As an entrepreneur and a founder of a high-tech company, I seek sources of inspiration.  Steve Jobs was one of those inspirational heroes.  I love the idea of dreaming big and then going after that dream and seeing it become reality.

Gates and Allen wanted to see a PC in every home.  Others thought at the time the world would only need a a handful of computers.  The big idea won.

Jobs and Wozniak wanted to create an affordable easy to use computer for the masses.  The big idea won and then kept winning with everything that followed.

Ford wanted a car in every garage, affordable enough that the people who built them could buy them.  The big idea won.

Edison wanted to electrify the world.  The big idea won.

Thanks Steve, Steve, Bill, Paul, Henry and Tom for being a dreamer’s heroes.  You’ve shown us its not crazy to dream big dreams and its not crazy to pursue them.

You all brought us joy.  Pure joy.

Last Friday I was grabbing an early morning flight out of Salt Lake City and I had to have my coffee. I went to Starbucks and overheard the pain of the barista describing her morning with broken software. “The computers were down for 2 hours this morning.” I asked her, “So what was it like?” She described the painful process of having to manually write down every sale, manually key-in the credit card transactions, and then catch-up on all those transactions once the computers were working again.

Your company’s customer experience is defined by your software. The previous blog post gave a tale of two experiences, one good, one bad. The message was: It is perilous to ignore how your software makes your customers feel.

Technology is no longer the constraint.

Marc Andressen described it well in a recent essay in The Wall Street Journal on “Why Software is Eating the World”:

Six decades into the computer revolution, four decades since the invention of the microprocessor, and two decades into the rise of the modern Internet, all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.

There are many companies, like Starbucks, who focus on creating the best possible customer experience they can. The layout of the stores, the training of the staff, even the language they use around their products. All of this can be destroyed in a moment by poorly working software.

The customer doesn’t even have to touch the software for the software to destroy the experience.

If the customer-facing employees of a company are frustrated by the software they use to transact business, that frustration will spill over into the customer experience. The customer may not even know why they walked away feeling like they had a bad experience.

We stated many years ago that our mission is “…to end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology.™” It’s time for every organization to contemplate how their software can be used to enhance or maybe even define their customer experience. Those that have understood this have succeeded wildly in the past few years: Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and Groupon, to name a few. We can probably all name companies who are equally defined by their software experience, albeit in a negative way. Those companies have either struggled or died.

Other than employees and investors, few mourn their passing.

It was time for a new pair of glasses. This is something I don’t replace that often, so quite frankly, I was a little excited. I stopped in at our local mall to visit the Pearle Vision store there. The selection process was both fun and compelling. My wife and I enjoyed the opportunity to explore different looks and styles, while finding something that was both functional and comfortable.

Then came the painful part.

Once we had made the selection, we sat down with one of the sales associates who collected the details to place the order. I probably had a hint of how this was going to go when the first words out of her mouth were, “This is going to take a couple of minutes while I reboot the computer.” Given the business I’m in, I’m sure I made some joking remark about “those darn computers.”

She then began filling in the details in what seemed like an interminably complex and lengthy process. She gave me some verbal indication that she was right near the end and then got the troubling look on her face as she was waiting for the software to respond. After a couple of minutes of waiting, she declared that the computer had frozen again and that she would need to restart the entire process.

What started out as as a pleasant Sunday afternoon shopping visit to the mall now had all the makings of a retail nightmare “waste of time.”

At this point, my wife lost interest and said, “I’m going to Pottery Barn. I’ll see you later.”

Apparently the second attempt actually worked. She then had to leave her station and travel back to the retail counter to enter my credit card information. I sat patiently, assuming this would be the quickest part of the process. Twenty minutes later I finally approached the retail counter to check in on progress. I must admit, my blood pressure was now rising.

I asked if there was any trouble and she said, “Nope. I just needed to help another customer.”

I completed the order and told them I would probably never return. I felt buyer’s remorse for the rest of the day. Even this morning I am contemplating canceling my order.

After this retail nightmare I stopped at the store next door. The Apple Store. I needed a new case for my iPhone 4.

The store was mobbed. It reminded of the Yogi Berra comment, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Sales associates were outnumbered by customers at least 10-to-1. (Unlike the 1-to-1 at Pearle Vision.) My wife and I had the same fun selection experience and then it was time to check out.

I caught the eye of a free sales associate. He approached me, scanned the item with his own iPhone, swiped my credit card, asked me if an emailed receipt was fine, showed me the email address he’d send it to, and I was done. In less than 60-seconds I was walking out the door with my new purchase.

I couldn’t help but reflect on how much effort Apple must have put into ensuring they could produce this kind of customer buying experience. I must admit, I seldom go to the mall anymore, but every time I do I excitedly visit the Apple store to contemplate future purchases.

These experiences hit home for us because they go to “joy.” I had no joy at Pearle Vision and thus I will look for more joyful alternatives the next time. The Apple Store not only gave me joy for that purchase, but also helped calm me from my previous bad experience at the place right next door.

When people ask me how to define “the business value of joy” in software design and development, I describe it as widespread adoption and enjoyable use by the people for whom it was intended. As we reflect on the tenets of the “Experience Economy” we fundamentally believe that customer “shopping, purchasing, and using” experience is what separates the winners from the losers.

Ignore this at your peril.

“My son or daughter would love to work at a place that thinks like you do.”

I find this a bittersweet moment. I appreciate that they see in us a place they would so love their children to work, that they would offer their children to us in that way. I often wonder to myself, have they already given up on their own career and resigned themselves to a joy-less work life? Or perhaps in the world of limited opportunities, if there’s only one spot available, they want their child to have it? Or perhaps the “golden handcuffs” of high compensation and longevity in their current position is enough to hold them in a less desirable situation?

This kind of reference is always worth its weight in gold. I’m proud we’ve created the kind of space and culture where people want to send their loved ones to begin a career.

We lament that there is an abundance of joyless jobs in our industry because we don’t believe it has to be that way. In fact, we have several years of experience that prove just the opposite.

“Joy” and “great results” are not mutually exclusive. You can have both, and you can provide both at a profit.

We had to learn these lessons and make painful decisions along the way to get where we are now. As we said last week, an important lesson is that if you want to enjoy the benefits of a strong culture, you have to be willing to incur the cost of that culture.

If you’re starting your own business, or you’re trying to re-invent an existing business, we encourage you to think about your culture. Create a culture you could get “little kid” excited about — something that makes you jump out of bed, excited about the work you’re going to do, and excited to share your enthusiasm with others.

If you do this and share it with others, I believe you too will start getting business cards from the people who “offer their children to you.”

Even if you’re not intentional about your culture, you will still have a culture. This is what I refer to as “the default culture.” Who did we hire? What attitudes did they bring? What behaviors do we tolerate?

Ultimately your culture will define your “inside reality.” This inside reality may or may not align with the world’s outside perception of your company. When these two things don’t align, there’s trouble.

At Menlo we have very intentionally focused our culture on the business value of joy. When I give tours of our space, I challenge people to ask me — at any point in the tour — “Rich, that thing you just described, what does that have to do with joy?” and I tell them that I will be able to draw a very short, straight line back to joy.

For example, our office space has no cubes, offices, walls or doors. This allows us to keep in constant communication with one another, without email. We use High-Speed Voice Technology™. Imagine how much better your day would go without “cc: all” emails flying around the corporate email system. Joyful.

Once you’ve made an intentional decision about your culture, the hard work begins. Every piece and part of your company must now be custom-fitted to foster and support this intentional culture. For us, it involved everything from the layout of our office space and the location of the office itself (it must be near a steady source of quality coffee!), to how we how we recruit, how we review resumes, how we interview, how we on-board new team members, how we offer feedback to one another, and how we let people go. It is not enough to simply say, “We want a joyful culture.” You can’t get the benefits of a joyful culture without being willing to incur the cost of building and supporting that culture. These costs are not solely financial. For example, in our industry there are superstars who are wonderful technologists but terrible team players. We could tolerate the poor social behavior for the benefit of the technology expertise. But if we did, it wouldn’t be long before all the intention in the world could no longer rescue our culture. We would have gotten a new culture, a superstar culture. Not the one we wanted, but rather, the one we were willing to tolerate.

Menlo’s culture is both strong and fragile at the same time. The strength comes from a team of people who all believe in the same goal. The fragility comes from a team of people who are still human beings who have their own challenges. The reality is that one drop of poison can kill the whole pond.

When we each walk in the door, we make a choice: poison or passion.

We passionately choose joy.

I hated it. Subsequently, I’ve never been a big fan of vacations.

When I joined Menlo, I was given four weeks of vacation per year. I tend to take it in the form of a half-day here, a day there, or — when I feel “ready” for a vacation, taking a three- or four-day long weekend. It works for me and keeps me adequately energized to do my job and do it pretty darned well.

Until this year.

I’ve had a host of serious health problems that have caused me to miss a lot of work during the last nine months.  I would return to work (probably a bit too soon), only to get ill again and miss more work. I was frustrated, and even though Rich (my boss) was sympathetic, I sensed that he was frustrated too.

I made a decision. Despite having already missed a lot of work while my body healed, I knew that I needed something more. I needed a vacation so my vital energies could replenish.

I took advantage of a new benefit offered to employees this year: the ability to purchase additional vacation time. I bought two weeks and told Rich I was taking some time off.

When the first day of vacation started, I unplugged from Menlo — completely — for the first time in nine years. I…

• set up an auto-responder on my email. Though we don’t use email internally for communication, I deal with many external companies arranging tours, speaking engagements, and the like. The auto-responder directed them to call the main Menlo phone number of to email Anna, a summer intern who would handle high-priority requests as they came in.
• deleted the mail application icon from my dock. This would help me fight the temptation to take “a quick peek” at my work-related email. (I keep my personal and professional mail feeds separate.)
• deleted my work-related twitter feed.
• turned off my work-related Google Calendars. For the first time, quite possibly ever, I was looking at just my commitments and appointments.
• didn’t log into the Menlo Innovations Facebook account. It’s rare that there’s anything truly urgent there, so it could wait for me to return.

Even though I love the work I do at Menlo, I knew I needed this break. I felt that if I could make it through the first 48-hours without “cheating,” I’d be fine.

For the next week and a half, I focused on projects at home and maintained my “Menlo-fast.” Some organization projects. Some gardening. A little home repair. Some reading. A lot of Star Trek episodes (the original series, of course) on Netflix.

The day before I was to return, I knew I was ready. I felt the best I’d felt in ages. Not only was I feeling physically better, I was feeling psychologically healthy and ready to take on the world again.

It took a rough patch in my life to remind me how important time away — even from something you love — can be. I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon.

Katherine Lawrence, co-author of Creativity at Work, often describes Menlo as improv theater — a passionate hobby of hers. I never quite got this connection until I watched Stephen Colbert’s commencement address at Northwestern University. Colbert described his early career in improv theater. He noted that the goal for every improv actor is to step on the stage with the attitude that “I am the least important person on this stage and my job is to serve everyone else here.” He went on to say, “Imagine that everyone steps on the stage with exactly the same attitude.”

Katherine Lawrence’s improv description of Menlo finally made sense to me.

(It occurs to me that in many organizations people do step onto the stage with the same attitude. Unfortunately it is the attitude of “it’s all about ME.” Or, even worse, “it’s all about pleasing the boss.”)

I think this also captures the essence of what is commonly referred to as “servant leadership.” (Lisamarie calls this “servant servantship” — working with the goal of helping the person sitting next to me be the best they can possibly be.) This is probably the purest definition of teamwork that we can imagine. It inverts the typical corporate hierarchical model that says “everyone is there to serve the person above them.” We’ve spoken before about how Menlo is an organization without hierarchy. This simple description of improv theater finally brings it all together for me.

There is joy at Menlo. It begins the moment each of us takes delight in knowing that we’re the least important person here and that our job is to serve each other and trust that others share the same attitude.

We are very intentional about building this foundation of trust. It starts with our interview process and continues every moment of every day.

It’s not easy. We’re not perfect at it. We do, however, work at it every day.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We’re currently looking to add to our team. At the time of this posting, we have one of our “Extreme Interviewing” events coming up soon. You can get a good taste of the Menlo interview experience by reading the June 2011 Inc. magazine cover story, You’ll Never Work Alone.

To apply for an audition, email Carol Sheridan (Menlo’s Factory Floor Manager).

Of course, all of them say, “I would want the joyful half.” I then ask them, “Why?” The most common response I get has shocked even me: “They would be easier to work with.”

It makes sense to me, I’m just shocked at how commonly this is the first response from the group. I’ve been treated in the last few months to hearing talks by Ari Weinzweig of Zingerman’s, Chris Zane of Zane’s Bicycle Shop, and most recently, Tony Hsieh of Zappo’s. All of them lead their organizations with an inordinate focus on customer service. They all enjoy a wonderful reputation and achieve great business results.

I believe there are two strong components for these three “Z-companies” as well as Menlo. The first is they are intentional about their culture and their hiring process first looks for that cultural fit. I’ve heard Ari Weinzweig say that “If you don’t look me in the eye and smile during the interview, you won’t get a job at Zingerman’s.” Why is that important? It might help you to know that Zingerman’s has a “10-4 Rule.” Anytime a Zingerman’s employee comes within 10 feet of a customer, they make solid eye contact and smile. Within 4 feet, they greet them verbally. So, if you don’t smile when you’re interviewing, it’s very unlikely you’re going to smile with customers.

The second component is the constant reinforcement of their culture in their daily practices. Part of this reinforcement comes from capturing great stories and retelling them until they become part of the lore of the organization. Stan Slap, who wrote the book Bury My Heart at Conference Room B, says every strong company culture needs a chief storyteller. By reinforcing your culture through storytelling, you end up with stories that almost anyone on the team can repeat with ease and your culture then becomes viral.

At Menlo, our most important stories have been retold during hundreds of tours we have done over the years. These tours are held in our open workspace, so everyone on the team hears them over and over again. They’ve heard them so many times, of course, they can retell the stories themselves. This has a secondary benefit for us. We talk often of ensuring that our “internal reality” matches the “outside perception” that others have of us. If anyone on the team hears something that doesn’t “gel” with our cultural expectations, they have an opportunity to question it. And they do.

Many visitors have confided in me that they would not want to share their internal reality with anyone else. They long for the joy that is the result of an organizational culture based on trust, integrity, respect, authenticity, purpose, and a sense of being part of something that is bigger than themselves. It is our belief that a focus on these values produces joy.

Joy makes us easier to work with.

And that makes all the difference.

Guest Blogger: Doug Wood, graduate of Shifting Gears

We were paired into teams of 1 interviewer and 2 interviewees and given an IT task that might exist in software creation. The tasks were unexplained and purposefully ambiguous and the interviewer watched us as we tried to structure some game plan from this sea of instructions as time ticked away. We were fighting the clock and needing to figure and learn how one another worked things out. As we forged this relationship into some form of communication that might get us to a completed task. We were instructed that part of the criteria for evaluation was to “Make your partner look good at any cost”. We were painfully aware of that goal as we fought the urge to look good ourselves.

This pairing was done 3 times and we were always assigned different partners and different interviewers and a different task to accomplish. Always being watched to see how we learned and made our partners look great and… (if we accomplished the task kept creeping into my mind, too)

Now in the Menlo Interview when that is done, the interviewees are dismissed and the interviewers then discuss how the people did. But with the Shifting Gears Program our Cohort (the 17 people in the group) are allowed to sit in and listen to everyone’s evaluation and share in the process after they are evaluated. So it is more like an intervention.  As the group is individually evaluated it is very affirming for our program to see how far each and every individual had come in the program as that is happening. I gained strength knowing that I was part of that and that I could draw from that strength as a greater resource. I felt like I had been given the cards of accomplishment from my evaluation and then all the other people’s cards from my cohort as well. What a terrific gift on top of yet another terrific gift.

Thank you, Menlo Innovations!

First of all, there were GREAT speakers. Patrick Lencioni, author of “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team“. Alison Levine, Captain of the First American Women’s Everest Expedition. Stan Slap, author of “Bury My Heart at Conference Room B“. Undercover Boss Sheldon Yellen of Belfor Holdings. Matt Higgins of the NY Jets. Christopher Zane, founder of Zane’s Bicycles. Norm Brodsky, founder of “small giant” CitiStorage and author of “The Knack“. Even our home base of Ann Arbor, Michigan was well represented by Zingerman’s Deli founder, Ari Weinzweig.

I came away with a number of leadership gems that were both inspiring and great reminders of what we, as leaders, need to do to inspire our teams. Here are some of the things I heard:

Patrick Lencioni:

• “People need to be reminded more than they need to be instructed.” (originally Samuel Johnson, quoted by Lencioni)
• “If people don’t weigh-in about how they feel about a decision, they won’t buy in.”
• “Institutionalize your human structures without bureaucracy.” (Note: This is the point where Lencioni called out from the stage, “Are the Menlo folks in the room?” Priceless!)
• “If we want to enjoy the benefits of teamwork, we have to be willing to incur the cost of teamwork.”
• “Conflict is good. Not derisive, interpersonal conflict, but strong, ideological conflict.”

Alison Levine:

• “Fear is a useful tool. Complacency will kill you.”
• “There is no such thing as a storm that lasts forever. Plan less, execute more.”
• “Standing on a mountain top doesn’t change anything. It’s the lessons you learn along the way.”
• “When climbing mountains, you survive if you understand that the summit is just the half-way mark.”
• “When climbing mountains, getting to the top is optional, getting down is mandatory.”
• “Tragedy is going to do one of two things to a team: either blow it up, or bring it together.”
• Tough leadership judgement: “If the conditions aren’t right, cut your losses, walk away.” (Alison’s team stopped 200 feet short of the summit).
• “Lack of failure tolerance stifles innovation.”
• “Nobody gets to the top of Mt. Everest by themselves.” (Alison’s next team reached the summit 8 years later).

Sheldon Yellen:

• CEO Sheldon’s company Belfor does not have an org chart, he “was born Sheldon, not CEO.”
• “There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success.” (originally former Michigan Governor George Romney, as quoted by Sheldon Yellen)

Larry Rosenstock:

• “The fact that we all aspire to be something more than we are is good thing.”
• “We hire for disposition. We train for skill.”

Stan Slap:

• “Leadership is not a practice. It’s a purpose.”
• “Leaders get emotionally committed to a cause and can inspire others to commit as well.”
• “In a survey of 10,000 managers, their most important values are also their most compromised at work. Family and Integrity.”
• “As a leader, you will never really work for your company until your company works for you.”
• “A leader knows their own core values so well they can name them.”
• “Leaders are great communicators. They will always communicate ‘why’.”
• “Leaders create. Leaders are consistent. Leaders are passionate.”
• “Your team is desperate for leadership, not management.”
• “A strong culture needs a chief story teller.”
• “An employee culture is an information gathering organism designed for its own survival.”
• “A culture hates change because change laments the loss of known rules.”
• “All management messages are interpreted as ‘work harder.’ All leadership messages are interpreted as ‘live better.’”
• “Be human first, a manager second.”

Chris Zane:

• “You’d be amazed how expensive the ‘Midlife Crisis Bike’ is…”
• “Build lifetime value relationships with both customers and suppliers and your service costs will drop dramatically.”
• “If you’re going to offer lifetime warranties, you better carry quality products.”
• “‘World Famous’ is an attitude.”
• “If I’m willing to fire an employee for mistreating a customer, I must be willing to fire a customer for mistreating an employee.”

Ari Weinzweig:

• “Write your vision as if you are in the future. Instead of the language ‘We will…’ use the language ‘We are…’”
• “A company’s culture is what’s going on when the boss isn’t there.”

Norm Broadsky:

• “We knew that change was working when employee’s trusted us enough to use the suggestion box.”

Mitch Thrower, founder of BUMP.com”

• All of us have a comma, e.g. John Smith, Fireman. What’s your comma?

For me, I realize how valuable it is to get away for a couple of days, hang out with really cool companies who have wonderfully innovative approaches and ideas, and get personally re-energized for the Menlo mission to bring “joy” to software design and development.

Thank you Inc. and Winning Workplaces for the inspiration and leadership you provide to the entrepreneurial community.