“You need to terminate five out of seventeen on your sales team?” I asked.

Roger took a deep breath. “Yes. And it doesn’t make them bad people. If anything, it makes me a bad manager. Intuitively, I knew they were not the right people for the role, but I allowed my judgment to become clouded, made up my own excuses for them.”

“How soon will you be making this change?”

“First, I have to find some people to cover the territory. No. I need to find some people capable of creating the kinds of relationships that generate sales.”

“What’s the biggest lesson from all this?” I prompted.

“I need to constantly be recruiting. I did not make the moves I knew I should have made, because I didn’t have a back-up to go to. Because I did not create the bench strength in my own candidate pool.”