Jeff started before any of them sat down.

“I'm convinced that this teamwork thing is the key to staffing, and everything else.”

Bobby responded first. “I agree. We need to get our recruiters moving right away, Clare.”

“Hold on a second.” Jeff sat down and put his feet on the table. “I think it's going to be a lot harder than we thought to hire eighty people.” Before Clare could confirm or deny his assessment, Jeff continued. “I mean, what did we hire last year? Twenty?”

Clare corrected him. “Almost thirty.”

“Right,” Jeff explained, “Thirty to get twenty, because of the turnover.”

Clare nodded.

Jeff directed the next question to her. “Okay, if we have to more than double that number of hires, do you think we'll be better or worse at finding the right kind of team players?”

She thought about it for a second. “Well, it wouldn't make any sense that we'd be better. I mean, more numbers, more bodies, more urgency. As much as I want to be optimistic, I think it's probably going to get a little harder.”

Bobby nodded, understanding the logic.

Jeff went on. “And that means we'll probably have to hire ninety or a hundred to get sixty, right?”

They didn't want to admit it.

“Come on, guys. It's only logical.”

Clare relented, sighing. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Well, maybe we should just change the standards a little,” Bobby proposed. “Maybe we need to be a little less picky. We probably can't afford to skip over or get rid of people who don't play well with others.”

Clare shook her head. “No way. If we do that, we'll just have more of the same kind of crap that we had at Oak Ridge. And the school renovation.”

Jeff frowned. “What school renovation?”

Bobby sighed and explained. “Year before last we were expanding and refurbishing a high school up in Calistoga. Sounds small, but it was actually a sizable job. Anyway, halfway through the project, we lost our best engineer because Bob wouldn't let us fire our worst engineer.”

“Wait,” Jeff asked. “I thought you said Bob didn't tolerate bad team players.”

Clare looked at Bobby as if to say should we tell him? “Well, he didn't tolerate it in most employees. But sometimes when it came to the people he felt bad for, and the people he knew personally, he was kind of a wuss. He always said that he sometimes had a hard time pulling the trigger.”

“How did the school situation resolve itself?” Jeff wanted to know.

Bobby answered, exasperated. “The good engineer went and started his own little firm. And I had to work my ass off to pick up the engineering slack, and that wasn't half as bad as having to work with the jackass engineer.”

“And the lesson is . . . ?” Jeff asked.

Bobby rolled his eyes. “I know. I know.”

“No. Say it out loud, Bobby Brady,” Clare pushed him, just slightly teasing.

In a singsong voice, sounding more like a seven-year-old than the head of operations for a seventy-five-million-­dollar construction firm, Bobby obeyed. “Keeping jackasses is a bad idea.”

Jeff took his legs off the table and sat up in his chair. “You know, I still think that if we could just figure out how to weed out most of the jackasses, things around here would change exponentially.”

“But then we'd have to hire even more people to take the places of the jackasses we get rid of,” Clare reminded him.

Jeff shook his head. “I don't think so, Clare. I'd bet my job on the fact that we could get more work done with fewer people if we had real team players.”

He paused and let them consider it for a few seconds.

“Think about how much easier it would be to make all the team stuff we talked about last year real. Trust, conflict, commitment, and the rest of it.”

“But how are we going to do that when we have twice as much work to get done?” Bobby protested. “Teambuilding sessions aren't hotel building sessions.”

“Bullshit,” Jeff responded. “We're not talking about hugging or holding hands or catching each other falling off chairs. We're talking about getting people to admit when they make a mistake on a project. And to argue about the right way to get things done without worrying that they're going to offend someone. And sticking to commitments, and holding each other accountable. We need to be teaching this to everyone.”

Jeff was getting excited, and continued. “Come on, Bobby. Last year when I took you guys through that teamwork project, did you think it was just a bunch of fluffy crap?”

Bobby shook his head. “No. I thought it made perfect sense.”

“So what happened?” Clare asked, rhetorically.

“That's what I was going to ask you guys,” Jeff added.

Clare and Bobby looked at each other.

Bobby offered an explanation. “I think we just got distracted with all the day-to-day firefighting.”

Clare nodded.

Jeff went on. “I'm sure that's true. But it sounds like you also kept some key people around who didn't fit the culture.” He paused for effect. “And I'm guessing that you didn't exclude them from the hiring process, either.”

Suddenly, Clare's eyes went wide. “Oh crap.” She looked at Bobby. “We let the jackasses hire more jackasses.”

They sat there for a moment, digesting the implications of what she had said.

“I have a question.” Bobby didn't wait to be called upon. “Why would a team guy like Bob be such a wuss when it comes to getting rid of people who aren't team players?”

Jeff didn't hesitate. “Because he thought he was being nice. If Bob realized how cruel it was to keep those people, he would have pulled the trigger.”

“Cruel?” Bobby didn't get it.

“Yeah. Think about it.” Jeff explained, “The most unhappy people in a company are the ones who don't fit the culture and are allowed to stay. They know they don't belong. Deep down inside they don't want to be there. They're miserable.”

“So you're saying we should just go out and fire all the jackasses?” Clare countered. “That seems cruel, too.”

Jeff shook his head. “No. You just can't go fire a bunch of people. But when you figure out who the jackasses are, you tell them that the only way they can stay, the only way they should want to stay, is if they can stop being a jackass. Or more constructively, if they can be a team player. Ninety-five percent of the time they'll do one of two things. They'll change their behavior and love you for making them do it, or they'll opt out on their own, and they'll be relieved.”

“What happens if they do neither?” Bobby asked.

“Well, that's when you call Clare and a lawyer and start doing the paperwork. But trust me, it doesn't happen near as often as you think it will, as long as you don't let them off the hook for their behavior.”

Bobby and Clare seemed to be generally on board with what Jeff was saying. But Clare was overwhelmed by it all.

“So where would we start?” she wanted to know.

Jeff smiled, energized by the clarity they were getting. “First, we go figure out how to recognize a real team player, the kind of person who can easily build trust, engage in healthy conflict, make real commitments, hold people accountable, and focus on the team's results. Then, we stop hiring people who can't. Finally, we help the people who are acting like jackasses change their ways or move on to different companies.”

He paused, looking at a big calendar on the wall. “And we have to do all of that in the next four weeks.” Then he caught himself and looked at Bobby. “I mean, month.”

Bobby laughed and looked at Clare. “I'm in if you're in.”

“Do we have a choice?” she replied.

Suddenly, Bobby had an epiphany. “Hey, what happens if we're jackasses?”

Jeff smiled. “That's a great place to start.”