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Joy, Inc - How We Built a Workplace People Love

200 SW Market Street
200 SW Market Street
Portland, Oregon 97201, US (map)

Across from Keller Auditorium

Propeller Room – Main Level

(up the escalator)

Website

Description

The Portland Chapter of the DAMA Data Management User Group is dedicated to delivering thought provoking data-centric presentations that will make you more successful in your job.

This month, we are bringing in Richard Sheridan, the CEO and "Chief Storyteller" at Menlo Innovations from Michigan to the Propeller room at the 200 Market Building.

Registration is required: http://www.damapdx.org/

Overview:

Every year, thousands of visitors come from around the world to visit Menlo Innovations, a small software company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They make the trek not to learn about technology but to witness a radically different approach to company culture.

CEO and "Chief Storyteller" Rich Sheridan removed the fear and ambiguity that typically make a workplace miserable. His own experience in the software industry taught him that, for many, work was marked by long hours and mismanaged projects with low-quality results. There has to be a better way.

With joy as the explicit goal, Sheridan and his team changed everything about how the company was run. They established a shared belief system that supports working in pairs and embraces making mistakes, all while fostering dignity for the team.

The results blew away all expectations. Menlo has won numerous growth awards and was named an Inc. magazine "audacious small company". It has tripled its physical office three times and produced products that dominate markets for its clients.

Speaker Bio:

From kid programmer in 1971 to Forbes cover story in 2003, "outlier" Richard Sheridan(U-M grad BS Computer Science '80, MS Computer Engineering '82) has never shied from challenges, opportunities nor the limelight. While his focus has always been around technology, his passion is actually process, teamwork and organizational design, with one inordinately popular goal: the business value of joy! Sheridan is an avid reader and historian, and his software design and development team at Menlo Innovations didn't invent a new culture, but copied an old one ... Edison's Menlo Park New Jersey lab. Henry Ford's recreation of the Menlo Park Lab in Greenfield Village was a childhood inspiration!

Some call it agile, some call it lean ... Sheridan and his team call it joyful. And it produces results ... business and otherwise. Five Inc. magazine revenue growth awards, invites to the White House, speaking engagements around the nation, numerous articles and culture awards and so much interest they are doing a tour a day of the Menlo Software Factory™. Sheridan was recently enlisted by Portfolio at Penguin to write a book about all he has learned about the effect of a culture focused on Joy. Rich is writing in his "spare time”.

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