acceptable behavior. The rank-ordered values that guide our behavior at WD-40 Company are:
1. Doing the right thing
2. Creating positive, lasting memories in all our relationships
3. Making it better than it is today
4. Succeeding as a tribe while excelling as individuals
5. Owning it and passionately acting on it
6. Sustaining the WD-40 economy
It’s interesting to note that our last value is “Sustaining the WD-40 economy.” I’ve seen a number of companies that never mention financial well-being as a value. When you don’t do that, everyone knows that the values are a joke. Why? Because when finances aren’t going well, a lot of energy gets focused in that direction.
Ranking our financial value last among our other values tells people it’s important—it’s one of our core values—but we will do nothing to make money that compromises any of the other values. Stating the value as “Sustaining the WD-40 economy” is broader than valuing profits. If people saw the word “profit,” they would think all we care about is making money. When we talk about a thriving economy, it implies the well-being of all involved, not just top management.
The final cultural change I needed to make to set up our “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” philosophy was to ask our people to think of us not as a team but rather as a tribe. Using tribal terminology gave me a vehicle to talk about a wide range of organizational attributes that were important to WD-40 Company, rather than just the attributes I’d be limited to if I were to use the word “team.” A team is about winning and getting stuff done in a positive way. While that’s important, a tribe is a much richer concept. A tribe is a place you belong; a team is something you play on once in a while.
The tribal concept set the tone for the open communication we needed in our company. It also helped establish a partnership philosophy that is necessary to implement the “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” concept.
There are three aspects of our “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” performance review system: planning, execution, and review and learning.
When it comes to planning, once a year every tribe leader has a conversation with each of his or her direct reports to establish the tribe members’ final exam that consists of three to five short-term SMART goals. SMART is a widely used acronym for what a well-defined goal looks like:
• S stands for specific—the goal is observable and measureable.
• M stands for motivational—the goal is something that the tribe member is excited about and willing to pursue.
• A stands for attainable—the goal is moderately difficult but achievable for the person.
• R stands for relevant—the goal directly contributes to the company’s bottom line or supports the efforts of those who do.
• T stands for trackable—the goal can be tracked over time so the individual can be praised or redirected, depending on their progress on the goal, in a timely manner.
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that all good performance starts with clear goals—that sets up the leadership aspect of servant leadership. When establishing a final exam with someone, it’s important to be certain that the person knows exactly what he or she is being asked to do. That’s what establishing SMART goals does. It makes sure that people are being evaluated on observable, measurable goals, not on fuzzy, subjective expectations.
The rules at WD-40 Company are simple: if people attain their observable, measurable goals at the end of the fiscal year, they will get an A—as long as they’re in good shape with living the company’s values. This means that a high performer who continually violates our values might be facing a career crisis.
Once people are clear on their final exam and the observable, measurable goals that the exam consists of, we move on to execution—the servant aspect of servant leadership. At this stage, people must begin to perform on their agreed-upon goals. This is where day-to-day coaching comes into play. This is a major emphasis in the “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” philosophy. This means that tribe leaders have to keep up their end of the partnership on a day-to-day basis, helping and coaching their tribe members to get an A on each of their goals. To help that process, WD-40 Company uses Ken Blanchard’s Situational Leadership® II model, which helps tribe leaders determine the amount of direction and support they need to give tribe members on each goal. While the leadership aspect of servant leadership—in our case, clear goals—gets things going, the real action is with the servant aspect of servant leadership—helping people achieve their goals. This sets up the third part of our performance review system: review and learning.
Continually planning and executing without the value of review and learning could blindside you with what we call a typhoon—a destructive event. That’s when somebody makes a mistake that hurts both the organization and that person’s reputation. Since we don’t want that to happen, it is important to take time to pause, review progress, and look for any learning—whether or not a mistake has been made.
At WD-40 Company the review and learning process is a continuous conversation throughout the year. Why do we say review and learning is an ongoing process? Because we don’t want to save up feedback until somebody fails. Periodically, you want to be able to give people feedback that either is positive or redirects their efforts.
As part of that process, four times a year all tribe leaders have a conversation with each of their tribe members, which we call informal/formal discussions. The first item of business is to review the agreed-upon final exam. Is it still relevant? Rather than filing goals that are established at the beginning of the year and then pulling them out at the end for the annual performance review, at WD-40 Company we think that goal setting is an ongoing process. In fact, if circumstances change, tribe members can renegotiate their goals even at the beginning of the fourth quarter.
After reviewing the final exam each quarter, the tribe leader and tribe member begin to look at the tribe member’s performance. In most organizations, at the end of the year every manager has to complete an evaluation for each direct report. We do that differently. At each quarterly meeting, performance is evaluated—but rather than the tribe leader doing the initial evaluation, the tribe member does it. Each tribe member gives themselves an A, B, C, or L on each of his or her agreed-upon goals. An L means that the tribe member is in a learning mode on that goal and isn’t ready for evaluation yet. The job of the tribe leader is to agree or disagree with the tribe member’s evaluation, and to do what needs to be done to help that person move each goal toward an A.
This evaluation process is repeated at the end of every quarter as well as at the end of the year during the final annual review. It is important to reiterate that tribe leaders fill out a performance evaluation only on themselves. They do not fill out evaluation forms on the tribe members who report to them.
Does everyone get an A? Not necessarily. Sometimes people are in the wrong job. If a person is a values-driven tribe member, we may look for another position for them within WD-40 Company. If the person is not a values-driven tribe member and we think termination is necessary, we kindly say to them, “Let’s share you with a competitor.” WD-40 Company is not for everyone.
To help everyone in WD-40 Company share our “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A” philosophy and integrate it into the new culture we had created, I initiated a new leadership model dubbed “Servant Leadership with an Edge.” We describe this model as a circular, continuous process beginning with our vision and values, then moving to planning and execution, followed by review and learning, and finally cycling back to vision.
This total process is about creating and enabling leaders to partner for success with their people. First we define with tribe members what an A embodies, and then we create a culture where people can achieve an A.
Does this work? You’d better believe it. In the tough economic years of 2010 to 2012, we had the best financial results in the history of our company. In our 2016 annual Employee Opinion Survey, the following were the five questions with the highest percentage of people indicating an affirmative answer:
1. I feel my opinions and values are a good fit with the WD-40 Company culture (99.1%)
2. I am clear on the company’s goals (98.4%)
3. I love to tell people that I work for WD-40 Company (98.4%)
4. I know what results are expected of me (97.9%)
5. I understand how my job contributes to achieving WD-40 Company’s goals (97.9%)
To me, helping people get an A is servant leadership in action. It’s the only way to get both great results and human satisfaction.
A native of Australia, Garry Ridge is president and CEO of WD-40 Company, where he has worked since 1987. He received his Masters of Science in Executive Leadership (MSEL) degree in 2001 from the University of San Diego, where he is now an adjunct professor for the MSEL program. In 2009, Garry and Ken Blanchard coauthored the book Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called ‘Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A.’ Garry is a popular speaker on the topic of humanizing the performance review process.