“Thought-provoking and genuine, Good People is a must read for anyone interested in creating prosperous, wholesome, and resilient teams and businesses.” —Beth Comstock, vice chair of General Electric “This book reminds us of what really matters in life: the goodness we find in ourselves and the goodness we pass on to others.” —Shep Gordon, Hollywood talent manager and “Supermensch” “Good People reminds us that good business and human fulfillment really can go together, that goodness and productivity aren’t enemies, that being whole and being successful are one and the same. This book is a manifesto for twenty-first- century business and also a wake-up call to all of us to be fully alive at work with our colleagues, in silence within ourselves, and in friendship with those we love.” —Tim Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2017 by Anthony Tjan Penguin supports copyright. 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Version_1 Dedicated to the Memory of Kaming Ng For your creative wit, relentless stubbornness, and beautiful intelligence For being a true cofounder, a true friend, and a true human being And yes, for being one of the very good people I’ll always remember, and dearly miss CONTENTS • • • • • • • PRAISE FOR GOOD PEOPLE TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION PART ONE INTRODUCING GOODNESS AND GOOD PEOPLE 1 • A FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH GOODNESS 2 • A NEW FRAMEWORK AND LANGUAGE FOR GOODNESS 3 • THE FOUNDATION: TRUTH 4 • THE HUMAN FACTOR: COMPASSION 5 • THE ULTIMATE QUEST: WHOLENESS PART TWO BALANCING TENSIONS TO ACHIEVE GOODNESS 6 • PRAGMATISM VERSUS IDEALISM 7 • SHORT-TERMISM VERSUS LONG-TERMISM 8 • VULNERABILITY VERSUS CONVICTION 9 • IDIOSYNCRASY VERSUS CONNECTEDNESS 10 • GRIT VERSUS ACCEPTANCE PART THREE THE IMPERATIVE TO PUT GOODNESS INTO PRACTICE 11 • BEYOND ORDINARY MENTORSHIP 12 • BECOMING A BETTER JUDGE OF PEOPLE 13 • WRAPPING IT UP: IT’S ALL UP TO YOU AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES INDEX PART ONE • • • • • • • INTRODUCING GOODNESS AND GOOD PEOPLE I n 1953, industrial chemist Norman Larsen and his staff of two at the fledgling Rocket Chemical Company set out on a mission: to create a formula for the booming aeronautics industry that could coat space missiles and protect them from water. It took extensive trial and error to perfect the formula, but on the fortieth attempt they nailed it. Thus was born Water Displacement 40, better known today as WD-40. WD-40 has a unique place in history and pop culture. It was first used on the Atlas space rocket, but then consumers began clamoring for it. Salesmen literally sold the now-iconic blue-and-yellow cans out of their car trunks. Today, WD-40 is a household name. Annual sales exceed $350 million, and the company is valued at more than $1.5 billion. WD-40’s meteoric success makes it easy to overlook the most unique aspect of the company: the people who work there.1 WD-40 has managed to retain its staff at three times the national average. Ninety-seven percent of employees report that they love—not just like—to tell people they work at WD-40.2 The company’s CEO, Garry Ridge, is unequivocal about the source of WD-40’s remarkable success: “It’s about people, it’s about learning, it’s about our culture, it’s about our tribalism,” he explained to me.3 Obviously, WD-40’s results aren’t just the effect of organizational competencies. They reflect something deeper and more meaningful about the people at WD-40. Under the leadership of Garry Ridge, who has been at the company for thirty years and has served as its CEO for twenty, there has been no question that the firm’s first priority and most valuable asset is—well above anything else—its people. The WD-40 tribe espouses and leads with the people-first philosophy that Ridge and management guru Ken Blanchard describe in Helping People Win at Work: “Don’t mark my paper, help me get an A.” The primary core value of the WD-40 organization is “doing the right thing”—helping the people at WD-40 truly succeed. In fact, at WD-40 mentorship is not just one expectation among many competing tasks; it is an imperative. The approval ratings for supervisors at WD- 40 are through the roof, consistently around 96 percent. “The number one responsibility of a ‘tribal leader’ or coach at WD-40 is the success of his tribe members. Full stop,” says Ridge. It’s a simple concept for goodness, but one to which it is difficult to fully commit. But this is what makes WD-40 a paragon of a good company and its employees paragons of good people. • • • • • “Good people”—it’s a phrase we hear all the time, both in the office and out of it. What do we really mean when we say those words? When we say that someone is good? We recognize that quality when we’re around it, and we can feel goodness when we experience it, but to really describe it, specifically and fully, is challenging to say the least. Certainly we don’t understand goodness to the degree it deserves. “Good” and “goodness” are words so embedded in our everyday colloquies they’ve almost lost their meaning. They’ve become what my late neighbor, the illustrious intellect and MIT professor Marvin Minsky, termed “suitcase words”: overused, overstretched phrases or expressions that have next to no practical meaning. Even formal definitions fall short. Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary’s definition of “good,” for example, is “something virtuous, right, commendable.”4 This is not incorrect, but we must build upon it and make it more concrete and understandable so that we may practice it in our daily lives. If we take on the burden of creating a practical, actionable definition of goodness and putting that goodness into practice, we need to acknowledge that the topic has been a core question and source of inquiry for the world’s greatest philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual leaders for millennia. As we can see from Aristotle’s relentless quest to better understand the human condition and human spirit, from twentieth-century psychosocial explorations of different stages of desire and development by the likes of Abraham Maslow or Erik Erikson, and from many faiths’ common principles of kindness, it is a near universal assumption that we should all live our lives striving to be good people. But how can we think of goodness and good people as concepts that can be practically applied in the business world and understand their far-reaching benefits? First, we need to confront the ambiguities in the way businesses use the term “good.” There are two sides of the word. When hiring employees and managing teams, we often use “good” as a synonym for “competent.” But “goodness” is far more than a person’s competencies; goodness is about people’s humanity, their values, the qualities inherent in their character, and other intangible traits. We therefore need to distinguish goodness as competency from goodness as values, and we need to understand that the latter ought to take greater priority. What makes WD-40 a special place to work is something that transcends the talent of its employees—which I am sure is great, but not far superior to the talent of competitors’ employees. WD-40’s greatest competitive advantage is its culture of good people. Its leadership has created a company that its employees believe in authentically. They genuinely find meaning both in their work and in their coworkers. And thus, WD-40’s incredible results, year after year. Despite the massive success of companies like WD-40, many people still believe that there’s no place in the business world for “soft” concepts like good, goodness, and good people. Business is business after all, right? These people assume that leading a good business means focusing solely on getting results. But the truth is, now that prolonged competition, greater availability of information, and technological advancements have created a more level playing field, people matter more than anything else. They add value at every point in the organization. The best companies aren’t just machines to maximize profits; they create widespread, positive change in their employees, their communities, and their industries. When good people imprint good values and qualities onto others, and they in turn do the same, they create enduring value and forward progress in businesses. And even if you only care about maximizing profits and returns, goodness and good people benefit the bottom line as well. This book is an attempt to explore the hard truth about soft matters. By putting the meaning back into the “suitcase term” of “good people,” we can elevate ourselves and the people around us—and change the face of business, perhaps even whole societies and the entire world. After working in and advising organizations both good and not so good, starting a few companies of my own, and investing in about fifty others, I’ve come to believe that pursuing goodness in yourself while surrounding yourself with good people is the only leadership decision that really, truly matters. When we ask ourselves why we admire leaders (or for that matter, people in general), the answer is predictable: they put people first and understand and practice the values that underpin goodness. These leaders are committed to improving everyone around them just as much as