One morning in October of 2014 I pulled into the parking lot at my office to find it surrounded by fire trucks. On the previous visit I’d made a big announcement: Traeger, the Oregon-based outdoor cooking company where I had recently become CEO, would be closing its warehouse and trucking operations and outsourcing them to UPS. The move made strategic sense, and we had offered generous severance and outplacement assistance to the several dozen employees affected. Nonetheless, the news hadn’t gone over well. When I got out of the car, I learned that one of our big-rig trucks was on fire. We didn’t know who was responsible, but it was obviously arson.
