It Was Never About the Oil

Garry Ridge spent 25 years as CEO of WD-40 Company. (Yes, that WD-40 — the blue-and-yellow can in your garage.)

When he got the job in 1997, it was an insular American company worth about $300 million, and Ridge was the long-shot pick: a bloke from Australia who'd never worked in the US market and had never been to Wall Street.

The bet paid off.

During his run as CEO, the company:

→ Grew revenue 7x
→ Expanded into 176 countries
→ Grew their valuation to $3.5 billion
→ Sustained 93% employee engagement
→ And went 25 years without any layoffs (including through COVID)

A pretty incredible resume, right?

How did he do it?

The easy explanation is that he had an incredible strategy. But that’s not what Garry would say…

He says his strategy was “probably wrong and roughly right.”

The real difference-maker was that they had, “an organization that had a high will-of-the-people.”

In other words, Garry put more focus on getting all of his employees to show up every day and passionately execute against an average strategic plan than he spent on developing the perfect strategic plan.

In today’s episode, Garry lays out why CEOs who don’t have their Heads of People sitting at the executive table are “losers” (in the literal sense of the word).

👀 Here's what you get in today's edition of the Culture Creators:

• The math equation that turns HR leaders into the most valuable strategic advisor in the room

• Why WD-40 deleted the word "failure" from its vocabulary (and what showed up in its place)

• Why a public company CEO threw out annual reviews, and the 15-minute conversation that replaced them

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

0:00 How Garry became CEO
8:45 Two quotes at 38,000 feet
12:30 What 93% engagement produced
17:45 Culture is a Crockpot
23:15 Turning down $4 million
26:00 Killing the annual review
30:30 Culture isn't HR's job
37:00 25 years, zero layoffs
41:45 Why he approved every hire
52:00 Dance off Broadway first