I had the opportunity to speak at the McLeod User Conference in Birmingham Alabama back in November.  The discussion was focused on best practices in transportation compensation.  I took the opportunity to share the nuggets of gold that I learned in solving the compensation puzzle.  The whole piece is 55 minutes in length.  Our segment starts around the 19 minute mark and runs for about 14 minutes.  You could assume that this is only a discussion about compensation and its impacts on the freight business.  If you came to that conclusion you would miss the broader discoveries around the importance of culture, ethos, values and purpose, and the individual roles these things play in the holistic human resource scheme.  I once heard a quote that I agree with and I will share it in closing. “Culture eats strategy for lunch”.  This quote means that you can have a great culture and a weak strategy, and your organization will succeed.  The opposite holds as well which is that a great strategy in a company with a poor culture is bound to meet an untimely end.  The importance of culture to strategy is indisputable.  This is the story of how Barton set out to fix its compensation plan, and ended up refining exactly what it means to be Barton.  Our culture is our competitive advantage.