Not long ago, I was talking with a CEO I respect — runs a high eight-figure service company — and I asked him how things were going with his people.

He said, almost offhandedly, "Well, you always have that 20% who aren't in step."

He wasn't upset about it. Wasn't looking for a solution. Said it the way you'd say it rains a lot in the spring. Just one of those things.

I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Rewind

Let me take you back to February 5, 1967. Crowley, Louisiana. Small farming town, about 15,000 people, the kind of place where everybody knew everybody and news traveled fast even without the internet.

My friends and I were hanging around the Mug-N-Burger that Sunday afternoon — sitting on the hoods and trunks of our cars, passing around Cherry Cokes and Dr Peppers — when word came through that a group of Hell's Angels had stopped at Morrow's Shell Station out on Highway 90.

We went. Of course we went.

When we pulled up, there were two Harleys under the canopy. One being...