Formalizing a Company Culture of Weird

Summary

Eric Ryan, Founder of Method, discusses the importance of creating a solid corporate culture and shares his tips on creating an innovative environment and managing an innovative culture.

Find more videos from world business leaders at MeetTheBoss - Executive Learning online.

Eric Ryan

At age 27, Eric Ryan founded method, a San Francisco based consumer goods company that has reinvented homecare products with an innovative branding and product design approach. In five short years, method has challenged some of the world’s largest multinationals in home cleaning, laundry, personal care and air care to become the fastest growing consumer products company in the US. Recently method was named #7 on the Inc 500 list for fastest growing private companies in America. In 2006 he was named PETA’s person of the year and one of Time Magazine’s eco leader.

Eric Ryan

Adam Burns:           

You’ve described Method as a belief brand, one that sells a philosophy and a culture, how did you first create that culture?

Eric Ryan:               

 So, ironically when we first created the culture, we didn’t.  It just happened naturally because when you start a company, and there’s just a few of you in a room, the innovative culture just kind of resonates from your natural personality, who you are, and who those first hires are.  So, it just forms organically in the beginning and then over time once you start to become on multiple floors, multiple offices, not everybody is in the same meeting all the time, there did come a point that we realized, okay we need to formalize the culture in order to be able to continue to enhance it.  In the beginning, it was just like, God, it’s who we are and what we believe in.

Adam Burns:           

 Absolutely, and now you call it in several occasions a culture of weird.  How do you effectively manage weird?

Eric Ryan:               

 I guess weird is one of those things you just can’t manage; you have to be, right?  What we work very hard at is helping people understand what do we mean by weird, and why do we want to be weird?  So, when you look at our business challenge, we are taking on several big, goliath competitors who have immense resources compared to us.  Our only chance of success is to be radically different from them, and of course, different things that have come into the world have come from different people who are typically weird.

What we try to do is reinforce this idea of being weird by – it’s our little wink to ourselves to always be different.  To be different takes courage, right?  To really put yourself out there and do something that hasn’t been done before; not only do you have to be a little weird, but you’ve gotta be self-assured and just have great confidence in yourself to do that.  So, it’s our way of continually trying to push people to have the courage to be different.