I recently came across a LinkedIn post from David Buckles, the former president of the Christian school my son attended, that has stayed with me.

He shared a message from a young man he first met in 2010, when he served as the unofficial chaplain of his son’s football team. He once gave the young man a Bible with a note inside, telling him he was proud of him and encouraging him to keep studying God’s Word.

More than 15 years later, the young man reached out to thank him. He still had the Bible, remembered the note, and wanted David to know that his encouragement had mattered.

Reflecting on the message, David wrote that sometimes we plant seeds and sometimes we water them. We do not always get to see the results. This time, he did.

What stayed with me was that distinction. Sometimes we plant a seed by seeing potential in someone and giving them an opportunity. Sometimes we water a seed someone else planted by coaching, encouraging, or challenging them. We may do both without realizing it—and we rarely know which moments a person will carry forward.

I understand why that young man kept the Bible and the note inside it.

In my desk, I have a file filled with notes, cards, and other reminders from leaders and mentors who have influenced me. Among them are notes from one of my earliest meetings with the leader who promoted me into my first general manager role in the transportation industry.

The lessons written on that piece of paper have long since become part of how I lead. I no longer need the notes to remember them.

But I will always keep that piece of paper.

It reminds me not only of what I learned, but of the person who took the time to teach me. What may have seemed like an ordinary conversation to him became part of the foundation of my career.

That is the thing about planting seeds: we rarely know which ones will take root or how long it will be before they begin to grow. Sometimes, we do not even recognize what is being planted in us until years later.

Lessons We Understand Later

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Most transportation companies know what matters.

They want to deliver exceptional service, operate safely, develop strong teams, control costs, and generate sustainable profits.

Those priorities aren’t particularly controversial. Ask almost any transportation owner or executive, and you’ll likely hear some version of the same things.

But knowing what matters and consistently managing the business around those priorities are two very different things.

It’s relatively easy to say that customers come first. It’s harder to create a service experience that remains consistent across different employees, departments, and operating conditions.

It’s easy to say that safety is the organization’s highest priority. It’s harder to uphold that commitment when doing so means taking a driver out of service on an already difficult day.

And it’s easy to recog…

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Diesel prices have increased substantially over the past year, putting significant pressure on motorcoach operators and their profitability.

The effects are immediate. Every mile costs more, every hour of unnecessary idling costs more, and trips priced months ago may no longer generate the margins originally anticipated.

It’s understandable that much of the conversation turns to fuel surcharges. After all, operators need a way to recover increasing costs, and customers need to understand why transportation prices are changing.

But I think there’s a broader conversation worth having.

Fuel-cost management is about much more than recovering higher prices. It’s about how effectively we manage the entire business.

I’ve spent much of my career operating transportation businesses, including periods when fuel prices rose dramatically and others when they declined just as quickly. Those experiences taught me that while we cannot control diesel prices, we can still influence

how fuel costs affect our businesses.

The question isn’t simply how to respond when prices increase. It’s whether we’ve established the management practices that allow us to respond effectively in the first place.

Fuel Prices Have Always Been Volatile

If you've been in the motorcoach industry for a while, today’s challenges probably feel familiar.

As the chart below shows, diesel prices have fluctuated significantly over the past two decades. We’ve seen dramatic increases followed by equally dramatic declines, sometimes within relatively short periods.

The circumstances behind each increase may differ, but the operational challenge remains largely the same.

When fuel prices rise, profitability comes under pressure. When they fall, the urgency to manage fuel consumption, purchasing, and pricing often fades.

That’s a mistake.

Trying to predict where diesel prices will go next isn’t a particularly reliable business strategy. Building a business that can withstand those fluctuations is.

I believe operators should consistently focus on four areas, regardless of what diesel costs today.

1. Manage Consumption

The first opportunity is also one of the most obvious: how much fuel are we actually consuming, and why?

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Years ago, while working at Walt Disney World, I participated in a grievance involving a bus driver who had run another vehicle off the road.

The incident occurred where two roadways came together. The other vehicle had a yield sign. The Disney bus had the right of way.

The driver traveled that route regularly and knew that motorists did not always respect the yield sign. On this day, another motorist entered the roadway instead of yielding to the bus.

The incident came to our attention because the motorist called to report it. Transportation management then asked our technology team to retrieve the onboard video and audio so that we could determine what had happened.

The footage showed that the driver saw the other vehicle and recognized that it was not yielding. We could hear him say:

“You have the yield. I’m not letting you over.”

That statement changed the nature of the incident.

This was not a driver who failed to see another vehicle or was surprised by an unexpected movement. He recogn…

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A personal milestone: This is the 100th edition of Ground Transportation Insights. It seems fitting that #100 is about something that has shaped much of my career—the connection between leadership, culture, and the experience we create for our customers.

Every transportation company moves people from one place to another.

The best transportation companies do something more—they create an experience people remember.

That’s because they’re not just in the transportation business.

They’re in the hospitality business.

The vehicle is simply how they deliver it.

Every day, operators invest tremendous energy in the operational side of the business. They focus on safety, maintenance, scheduling, staffing, routing, technology, fuel costs, and customer communication. Those things are all essential.

But when customers remember an experience, they rarely talk about your dispatch software or how efficiently you scheduled a run.

They remember how you made them feel.

That feeling isn’t accidental.

It’s created by leadership.

Hospitality Is More Than Being Friendly

During my years on the senior leadership team for Parking and Transportation at Walt Disney World, we spent as much time talking about the Guest experience as we did about the vehicles that delivered it.

Safety, reliability, maintenance, and efficiency mattered tremendously. But so did the smile at the vehicle door. The greeting at the tram stop. The way a Cast Member responded when something went wrong. The way a Guest felt at the end of the interaction.

We didn’t simply hope we were delivering a great experience—we measured it. We regularly received Guest satisfaction feedback and Cast experience feedback, tracked the results, and used those insights to drive improvements. We didn’t treat the experience as intangible. It was managed.

We also recognized that many Guest interactions weren’t unique. Every day, Cast Members encountered questions about directions, confused Guests, long waits, accessibility needs, weather disruptions, missed stops, and countless other situations.

Rather than expecting each Cast Member to figure it out on their own, we anticipated the most likely scenarios, set clear expectations for how we wanted those interactions handled, and reinforced them through annual training.

We even gave Transportation Cast Members a small card they could carry with their ID as an everyday reminder of our Guest Service Principles. It wasn’t a substitute for training. It reinforced the basic behaviors we expected Cast Members to demonstrate every day.

That’s an important distinction.

We weren’t scripting every conversation. We were creating consistency in the experience.

We wanted Guests to receive the same level of care, professionalism, and hospitality, no matter which Cast Member they encountered.

That’s the first lesson many transportation companies miss.

Hospitality isn’t simply about hiring nice people.

It’s about creating clear behavioral expectations that every employee understands, and every leader consistently reinforces.

That’s culture.

Great Service Is Operational

Many organizations treat customer service as a personality trait.

Some employees “have it.”

Some don’t.

The best hospitality organizations take a different approach.

They define what great service looks like.

They prepare employees to deliver it.

They coach it.

They observe it.

They measure it.

They recognize it.

They reinforce it.

In other words, they operationalize hospitality.

That’s a leadership responsibility—not a frontline employee responsibility.

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Sometimes the breakthrough isn’t a better answer.

It’s a better question.

As I looked back at the four articles published in September, that idea kept showing up in very different ways.

When considering artificial intelligence, the question isn’t simply, How can we use AI? It’s What problem are we trying to solve?

When planning for the year ahead, the question isn’t simply, What can we afford? It’s Where are we trying to go, and what will it take to get there?

When trying to turn around a struggling business, the question isn’t simply, How do we generate more revenue? It’s Are we generating profitable revenue?

And when performance isn’t where we want it to be, the answer isn’t always more effort, more oversight, or another process. Sometimes we need to ask, What might already be getting in the way?

Different subjects.

Same leadership lesson.

Be…

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I recently heard a story about Sandy Koufax that I’d never heard before.

It immediately resonated with me — not just as a baseball story, but because of what it says about performance, perspective, and our tendency to sometimes make things harder than they need to be.

And with another Major League Baseball season winding down and attention beginning to turn toward October, this seemed like a fitting time to share it.

Sometimes the person closest to a problem isn’t the person best positioned to see it.

Sandy Koufax learned that lesson in the spring of 1961.

Today, Koufax is remembered as one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. He won three Cy Young Awards, threw four no-hitters — including a perfect game — and helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win three World Series championships.

But that wasn’t the Sandy Koufax the baseball world knew during the first several years of his career.

Everyone could see the talent.

Koufax could throw a baseball extraordinarily hard. He had the kind of arm that made people believe greatness was inevitable.

There was just one problem.

He couldn’t always control where the ball was going.

During his first six seasons with the Dodgers, Koufax went 36–40 with a 4.10 ERA. In 691⅔ innings, he walked 405 batters.

The harder he tried to throw, the wilder he could become.

Then, during spring training in 1961, Dodgers catcher Norm Sherry offered Koufax a different perspective.

Stop Throwing So Hard

Koufax and Sherry were riding a bus from the Dodgers’ spring training home in Vero Beach to an exhibition game when Sherry suggested that Koufax ease up.

Sherry had noticed something.

When Koufax tried to generate even more velocity, he would tense up. Instead of making his already exceptional fastball better, the additional effort could cost him both movement and control.

Sherry suggested that Koufax stop trying to throw every pitch so hard, mix in more curveballs and changeups, and enjoy himself.

Then came the game.

The Dodgers were playing the Minnesota Twins in Orlando on March 23, 1961. Koufax walked the first three batters he faced, loading the bases without recording an out.

Sherry, who was catching him, again encouraged Koufax not to overthrow.

Koufax settled down.

He proceeded to pitch seven scoreless, no-hit innings.

Something had changed.

A few weeks later, Koufax described his improvement simply: he had shortened his windup, was throwing easier, and had more confidence.

He went on to win 18 games that season and lead the National League with 269 strikeouts.

It was the beginning of one of the most remarkable stretches of pitching in baseball history.

And I’ve been thinking about Norm Sherry’s role in that story.

Because Sherry wasn’t standing on the mound.

He was behind the plate.

A Different View of the Same Problem

Koufax knew he was struggling with control.

He knew he was walking too many hitters.

But he was experiencing the problem from the pitcher’s mound.

Sherry saw it from somewhere else.

From behind the plate, he could see what happened when Koufax tried to overpower hitters. He could see the tension. He could see the result.

Same pitcher.

Same baseball.

Same problem.

Different perspective.

I’ve experienced a version of that myself.

When I took responsibility for Parking and Transportation at Walt Disney World, I went through the same operational training our Cast Members did. One evening, while training in the Magic Kingdom parking operation, I noticed something as we loaded guests onto the parking trams.

Cast Members were instructing families to seat adults toward the outside of each row and children toward the inside.

There had been a very good reason for the practice. The parking trams originally didn’t have doors, and keeping children toward the inside reduced the risk of a child falling from the tram.

But doors had been added to every tram in 2008.

And we were still enforcing the same seating requirement.

What really brought it into focus for me was seeing it late at night.

It was 10 or 11 o’clock. Families had spent a full day in the Magic Kingdom and were ready to get back to their cars. They had made their way out of the park, waited for a ferryboat or monorail to take them across Seven Seas Lagoon to the Transportation and Ticket Center, and then waited again to board a parking tram.

Finally, they were seated.

Then we asked some of them to move.

Not surprisingly, guests would look at the closed tram door and ask some version of:

“Why? There’s a door.”

It was a reasonable question.

Our Cast Members bore the brunt of the frustration while enforcing the requirement. And we were creating one more unnecessary delay at the very end of a long day.

So I started asking the same question the guests were asking.

Why are we still doing this?

Eventually, we got on a conference call with our safety team. I explained what I had observed during training and said I was struggling to understand why we were still enforcing the requirement when every tram now had doors.

The answer was remarkably simple.

We had never gone back and changed the process after the doors were installed.

So I asked another question:

When did we put the doors on the trams?

2008.

We were having this conversation in 2016.

For eight years, we had continued enforcing a requirement designed to address a condition that no longer existed.

If that isn’t an organizational blind spot, I don’t know what is.

Once we questioned the requirement and reviewed it with the appropriate partners, we eliminated it.

The result?

Less friction for our guests.

Fewer unnecessary confrontations for our Cast Members.

And a more efficient operation because families could board, sit down, and we could load and go.

The operation changed. The process didn’t.

And for eight years, no one had challenged the disconnect.

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Part 4 of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series

“It cannot lose money.”

That was the condition.

Walt Disney World leadership had decided to bring Minnie Van back.

Now the ideas our team had developed had to work in the real world.

Bringing the service back wasn’t enough.

We had to build a sustainable business.

Run It Like a Business

Minnie Van was different from nearly every other mode of transportation at Walt Disney World.

Guests paid for every ride.

That distinction mattered.

Unlike the other transportation modes, Minnie Van wasn’t simply a service we had to operate well.

It was a business we had to operate sustainably.

We wanted to recreate the exceptional experience our guests had enjoyed before COVID and reestablish the strong culture that had existed among our Cast Members.

But we couldn’t simply recreate the business that had existed before COVID.

So our standard became more demanding.

Could we recreate the exceptional guest experience?

Could we reestablish the strong culture within the team?

And could we make the changes necessary to do both within an operating model that didn’t lose money?

Financial performance couldn’t be something we measured only after making operational decisions. It had to be part of how we made those decisions.

That didn’t mean the cheapest option always won. Sometimes spending more was the right decision because it protected something fundamental to the experience or improved the business's performance.

But every decision ultimately had to support a sustainable operation.

We weren’t trying to make Minnie Van cheaper.

We were trying to build a sustainable business without losing what had made Minnie Van special.

Define the Business Before You Operate It

As we defined the relaunched business, we began thinking more precisely about what guests were actually buying.

It wasn’t just a ride.

It was time.

There are two currencies we all manage every day: time and money. And people are often willing to spend one to get more of the other.

Minnie Van gave guests that choice.

They could use the complimentary transportation available to them, or they could spend money for a direct ride and reclaim some of their vacation time.

That might mean staying longer in a theme park. Enjoying dinner without leaving early to allow for the trip back. Or simply spending less of a vacation they had invested significant time and money in waiting or transferring between modes of transportation.

We were giving guests the opportunity to buy back some of their vacation time.

Understanding that value helped us answer another important question:

Who exactly were we building this business for?

Before COVID, Minnie Van’s operating footprint had expanded beyond Disney Resort hotels to include select Good Neighbor hotels and destinations outside our core operating area.

When we returned, we deliberately made that operating envelope smaller.

Minnie Van would be exclusively for guests staying at Walt Disney World Resort hotels, providing transportation to destinations within Walt Disney World.

There was an exclusivity to that decision. Minnie Van became another differentiator for the Disney Resort experience.

There was also a business benefit.

Keeping the fleet concentrated within Walt Disney World reduced longer trips and repositioning time while keeping vehicles closer to their next potential fare.

We had established a clear productivity target:

At least two rides per revenue hour, with 2.5 as the goal.

That target influenced where we operated, who we served, how much capacity we deployed, and when we deployed it.

A trip could generate revenue and still hurt the business if it pulled a vehicle away from concentrated demand for too long.

Revenue wasn’t the objective. Productive revenue was.

Price the Experience for What It Was Worth

Pricing began with the economics.

What did a ride need to generate for the business to make sense?

Then we looked at the marketplace.

What would a guest pay for a comparable premium experience from Uber or Lyft?

But Minnie Van wasn’t simply a Disney-branded version of a premium rideshare service.

Disney owned and operated it, driven by Disney Cast Members who knew Walt Disney World and understood the expectations that came with a Disney vacation.

And it provided access outside rideshare companies couldn’t replicate, including Disney transportation locations such as the Magic Kingdom bus loops.

So there was a third question:

What premium was that exclusivity worth?

Our pricing had to reconcile all three: the economics of the business, the price of a comparable premium transportation experience, and the additional value of a Disney-owned and operated service.

We weren’t trying to determine the highest price we could convince a guest to pay.

We were trying to establish a price that reflected the value of the experience while allowing the business providing it to be sustainable.

Then we had to see whether guests agreed.

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Every January, many leadership teams step away from the operation to talk about their goals for the new year. They identify priorities, discuss what needs to change, and leave with renewed energy about what they hope to accomplish.

There is only one problem: they are already late.

By January, the budget has likely been approved. Resources have been allocated. Financial expectations have been established. If the planning session identifies a need for another employee, new technology, leadership development, additional safety resources, or new equipment, the organization begins the year trying to fund a priority that should have helped shape the budget in the first place.

Strategic planning should not follow the budget. It should help create it.

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer, but it should also remind us how little time remains in the year. The next few months will move quickly. Soon, operators will be finalizing revenue projections, labor assumptions, capital plans, and oper…

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Earlier this summer, Busline magazine asked me to write about artificial intelligence and how it is beginning to influence the bus and motorcoach industry.

It was a timely assignment. Artificial intelligence has become one of those terms that seems to be everywhere. Technology companies are talking about it. Operators are experimenting with it. Conference agendas are filled with it. Scroll through LinkedIn for a few minutes, and you probably won’t have to wait long before someone tells you how AI is going to transform business.

But the more I thought about the assignment, the more I realized I didn’t want to write another article about the promise of AI.

I wanted to understand what it actually means for our industry.

So I started having conversations.

I spoke with technology leaders developing tools for transportation companies and operators running businesses of different sizes and complexity. Some were already deeply engaged with AI. Others were still trying to understand where it might fit. Their perspectives weren’t identical, nor should they have been.

What interested me was where those perspectives began to intersect.

The resulting Busline article had to fit within roughly 1,000 words. But the conversations left me with far more material—and more questions—than I could possibly explore there.

This is the conversation that didn’t fit into 1,000 words.

We’ve Been Here Before—But This Feels Different

Over the course of my career, I’ve watched technology evolve from rotary phones to smartphones. I remember when caller ID, call waiting, and dial-up internet were revolutionary. I remember life before personal computers, email, GPS navigation, and the internet itself.

Each innovation reshaped the way we worked.

The transportation industry evolved in its own way. Dispatch and reservation systems became increasingly sophisticated. GPS and telematics gave operators visibility into their fleets that would once have been unimaginable. Mobile technology changed how we communicate with drivers and customers. Technology transformed nearly every operational function.

Some operators embraced those changes quickly. Others took a more measured approach, waiting until the technology proved itself. Eventually, each innovation simply became part of operating a modern transportation business.

AI feels like the next chapter, but with an important difference.

It isn’t simply changing the tools we use.

It’s beginning to change what those tools can do for us.

And the pace of that change appears to be accelerating.

First, We Have to Get Beyond the Hype

One challenge with talking about artificial intelligence is that the term itself has become so broad that it can mean almost anything.

AI can describe the camera system identifying unsafe driving behavior. It can describe software analyzing years of reservation data. It can describe a chatbot answering customer questions. It can describe ChatGPT drafting an email. And increasingly, it can describe agents capable of taking actions across multiple business systems.

Put all of that under one label, and it’s easy to understand why people are simultaneously excited, skeptical, curious, and confused.

Louis Bookoff, co-founder of Busie, offered an interesting perspective when I asked where he sees AI creating the most value. He actually started by talking about where it doesn’t.

Writing emails and generating marketing content have become what he described as almost “table stakes.” He also pointed to the growing amount of obvious AI-generated content—what he called “AI slop”—and the resulting fatigue it can create. His larger point was that people still crave authentic human interaction.

That struck me because so much of the public conversation about AI begins with generative tools. Ask someone how they’re using AI and the answer is often some version of writing emails, creating social media content, summarizing documents, or conducting research.

Those are useful applications. I use many of them myself.

But they’re only the beginning.

Louis described work around pricing, dispatch, fleet allocation, accounting, and even identifying events that could create new sales opportunities for operators. In the latter case, AI can identify relevant events, find potential contacts, and help manage a process that would be extremely time-consuming to perform manually.

His distinction was important: the closer AI gets to critical workflows, the higher the stakes become. General AI has value, but use-case-specific applications make the potential easier to understand—and demand greater thoughtfulness.

That may be one of the first lessons for operators trying to make sense of all of this.

Don’t start with AI.

Start with the work.

The Opportunity Is Already Inside the Business

My conversation with Niall McKeever of Zaui added another dimension.

Niall spent many years as an operator in his native Northern Ireland before moving to the technology side of the industry. That background gives him an interesting perspective because he understands both what the technology can do and the realities of running a transportation business day after day.

Much of our discussion centered on something transportation companies already possess in abundance: data.

Think about how much information an established operator accumulates.

Trips. Customers. Routes. Pricing. Seasonal demand. Maintenance. Driver activity. Sales history. Cancellations. Utilization.

For years, much of that information has existed primarily as a historical record. AI makes it possible to use it much more dynamically.

Niall described systems capable of examining years of past performance around a holiday, for example, and using that history to forecast schedules and routes. He also discussed the potential for that same intelligence to inform dynamic pricing.

That’s a fundamentally different value proposition from asking an AI tool to write an email.

The information already exists.

The opportunity is to understand it better.

And that idea surfaced elsewhere.

Bill Adams of First Class Charter talked about wanting greater integration between dispatch, maintenance, drivers, and finance. His vision was a system that could monitor maintenance intervals and help the organization become proactive before a mechanical issue turns into what he called a “chaos situation.” Importantly, he immediately connected that operational visibility back to protecting margin and profitability.

Bill also saw opportunity on the other side of the business: customers.

First Class has hundreds of customers in its database. As Bill pointed out, no one can manually stay in meaningful contact with all of them or continuously monitor who traveled six months ago, much less two years ago. He sees AI helping identify customer patterns, determine how individual customers prefer to be contacted, and maintain relationships at a scale that would be difficult to accomplish manually.

He also connected customer history to pricing—using patterns in demand and travel behavior to become more confident about peak and off-season rates rather than defaulting to discounting to win business.

That’s not replacing sales.

It’s giving salespeople better information about where to focus their attention.

AI and Automation Aren’t the Same Thing

Another important distinction came from Ben O’Day of Initek Consulting.

For years, companies like Initek have helped organizations connect systems, move and normalize data, and automate processes. None of that began with generative AI.

What’s changing is how quickly and flexibly that work can now be done.

Ben described how building an adapter to connect a new telematics platform might previously have required multiple days of software development. With AI-assisted development tools, that work can happen much faster. But he raised an even more interesting question: in some situations, does a traditional software integration need to be built at all, or can an AI agent perform the work another way?

That distinction matters because AI didn’t invent automation.

What it is doing is lowering barriers that once made sophisticated automation difficult, expensive, or inaccessible—particularly for smaller organizations.

Ben also sees an interesting divide in how operators are approaching the technology. Larger organizations may have internal resources that allow them to experiment and develop applications themselves. Smaller operators, meanwhile, may know they need to understand AI but not know where to begin, increasingly looking to their technology partners for guidance.

That may be one of the most important challenges surrounding AI right now.

The technology is advancing faster than many organizations can reasonably absorb it.

Get on the AI Bus—or Get Run Over by It?

Niall described a pressure to learn AI that I suspect many people are feeling.

The message can sometimes sound like: AI is here. Get on board.

For those of us in transportation, there’s probably an even more appropriate metaphor.

At times, it can feel like get on the AI bus or get run over by it.

I don’t think those are the only options.

Niall compared some of the anxiety surrounding AI with earlier technology transitions. There was a time when businesses were being told they needed a website. Later came mobile technology and other digital tools that created new expectations for how companies operated and interacted with customers. Each transition created its own uncertainty and its own pressure to keep up.

AI may be moving faster, but the leadership challenge is familiar.

Operators don’t have to automate their entire back office tomorrow.

They also can’t afford to simply ignore what is happening.

Somewhere between chasing every new AI application and dismissing the technology altogether is a much more practical path: understand what is becoming possible, identify the problems in your own organization worth solving, and begin experimenting where the potential value is clear.

Operators are already showing just how far that experimentation can go.

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Some of the most important leadership work happens when very little seems to be happening.

There’s no announcement. No major breakthrough. No obvious result to celebrate.

Sometimes there isn’t even certainty that the work will pay off.

Yet as I looked back at the three articles published in August, that idea kept resurfacing.

Great organizations are rarely built in the exciting moments alone. They’re built in the middle—when leaders continue reinforcing expectations after the initial enthusiasm fades. They’re built when experienced leaders remain willing to learn, adapt, and challenge what they think they already know. And they’re built when teams prepare for opportunities that may never come.

In different ways, each of August’s articles explored what leadership looks like before the results show up.

If you missed one, here’s a look back at the month.

Most organizations believe in the right things. Accountability. Leadership development. Safety. Communication. Operational discipline. Continuous improvement.

The harder question is whether those beliefs consistently show up in their behavior.

Believers, Behavers, and the Middle explored what happens after the kickoff meeting ends and the excitement around a new initiative begins to fade.

That’s when the real work begins. The twentieth leadership meeting. The fiftieth review of the scorecard. Another coaching conversation. Another opportunity to reinforce the same expectation.

Strong cultures aren’t created because organizations announce the right priorities. They’re created when leaders reinforce those priorities consistently enough that the behaviors eventually become part of how the organization operates.

Belief may begin the journey. Behavior sustains it. And discipline carries organizations through the middle.

Clint Hurdle spent more than three decades in professional baseball before becoming manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. He knew baseball.

But when the organization began embracing advanced analytics, Hurdle initially wasn’t convinced.

What happened next offers an important lesson for leaders in any industry.

Rather than forcing a choice between experience and data, Hurdle and Pirates General Manager Neal Huntington learned to combine them.

Hurdle didn’t abandon his experience. Huntington didn’t abandon the numbers. They learned from one another. The result helped produce three consecutive playoff appearances and end a 20-year losing streak in Pittsburgh.

The same tension exists in ground transportation today. AI. Telematics. Cameras. Maintenance software. KPIs. New approaches to recruiting and operations.

The technology changes, but the leadership challenge doesn’t.

The strongest organizations won’t be those that blindly embrace every new idea—or those that reject new ideas because experience tells them the old way works.

They’ll be the ones willing to learn, test, adapt, and improve.

Experience still matters.

So does remaining teachable.

The third installment of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study explored one of the most unusual periods of my career. When COVID shut down Walt Disney World in March 2020, Minnie Van stopped operating. Eventually, its drivers and dispatchers were laid off.

There was no reopening plan. No budget. No timeline. And no guarantee the service would ever return.

But we kept preparing. We simplified the fleet and reduced financial exposure. We maintained the vehicles and equipment. Once the leadership team returned from furlough, we challenged old assumptions, refined financial models, and began redesigning the operating model—even though we had no idea whether we’d ever get the chance to use it.

Then, just before Christmas 2021, the opportunity finally came. Minnie Van was coming back. With one condition: “It cannot lose money.”

For nearly two years, we had been preparing for a conversation we weren’t even sure would happen.

When it finally did, we were ready.

The August Throughline

At first glance, these are three very different stories.

One began with a sermon. One began with a baseball manager. One began with a business shut down by a global pandemic.

But all three point toward something I’ve come to believe strongly about leadership.

Results are often determined long before they become visible.

Culture is built through ordinary behaviors repeated when no one is celebrating them.

Experienced leaders get better when they remain humble enough to keep learning.

Organizations become ready for opportunity by doing the work before opportunity arrives.

None of those things provides immediate gratification. That’s what makes them difficult.

It’s easy to remain committed when progress is obvious. It’s easy to embrace change when the results are immediate. And it’s easy to prepare when you know exactly what you’re preparing for.

Leadership is tested when those things aren’t true. That’s where discipline matters. That’s where curiosity matters. And that’s where preparation matters.

The results may come later. The work comes first.

Looking Ahead to September

September will be a special month for Ground Transportation Insights.

First, I’ll conclude the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series.

The first three installments have explored why a popular service struggled financially, how we discovered that the real problem wasn’t what we originally thought, and how nearly two years of preparation created an opportunity for the service to return.

The final installment will share what happened next—how dozens of decisions across pricing, labor, fleet, operations, and leadership ultimately transformed the business's economics.

I’ll also take a deeper look at AI in bus and motorcoach operations—beyond the hype.

Building on an article previously published in Busline Magazine, I’ll explore where AI can realistically create value for transportation operators, where its limitations remain, and why the opportunity isn’t about replacing experienced people but giving them better tools to make decisions and operate the business.

And September will mark another milestone:

The 100th article published by Ground Transportation Insights.

When I started writing GTI, my goal was relatively simple: share lessons from more than three decades of leading transportation operations and organizations, while continuing to learn from the people and businesses shaping the industry today.

One hundred articles later, I’m grateful for everyone who has read, subscribed, commented, shared an article, challenged an idea, or simply joined the conversation.

There’s still plenty more to explore.

A Closing Thought

August reminded me that leadership often requires doing the work before there is evidence that the work is working.

Keep reinforcing the expectation. Keep reviewing the numbers. Keep coaching the leader. Keep asking questions. Keep learning. Keep preparing.

Most of it won’t generate headlines. But over time, those ordinary decisions accumulate.

They become habits. Habits become culture. Preparation becomes readiness. And eventually, the results begin to show.

Great leadership isn’t only about what happens when the opportunity arrives. Often, it’s about everything you did before it did.

Question for readers: What is your organization doing today that may not produce an immediate result—but you believe will matter a year from now?

If your organization is working to strengthen leadership, improve operational performance, or build the systems needed for sustainable growth, I’d be happy to help.

Through coaching, advisory support, consulting, and fractional leadership engagements, I work with transportation organizations to turn good intentions into stronger execution and sustainable results.

Learn more at Bus Business Consultants.

Part 3 of the Minnie Van Leadership Case Study Series

March 12, 2020.

I was sitting at home watching the evening news when Walt Disney World announced it would close due to COVID-19.

Within seconds, my phone started buzzing.

Text messages.

Phone calls.

Questions.

“What does this mean?”

“What happens next?”

The truth was, I didn’t know.

I had learned the news at exactly the same time everyone else had.

I remember telling the team, “We’re finding this out together. We’ll work through it together.”

No leader wants their team to learn something that significant from the evening news.

But that’s how quickly events were unfolding.

The next morning, we all reported to work.

Not to operate the business.

To shut it down.

For the next three days, we worked around the clock winding down an operation that, until then, none of us had ever imagined would stop.

In the first two articles of this series, I shared how we had diagnosed the challenges facing Minnie Van before COVID abruptly changed everything.

The diagnosis was complete.

The future wasn’t.

From Operations to Survival

The following week, we were all working from home.

Like everyone else at Walt Disney World, we assumed the closure would eventually end.

We just didn’t know when.

The conversations weren’t about Minnie Van.

They weren’t about long-term strategy.

They were about helping Walt Disney World navigate one of the most uncertain moments in its history.

A few weeks later came furloughs.

Like thousands of other Cast Members, I suddenly found myself wondering when—or even if—I would return.

When I returned in early June, the Transportation offices were almost unrecognizable.

Hallways that had once been busy were silent.

Many offices sat dark.

Parking lots were nearly empty.

For a place that had operated almost continuously for nearly fifty years, the stillness was striking.

Walt Disney World reopened on July 11th.

Transportation returned.

Parking returned.

Guests slowly returned.

But everything was different.

Attendance remained dramatically lower, and health and safety protocols shaped nearly every operational decision.

More importantly, Walt Disney World wasn’t operating in isolation.

Disneyland remained closed and would so for over a year.

Several international parks continued to open and close as local conditions changed.

Across the Walt Disney Company, the Parks and Experiences business was operating under extraordinary financial pressure.

Against that backdrop, I completely understood why Minnie Van wasn’t a priority.

There were many bigger issues demanding Walt Disney World leadership’s attention.

And there were many bigger issues demanding mine.

Transportation also wasn’t reopening in isolation.

Every day required close coordination across Transportation, Parking, Security, Park Operations, and Front Entrance teams as we worked together to safely reopen Walt Disney World under entirely new operating conditions.

Between helping lead that effort, I continued moving Minnie Van forward whenever the opportunity allowed.

A Business Many Thought Was Gone

As summer turned into fall, another difficult chapter arrived.

Disney announced significant layoffs.

Within Minnie Van, our drivers and dispatchers were laid off.

Fortunately, we were able to retain the management team by placing them in other leadership roles throughout the Transportation division.

From the outside, Minnie Van appeared to be finished.

People occasionally asked me a simple question.

“Why are you fighting so hard for Minnie Van?”

It wasn’t an unfair question.

By then, the service had developed a reputation.

Guests loved it.

Disney Finance...not so much.

Around Transportation, Minnie Van had become known as the operation that ran at a substantial loss.

To many people, continuing to spend time on it simply didn’t make sense.

The operation wasn’t running.

There was no approved reopening plan.

The company was focused on much bigger challenges.

Yet whenever there was an opportunity, I kept moving it forward.

From the outside, I’m sure some people thought I was wasting my time.

Looking back, I understand why they felt that way.

Read more

One of the best leadership lessons I’ve read this year didn’t come from a business book.

It came from a former Major League Baseball manager.

As the industry gathers in Pittsburgh this week for ABA’s BISC/BusMARC Summer Summit, I can’t think of a more fitting place to reflect on a leadership lesson that also began in Pittsburgh.

Clint Hurdle spent more than four decades in professional baseball. After an 11-year playing career, he worked his way through the coaching ranks before managing both the Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates. He led the Rockies to their only National League pennant in 2007 and later guided the Pirates to three consecutive playoff appearances, ending a 20-year losing streak.

In 2025, Hurdle published Hurdleisms: Wit and Wisdom from a Lifetime in Baseball, a collection of the lessons he learned throughout his career. While there are plenty of memorable stories in the book, one in particular caught my attention.

Hurdleism #8:

“Let’s drop this old-school versus new-school debate.”

At the time, Hurdle was managing the Pittsburgh Pirates, while General Manager Neal Huntington was among the early believers in using advanced analytics to build a winning baseball team. Huntington had assembled an analytics department staffed by some of the brightest minds in the game.

Hurdle wasn’t immediately convinced.

As someone with more than 35 years of experience as a player and coach, he knew the game. He understood players. He trusted what he saw on the field.

The numbers? Not so much.

As Hurdle admitted in the book:

“To say that I bought in right away would be a flat-out lie. Actually, it took me two years in Pittsburgh to understand all the different metrics, what they meant, and which ones to value most.”

After the 2012 season, Huntington came to Hurdle’s home for what turned into a marathon strategy session. They reviewed the organization’s player development process, challenged each other’s thinking, debated ideas, and ultimately found common ground. As Hurdle described it, they “threw their egos out the door” and committed to doing what they believed would build a winning ball club.

By the end of the conversation, something had changed.

Hurdle didn’t abandon his decades of baseball experience.

Huntington didn’t insist the numbers alone had all the answers.

Instead, they became partners.

As Hurdle wrote:

“We truly became a partnership that day. I got on board with becoming analytically driven, and we agreed we would honor the human analytics of the game as well.”

Then came my favorite line in the entire book.

“Let’s all just be in school together.”

The results speak for themselves.

From 2013 through 2015, the Pirates won 280 games, reached the playoffs three consecutive seasons, and finally ended one of the longest losing streaks in professional sports.

Reading Hurdle’s story, I wasn’t really thinking about baseball.

I was thinking about our industry.

Read more

This is not my typical Ground Transportation Insights article. It’s a personal reflection I felt compelled to share, and I hope it encourages someone to have a conversation they’ve been putting off.

Last Saturday evening, my brother-in-law, Will, suffered a heart attack.

Over the next few days, our family lived on phone calls, text messages, and prayers. We waited for updates from thousands of miles away, hoping each one would bring better news than the last. We didn’t know what the coming days would hold or whether surgery would even be possible.

Tuesday night, he passed away.

He was in his mid-50s.

Adding to the heartbreak, his family lives in an area currently affected by severe wildfires. Even being together has been made more difficult by circumstances beyond anyone’s control. It has been an incredibly difficult few days for everyone who loved him.

This isn’t the article I planned to write this week.

In fact, it isn’t really a Ground Transportation Insights article at all. But sometimes life has a way of reminding us that some conversations are simply more important than the ones we had planned.

The truth is, this story didn’t begin last Saturday.

It began several years ago.

Like many people, life got busy. Over the past few years, I left Disney after a career that spanned more than two decades, accepted a new position in Texas, started my own consulting business, and eventually moved back to Florida. They were exciting changes, but somewhere along the way I kept telling myself I’d get back to taking care of my own health.

I wasn’t ignoring my health because I didn’t care. I was doing what so many of us do—I convinced myself there would be time later.

I have a bicuspid aortic valve with mild regurgitation that should be monitored annually. Instead, several years slipped by before I finally scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist.

Thankfully, I did.

At that appointment, my cardiologist updated my evaluation, performed an EKG, and recommended a more comprehensive workup because of my age and other risk factors. That included a coronary artery calcium (CAC) scan.

The scan found calcified plaque in my coronary arteries.

It wasn’t the news I wanted to hear.

But it was the news I needed to hear.

That one test changed the conversation.

My cholesterol medication was increased. We talked about diet. We talked about exercise. When I mentioned that I had noticed a decline in my stamina and was becoming more winded doing activities like yard work, my cardiologist ordered a nuclear stress test to make sure the plaque wasn’t significantly limiting blood flow to my heart.

Thankfully, those results were reassuring.

The stress test showed normal heart function and no evidence of significant blood flow limitation during exercise.

I don’t share any of this because I want sympathy.

I share it because, just a few months ago, I probably would have told you I felt reasonably healthy.

Would my brother-in-law’s story have been different if he had undergone the same testing?

I don’t know.

No one can honestly answer that question.

Heart disease is complicated. Every person is different. Every medical history is different.

But I do know this.

My calcium scan changed my story.

Not because it found an emergency.

Because it prompted a conversation...

...and that conversation led to action.

It prompted additional testing.

It changed my treatment plan.

It gave me an opportunity to make different choices before a problem became a crisis.

As someone who has spent a career in transportation, I’ve always believed in preventive maintenance.

We inspect buses before they leave the yard.

We monitor tire pressure.

We change fluids before engines fail.

We invest thousands of dollars preventing breakdowns because we know the cost of waiting.

Yet many of us don’t approach our own health with the same discipline.

We postpone physicals.

We ignore fatigue.

We assume getting older simply means slowing down.

We tell ourselves we’ll get around to it.

Sometimes we don’t.

It’s now been a little over two months since that appointment.

I’ve changed my diet.

I’ve become much more intentional about exercise.

And I’ve already noticed something encouraging.

My stamina has improved.

Activities that were leaving me unusually winded just a few months ago are becoming easier, even in the Florida heat.

I still have work to do.

But I’m moving in the right direction.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds for any of us.

What I do know is that this week reminded me how quickly life can change.

I can’t tell you whether a coronary artery calcium scan would have changed Will’s story.

I can only tell you what it changed in mine.

For me, it was a cardiology appointment. For you, it may be something entirely different. Whatever it is, don’t keep telling yourself you’ll get to it later.

If you’ve been putting off that physical...

If you’ve been ignoring symptoms...

If you’ve been telling yourself you’ll get around to it someday...

Make the appointment.

Have the conversation.

Ask the questions.

Then act on what you learn.

Your physician will help determine what screenings or tests are appropriate for you based on your age, medical history, family history, symptoms, and other risk factors.

Please don’t wait.

The people who love you need you here.

Author’s Note: A coronary artery calcium (CAC) scan may not be appropriate for everyone. Whether this or another screening test is right for you depends on your age, medical history, family history, symptoms, and other risk factors. My hope in sharing this story is simply to raise awareness that this screening exists and to encourage you to have a conversation with your primary care physician or cardiologist about what is appropriate for your individual situation. In my case, the out-of-pocket cost was approximately $100.

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In early July, I listened to a sermon by Pastor Andy Stanley of North Point Ministries. One observation, in particular, stayed with me.

He talked about the difference between being a believer and a behaver—someone who believes something intellectually but hasn’t yet allowed that belief to consistently shape their actions.

He shared the story of a man describing his own faith journey. At first, he didn’t think he had the discipline to make a lasting commitment. Rather than waiting until he felt ready, he simply kept showing up. Over time, his commitment deepened, and with it came the discipline he thought he lacked.

That story reminded me of something I’ve observed throughout my career.

Organizations can be believers, too.

They believe in accountability. They believe in leadership development. They believe in safety. They believe in operational discipline. They believe in coaching, communication, and continuous improvement.

But believing in those things and consistently behaving in ways that reinforce them are two very different things.

Later that same day, I read a thoughtful LinkedIn post by Michael Sprague, Chaplain at Capital Commission in Louisiana, about what he called having “faith in the middle.” His point was simple but powerful: it’s relatively easy to have faith at the beginning of a journey, when everything is new and full of possibility. It’s also easier at the end, when you can finally see the results of your efforts.

The middle is different. The middle is where enthusiasm fades. It’s where the work becomes repetitive, progress feels slower than expected, and the temptation to quit quietly creeps in.

As I reflected on hearing Andy Stanley’s message and then reading Michael Sprague’s post later that same day, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was more than a coincidence. For me, it felt like a gentle reminder that this was a lesson worth paying attention to. Two different people. Two different messages. Yet both pointed to the same truth: belief, commitment, and discipline are tested not at the beginning or the end of the journey, but in the middle.

As I read Mr. Sprague’s words, I couldn’t help but think about how this too can be applied to an organization.

They also experience “the middle,” too.

The kickoff meeting is exciting.

Announcing a new leadership initiative is exciting.

Rolling out new performance metrics, safety initiatives, or leadership expectations creates energy and optimism.

Everyone believes this time will be different.

Then comes the middle.

The twentieth leadership meeting.

The fiftieth review of performance metrics.

Coaching the same supervisor again.

Having another difficult accountability conversation.

Reinforcing the same expectations once more.

The excitement fades, but the work remains.

Read more

As I looked back over July’s articles, something unexpected stood out.

Each week began with a completely different story.

A World War II veteran recalling D-Day.

A controversy involving Major League Baseball.

A struggling transportation business.

A leadership document I wrote more than twenty years ago.

At first glance, they don’t seem to have much in common.

But as the month unfolded, I realized they were all pointing toward the same lesson.

Better leadership begins with greater clarity.

Clarity about what we’re seeing.

Clarity about what truly matters.

Clarity about the assumptions shaping our decisions.

And clarity about the timeless principles that continue to guide great leaders, even as the world around them changes.

Below is a brief recap of July’s articles. If one of these topics resonates with you, I’d encourage you to read the full article. Several readers shared that these pieces sparked meaningful conversations with their leadership teams, and I hope they do the same for yours.

The July Throughline

Looking back, I don’t think July was really about D-Day, baseball, Disney, or even leadership documents.

It was about clarity.

Great leaders see beyond today’s obstacles.

They distinguish between appearance and reality.

They challenge assumptions rather than accept them.

And they consistently return to the fundamentals when complexity threatens to distract them.

Perhaps that’s one reason leadership can feel so difficult.

Not because the principles are especially complicated, but because clarity requires discipline. It requires leaders to slow down, ask better questions, remain curious, and resist the temptation to react to the first explanation that presents itself.

When leaders see more clearly, they make better decisions.

And better decisions shape stronger organizations.

Looking Ahead to August

Coming in August, Ground Transportation Insights shifts from understanding leadership to practicing it.

The upcoming articles explore the difference between belief and behavior, the discipline required to sustain organizational change long after the excitement of a new initiative fades, the importance of remaining teachable throughout a leader’s career, and why many of the greatest transformations begin long before the opportunity to implement them ever arrives.

If July was about seeing leadership more clearly, August will explore what it takes to live it consistently.

A Closing Thought

One observation keeps coming back to me.

Leadership isn’t usually transformed by discovering one revolutionary new idea.

It’s transformed by seeing familiar ideas more clearly.

Sometimes that clarity comes from looking at a challenge from a different perspective.

Sometimes it comes from questioning an assumption we’ve carried for years.

Sometimes it comes from rediscovering a principle we learned long ago but needed to be reminded of.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing Ground Transportation Insights.

Each article begins with a different story, but I’m continually reminded that the best leadership lessons often point back to the same enduring truths.

Thank you for reading, for sharing these articles with others, and for being part of the conversation.

Question for readers: Which article resonated with you most this month, and why? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

If your organization is working to strengthen leadership, improve operational performance, or build a stronger culture, I’d be happy to help.

Through executive coaching, advisory support, consulting, and fractional leadership engagements, I partner with organizations to develop leaders, improve performance, and create sustainable results.

To learn more, visit:

www.busbusinessconsultants.com or www.dicksonleadership.com

A few weeks ago, I came across a one-page leadership document I created for my Disney management team in June 2005.

At the time, I had already spent about nine years as a Disney leader and four years leading other leaders. Looking back, I expected to find something that felt outdated, overly simplistic, or reflective of a younger manager who still had a lot to learn.

Instead, I found something that surprised me.

While there are certainly things I would change today, much of the foundation still holds up remarkably well.

The document was called “The Five Things to Know.”

The five expectations were simple:

• Know Your Purpose

• Know Your Guests

• Know Your Cast (the Disney term for employees)

• Know Your Business

• Know Your Role

As I reread it, I realized something.

The reason those ideas still resonate isn’t that they’re particularly sophisticated.

It’s because they’re rooted in awareness.

Awareness of why you’re there.

Awareness of the people you serve.

Awareness of the people you lead.

Awareness of how the business actually works.

Awareness of the responsibilities you’ve been entrusted with.

Twenty-one years later, I still believe leadership failures often begin when leaders lose that awareness.

Read more

Part 2 of a Leadership Case Study Series

In Part 1, I shared how I assumed responsibility for Minnie Van just months before COVID shut down Walt Disney World.

As I immersed myself in the operation—training as a driver and shadowing the dispatchers and managers, it became clear that the challenges facing the business ran much deeper than guest demand.

At the end of that article, I shared the realization that changed everything.

The issue wasn’t demand.

The issue was the operating model supporting the demand.

Once I reached that conclusion, the obvious next question became:

If demand wasn’t the problem... what was?

My first instinct wasn’t to start changing things.

It was to understand why the business had arrived where it was.

That meant studying more than the operation itself.

It meant studying the decisions that had shaped it.

Smart People Had Already Been Working the Problem

One thing surprised me almost immediately.

This wasn’t an operation that had been ignored.

Quite the opposite.

Over the previous two and a half years, finance teams had analyzed it.

Industrial engineers had analyzed it.

Operational leaders had analyzed it.

Changes had already been made.

The business wasn’t standing still.

Yet, despite all of that effort, the operation continued to struggle financially.

What struck me wasn’t that people hadn’t cared.

They absolutely had.

Intelligent people had invested countless hours trying to improve the business. They had studied demand, analyzed costs, modeled scenarios, and implemented changes. Every recommendation had been made with the best of intentions.

That’s an important leadership lesson in itself.

Struggling organizations are rarely struggling because nobody is trying.

More often, they’re struggling because everyone is working hard to solve the same problem from the same set of assumptions.

Then a different thought occurred to me.

Everyone was looking for better answers.

The breakthrough came when we started asking better questions.

That led me to one question I couldn’t shake.

What if the answers we’d been finding were perfectly logical...

...but they were answers to the wrong question?

That became the turning point.

Read more

Recently, several San Francisco Giants players made headlines after writing Bible verses on their Pride Night hats. Major League Baseball responded by warning the players that altering uniforms violated league rules.

Predictably, the story quickly became another political flashpoint.

Some viewed the players as standing up for their religious convictions. Others viewed their actions as disrespectful to the LGBTQ community. Before long, the conversation became another battle in our seemingly endless culture war.

I’ll be honest.

My initial reaction to the story wasn’t particularly charitable.

As someone who has often questioned whether highly visible gestures achieve the outcomes organizations hope for, my first thought was that this was another example of symbolism taking precedence over substance.

But the more I thought about it, the more I found myself asking different questions.

Why did this story generate such strong reactions?

Why were reasonable people viewing the same situation so differently?

And what can leaders learn from it?

I’ve spent much of my career leading teams and organizations. Along the way, I’ve come to believe there is an important distinction between telling people how to act and telling them how to think.

Organizations have every right to regulate behavior.

In fact, they have a responsibility to do so.

They should establish expectations around professionalism, safety, ethics, performance, and respect.

If we ever worked in a place where people were excluded or denied opportunities because of who they were rather than their ability to contribute, shame on us.

But behavior and belief are not the same thing.

A leader can require respectful behavior.

A leader cannot require genuine conviction.

Organizations can require compliance.

Genuine belief is another matter entirely.

One of the earliest lessons I learned during my years at Disney involved something as simple as pointing.

Cast Members were taught to point with two fingers rather than one because a single-finger point is considered offensive in some cultures.

The lesson wasn’t really about pointing. It was about recognizing that intent and interpretation are not always the same thing.

Disney understood that people from different backgrounds could experience the same gesture differently. Rather than dismissing those differences, the company adjusted its standards accordingly.

Looking back, I’ve come to appreciate the lesson behind it.

Disney required the behavior, but the lesson wasn’t really about the behavior itself.

It was a recognition that people can experience the same action differently.

That reality didn’t require agreement. It required awareness.

It was a simple but important reminder that people do not all experience the world in the same way.

I’ve thought about that lesson often while watching many of today’s cultural debates unfold.

The rainbow controversy in Major League Baseball is a perfect example.

For some people, the rainbow represents inclusion, acceptance, and belonging.

For others, the rainbow carries religious significance rooted in the biblical account of Noah and God’s covenant with humanity after the flood.

Both perspectives are rooted in beliefs that people hold deeply.

The same symbol can carry very different meanings depending on who is looking at it.

If people come from different backgrounds, experiences, cultures, and belief systems, why would we expect them to interpret every issue the same way?

The goal isn’t necessarily to eliminate those differences.

The goal is to recognize that they exist and create an environment where people can work together effectively despite them.

Great leaders understand that people don’t have to agree on everything in order to treat one another with dignity and respect.

Read more

With Independence Day approaching, I recently read an account from veterans who participated in the Normandy landings.

What struck me wasn’t just their courage.

It was the lesson their stories revealed about perspective.

On the 50th anniversary of the invasion, two men were interviewed about their experiences on June 6, 1944.

The first was a soldier who landed on Omaha Beach.

He described the chaos as landing craft came ashore and soldiers charged the beaches under relentless German fire from the cliffs above. Surrounded by explosions, casualties, and confusion, he remembered thinking:

“There is no way we can possibly win.”

The second interview was with a pilot flying over the battle.

Unlike the soldier on the beach, he could see the massive Allied force assembled in the English Channel. He watched wave after wave of troops, ships, equipment, and reinforcements moving toward Normandy.

From his vantage point, he remembered thinking:

“There is no way we can possibly lose.”

Same battle.

Same moment.

Two completely different conclusions.

The difference wasn’t courage, intelligence, or commitment.

It was perspective.

Before going further, I want to be clear. Nothing I’ve experienced in business compares to what those men endured during the D-Day invasion and the long months of fighting that followed as Allied forces pushed across Europe toward victory.

Their sacrifices helped preserve freedoms that many of us enjoy today, and I am grateful for their service.

What struck me wasn’t the scale of the challenge.

It was the lesson.

Throughout my career, I’ve seen how people can experience the same situation and reach dramatically different conclusions based on what they can see.

When You’re Standing on the Beach

Many years ago, I was involved in a transportation operation that was struggling financially.

Revenue was declining. Costs were rising. Morale was suffering. Customers were frustrated.

For employees closest to the day-to-day operation, it often felt like the organization was fighting a losing battle.

And honestly, I understood why.

They were dealing with customer complaints, staffing challenges, equipment issues, and operational disruptions every day.

What they saw was real.

What they couldn’t always see were the contract negotiations, business development efforts, cost initiatives, operational changes, and strategic decisions taking place behind the scenes.

Their perspective was shaped by the challenges immediately in front of them.

Mine was shaped by a broader view of the organization.

Neither perspective was wrong.

One was simply wider than the other.

I’ve seen this same dynamic play out during turnarounds, start-ups, rapid growth, and periods of significant uncertainty.

I saw it while helping turn around operations in Orlando and Las Vegas.

I saw it while helping stabilize and improve a newly launched transportation operation in Austin.

And I saw it during the COVID-19 shutdown of Walt Disney World and the uncertainty surrounding when and how the resort would eventually reopen.

In each situation, people closest to the daily challenges often felt overwhelmed by the immediate reality they were experiencing.

Again, they weren’t wrong.

They were standing on the beach.

I remember seeing this firsthand while helping stabilize the operation in Austin.

Early on, the challenges seemed endless. We were addressing facility issues, refining processes, improving financial reporting, adding vehicles, and building organizational structure at the same time.

To many employees, it probably felt like there was always another problem to solve.

But by the summer, the broader picture was becoming clearer.

We had moved into new office space. New vehicles were arriving. Our maintenance facility was nearing completion. Financial performance was improving. Most importantly, we had greater confidence that our budgets, reporting, and operating processes accurately reflected the business's reality.

The day-to-day challenges hadn’t disappeared.

But from a leadership perspective, we could see signs that the operation was moving in the right direction.

The people closest to the work saw the obstacles.

We could see the progress.

Both perspectives were real.

Read more