Things at the Oak Ridge site were crazy the next day, more than Bobby had expected.

“Nothing major,” Bobby explained, “but if I don't spend the next few days with the inspectors there, we could be in a little trouble.”

So Clare and Jeff agreed to move Ted's formal follow-up interview to later in the week, giving them more time to settle on their definition of a team player.

The next day was Bob's surgery, and while the office continued to be busy, plenty of people were worrying, praying, and checking in with the Shanley family for updates. When news came that the procedure had been successful and that Bob's prognosis was a good one, there was great relief in the VB office. Unfortunately for the leaders of the firm, that relief was short lived because their anxiety merely shifted to the future of the business.

The following day would be Ted's interview, and Jeff decided he needed to meet with his two lieutenants immediately to resume their discussion about getting greater clarity about what a jackass was, and what it meant to be a team player, so they could be prepared for the interview. They agreed to bring food into the office and stay as late as was necessary.

By six-thirty, Indian food had been set out on Bob's desk, and Clare and Jeff were waiting for Bobby to arrive.

“I don't remember exactly where we landed the other day when Bobby and I had to leave,” Jeff admitted.

Clare reminded him. “We were going to take the words you wrote on the placemat and test them against some of our difficult people.”

At that moment, Bobby entered. “You mean jackasses.”

Clare rolled her eyes playfully.

“Right,” Jeff remembered. “Did you remember to grab the placemat?”

Clare was already holding up the salsa-stained remnant in her hands.

Bobby went straight for the food but kept the conversation going. “I've got another employee for us to analyze: Tommy Burleson.”

Clare winced. “Oh, I'd almost forgotten about him.”

“Was he a jackass?” Jeff asked.

Clare looked at Bobby. “What do you think?”

He thought about it. “I don't know. He wasn't a jerk, that's for sure. Which is probably why we kept him here for two years before we asked him to leave. But he certainly wasn't a good guy to have on your team.”

“Why not?” Jeff asked.

“Tommy was one of the most frustrating people I've ever had to deal with,” Clare announced. “The guy was funny. Charming. Bright.”

“Sounds like a nightmare,” Jeff commented sarcastically.

“That's the thing,” Clare said. “As wonderful a guy as he was, we just couldn't get him to step up.”

“You mean he wasn't hardworking? He was lazy?”

Bobby smiled and winced at the same time. “That's what was so hard about Tommy. You wouldn't say he was your classic lazy person. He would do what you asked him to do.”

Clare finished, “And nothing else.”

Bobby agreed. “He'd do just enough to stay out of trouble, but he'd never really tackle a project or a problem with a sense of urgency. Or passion.”

Clare added, “It would have been a lot easier if he were a jerk. Or a sloth. But he wasn't.”

“So he was lacking passion?” Jeff prodded, seeking closure around the right word.

Bobby winced again. “No. Tommy definitely had passion, just not about work. He was totally into the company softball team and fly fishing and the Civil War.”

Clare tried to capture it. “He just wasn't hungry.”

Jeff wrote something in his notebook and then asked Clare, “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, he wasn't the kind of guy who had a sense of personal motivation or a desire to do something big.” She paused to think about it. “Maybe it's because he came from a pretty comfortable background and just didn't have anything to prove. Or to accomplish. I don't know.”

Bobby's mouthful of chicken tikka masala didn't stop him from talking. “He's the kind of guy who would be the best next-door neighbor in the world, but not someone you'd want to depend on. Or go into business with.”

Jeff was nodding and looking at his notebook. “Hungry. I like that.”

“So do I,” said Clare. “That's better than hardworking.” She turned toward Bobby. “Speaking of hungry, are you going to wait for us to say grace before you inhale all of the naan?”

Bobby apologized and they bowed their heads.

A few minutes later, after everyone had filled their plates, Jeff went to the whiteboard and found a corner where there were no names. He wrote hungry.

“Okay,” he announced, “I think that's the right word. We need to hire people who are hungry. They go beyond what is required. Passionate about the work they're doing. Hungry.”

They all nodded, and Jeff continued. “And then there was the other concept we talked about after Ted left yesterday.”

Clare nodded, holding up the placemat. “People. It had to do with being smart about people.”

Jeff wrote smart on the board. “Right. And Ted is really smart.”

“That doesn't sound right,” Bobby objected. “It sounds like you mean intelligent.”

“I think that's why I like it,” Clare said. “It's not your typical ‘nice guy’ description. It's like emotional intelligence, but simpler. It just means a person has to know how to act and what to say and what not to say. People smart. Which is a lot more than being nice.”

“And I think calling it smart will make people think about it in a different way,” Jeff agreed. “They won't write it off as something soft or easy.”

Bobby wasn't sold. “But you can't be a jackass if you're smart about people. This sounds like it should be the only thing that matters.”

Jeff thought about it and pushed back. “I disagree. A smart person could be a jackass. In fact, that would be the worst kind of jackass.”

“Explain that,” Clare asked.

“Well, you could be really good about knowing what to say and how to say it and how to charm everyone you deal with,” Jeff said. “But if deep down inside you were doing it for yourself, for your own ambitions, that would make you a duplicitous jackass.”

“Use words I can spell, smart man,” Bobby joked.

Jeff smiled. “Two-faced. Deceitful. Dishonest.”

A light seemed to go on above Clare's head. “Maybe that's where the next idea comes into play.”

“What idea?” Bobby asked.

Clare looked at the placemat. “Well, the word you wrote here was unpretentious.”

Jeff nodded. “Right. That came from our discussion about Bob. People at VB don't fit in if they're pretentious.”

“I think pretentiousness isn't the right concept.” Surprisingly, it was Bobby who was pushing on this one. “Or maybe I'm wrong. I mean, pretentious people are definitely jackasses, but there's more to it than that. What makes someone stand out here, in a bad way, is when they're . . . arrogant.” He seemed confident that was the right word. “What's the opposite of arrogance?”

“Humility,” Clare responded enthusiastically. “Jackasses aren't humble.”

“That's it,” Bobby said. “And that's Bob for sure.”

Jeff drew three circles on the board, creating a Venn diagram of sorts. He then wrote the words humble, hungry, and smart next to the circles.

He went back to his plate of food, and the three executives ate as they studied the diagram.

For the next hour, they chose employee after employee, some who were difficult, others who were all-stars, and others who fell somewhere in between. They evaluated them against the three new words, placing them in the circles where they belonged.

Every all-star easily met a pretty high standard for being humble, hungry, and smart, and they were placed in the middle segment. Some barely failed to meet the standard in just one area and were close to the middle of the chart, while others struggled with more than one of the qualities and were further out from the middle.

Jeff insisted that the leadership team be evaluated the same way, and though each person made it into the middle segment, what was interesting is that they landed in different locations.

By the time the food was mostly gone and they had placed almost two dozen names somewhere in the diagram on the whiteboard, Clare and Bobby were convinced they were on to something.

But Jeff was still uncertain. “It still sounds too simple to me.” He kept looking at the three words. “And yet, I don't see anything missing. I guess it's just the combination of the three.”

“That's it,” Clare announced, walking to the whiteboard and circling the middle segment in bright red. “The magic here is just that if even one of the qualities is missing in a big way, you've got yourself a jackass.”

Bobby laughed. “Hell, I could have told you that.”

Clare threw her pen at Bobby.

They decided they should start using the model right away in the hiring process, which Bobby suggested they call the “no jackass test.” The first of those tests would be the next morning with Ted Marchbanks.