I've n- I've not heard that.

Okay.

So, uh, I'd been traveling around the world to our different operations, and I got back to my office one day and, uh, and someone ran in really quickly and said, "I need to talk to you." And I thought, "Oh, wow, you must have missed me." [laughs] And they, they...

That wasn't really what was going on.

They, they were there to make me aware of a fact that there was something that happened that they didn't know about and they should've known about it.

And I thought to myself, "Wow, you know, how, how do we, how do we get rid of what I would call the na-na-ni-na-na disease in an organization, the finger-pointing disease, right?" And I said- Well, we have to, we have to give people permission to be able to do what they need to do.

So we created this thing called the Maniac Pledge.

Anything you wanna promote.

Ah.

So those six years operating at a distance from what you would call headquarters really taught me a lot.

A- and given our goal eventually was to take the blue and yellow can with a little red top to the world, I knew the barriers that happened to be at distance, and one of them was how do you make decisions when you're, you know, 8,000 miles away? So that was, that was really a big learning for me, and, uh, I, I think I ben- benefited from that.

Um, and, uh, when I moved to San Diego, I didn't move to be CEO.

I, I was asked to move to head up our global, um, expansion program.

Uh, I'd done a lot of work in Asia Pacific, and, uh, it was exciting, and one of my kind of reflection learning moments in life is great things happen when you disrupt yourself, and there's probably nothing more disruptive, or there's some...

I guess there is, of moving a family 8,000 miles across the ocean to a country where people drive on the other side of the road.

You have to.

Could you share that with the listeners, please?

Yeah.

Well, there's a story behind that.

I was given the privilege to lead the company in 1997, and I knew with the help of the people around us and my experiences how to actually market the product.

What was always on my mind was how do you build cultures where now that the sun was truly never going to set on the organization, where people are empowered and they felt like they belonged and they mattered.

Having worked for a period of time away from the center of the company, which was San Diego, I kind of knew what it was like to be out there.

I didn't know how to do that.

So when you do go into an organization, do you just work with the CEO or do you work with the whole executive team or how do you approach an assignment where they want to have a better culture?

Does it create memories?

And they're hierarchical.

So the number one value is more powerful than the number six value.

And I can give you an example of how that works, if you like.

This is a probably right...

Okay, I changed it a little bit to protect the innocent.

But okay, Michelle is working at the company.

So all of that.

how did you end up running the Aussie branch, if you will, and how did you end up moving up the ladder and becoming the CEO?

Well, I was having a phone conversation with the then president one day, and I said, is there anything else you'd like me to do? And he said, funny you should ask, would you like to move to the U.S.? And I said, to do what? He said, why don't you come over here and head up our global expansion program I'd done a lot of work in Asia based out of Australia, and I really did have a love for global culture.

And there wasn't anyone else really in the company that was as enthusiastic, I guess, as I was about taking the brand globally.

So I said, okay, so we packed up our toys and moved to San Diego.

And three years later, he retired.

And for some reason, the board of directors of a US public company thought that this dumbass from Australia might be okay.

So I got the opportunity to lead the company in 1997.

Yeah, great.

And you have a very different take on it that I'd love you to expand on.

Yeah, you know, the whole tribal concept is not to reflect or to reflect on any Indigenous behaviour at all.

It goes back to the beginning of mankind, you know, when Ugg the caveman was a member of a tribe.

And the whole basis is tribes create one of the situations that are so important to people, and that's belonging.

You know, one of the two things that people want in organizations are, do I feel and am I treated like I belong? And do I feel and am I treated like I matter? So if you think about a tribal organization, it has a just cause, a group of people that come together to protect and feed each other.

But then there are attributes in the tribe that are really important.

The one that I think is very powerful looks to the leader and the number one responsibility of the tribal leader is to be a learner and a teacher.

are automotive customers, right? They're people that work in, like, car shops and

I'll take it.

Yeah.

Well, because the details, you know, but this person worked in the supply chain at WD 40 company and they had the ability to make decisions around some of the, um, ingredients that would go into our products.

And one day, salesman X from company fill in the blank came along and said, hey, I've done some work on your formulation and there's an ingredient that you're using and we have an alternative to that.

Efficacy wise, it's just as good.

In fact, I might even say it's a little bit better.

And I've done some sums and some math on this.

I'd love to hear that story.

Say that again for us.

Culture equals values plus behavior times consistency.

Okay.

So when I was in high school in Australia, my science teacher came in one day and said, we're going to grow culture in a Petri dish.

Okay.

So what do you need to know? You need to know what ingredients to put in the Petri dish to grow the desired culture you want.

And then the second thing is you're the owner of this Petri dish.

What advice have you got? What thoughts have you got for leaders in relation to their ability to be deeply curious about the customer so that the customer loves what you do?