Garry Ridge, who runs the chemical company WD-40, has a leadership style guided by two sources — Aristotle, and the BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink.“Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work,” Mr. Ridge said first, quoting the Greek philosopher.Then he picked up a recent BlackRock memo. “Companies who forged strong bonds with their employees have seen lower levels of turnover and higher returns throughout the pandemic,” Mr. Ridge read aloud.This he punctuated with his own commentary: “Well, duh!”WD-40, which comes in a bright blue-and-yellow canister familiar to many homes with squeaky doors, is a cleaning product with a secret formula that can loosen a rusty bolt, scrub crayon off the wall, get bug splats off a car and remove rust from a bike chain. Mr. Ridge likes to remind the nearly 600 employees across his 17 o …
