Jeff took a detour on his way to work in the morning, stopping by the Oak Ridge building site to check in with Bobby and his crew. When he pulled up to the trailer, he didn't see Bobby's car.

“He left five minutes ago,” someone standing outside the VB trailer explained.

Jeff decided to spend some time walking the site, greeting as many workers as he could find, just to get a better sense of who they were. It certainly wasn't the first time since joining the company that he had been to a work site; he had made a habit of going into the field a few times every week. But he had never been to Oak Ridge, mostly because it was almost complete and provided few learning opportunities compared to the earlier-stage projects. But Jeff was learning new things now and viewing the site from a CEO's perspective, even if no one knew that he was their new boss.

When he arrived back at the office, Bobby and Clare were sitting at Uncle Bob's desk.

“Hey, I thought you were going to spend the morning at Oak Ridge,” Jeff said to Bobby. “I guess I missed you by a few minutes.”

Clare carried her open laptop over to Jeff and put it in front of him. “You need to read this. We're sending it out this morning,” she explained, a little sadly.

Jeff was confused. “Okay.” He sat down to read an e-mail that Bob had written to his employees. It was a touching explanation of his medical situation, his fondness for VB and the people who worked there, and his sadness about having to leave. Jeff had tears in his eyes within minutes. Bob also announced that he was extremely glad to name Jeff as the company's new leader. He even noted that Clare and Bobby had expressed to him their confidence in Jeff, both as a person and as an executive.

When Jeff finished, he looked up at Bobby and Clare, who seemed at once to be melancholy about Bob and concerned for the company.

“Bob wanted to send a video,” Clare explained, “but he decided he wouldn't be able to get through it because he'd be too emotional.”

“And just in case you're wondering, he was telling the truth about our confidence in you,” Bobby added without much emotion.

Jeff was overwhelmed, mostly by gratitude, but by pressure, too. He would never forget that moment.

Thankfully, Clare broke the silence.

“Okay, boys. We need to get to work.” She paused and took a deep breath. “So what's going on at Oak Ridge, Bobby?”

“Things looked okay today. Which is why I came here early. I figured we should get started as soon as possible.”

Jeff moved to his desk and opened his notebook. “Alright then. Let's talk about staffing.” He looked at his notes. “Basically, we have eight weeks to hire sixty people.”

Bobby winced. “Ooh. Don't say eight weeks. Call it two months. That sounds longer.” Then he corrected his boss. “And it's more like eighty people.”

Jeff was confused, looking down at his notebook. “Wait. Last night you said sixty.”

Clare explained. “We said we need sixty more people to staff the project. To do that we'll have to hire at least eighty.”

“Why?”

“We'll lose at least twenty of them along the way.”

Jeff was shocked. “That's thirty-three percent turnover.”

“We can do math, too, smart guy,” Bobby teased him.

Jeff looked at Clare. “Is that typical for every construction company? Why haven't I heard about this sooner?”

She explained, “Turnover in construction isn't uncommon. But we're higher than most.”

“Why?”

“Because we're a little more demanding of our employees when it comes to behavior. Bob just doesn't tolerate people who don't fit the VB culture.”

“You mean teamwork?” Jeff asked.

Clare and Bobby nodded.

Jeff decided to let the turnover issue go for the moment. “Okay,” he sighed, “where do we find these people? Let's start with the guys pounding nails and pouring cement.”

Clare waved off the question. “We've got that covered. We have sources, and if we have to, we can staff the lower-level jobs through subcontractors and temp services. It'll cost us more, but that's a high class problem at this point.”

“And what about the foremen and the project manager?”

“Well, that's a little harder. And we just lost two foremen a few months ago, so we're already a little behind.”

“Yeah, what happened with that?”

“Well, you know that Oak Ridge is almost a month late, which isn't as bad as it could have been, given the problems we had. Two of our best foremen quit because the conditions on site were toxic.”

Jeff looked worried. “You don't mean literally toxic.”

“No, I mean ugly. We had a difficult project manager handling one part of the job and a few pushy foremen who made things worse. Life was pretty miserable over there for a while.”

“How so?”

Bobby jumped in. “Bullshit accusations from one group to another, mostly about who was slacking off and who was pulling their weight.”

“What about the difficult project manager? What did he do?”

“She,” Clare explained. “Nancy Morris. She tried to ignore it. Told everyone to just get along and get their work done. Things got worse.”

“Who got fired?” Jeff wanted to know.

“Well,” Bobby explained a little sheepishly, “no one. When the two foremen quit, we couldn't afford to lose anyone, even if we wanted to. It was a total mess.”

Jeff tried not to sound judgmental. “So, are we planning to keep the crappy project manager and foremen?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Bobby answered. “We're going to need as many people as we can get.”

Now Jeff couldn't hold back his frustration. “So, I guess the teamwork stuff we did last year wasn't real after all.”

Clare was defensive now. “Wait. That's not fair. Bob was very serious about it, and so were we. He always says that he'd rather sell the company than have a bunch of political, self-centered people working here.”

Bobby added, “And it wasn't just a bunch of bullshit posters and T-shirts, if that's what you mean. We did those sessions on trust and healthy conflict and accountability, the ones you helped us with. We just got busy and dropped the ball, and didn't push it down into the rest of the organization. That was probably my bad, because most of these people worked in my group.”

“I should've seen it sooner, too,” Clare admitted.

Jeff wasn't convinced, but tried to stay focused. “Where did the two foremen go? The ones who left.”

“They're doing contract work on the other end of the valley,” Bobby explained. “Residential stuff.”

“Are they really good? And if so, can we get them back?”

Bobby shrugged. “I'm not sure.”

Jeff frowned. “You mean you're not sure if they're good or not?”

Bobby shook his head. “No, I don't know if we can get them back. As far as whether they're good, I guess it depends on what you mean by good.”

“Well, how about in terms of teamwork?” Jeff asked, looking at Clare.

She shrugged. “That probably depends on who you ask, too, but I thought they were solid.”

Jeff was more than a little troubled by the lack of clarity from his colleagues, and decided he didn't have the luxury of holding back.