Landscape Management, December 2018

business insider LETS GROW Growth requires ownership at all levels S ome owners lament that they made more money when they were smaller and they make less now Why is that One reason is their inability to build a strong dynamic nimble organization that operates as well as the owner could on his or her own To scale your business effectively you have to successfully scale your organization and this requires that your leaders from laborers and foremen on up to the director level feel and take ownership of their area of operation Ownership must be empowered and at many levels it also must be trained so that employees understand their role and understand what it means to take ownership Here is an example SUPER FOREMEN FOREWOMEN To operate as super foreman means to operate at the level of supervisor and project manager Super foremen in installation take ownership for their projects To do that they must be empowered with information This means giving them all the project data ahead of time so they can process it and plan accordingly According to Brandon Lair CEO of The Site Group in New Carlisle Ohio you should review the job with foremen a week ahead and give them the job estimate sequenced in the order that it will be produced You then ask them to schedule their own work by inviting them to the scheduling meetings to represent their own jobs in the scheduling discussion Its a chicken and egg concept If you want your people to act like project managers start treating and training them as such When you give foremen actual ownership of their jobs success they will take more ownership when talking to clients giving them a better experience too More ownership will translate into a better chance of hitting numbers timelines and quality objectives FREEDOM TO FAIL Having worked with countless owners and profiling them using scientific tools I have uncovered that a low level of trust is the entrepreneurs biggest weakness This is not conjecture or anecdotal I have data Looking at BY JEFFREY SCOTT The author is owner of Jeffrey Scott Consulting which helps landscape companies grow and maximize profits Reach him at jeff@ jeffreyscott biz 24 different personality traits trust rates the lowest on average on a scale of 1 to 10 Not all entrepreneurs score low but a majority of them do This shows up in an owners inability to empower his or her people with knowledge and authority to make decisions Employees must have the freedom to fail if they are to improve Employees learn from their mistakes We all do But owners with low levels of trust short circuit that process Their people stop growing their organization stops growing and their better people leave or never get hired due to the subconscious knowledge that the owner will have to give up control Thus the owner sadly finds out that his or her income shrinks as his or her organization grows THE ENTREPRENEURS GROWTH CHALLENGE Mentoring Leading 2018 JEFFREY SCOTT Managing Doing YOUR CHALLENGE Take the 20 per hour tasks you do and delegate them or eliminate them from your companys processes altogether Then take the 50 per hour tasks and delegate those too Then take your most important tasks and find develop or hire someone to mentor who can do a better job than you so you can move up to more important things and grow yourself and your company to the next level As shown in the figure The Entrepreneurs Growth Challenge the owner of the business must grow for the organization to take on ownership and become strong dynamic and profitable If the owner is not growing neither is the company DECEMBER 2018 LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET 53