Olivia: Most of us accept a simple, depressing trade-off: you can either have a job that pays the bills, or you can be happy. The idea you can have both, let alone that your boss is responsible for your joy? That sounds like a fantasy. Jackson: Right, it sounds like something from a utopian novel, not a quarterly business review. But what if it's not a fantasy? What if it's a practical, profitable business model? Olivia: That's the central, almost radical, premise of Richard Sheridan's book, Chief Joy Officer: How Great Leaders Elevate Human Energy and Eliminate Fear. Jackson: And Sheridan isn't just a theorist. This comes from his own burnout in the tech industry and his experience building Menlo Innovations—a software company so famous for its joyful culture that thousands of people literally fly to Michigan just to tour it. Olivia: Exactly. He argues this isn't about perks like ping-pong tables. It's a moral imperative. And it starts with a pretty stark diagnosis of the modern workplace.

Olivia: The book opens with a foreword by management guru Tom Peters, and he drops a bombshell statistic: consistently, only about one-third of workers are satisfied with their jobs. He calls this, flat out, a tragedy. Jackson: A tragedy. That's a heavy word for the 9-to-5 grind. But when you think about how much of our lives we spend at work, maybe it fits. What does Sheridan mean by the "suffering" that needs to be ended? Olivia: He knows it firsthand. Before founding Menlo, he worked at a company called Interface Systems. He describes this period as a slow descent into burnout. He was successful on paper—promotions, authority—but he was miserable. He’d play FreeCell at his desk just to escape, or take longer, inefficient routes to work just to delay getting there. Jackson: Oh, I know that feeling. The "scenic route" to prolong the dread. What was causing it? Olivia: A culture of fear and dysfunction. He tells this story about "code wars," where two programmers disagreed on a piece of code and would just spend months overwriting each other's work every single day. There was no collaboration, just silent, digital combat. The company mantra was essentially "Just Smush-it"—get the product out the door, no matter how broken, and deal with the angry customer calls later. Jackson: Ah, so the suffering isn't physical pain, it's the soul-crushing feeling of doing pointless, broken work in a toxic environment. I think almost everyone has had a taste of that. But how does a single leader even begin to fight something that feels so systemic? Olivia: Sheridan argues the primary enemy of joy is fear. And to build a joyful workplace, you have to systematically eliminate it. He points to leaders like Alan Mulally, who famously turned around Ford Motor Company. When Mulally took over, Ford was losing billions. He implemented a simple color-coded system for project updates: green for good, yellow for caution, red for trouble. Jackson: Let me guess, for the first few weeks, everything was "Green, boss!" Olivia: You got it. A sea of green. Everyone was terrified to admit failure. Then, one day, an executive named Mark Fields stood up. The production of the new Ford Edge had a major quality issue and had to be shut down. He looked at Mulally and said, "Red, boss." The room went silent. Everyone expected him to be fired on the spot. Jackson: And what happened? Olivia: Mulally started clapping. He applauded. He said, "Mark, thank you for the transparency. Now, how can we help you?" In that moment, he replaced fear with psychological safety. He showed that the truth wasn't a fireable offense; it was the starting point for teamwork. Sheridan argues that's the job of a joyful leader: to make it safe to be human, to make mistakes, and to tell the truth.

Jackson: That Ford story is powerful. And it's a perfect illustration of what you were saying. Mulally didn't just give a speech about honesty. He created a system—the color-coded reports—that made truth-telling safe. Olivia: Precisely. And Sheridan argues that's the secret to all of this. You don't just preach joy, you build systems for it. It's not about a leader's charisma; it's about the architecture of the culture. Jackson: Okay, now I'm interested. This is where it gets practical. Give me an example. What does a 'system for joy' even look like? It sounds so abstract. Olivia: Let's start at the very beginning: hiring. Menlo uses a process they call "Extreme Interviewing." Instead of a one-on-one meeting where you talk about your strengths and weaknesses, they bring in dozens of candidates at once for a mass audition. Jackson: A mass audition? That sounds terrifying. Olivia: It's designed to be the opposite. They pair candidates up and give them a simple task to work on together. But here's the key instruction they give everyone: "Your job is to make your partner look good." Jackson: Wow. So they're not testing for who's the smartest coder or the most aggressive problem-solver. They're testing for kindness. For collaboration. Olivia: Exactly. They are filtering for good kindergarten skills, as they call it. They're building a team of collaborators, not a collection of individual heroes. The system is designed to reveal character, not just credentials. It’s their first line of defense in building a joyful culture. Jackson: That's wild. But what about when things go wrong after you're hired? How do you handle failure without fear creeping back in? Even with a team of nice people, mistakes happen. Olivia: They have a system for that too, and it’s one of my favorite stories from the book. In the early days, when a project had a problem, the team would naturally start to point fingers. It’s human nature. So one of the co-founders, James Goebel, who was in charge of operations, made a declaration. He said, "From now on, if something goes wrong, it's my fault. Blame me." Jackson: That's a bold move. How did that play out? Olivia: Well, one day a team was stuck, and the blame game started. A longtime team member named Ted stood up and said, "Stop. It's James's fault. Now let's go solve the problem." It completely short-circuited the argument. The phrase became a company mantra. It’s a simple, humorous system that instantly diffuses tension and gets everyone focused back on the solution, not the blame. Jackson: That's brilliant. It's like a cultural pressure-release valve. But what about the really tough, personal stuff? The book is highly rated, but I know some readers find it a bit idealistic. Does this 'joy' culture extend to real-life messiness? Olivia: It does, and this is where the book really shows its heart. Sheridan tells the story of Tracy, an employee who was about to return from maternity leave in 2007. Her childcare plan fell through at the last minute. She was distraught, thinking she'd have to quit. Jackson: A situation so many working parents face. What did they do? Olivia: Sheridan told her, "Just bring the baby to work with you." Tracy thought he was insane. But he said, "Let's run the experiment." So she did. They set up a little space for the baby, Maggie. When Maggie fussed, Tracy or another team member would hold her. It wasn't a formal policy; it was a human solution to a human problem. That one experiment has now led to over twenty "Menlo babies" coming to work with their parents over the years. It’s a system born from care.

Jackson: So when you put it all together, it seems the big idea here is that joy isn't an emotion you hope for, it's an outcome you design. You build these small, weird, human systems—for hiring, for failure, for family—and the result is a workplace that doesn't crush your soul. Olivia: Exactly. And Sheridan's ultimate point, which I think is so powerful, is that this isn't just good for business—it's a leader's moral obligation. He quotes the legendary basketball coach John Wooden, who said: "A strong organization starts with caring for their people." It reframes leadership from being about profit or power to being about human development. Jackson: It really challenges you to look at your own workplace. It makes you wonder, what's one small 'system' you could change in your own team tomorrow? Not a big policy, but one small ritual that could reduce fear or increase connection. Olivia: A great question for all of us to think about. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Join the conversation and let us know what you think. Jackson: This is Aibrary, signing off.