Monthly Commentary

July 2026

We have two modern taquerias in our small town—or perhaps they’re better described as craft taco restaurants. They are nearly identical in concept, located less than half a mile apart, both on Main Street. When the second one opened just over a year ago, the locals were understandably confused. How could there possibly be enough business to support two such similar establishments?

In fact, the running joke in our town whenever we see an “Opening Soon” sign is whether we’ll be getting another brewpub, wine bar, pizza place, or coffee shop. But two taco joints seemed like one too many.

At first, my wife and I supported both restaurants. We really enjoy Mexican food, and there’s something to be said for chips and salsa arriving at your table in sixty seconds or less. The food is good at both places. I couldn’t grade one above the other when it comes to the bar, the number of televisions showing sports, the background music, or the weekend entertainment. I haven’t closely compared the menus, but the prices seem comparable as well.

From what I understand, both operate under licensing agreements with small chains, with each proprietor also serving as the general manager.

So why do we walk past the first restaurant to reach the newer one every Thursday night for happy hour and dinner?

Energy. Energy alone.

I suppose you could call it atmosphere, but those are different things to me. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not sure there is much difference between the two restaurants when it comes to the physical environment or the amenities they offer.

Although we can probably be categorized as regulars now, our visits weren’t always predictable enough to earn that designation.

The owner’s name is Chris, and he comes over to talk with us every single time we show up. It’s not the obligatory “How’s everything today?” fly-by you see at other restaurants. It’s a genuine conversation, and I always take the opportunity to learn more about him, his business, and his team.

Last week, I told Chris how much we appreciate that his employees know both of us by name. Even though they wear name tags, I think they knew our names before we memorized theirs. I also told him I was impressed that, in such a high-turnover industry, he had almost exactly the same staff on the restaurant’s one-year anniversary that he had on opening day.

Chris politely corrected me.

Most of his staff had been with him for years, he explained. They had simply followed him from the other restaurants he managed before he was fortunate enough to own a location of his own.

They seem to wear permanent smiles throughout their shifts. They enjoy playful banter with one another, with their customers, and with the owner himself.

Recently, we sat at the bar next to a couple who handed Chris a pink box with a scripted logo on top. Curious, I asked what it was.

With a thick New York accent, the gentleman to my left gladly informed me that it was a cheesecake from a famous bakery in Brooklyn. He had flown back that afternoon and couldn’t wait to bring this small piece of his past to Chris and his team to enjoy.

Since I’m also from the New York metropolitan area, we spent the next fifteen minutes discussing pizza, bagels, hot dogs, and why a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich somehow always tastes better when it’s made in the Bronx.

Oh, and I had a couple of drinks and a burrito bowl for dinner. Or at least that’s what I think I had. I wasn’t really there for the food.

That’s the thing about the intangibles that often determine whether a business succeeds. The food may bring someone through the door once, but the energy makes people walk past one restaurant to reach another.

Perhaps that’s why we keep walking the extra half mile. We aren’t simply choosing between two places that serve tacos. We’re choosing the place where the employees seem happy to see one another, the owner seems happy to see us, and a customer returning from New York thinks to bring back a cheesecake for the entire team.

Some businesses serve food. Others create a place where people feel they belong.

June 2026

Scott Pelley was reportedly fired from 60 minutes this week and it certainly made big news.  If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Mr. Pelley is an award winning reporter, anchor, author and longtime correspondent.  You probably don’t need to be too concerned for him, as there’s little doubt that following the termination of his contract at CBS, he’ll find employment relatively soon, whether through his own podcast or streaming service, or with another legacy network.  There are many columnists that will write about the politics behind his dismissal, as well as the events leading up to the inevitable departure, but I’m going to avoid that and focus instead on the decision making from both sides.

In any white collar profession, the moment you get into the workforce you’re introduced to various paths to leadership roles.  But regardless of how high you climb on the corporate ladder, you always have a boss.  I remember, when I was new in the business world, challenging this once to a mentor, suggesting that the CEO isn’t a direct report to anyone.  Not true I was told – they report to the Board of Directors.  Okay, then what about the Chairman of the Board?  Well they report to the shareholders.  In a small business without a Board?  In that case the owner or president is held accountable by their customers and suppliers.

Whether it’s a superstar professional athlete, an award winning journalist, or a top performing sales representative, everyone is accountable for their actions.  NFL fans may remember in 2005 when Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Terrell Owens famously did shirtless sit-ups in his driveway for the media while he was in the middle of a contract dispute with the front office.   While still an elite athlete, he never played another down for the Eagles.

It has been reported that Scott Pelley was fired “for-cause” after a heated staff meeting in which he challenged new 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton and criticized CBS News leadership.  According to reports, the termination letter said Pelley had shown hostility, disrupted staff meetings, and showed no desire to contribute to the program’s future.  Other than those that were in the room that day, no one will ever know what actually happened, but it would be rare for a company to dismiss one of their top performers unless they felt it was the best decision for everyone involved.

Although certainly not as significant or newsworthy, I was once required to terminate the number one sales representative in a division in which I was a regional director.  It’s not important to this essay as to what they did, but suffice it to say that there were no other options other than dismissal.  The individual was two weeks away from walking across the stage at our annual President’s Club award trip to accept their trophy and give a speech – a speech that I had already read and approved.  This representative was not a direct-report to me, but to one of the managers on my team.  Although firing employees for misconduct is rare, when it occurs, the termination meeting is usually conducted by their manager, along with the help from a Human Resources representative.

In this case, I felt that the rep’s manager was too close to the situation, and would likely have a difficult time executing this sticky situation.  Whereas it was definitely uncomfortable for me, I knew that I needed to protect the company should this result in any type of litigation.  Fortunately it didn’t, and I’m also happy to say that the rep was not out of work for any significant amount of time, and most likely wasn’t negatively impacted by any compensation differences.

High performers often have a wider margin for error. That is true in sports, business, journalism, entertainment, and almost every profession. Organizations will often tolerate quirks, strong opinions, difficult personalities, and even occasional friction when someone consistently delivers exceptional results.  But there are limits, and the overall culture of the organization needs to be part of the decision making process.

In sales, most people who choose that profession understand that it comes with a quota — one that is often job-dependent. And while those in media, sports, and entertainment may not have quotas in the traditional sense, their leaders still have metrics and KPIs to measure the success of each individual contributor.

But the best leaders understand that numbers are only part of the equation. The behavior of top performers, good or bad, can have a larger impact on the organization than the actual numbers they produce.

That is what makes these decisions so difficult. Sometimes the highest producer can also create the greatest risk. And when that happens, leadership has to decide whether the performance is still worth the price.

May 2026

In both sales and client service, most new managers and supervisors are promoted as a result of progressing from individual contributor roles. Ideally, the senior managers making these decisions are experienced enough to recognize that it’s often more effective to place new leaders in charge of a different team within the same business unit, so they aren’t managing their former colleagues.

This approach works well for a couple of reasons. Their coworkers likely respect them, otherwise they wouldn’t be considered for promotion in the first place. It’s also common for the individual being promoted to have mentored many of the team members, demonstrating the leadership skills needed for the role. However, especially in sales, the assertive, and sometimes aggressive, traits that make someone a top performer can also create friction within a team. Starting with a “clean slate,” without previously exposed flaws, often makes for a smoother transition.

In a not-always-perfect world, new managers are sometimes hired from outside the organization or division. This can be intentional—an effort to bring fresh ideas into the business unit—or simply the result of not having enough qualified internal candidates. The latter was the case in my last corporate leadership role, when I was transferred from a legacy department into a relatively new sales organization within the same company.

Although the product itself wasn’t new, the company had decided to move up-market, creating a sales organization focused on larger, higher-revenue business clients. In this case, all of the sales representatives hired into the division were experienced, and most had already enjoyed a high level of success. The training classes held monthly at corporate headquarters felt more like advanced coursework than the basic skills typically taught to first-time sales reps. However, most of these reps came from highly transactional sales environments, with little to no experience in strategic selling.

Senior managers are often invited to corporate headquarters to serve as guest trainers during these sessions. Many see this as a good opportunity to sharpen their skills—at making excuses for why they can’t attend. The travel can be exhausting, and a week at the home office with no flights or hotel rooms is not only welcomed, but probably deserved.

Since I was new to the division, I did just the opposite and volunteered to guest train as often as I could. This wasn’t altruistic. I saw it as an opportunity to identify the characteristics that led to success in this new initiative, while also giving myself a crash course in the product.

As mentioned, these were highly successful transactional reps, while my background was more rooted in enterprise-level, strategic sales. I knew I could offer some value, as these professionals would need to develop new word tracks and scripts—and adjust to a much longer sales cycle with far fewer prospects to convert into clients.

The differences were immediately obvious. On the first day, the discussion began with the group brainstorming what had made them successful in the past. Early on, I had to delicately challenge one common tactic: offering prospective clients a “free estimate.” In most cases, a CFO authorizing a $50,000 purchase isn’t expecting to pay for a proposal, but they are expecting something thoughtful, thorough, and credible. The language matters.

As the session continued, the conversation shifted to cold-calling techniques, and one eager participant asked the group who had the best scripts to “trick” prospects into agreeing to a meeting. Their classmates were more than willing to share. One rep described a tactic he used when calling existing clients to upsell additional products. He would leave a voicemail designed to create urgency: “I see something strange in your account that I need to speak with you about.” “Guaranteed callback,” he said confidently.

So what did he say when the client returned the call, often with some level of concern? “What I saw is that you haven’t signed up for this new product yet.”

I asked them to stop using that approach immediately. Keep in mind, most of these participants only saw me as a manager. They didn’t know I had already spent decades in sales, so when I suggested a different approach, it was met with a healthy dose of skepticism. They asked how I would handle it instead.

I told them my approach would be much simpler: “Hi, this is Bob. Are you happy with the service we currently provide? If I had an additional solution that could benefit you, would you be open to hearing about it?” Laughter followed as they dismissed it almost instantly. “That will never work,” someone said.

Funny, I thought. It’s worked pretty well for over 25 years.

They were looking for shortcuts—ways to get more clients with less effort—instead of investing the time to identify the ones who genuinely needed what they were offering. That instinct isn’t unique to sales. It shows up in leadership, in client service, and in just about any role where results matter. The temptation to find a faster, easier path is always there, and sometimes it even works—at least in the short term. But over time, people tend to recognize the difference between being guided and being maneuvered. One builds confidence, the other creates doubt.

The longer path of asking direct questions, being transparent about your intent, and giving the other person the space to decide doesn’t always produce immediate results. It can feel slower, even inefficient. But it tends to lead to better conversations, stronger relationships, and outcomes that last longer than a single transaction. In the end, it may be less about finding a better way to “get” the meeting and more about doing it in a way that actually holds up once you’re there.