Join Rich for his presentation, "Lead with Joy & Watch Your Team Fly"!
DATE: TBD
Change is hard. But you won't create a joyful workplace by leading the way you've always led. In this talk, Rich explores his own journey to joy, focusing on how he had to learn to lead in a completely different way and, by doing so, witnessed results that exceeded his wildest expectations.
In 1903, the Wright Brothers achieved sustained, powered, and manned flight for the first time. Shortly after, Orville Wright was interviewed about the feat and he declared that man would never be able to build a plane capable of carrying more than two people. It would be physically impossible. Rich read that story in a book on a 747 from Detroit to London while flying at 35,000 feet, at 500mph, with 50,000 gallons of fuel on board, with 400 passengers and their luggage in perfect creature comfort. You, the leader, will need to make change, serious change. In this talk, Rich will use this example and by analogy, apply it to human teams we are leading. The message is simple: when we finally understand the relevant principles (in flight, or in teams), we can fly to heights and distances that were previously unimaginable.
Rich will take you on a journey of change in this talk and bring you to the place he is now - that we stand at the vanguard of understanding what it takes to unleash the human potential of the people who work for us and around us. He will explain how the common, unchanging, disengagement statistics are a fundamental failure of leadership and what simple things we can do to get our teams off the ground and flying. You will come away energized and inspired. You will want to start your own journey to joy tomorrow! And he will convince you it is within your power to do so. All of these lessons are available to everyone no matter how big their company or how old their organization.
Rich Sheridan, CEO and Chief Storyteller at Menlo Innovations, is a successful entrepreneur and author of two best-selling books—Joy Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love and Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear. Rich’s passion for inspiring organizations to create their own joy-filled cultures has led him to address audiences across the world—through four continents and 18 countries (and counting) as well as throughout the United States.
What motivates Rich to speak to tens of thousands of people around the world in nearly every setting imaginable? What does he share with his audiences that makes them jump to their feet with enthusiasm and return to their organizations on fire with inspiration? Simply this: joy. More specifically, that joy in your organization is not just possible but essential—essential to profitability, to productivity, to every measure of success. Rich doesn’t just talk about joy in the workplace. He lives it every day at Menlo, the custom software and consulting company he co-founded in 2001 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Since then, Menlo has received worldwide notice for its unique culture, including recognition by Inc. Magazine as the most joyful company in America. Menlo has also been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility for 11 straight years and has received a lifetime achievement award for Freedom at Work from WorldBlu, as well as five revenue awards from Inc. magazine. Today people come to Menlo from all over the world—nearly 20,000 in the past seven years alone—to learn about Menlo and how they can create a culture of joy in their own organizations.