Book review: Joy, Inc by Rich Sheridan

Joy, Inc.: How We Built a Workplace People Love by Rich Sheridan came out December 26 and it’s the single best business book I have read in a long while.

Menlo is a software design and development company in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They have built a culture that removes the fear and ambiguity that traditionally makes a workplace miserable and made joy their explicit goal.

I have recently had a chance to spend a day at Menlo talking to their founders and their people and I can say with confidence that they are an amazing workplace with a remarkable energy.

How would you like to work at a company where:

They’ve eliminated meetings
They’ve eliminated internal email
Employees can bring dogs and babies to work
You work a 40-hour work week
Finances and salaries are transparent
You get to constantly learn from and with your co-workers

I’ve previously written about Menlo on this blog – especially about their hiring process which is radically different from other companies.

This book is a pleasure to read and has a great story that will pull you right in but it is, above all, incredibly useful.

Sheridan clearly lays out the many innovative and effective things they’ve done to create a happy workplace and most of them could without a doubt be translated into any kind of workplace.

You will read this book with a smile on your face and go “Of course – that makes perfect sense! Why isn’t every workplace doing this?”