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Early in my career, a colleague and I made a shared commitment one summer to eat healthier. Salads. Smoothies. The full routine. Like many well-intentioned plans, our discipline began to fade after a few weeks. Eventually, we introduced what we jokingly called Grease Wednesdays, a weekly cheat day as a reward for all our good behavior. Every Wednesday, one of us would head out to grab fast food, and wed hide away in a small boardroom to indulge in our shared lack of nutritional discipline. At first, it was just the two of us, chatting with laptops closed and fries on the table. And then coworkers began peeking into whatever boardroom we were in, curious about the laughter. Eventually, someone asked if they could join. Then another. Within weeks, we had outgrown the small meeting room. Within months, we had moved into the departments largest boardroom to accommodate the growing crowd. What started as a casual indulgence became a shared ritual. And without intending to, Grease Wednesdays began to change our department culture. We all began to get to know each other as individuals, with pets and families and hobbies. The ritual also smoothed tensions between departments, built friendships between unfamiliar teammates, and helped us realize we hadnt felt all that connected before. Recent research shows the disconnection I witnessed in my own team is now part of a broader workplace trend. A 2025 survey of U.S. workers found nearly 40% report feeling lonely at work, and employees who lack social connection are significantly more likely to consider leaving their jobs because of it. When people feel they belong, trust builds, collaboration accelerates, performance rises, loyalty deepens, and well-being improves. When they dont, silos form, trust erodes, and discretionary effort fades. Take these numbers: a recent BetterUp survey found that workplace belonging leads to a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% reduction in turnover risk, and a 75% decrease in employee sick days. THE PROBLEM WITH OVER-ENGINEERING CONNECTION Belonging is not accidental; its cultural. And culture is shaped, reinforced, and protected by a leaders vision, values, behavior, and accountability, including what I call positive accountability. But this is where many organizations misstep. When leaders notice disconnection, the instinct is often to formalize solutions with more engagement meetings, structured team building, and mandatory social events. Yet forced connection and fun rarely produce authentic trust. In fact, over-engineering connection can make people more guarded. For instance, research cited in a study by the University of Sydney found that when team-building activities feel mandatory, they can create resentment and pushback among employees. Belonging grows best in environments that feel natural, voluntary, and human, not observed or measured. If you want to improve connection and belonging in your workplace while avoiding forced connection, here are some steps you can take. DESIGN INTENTIONAL SPACES What made Grease Wednesdays powerful wasnt the food. It was the opportunity that a casual ritual created. We had, quite by accident, built a small, repeatable, low-pressure interaction in which familiarity could grow.Design offers a strong middle ground between compulsory team-building exercises and complete social neglect. The key here is to design small, optional, and repeatable opportunities that humanize the workplace. For in-person teams, you can host walking one-on-one meetings, Friday coffee drop-ins, no-agenda team lunches, or cross-department donut runs. For remote teams, you could host 15-minute morning online coffee drop-ins or no-agenda team virtual lunches, and share team celebrations of birthdays, anniversaries, and project completions. Keep it light; keep it optional; keep it ritual. MODEL OPENNESS Studies in organizational research find that when leaders are open, available, and accessible, employees feel more psychological safety. Psychological safety, coined by organizational psychologist Amy Edmondson, is the shared belief within a team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, like speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes, without fear of punishment, humiliation, or retribution.To build psychological safety in teams, leaders can model openness. Do that by admitting when you dont know something, sharing a decision youve reversed (and why), and publicly thanking a team member who challenged you. Another way you can model openness is by offering positive team accountability by sharing the successes they see and are proud of within the team. For example, one leader I work with sends out an email to his team every two or three weeks. The irregularity of timing is actually effective by design, making the email feel more authentic. REWARD CONNECTION, NOT JUST OUTPUT Social psychology research shows that reciprocity in the workplace builds trust, cooperation, and positive relationships. The principle of social reciprocity, or when one recognizes and responds to positive actions, contributes to stronger workplace dynamics and mutual respectthe core components of connection and belonging.One way to do this is to shift what gets publicly praised. If the only Slack shout-outs are for revenue, speed, and delivery, people will assume that is all that matters. Instead, reward connection by recapping projects in team meetings by asking, Who helped make this possible? You can also celebrate the people who mentor, unblock, and build bridges across teams. When helping behavior is acknowledged, rewarded, and career-relevant, connection stops being invisible labor and becomes part of how success is defined. Full offices dont cure loneliness, but intentional culture does. When leaders design natural rituals, model openness, and reward connection as deliberately as they reward performance, belonging is no longer accidentaland becomes part of how work actually works.
Category:
E-Commerce
Being a middle manager often feels like living in two worlds at once. On one side, executives cascade big goals and sweeping strategies. On the other, teams look to you for clarity, advocacy, and daily guidance. Youre constantly reconciling top-down demands with bottom-up realities, often with too little time and too few resources to satisfy either side. The paradox of the role is stark: Middle managers carry enormous responsibility for execution but dont always have the authority to make critical decisions. Youre expected to deliver results on budgets you dont control, within structures you didnt design, and through policies you didnt write. This tension is one of the biggest sources of chronic strain. One survey found that middle managers reported higher burnout rates (36%) than non-managers, while another showed that 71% are sometimes or always overwhelmed at work. But heres the good news: The middle isnt just where pressure piles up. Its also where strategy becomes reality, where culture is lived (or lost), and where agility gets tested in real time. If you can reframe the squeeze as an opportunity, middle management becomes less a grind and more a proving ground. Here are four ways to turn the pressure into potential: BUILD YOUR COALITION If you think of your team only as your direct reports, youre missing the larger playing field. Work today is inherently cross-functional, which means your effectiveness hinges on your ability to influence sideways and upward, not just to manage downward. Peers hold the resources and expertise you need. Leaders above you control priorities, approvals, and air cover. Without credibility in those directions, even flawless execution within your own group can collapse at the edges. Research shows that misalignment between teams is one of the biggest drivers of wasted work. When priorities or interpretations differ, teams can spend weeks pulling in opposite directions. Middle managers who proactively build peer alignment surface these gaps early and save everyone time and frustration. The fix isnt complicated, but it is intentional: cultivate your network. A short, well-timed conversation with a peer or senior leader can prevent the kind of breakdowns that leave your team spinning. Think of it less as networking and more as preemptive damage control. The middle managers who thrive are the ones who invest in relationships that make the work move. MASTER THE PRACTICE OF LEADERSHIP Leadership is often packaged as a set of sweeping competencies or treated like a fixed trait you either have or dont. In reality, leadership is shaped over time, forged through daily choices, interactions, and repeated practice. While traditional leadership development focuses on broad skills taught in workshops or courseswhat we call horizontal development at Sounding Boardmany real-world challenges require something deeper. Vertical development helps managers think more complexly, adapt to evolving contexts, and lead with lasting impact, not just quick fixes. This kind of development happens through practice, not theory. Neuroscience supports it: Consistent, real-world repetition strengthens the neural pathways that anchor adaptability and retention. At BTS, weve seen that transformational leadership often hinges on unlocking specific mindset shifts, patterns where leaders typically get stuck and need to evolve to grow. So, how do you start? Find smaller moments to experiment. Instead of waiting for a performance review, try a quick debrief after a call with a direct report. Test a new communication approach in a team meeting before the next town hall. You can even name your intention to those around you. Letting others know youre trying something new sets expectations and invites helpful feedback. LEVERAGE AI FOR ON-DEMAND SUPPORT Your toughest challenges dont show up as theory; they show up in the form of messy, human situations: a disengaged direct report, a senior leader who keeps moving the goalposts, a peer who wont align. These problems dont have one-size-fits-all solutions, which is why coaching is so powerful. For decades, personalized coaching was a privilege reserved for executives. But with AI practice bots paired with guidance from real coaches, middle managers can get development thats personalized and scalable when they need it. These tools let you rehearse tough conversations, like giving feedback or delegating more effectively, in a low-stakes environment. Coaches help you translate insights into actions and longer-term mindset shifts. The result is leadership growth thats less abstract and more actionable. The smartest move? Start small. Pick one conversation youve been avoiding and rehearse it with an AI conversation bot. Youll uncover blind spots, test new approaches, and walk into the real thing with more confidence and control. MAKE UNCERTAINTY YOUR PLAYGROUND The defining condition of modern work is uncertainty. Markets swing, technologies disrupt, priorities pivot. If you wait for clarity, youll always be behind. The managers who thrive arent the ones who resist ambiguity, but those who use it as a catalyst to experiment and learn. One biopharmaceutical company I worked with recognized this when it expanded leadership development beyond senior executives to include middle managers. After providing leadership training focused on managing ambiguity and integrating AI into workflows, the company paired each manager with a coach to help translate learning into action. The result was faster decision-making and stronger cross-functional collaboration during a major pivot. When you stop treating uncertainty as a threat and start treating it as a laboratory, you shift from surviving change to shaping it. With these practices, middle management isnt a burden, but a launchpad for growth.
Category:
E-Commerce
I have what I consider a healthy skepticism toward authority. Ive always considered leadersdespite what titles they holdas fallible people who dont necessarily deserve blind adulation or deference. That skepticism has made it hard for me to adopt the company man persona, which might explain how little of the proverbial corporate ladder Ive climbed. And rather than take responsibility for that, Im going to blame my dad: The instinct to question rather than comply, to think critically instead of playing yes-man, came from him. We never had a formal conversation about it. I just watched how he moved through the worldconfident, grounded, with little to proveand absorbed it. Even though I now interrogate masculinity professionally as a writer, the version of being a man I internalized first came from my father. The idea of masculinity is broad, contested, and constantly evolving. And in corporate America, it still matters. Research shows that sons often emulate their fathers version of masculinity, and because men continue to dominate leadership positions in the U.S., those inherited models dont stop at the home. They show up in how work gets done, who gets promoted, and what kinds of behaviors are rewarded. In practice, that inheritance can look like an executive who demands deference but bristles at accountability. Or a leader who establishes a culture where men bond through exclusion or bigotry. Or an environment that rewards bravado over substance, and conflates emotional intelligence with weak, beta behavior. It can show up when men label assertive women aggressive, when they police what version of masculinity makes a leader, or when they constantly need to prove their worth. Think of Successions Kendall Roy, or your own pick of privileged white men whose familial connections thrust them into headlines more than their merit. In short: Corporate America has whats colloquially known as daddy issues. Corporate culture reflects the versions of manhood its leaders were taught to perform. In speaking with several psychologists and professors who specialize in families and masculinity, Ive come to understand that changing this culture wont come from diagnosing men. It will come from redesigning work so that care and empathy arent something they have to unlearn to succeed. Rethinking the dad dynamic Research shows that fathers influence how sons build social networks, how they communicate, and even whether they feel comfortable promoting women. All that even further complexifies when the father-son relationship is fraught. Masculinity researchers use the term father hunger to describe the effects of an absent or emotionally distant father, which can result in insecurity, difficulty forming healthy relationships, a constant search for validation, or adopting a hardened persona to mask fear. But as far as the label daddy issues, its typically reserved for women, and psychologists have long pointed out that this framing is both inaccurate and sexist: All human beings have mommy issues and daddy issues, Michael Thompson, a psychologist specializing in children and families, told me, because our parents shape us so powerfully. When I first started researching this piece, I assumed it would focus primarily on how toxic masculinity is passed from fathers to sons and then reproduced in the workplace. That assumption was informed by my own experiences with male coworkers, and trying to make sense of the world were currently living through: one where that toxic form of masculinity and its negative by-productscruelty, aggression, bigotryseem to be celebrated and exacerbated. But the more I spoke with experts who study the intersection of masculinity, fatherhood, and work, the more that framing felt incomplete. What emerged instead was a picture of modern fatherhood thats more intentional, and more emotionally engaged than the stereotypes suggest. Many of todays fathersand those who hope to become fatherscare deeply about being present for their children and involved in their daily lives. Contemporary daddy issues in the workplace arent about litigating past fatherhood. Theyre about whether institutions make room for a healthier version going forward. Changes underway Language plays a role in that shift to encourage men to more closely examine their masculinity, and the versions of it theyve inherited from fathers and older men in their lives. Developmental psychologist Gary Barker, founder and CEO of the Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Justice, an international organization that works globally to engage men and boys in healthy masculinities, told me he prefers the term caring masculinity over phrases like toxic masculinity or even healthy masculinity. The former, he explains, often makes men defensive; the latter can sound clinical. Caring masculinity, by contrast, frames masculinity around care for children, family members, communities, and friends. It means recognizing that youre at your best when youre connecting with others in caring relationships, Barker said. Barker and I spoke about the influence of our own fathers. Neither explicitly told us that a softer, kinder, less bombastic version of masculinity was the way to go, but care, not a rigid toxicity, was modeled. My father regularly asked me about my feelings and talked with me about my interests, even if they weren’t interests he shared. I always felt seen and accepted. Maybe they didnt have the language around it, Barker said, but they did feel an ethic of, Ive got a duty to those around me.” That perspective aligns with how some psychologists understand the current cultural moment. Michael Reichert, a clinical psychologist and founding director of the Center for the Study of Boys and Girls Lives at the University of Pennsylvania, a research consortium, sees todays conversations not as a rejection of the past, but as an evolution. I dont think were at this place because weve had everything wrong all along, he said. I thin were evolving toward a new understanding of what it means to be a man. That evolution shows up in data. Reichert said this generation of young men prioritizes emotional competence: the ability to identify and regulate their own emotions, express vulnerability, and maintain close relationships without defaulting to dominance or withdrawal. In an interview with The Atlantic, Reichert spoke about an emotional literacy course he taught at a boys high school for 25 years, and how hes seen firsthand the way resistance has morphed into acceptance on this front. National surveys also suggest sustained interest in fatherhood: Pew Research Center data shows that 57% of Gen Z men without children hope to become fathers, while a majority of millennial dads report being highly engaged parents. In other words, many young men arent aspiring to emotional distancetheyre aspiring to connection. The question is whether the workplaces they enter will reward that shift. Where we go from here Jamie Ladge, a professor of management at Boston College who studies fatherhood and organizations, told me that both workplace research and workplace culture still rely on overly narrow definitions of what fathers look like, often centering cisgender, heterosexual men with one partner. That hypothetical father maps neatly onto traditional ideas of masculinity: stoic provider, unencumbered worker, secondary caregiver. But theres a lot more nuance and complexity in the fatherhood identity that needs to be considered, she said. Fathers may see themselves as caregivers, role models, breadwinners, or stay-at-home parentsoften moving between those identities over time. Many fathers arent married, dont work traditional jobs, dont live in nuclear families, or arent in heterosexual relationships. When organizations cling to a single archetype, they dont just miss entire groups of men, they reinforce a narrow model of masculinity that constrains everyone. Ladges research suggests that when workplaces support fathers in these varied rolesand thus support more diverse views of masculinitythe benefits are tangible. Involved fathers are more likely to experience work-family enrichment, feel more satisfied at work, and think less about quitting. Theres a real benefit to being an involved father, Ladge said. That satisfaction carries over into positive outcomes for organizations. Supportive management is key. Policies that normalize paid parental leave, flexible schedules, and caregiving responsibilities dont just benefit families, they influence how employees relate to their work. Barker echoed this point, noting that organizations that encourage caregiving often see greater engagement in return. As fathers, if we feel supported in taking that time, we come back with more energy, more productivity, and more connection to the workplace that made it possible, he said. And yet, despite evidence that caring workplaces are more sustainable and productive, many organizations still cling to outdated ideals. Theres a strong bias, especially in the U.S., that the ideal worker is someone who works the longest hours and has no life outside of work, Ladge said. That expectation undermines the very conditions that allow parentsincluding fathersto be present at home and engaged at work. The result is a self-reinforcing loop: Research shows that parents with greater autonomy and supportive supervisors are more involved with their children, while involved parents are more satisfied and productive employees. I didnt learn skepticism of authority from a leadership seminar. I learned it by watching a man who knew who he wasand didnt need a job to prove it. Workplaces that make room for that kind of fatherhood might finally get the leaders they keep claiming to want.
Category:
E-Commerce
We’ve been sold a lie. Somewhere between go to school and get a job, work became the central node of our livesthe very thing that defines us. We measure our worth by our output, our identity by our title, and our health by how much we can endure. The hours. The travel. The back-to-back meetings. The busyness. That’s not the picture we painted for ourselves when we chose our major in college and envisioned what we thought would be a fulfilling career; that’s conditioning. The result of which has shaped our meaning of work and how we see ourselves in it. But meaning isnt found in the busyness of the grindrather, it’s found in alignment. And when our work has greater meaning, we change our relationship with it and, more importantly, with ourselves. On our latest episode of the From the Culture podcast, we spoke with Lenore Skenazy, cofounder and president of the nonprofit Let Grow, about finding meaning at work. And she offered a unique framing for how to rethink work and find alignment. In response to the public backlash she received after penning a 2008 column in the New York Daily News about letting her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone, Skenazy founded Let Grow with NYU business school professor Jonathan Haidt to help parents rethink the job of parenting. In our venture to become parents, we didnt imagine our job would be that of a supervisor or a concierge to our children. Instead, we imagined ourselves as guardians who would help our children grow. For Skenazy, the meaning of parenting is to prepare our children for adulthood, not to protect them from it. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores the inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then this is the most important conversation in business that you arent having.","subhed":"","description":"","ctaText":"Listen","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLvojPSJ6Iy0T4VojdtGsZ8Q4eAJ6mzr2h","theme":{"bg":"#2b2d30","text":"#ffffff","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","subhed":"#ffffff","buttonBg":"#3b3f46","buttonHoverBg":"#3b3f46","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91470870,"imageMobileId":91470866,"shareable":false,"slug":""}} A deep rethink Although this may seem like a simple repositioning, its actually a profound recontextualization. When we think about parenting as a job of preparation as opposed to protection, it gives our work new meaning and, as a result, we engage in it differently. As Skenazy argues, when the work of parenting is about preparation, we grant our children freedom and independence to navigate the world on their own. Not in a way that endangers them but, rather, challenges them. When this happens, not only do they grow into more resilient humans who will likely be better prepared for the world, but weas parentsget more fulfillment from our work. The benefit of this recontextualization also applies to our professional work. When we reframe the meaning of work, we change our alignment with it. The result of this framing not only improves our well-being but also improves the work. The behavioral science is unambiguous to this fact. When work is more meaningful, were more engaged, more committed, and more satisfied. Moreover, these effects produce greater productivity and higher effort because were more willing to go the extra mile when we feel more fulfilled. A win-win This phenomenon happens on the individual level but scales when we consider the greater work of the organization. When workers collaborate in shared meanings, their collective outputs are optimized, and the organization is more likely to flourish because of it. This isnt about touchy-feely, woo-woo vibes to make people feel good. This is a renegotiation of work that empirically changes how we work, the impact of our work on the organization, and its impact on us. Its a win-win across the board. But thats not the world of work we occupy. Instead, our current framing of work is one that valorizes grind and prioritizes compensationwhich is transactional at best, but in most cases adversarial. Thats not to say that labor should not be sufficiently compensated, but that the exchange between wages and work should be more than just monetary. They should be meaningful as well. Suffice it to say that work is in desperate need of work. Not more grind, more hours, or more late nights, but more meaning. The best part about it is that meaning is socially negotiated and, therefore, we can change it ourselves. It doesnt require permission or approvaljust rethinking. We explore this in greater depth with Skenazy on our latest episode of From the Culture, available here or wherever you get your podcasts. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_16-9.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2026\/01\/studio_square_thumbnail.jpg","eyebrow":"","headline":"FROM THE CULTURE","dek":"FROM THE CULTURE is a podcast that explores the inner workings of organizational culture that enable companies to thrive, teams to win, and brands to succeed. 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Category:
E-Commerce
This story was produced by Grist and co-published with Source NM. The first thing Andy Barrientes noticed when he showed up for his shift at RMS Foods on Valentines Day in 2005 was the cloud of black smoke emanating from the building. A fire had started in the factory around 4:20 p.m., not long before Barrientes was scheduled to clock in as maintenance manager at the food manufacturing plant in southeastern New Mexico. The blaze had caught his coworkers coming off the day shift by surprise; they reported smelling the smoke before seeing the flames. When Barrientes arrived, he saw the staff huddled together at the park across the street. Everyone was holding hands, he said. And we were just the fire was so big. Barrientes had only been working at the factory for a few years. The job was something of an odd one: RMS Foods had once been a prominent meat processor in Hobbs, New Mexico, supplying local hotels and restaurants with cuts of beef and pork. But the company had recently started producing soy-based veggie burgers under the Boca Burger brand an unlikely pivot for a part of the country better known for its cattle ranches, steakhouses, and dairy farms. Barrientes was hired around the same time as this change, and in the years since, veggie burger production had taken off. On the day of the fire, the entire staff evacuated without injuries, allowing the fire department which arrived within four minutes of receiving the call to immediately set to work containing the inferno. By 5:30 p.m., the clouds of smoke had mostly dissipated, but the building was gone. The roof of the factory had collapsed, and all but three pieces of food-processing equipment were damaged beyond repair. Among those standing across the street in the middle of Humble Park were Sam Cobb, president of RMS Foods, and his wife, Rhonda. Cobbs father had founded the company 46 years prior, and the plant had been standing proudly on North Grimes Street for nearly as long. The family business all but burned to the ground in about an hour. Cobb, who had taken over after working under his father for years, promptly began thinking about how to support his employees in the face of such a loss, but he had few details for what came after that. Well assess the damages and see what we can do to get back in business, he told a local reporter for the Hobbs News-Sun. His uncertainty didnt last long. The following day, Cobb informed the News-Sun that he was at work on a plan to continue paying his nearly 100 employees for as long as it took to rebuild the facility although he had yet to meet with the insurance company or inform them of such a plan. In less than a week, Cobb had negotiated a deal between the insurance company, a local construction company, and his staff. All RMS Foods employees would immediately be eligible for state unemployment benefits, and roughly a third would also be hired back to assist with the reconstruction. From the day we started, we were actually building: running wires, putting up red iron, putting up walls, pouring concrete, doing 17 hours a day, said Barrientes, who worked on the factory reconstruction and is still employed at RMS Foods today. We got it done quick, he added. The arrangement was typical of Cobb, according to Barrientes and other current employees. Hes never said no to us. Hes always taken care of every one of his employees, and thats why were all so dedicated to him, he said, because hes dedicated to us. Just eight months later, the facility was operational again and Boca Burgers were flying down the factory line. Tucked away in the southeastern corner of New Mexico, just minutes from the Texas state line, Hobbs lies in the middle of the Permian Basin. Most jobs in the city of about 40,000 residents are in mining, quarrying, or oil and gas extraction, according to the local economic development council. Animal agriculture both cattle ranching and dairy farming also figures significantly in the regions economy and culture. These industries shape local attitudes toward eating; barbeque joints abound in the area and steak dinners are common. Here in oil patch/cattle country, it is probably difficult to find people who will give any type of endorsement to any burger labeled vegetarian, or worse yet, vegan, Robert Hamilton, a local Hobbs librarian who doesnt eat red meat, told me. Against a backdrop of pumpjacks and stretches of desert sky, RMS Foods is a total anomaly. You would be surprised how many people dont know that this is here, said Arnold Langley, a production manager at RMS Foods who has been with the company since 2006. Langley is something of a food-manufacturing veteran having previously worked at a french fry factory that shut down in Washington state, he was hired by RMS to help scale Boca Burger production. Id say I came down to Hobbs to go to work for Sam, said Langley, and I never looked back. Seated in his office, in the same building his employees helped rebuild more than 20 years ago (now dedicated to Rhonda, who died in 2018), Cobb wears a crisp button-down with his salt-and-pepper hair combed back neat. On the walls are photos of friends and family, plaques for business accolades, and black-and-white shots of his days in college at Texas Tech University. An official portrait of Cobb at City Hall sits on a nearby table; Cobb served as the mayor of Hobbs from 2012 to this past January. To illustrate the evolution of RMS Foods, he pulls out various marketing materials hes kept from over the years. There are promotional catalogs of beef and pork products, followed by cheeky magazine ads for Boca Burgers. (One reads: The way Bob devoured his burger, youd think no one told him its meatless with 70 percent less fat.) How Cobb reconciles his relationship to these dueling food industries is curious his venture into the plant-based burger space only came about because of his expertise with meat processing. Cobb is aware of the paradoxes inherent to his careers trajectory. In our first phone call, over a year ago, he conceded that non-animal sources of protein will become crucial to food security in years to come. Theres no way that as our global population grows, everybody can have a T-bone steak every night, he said. Additionally, greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture, particularly beef production, are a major contributor to climate change. Research has shown more people embracing a plant-based diet is a crucial step to reducing global emissions. But for Cobb, animal agriculture and plant-based protein have long existed alongside each other, and in his case, one supports the other. He likes to say: I make veggie burgers for a living so I can afford to be a cowboy. Cobb himself is a fourth-generation rancher. In the late 1880s, his great-grandfather Gatlin Hall Cobb acquired land and started a ranch in Haskell County, Texas, which is still in the family today. Sam Cobbs father, S.G., lived through the Great Depression and a drought in the 1950s, two events that showed him the financial precarity of raising cattle for a living. It soon became clear that the Cobb family didnt make enough money off of the family ranch to support both generations. So S.G. left Texas and headed west to New Mexico in 1959, with the hope of one day buying his own ranch. S.G. had a no-nonsense way about him, according to his son, and when he arrived in Hobbs, he opened a franchise of Rich Plan Corporation, a frozen-food company that sold and delivered bulk orders directly to households nd even offered freezers to hold months worth of food. According to Cobb, when the national Rich Plan Corporation went bankrupt, S.G. maintained his relationships with livestock farmers and rebranded his company as Rich Meat Services. The company transitioned into a meat processing business, selling beef and pork products to a number of hotels, restaurants, fast-food chains, and food service distributors around the country. But the dream of starting another family ranch never left his father, said Cobb, and in 1978, after nearly 20 years in New Mexico, S.G. and a business partner bought some land off a longstanding ranching family, in Lea County, where Hobbs is located. That family, too, was struggling with the economics of their chosen profession. What happens with ranches is the families grow, but theres not enough ranch income to feed everybody, said Cobb. So then they start selling it off. For Cobb, raising cattle is still a family affair: His oldest son lives on the ranch and Sam comes out on weekends to help with branding, castrating, and corralling cattle. His granddaughter from Austin occasionally comes into town for workdays, too. The ranch, along with the family land in Texas, holds tremendous symbolic value to Cobb, whose father instructed him never to sell it. After graduating from Texas Tech in 1976 with dual degrees in animal science and business, Cobb came back to New Mexico to work for his father at Rich Meat Services first as a salesman, and then in operations. He had a knack for keeping clients happy by staying level-headed in a crisis. David Pyeatt, who was once a customer of Rich Meat Services, said, Sams incredibly intelligent and witty as heck. And he always takes a complex problem and comes up with a very obvious and simple solution. But the move away from sales may have been for the best; Pyeatt suggested that Cobb can be buttoned-up to the point of coming across as awkward. Tall, careful with words, and with near-perfect posture, Cobb sometimes has the air of a chaperone at a school dance. When you first meet Sam, you may think hes a turd, you know? said Pyeatt, who, it must be said, considers Cobb a dear friend. Am I saying that nicely? As a businessman, Cobbs superpower is his pragmatism. In 1980, he took over RMS Foods as president, and the company soon became the largest supplier to Dairy Queen franchises in the Southwest. Years later, Cobb struck a deal with a Japanese trading company to export high-quality cuts of beef and pork to Japan taking the company he inherited from his dad to new heights. But he always had an eye on growing the business even more, and in the late 90s, that meant looking beyond red meat. The company Boca Burger, started by a natural-food restaurateur in Boca Raton, Florida, was successful at capturing the publics attention with a better-for-you veggie burger, at a moment when diet culture ran rampant. In 1995, then-president Bill Clinton made headlines for stocking Boca Burgers on Air Force One, after reportedly being introduced to the vegetarian product by a heart specialist. The trend caught Cobbs attention, too. In 1997, through a fortuitous chain of connections and on the strength of his reputation as a meat purveyor an invitation to join a group of investors and purchase Boca Burger came to Cobbs desk. According to him, it was a no-brainer. RMS already had most of the necessary manufacturing equipment to get started. The titular Boca Burger made primarily of soy protein concentrate and wheat gluten essentially comes together using the same manufacturing process as a ground-beef burger, said Cobb. The only difference is the ingredients. Instead of blending animal protein, were blending plant protein. Initially, Cobb became an employee of Boca Burger, sold off his Dairy Queen business, and ceased producing meat products at RMS Foods. When production of Boca Burger moved to Hobbs, RMS was manufacturing about 60 percent of the brands soy patties. We started growing exponentially, said Cobb, enough for the conglomerate Kraft Foods (now Kraft Heinz) to notice. Sales went from $20 million in 1998 to $40 million the following year. On the strength of that growth, Kraft bought Boca Burger in 2000 for an undisclosed amount. I saw an opportunity in the plant-based category, said Cobb, and it paid off. By 2002, Boca Burger sales reached $70 million. After the 2005 fire, representatives from Kraft Foods visited Hobbs and were so impressed by Cobbs operations that they decided to designate RMS the exclusive manufacturer of Boca Burgers. Sam got a letter from Kraft telling him that, said Barrientes, and the company president read it out loud to his staff in the newly rebuilt office conference room. His father stood beside him for the announcement. They were in tears, because they were coming back, said Barrientes. Every morning Cobb is in the RMS office, he eats whatever plant-based product is being made at the moment for breakfast. Its a daily ritual shared by many of the staff members, who sample the veggie patties all day to inspect the quality. The faux-meat burgers are good, employees admit, but of course, they arent well, meat. (I mean, I love my steaks, said Barrientes.) Cobb isnt planning on giving up meat anytime soon, and doesnt expect others to immediately do so, either. Im an omnivore, he said. As a planet, we dedicate roughly half of all our habitable land to growing food. But the majority of that land nearly 80 percent is ultimately in service of raising livestock. Thats because livestock need pasture land to graze, but they also depend on animal feed and growing enough corn and soy for all those farmed animals also takes a lot of land. Cattle and other ruminants pose a big problem for the planet in the form of greenhouse gas emissions; these animals have stomachs with multiple compartments, and their digestive process produces methane, which is then released when the animals burp. But the amount of land needed to raise animals for human consumption also means the global demand for meat drives a tremendous amount of deforestation and biodiversity loss. Thats why so many plant-based protein advocates argue mitigating the effects of the climate crisis rest on everyone eating less meat. When it comes to matters of persuasion, however, Cobb understands that nobody has ever changed their diet unless they themselves wanted to. Ive got friends that wouldnt put a plant-based burger in their mouth with a gun to their head, he said. This awareness may be a business advantage for someone like Cobb even if the uncomfortable truth may strike fear into the hearts of plant-based evangelists and climate advocates. In the 2010s, Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods went all-in on developing veggie patties that supposedly tasted and bled like real beef. At the time, much of their messaging touched on the environmental case for swapping out beef for soy. I know it sounds insane to replace a deeply entrenched, trillion-dollar-a-year global industry thats been a part of human culture since the dawn of human ciilization, said Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown in a TEDMED talk, referring to animal agriculture. But it has to be done. The plant-based protein category enjoyed double-digit sales growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data from the Good Food Institute, a think tank that tracks the alternative protein industry. But since 2022, demand for these products has been falling. For Brown and others, this style of practically pleading with consumers to change their habits spectacularly backfired. Beyond Meats stock price tanked by more than 99 percent in 2025 compared to five years prior. The company reported a net loss of $110.7 million in the fiscal third quarter of last year, its most recent earnings report. Its total outstanding debt is $1.2 billion. Beyond has never once turned an annual profit. There are a number of theories as to why Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods gamble on ultra-realistic fake meat failed so hard including their inability to compete with beef on price and taste. Our thesis is that a bunch of products launched during the pandemic that werent ready for mainstream adoption, said Caroline Cotto, head of NECTAR, an organization that runs taste tests with plant-based and animal-protein products in order to help the former achieve taste parity. A lot of consumers tried those products and had a really negative experience because they were paying more for a product that didnt deliver, she added. So they really soured on that category and have stopped revisiting it. Cotto argues that the plant-based meat industry is something of a valley of disillusionment, and its hard to disagree. This stunning market failure carries a lesson for the plant-based industry that the broader climate movement and environmental experts have long known: Information alone, even a lot of it, even the really dire stuff, is insufficient to lead to a change in how most people behave. Some industry leaders may now be actively running in the opposite direction of mentioning climate and sustainability: Peter McGuinness, the former CEO of Impossible Foods who stepped down last month, argues this sector struck out with consumers by becoming too woke and partisan. The future of Impossible, now, is cloudy. The company recently announced it is experimenting with protein-packed grains and pastas. The plant-based burger category as a whole has slumped, and as a result, RMS is also producing fewer units of Boca Burgers these days. Barrientes estimates the plant makes less than 4 million pounds of soy-based burgers for Kraft Heinz every year, when in previous years, it was moving almost 20 million. Based on all his experiences in Hobbs, Cobb understands that part of selling plant-based food comes down to how you talk to people. Its the old adage. You can lead a horse to water, but youre not making him drink, he said. But he also reckons that the answer is simpler that the role flavor plays cannot be understated. If you want a hamburger, and you want a big old greasy hamburger, its hard to duplicate that with a plant-based product, said Cobb. Cotto agrees but thinks these product categories can achieve taste parity, or even become something consumers prefer over meat, with more research and development. The biggest opportunity across the board is just making sure that these products taste great, she said. Cobb regularly goes out to eat with a small group of friends, including David Pyeatt, his former customer from his meat-supplier days. For someone in the food business, even casual meals can function as informal, but telling, focus groups. At a dinner last October, when I asked the group whether they like faux-meat burgers, nervous laughter sputtered around the table. John, a rancher based in Hobbs, said there was nothing about synthetic meat that appealed to him, and said he didnt think he would ever try it. Pyeatt shared a story about how his wife had recently made two versions of sloppy Joes one with ground beef, and another for his mother-in-law that used vegan crumbles from Boca. Pyeatt tried both, and loved the plant-based one more than the tried-and-true original. It simply, in his words, tasted better. But ultimately, he said, if you put a steak in front of me, Im going to like a nice steak. Nobody here eats Boca Burger, said Cobb, though his guests quickly contradicted that. Someone suggested that Boca Burger patties arent bad if served with a bit of mayo. The conversation underscored how, at the end of the day, people want to eat things that taste good and the promise of something truly delicious can tempt even the staunchest meat-eaters among us. The servers began to bring out peoples orders, and when the last plate dropped, Cobb and his guests picked up their forks and knives and began to cut into their steak dinners. Cobb believes the plant-based burger is functionally dead. Back at his office, speaking from behind his desk, he explained his view that faux-meat patties will never fully go away, but that demand is unlikely to return to the levels it reached during the pandemic. Whether or not vegan brands should try to replicate the taste and texture of meat is a really big debate right now in the space, Cotto said. But breaking free of conventions set by meat-eaters and industrial animal agriculture will demand new ways of thinking, cooking, and dining. We dont have a name for it, said Cotto, but the plant-based protein industry could also explore a third-space product thats sort of like the closest equivalent I can think of is tofu, right? Its a center-plate protein, but its not fitting into a narrow box for consumers. Whether or not plant-based brands will pursue that route, for now, remains to be seen. Either way, Cobb isnt out of the game. When I asked him about the future of the industry, I was struck by his pragmatism. Ever the entrepreneur, he is still out looking for opportunities to bring in new plant-based manufacturing business. He argues that the concept of swapping veggies for meat could catch on as long as its price competitive. Last year, on top of its Boca Burger production, RMS began a new partnership with the Seattle-based Rebellyous Foods, a brand of plant-based chicken patties and nuggets that sells directly to food service and school districts. (Disclaimer: Former Grist CEO Brady Walkinshaw is an investor in Rebellyous Foods. He had no editorial role in this story.) The ingredients are nearly identical to those in Boca Burgers, employees told me, but the manufacturing process varies slightly, giving the faux chicken products a juicier, more delicious texture. Employees at RMS seem to love it: Its actually good stuff, one told me. Cobb said hes interested in exploring the so-called emerging product category of blended proteins think: sausages and hot dogs that replace some of their meat content with whole-cut veggies or soy. Plant-based advocates like these proucts because they help lower consumers overall meat consumption, even if they never give up meat entirely. But Cobb noted this practice is nothing new. I used to put soy in hamburger patties. We used to do that for cost savings, he said. He reminded me that all of the technical equipment and expertise that RMS has acquired over the decades of being in the food-manufacturing business means the company is well-positioned to produce other vegetarian appetizers and snacks, like falafel. These, he reckons, can appeal to meat-eaters, as long as they taste good. When it comes down to it, Cobb has been successful because he pays attention to what consumers want and, quite simply, makes it. When I asked Cobb if he would ever go back to processing meat, he answered: I would if the opportunity presented itself and it created jobs for my employees and people in Hobbs. He paused and added, Yes, Ive considered that.
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