our future, willing to change anything and everything—including things we probably shouldn’t ever change.” Joe saw smiles and continued, “We’ve been focusing on markets that might not be the ones for us.” With more smiles, Joe became animated. “We need to discover who we are before we go further—we need to start at the heart.” One person began to clap, then another and another until the entire room erupted in thunderous applause. It was like a weight had been lifted. Owen raised his hand and said, “I’m new here, and I’d love to learn who we are, where we came from, why we are who we are.” Micah, an old-timer, spoke up, “Well, I’ve been here since the beginning, and I’d love to get the same feeling we used to have— we were a team, we had…” Erik, another long-time employee, 昀椀nished Micah’s sentence, “Passion—we had passion. Well, we can get that back.” Diane, their HR head, added, “I’d love to know why our employees came to Joe’s in the 昀椀rst place—and of course, I want to know what they love as well as what they don’t love about Joe’s.” The head of engineering piped in, “I’d like to know more of what each department is up to. I only know about my department. Frankly, I don’t even understand what some departments do.” Mark, the Marketing VP, stood up. “I’d love to know why our customers buy from us, why they’re loyal and why some of them have left us,” he said. “If we could learn what we do best and stick with that, we’d be unbeatable.” On and on, people stood up and voiced their enthusiasm for Joe’s idea—they were excited about learning about their strengths, what made Joe’s special. Those people included the very people 10