From the course: Implementing Continuous Improvement: A Case Study

About Menlo Innovations

(logo whooshes) (bright music) - Hey there. So we are in Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the Michigan Wolverines. And those that know me well, know that I grew up with Ohio and I'm a huge Ohio State University football fan. And for those that aren't familiar with American football, Michigan and Ohio State are big rivals, they're enemies, they don't like each other, but this is a beautiful campus, we're actually driving through the campus right now. Today we are going to be visiting with a company called Menlo Innovations. And one of the co-founders of Menlo is Richard Sheridan and we've actually interviewed Richard on a podcast, and Rich wrote a book called "Joy, Inc.", coming up to a stop light here so it's safe for me to hold the book up here, so "Joy, Inc." And it's a fascinating book and really, it's an interesting book. And the goal, and I'm going to kind of quickly read it here from the cover, is that Rich and his team have removed the fear and ambiguity that typically makes a workplace miserable, and with joy as the explicit goal, Sheridan and his team changed everything about how the company was run. And it's fascinating. We visited with him yesterday, and their folks work in pairs, so two people to a computer, which is very odd to see, but we're going to explore that, and figure out why they do that. Now I will say that we don't have a detailed agenda planned today, and Rich and his team do tours on a regular basis, and we'll just kind of go with the flow, and see where it leads us, but I'm very excited. We're really close, so let's drive the rest of the way in, and see how things go. (bright music) All right, so we are just about to go inside of Menlo Innovations, so let's go check it out.

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