If you are in a lean organization, an IT business, a company practicing agile, or just a flat-out innovative company, chances are you’ve heard of Rich Sheridan and his company, Menlo Innovations. Menlo is attracting companies from around the globe, including Toyota, to learn about the Menlo Way and their crazy-unique business model that creates a "Joyful" experience for employees, customers, and vendors.
I had the opportunity to interview Rich and get a sneak preview of his upcoming Workshop in Indianapolis on August 26, 2014. LEARN MORE….
Session Description: Get a glimpse into Menlo Innovations joyful and disciplined “agile” methodologies that are the foundation on which we have built our business culture. This action packed day includes hands-on activities touching every aspect of Menlo’s internal processes. LEARN MORE….
Excerpt from the Podcast:
Joe: Can you give me a visualization of what I would see on a tour? I’m picturing two geeks out there at a desk, programming and I’m walking around and seeing all these pods. What would I see?
Rich: The first thing you would notice, when you walk in our front door or what you don’t see, that is there are no cubes, offices, walls, and gifted c-suite. Everybody’s out in one of those vilified open office environments. The ones that fast companies tell us are an idea born in the mind of Satan in the deepest caverns of hell. They tell us it doesn’t work and it, particularly, doesn’t work for introverts even though Menlo is filled with introverts as you might imagine.
People ask me, “Why is it that this open office environment works for Menlo and doesn’t seem to work for anywhere else?” I say, “Well, it’s pretty simple. We didn’t create an open office environment. We created an open culture and then we fit our environment to our culture.” I think that’s a key part of this. The next thing you notice is the aural part of it. I mean, the A-U-R-A-L, aural part of it. It’s noisy. This is like a noisy restaurant. People are sitting shoulder to shoulder. The team is in charge of the space. They fit it however they want. They can slide these lightweight aluminum tables around. They have pull downs from the ceiling. So, they can put the tables wherever they choose and the team chooses and has chosen for our history.
We’ve been in business for thirteen years now and still push the tables side to side and front to front. They want to be close to one another. They literally sit shoulder to shoulder in their pairs. Two people, one computer, working on the same task all day long together, talking with one another. Those pairs are energized. They’re communicating. They’re sharing. They’re challenging each other. They’re pushing each other along.
You have this wide open, high-energy, high noise environment; very visual as you can imagine. We pretty much have stuff on the walls everywhere. We ran out of wall space. We’re in the basement of a parking structure. We have all these huge pillars, cylinders and we started wrapping those with corks so we could put pushpin artifacts on the pillars as well. It’s bright. It’s airy. It has a very high ceiling. There’s just a lot of human energy in the room.
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