Joe showed up at 8:00 a.m. and walked in on a celebration. bill’s people were talking about a success they had with a new product. They meticulously explained the product, why their customers loved it and how they presented it to the customer. Joe turned to bill and said, “This is neat — why are you doing this?” “a bunch of reasons — 昀椀rst of all, we force ourselves to celebrate something every month so we can build a sense of purpose and camaraderie. i make sure that i’m not the main person running this meeting, because i want others to take as much ownership and responsibility as possible. it sets a good example and it’s infectious. but, most of all, we’re explaining this new product so that everyone is on the same page, any one of us could present it to the customer — that’s extremely important — no lost opportunities because an employee doesn’t know what’s going on.” Joe whispered, “interesting — at our company, a day doesn’t go by without me hearing a chorus of employees saying they don’t know why we’re doing something or that nobody told them of a new policy or whatever.” “right — we try every way possible to not let someone play dumb,” said bill. The tone of the meeting changed when max stood up. max was the sales VP. Joe recognized him from meetings they had been in together. “Next, i’d like to share a disturbing situation that we need to be aware of. as you may or may not know, we have a new competitor down the road. i’d like to discuss how it’s selling against us and how we can make sure that it doesn’t hurt our business.” max discussed in detail the competitor, its strengths and weaknesses, its recent success against bill’s store and how bill’s store could withstand the competition and ultimately win. The employees were somber but immersed. 12