Gary walks by Larry on a jobsite. Gary gives Larry a hearty hello and even asks how he’s doing. Larry responds with a head nod and a “good, thanks.” Gary is left wondering what’s wrong with Larry, while Larry wonders why Gary is always so loud. That’s because they both communicate differently, and one way is not better than the other. That was one of the lessons I took away from two presentations at Lawn & Landscape’s Top 100 Executive Summit and Awards Dinner last month.

Both of our speakers, Dr. Jermaine Davis and Dave Mitchell, have studied communication for years and were the keynote speakers at the event. That lesson — that not everyone communicates or wants to be communicated with like I do — was a key take away for me. Here are a few more lessons I took away from the presentations.

• Look ahead. Davis says feedback is important, but we lose sight of what he calls “feedforward.” Feedback lets people know what they got wrong, feedforward is about inspiration and aspiration. “Here’s how you position yourself for success next time.”

• Ask the right question. In an interview, Mitchell recommends asking a candidate, “Tell me about a time you disappointed your boss, your parents or your teachers?” During the answer, they can either take ownership of the mistake or blame someone else. Who do you want working at your company?

• Listen up. Davis says there are three goals to listening: To demonstrate respect, to hear the person out and to seek to understand. But none of that means you have to agree with each other. It just means you have created enough space for the other person to share their perspective.

“That lesson — that not everyone communicates or wants to be communicated with like I do — was a key take away for me.”

• Remember perspective. Mitchell says we are all delusional because we all develop how we see the world through the experiences we have. “We are all living in our own private island,” he says. Two people can have exactly the same experience but walk out with different feelings about the situation.

You can read more about Davis’ presentation and Mitchell’s in the August issue of Lawn & Landscape. – Brian Horn

Dr. Jermaine Davis remembers conversations with his mother fondly.

When she passed away in 2005, he spoke at her memorial service and recalled that he could go to her with anything. But he admitted that if an old adage is true — that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail — she wielded her voice like a jackhammer.

Davis said that even today, when someone yells or curses at him, he shuts down. But the problem is that he naturally gravitated toward that communication style, and it was something he had to shake.

“Great leaders, great supervisors — they have multiple tools so they can adjust. You can’t motivate everyone the same. People are different,” Davis said. “I want to have an open relationship with my son. If he makes a poor choice, I want him to open up and share it. But I know I have to earn that.”

Davis spoke at Lawn & Landscape’s annual Top 100 event in Nashville, Tennessee, where executives from the largest landscaping and lawn care companies nationwide attended to celebrate their successful years amidst a pandemic. And, in what Davis said was his first live presentation since the pandemic began, he told the attendees what he’s learned in 25 years of working in communication at Frito Lay, Keebler Cookies and IBM.

Among those lessons? Leading while trying to gain someone’s perspectives, even when you disagree, is the most effective way toward progress.

“When an individual is brutally honest, it can shut people down. I’m going to recommend you put some more tools in your toolbox so you can be more effective,” Davis said. “What if you were honest while being compassionate? It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you’re soft. I’m going to say it in a way where people hear you.”

Welcome the conversation.

Davis said communication happens in one of three areas: someone’s private life with immediate family; someone’s personal life with close associates or friends; and someone’s professional life at work or in a particular industry.

Conversations in any of those arenas can turn contentious in a hurry, and Davis recommended putting a stop to it and implementing a few quick tactics to avoid the talk from spiraling completely.

“Next time you’re having a conversation that’s going south, be mature enough to say, in your own words, ‘hey, is this conversation working for you?’” Davis said.

Davis recommends asking:

• “Is this conversation working for you?”
• “Would you like for it to work for you?”
• “What’s one thing you need from me to make this conversation work for you?”

As for identifying when those conversations need these tactics, Davis said it’s important to acknowledge the productivity of the talk. There’s a major difference between dialogue and debate. “A dialogue is an exchange between you and your stakeholders. They share, you share and then you make sense,” Davis said. “But in a debate, there’s yelling, screaming, jockeying for position. It drains people. When people are drained, (there’s) no motivation to do the work.”

Measured approach.

Davis said he practices a carpenter’s golden rule: measure twice and cut once. In other words, he says know your goals — reaffirm your goals — and then make decisions.

Additionally, he also said establishing trust with your teams to help accomplish those goals is essential. Particularly as business leaders, making sure that employees feel empowered helps drive them toward effective communication.

“When people trust us, do you know what happens? Communicate goes up,” he said. “When people trust us, they take more risk. When people trust us, they open up more. When people trust us, they share their creative ideas. When they don’t trust us, they hold back. They’ll watch the organization tank.”

Finally, Davis also told attendees that when a “champion” loses a game, they go back and watch the game tape. They get feedback to review what went wrong. He recommends company leaders do the same thing several times throughout the year.

“Feedback is the breakfast food of champions,” he said. “(Using it shows) here’s how you position yourself for success next time.”

Scythe Robotics (Scythe), the creator of commercial-grade autonomous robotic solutions for the landscaping industry, announced its first offering: an all-electric, fully autonomous mower, designed completely in-house.

Scythe also announced its $13.8 million in Series A funding led by Inspired Capital with participation from existing investors True Ventures, Zigg Capital and Lemnos, bringing the company’s total funding to $18.6 million. The new investment will be used to grow the company’s existing operations in Texas, Florida and Colorado, expand with new customers and accelerate development of further products.

The machine features eight HDR cameras and a suite of other sensors that enable it to operate safely in dynamic environments by identifying and responding to the presence of humans, animals and other potential obstacles. Simultaneously, the machine captures property and mower performance data.

Founded in 2018 by Jack Morrison, Isaac Roberts and Davis Foster, distribution of the mowers is scheduled for Fall of 2022.

“To date, commercial landscape contractors haven’t had a technology partner who enables them to keep up with demand and to operate emissions-free. We are that partner,” said Jack Morrison, co-founder and CEO of Scythe. “Our autonomous mower gives them the ability to grow their business, while staying green. It’s designed from the ground up to be an order of magnitude more reliable, more productive and safer than any existing machine by incorporating state of the art autonomy with a rugged, all-electric design.”

HOLMDEL, N.J. — WorkWave has signed an agreement to acquire Real Green Systems.

“(This acquisition) marks the beginning of a new chapter where WorkWave will help our customers focus on the future, helping them to go beyond service to create effective, fast-growing, highly profitable service organizations that also deliver the best service experience possible,” said David F. Giannetto, CEO of WorkWave.

While the Real Green solution and PestPac will remain separate, additional product offerings that support customer growth, including Coalmarch and WorkWave Agency groups, will work together.

Serent Capital, the former investor in Real Green, and Real Green Founder Joe Kucik will roll significant equity and join TA Associates as minority owners of WorkWave.

“Real Green believes in this same mission, and together we will allow every solution in this expanded WorkWave product portfolio to deliver greater value,” Giannetto said. “We have tremendous respect for the Real Green team, and the goal of this acquisition is to not just allow them to continue to lead the green industries forward, but to help them make an even greater impact.”

Bill Nunan, president and CEO of Real Green, will stay on as the head of Real Green operations within WorkWave.

“After years of watching WorkWave develop alongside Real Green, we’ve long known that the combination of these two companies would create something special,” Nunan said.

This move follows WorkWave’s recent acquisition of Slingshot, a provider of customer call center software.

BLUE BELL, Pa. – BrightView Holdings acquired Baytree Landscape Contractors, a full-service landscape firm based in Atlanta. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

“Like BrightView, Baytree has achieved success across the spectrum of landscape services: design, development, irrigation, maintenance and enhancement. We look forward to bringing their skilled workforce and leadership into the BrightView family,” said BrightView President and CEO Andrew Masterman.

Baytree operates from six primary locations: Atlanta; Johns Island, S.C.; Charleston, S.C.; Myrtle Beach, S.C.; Charlotte; and Nashville. At peak, Baytree employs more than 370 team members. The company also ranked no. 49 on Lawn & Landscape’s Top 100 List this year.

“The team at Baytree is excited about the many opportunities that being a part of the BrightView organization will bring,” said Andrew S. Watkins, Baytree president and CEO. “The people part of our business is everything. BrightView has put a priority on that from day one of this process.”

BrightView has also acquired West Bay Landscape, a landscape maintenance firm in Bradenton, Fla. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

West Bay’s primary focus is commercial landscape maintenance, serving clients within a 30-mile radius of their base in Bradenton, south of Tampa Bay, on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

No one came out of the pandemic craving more Zoom. Everyone has told me as our industry emerges from a different kind of tech bubble. After a year working in the cloud, technology fatigue has never been higher, even as it allowed us to thrive during an unprecedented worldwide event.

If a jumble of apps and data sets has your employees feeling hijacked by systems they don’t understand, you are not alone. Technology is one of the highest-ranking stressors in the workplace. As a tool, it is equally important as trucks, mowers and other equipment in ensuring consistent employee productivity and optimal customer satisfaction.

But, unlike how fixing an equipment problem results in a higher-performing tool, fixing a tech problem by upgrading the tech often upgrades the problem without any meaningful gains in customer satisfaction or employee productivity.

Here are 5 strategies to reduce technology overwhelm and regain control:

Too much tech can be overwhelming,so make sure what you're using is effective enough that it solves problems without creating new ones.

1. Determine who owns the tech. This may be one of the most overlooked pieces in many organizations. Just as your operations divisions have people responsible for ensuring they function correctly, your technology solutions should also have an owner to provide oversight, training, evaluation, implementation and integration. The real value of tech lives in how it integrates throughout your business, providing critical, accurate, actionable and timely data across all levels of the organization in a seamless, accessible manner.

2. Evaluate the capabilities of current tech. Technology is sometimes employed because it easily addresses a specific need. When lesser-known or unique uses of the program are overlooked, critical functionality is not employed, resulting in additional technology being implemented down the road that should have been handled by existing tech. This can lead to unnecessary expense, compatibility issues and increased workload where the same data must be entered into multiple systems. Being creative with tech implementation and use can often provide needed results even if the software was not specifically designed to function a specific way. This eliminates the need for multiple solutions.

3. Implement the right tech for the right data. Technology implementation should be done with a specific purpose in mind. Employing technology simply because of the cool things it can do is pointless if it does not ultimately increase the ability to better service your customer base or improve employee productivity. For tech that you choose to employ, verify the information it provides is timely, accurate and useful. Don’t confuse data volume with usefulness. Useful data should provide you and your employees with critical, actionable data that benefits your customer, streamlines employees’ workloads, or does both at the same time.

4. Eliminate “app for that” thinking. You’d be surprised at how many workaround tools your staff may be using, especially those that are free, easy to download or promote a quick fix. Solving a tech issue with a quick trip to the app store compounds your tech silos and fails to solve the problem. Be proactive. Make a list of all the apps your teams are using, authorized or DIY, then find out where the system limitations are and fix them. It could be as easy as more training.

5. Address the learning curve. Workarounds, like all shortcuts, fill a perceived need. Mostly, they’re employed to overcome learning gaps with existing systems or humor a “because this is the way we’ve always done it this way” mentality that is resistant to change. The result is separate processes, outside tracking spreadsheets and individual-use apps, all of which create compatibility and reporting inconsistencies with existing systems while limiting access to critical information and requiring more effort to obtain it. Find out what employees don’t know, what will help them become more fluent, and make learning a major part of any new technology initiative.

These actions will increase the visibility of usable data, help streamline critical processes, and ensure a better and more consistent service experience for your customers.

An increasing global population, droughts and a move toward more sustainable options throughout the industry has led to drip irrigation becoming more popular.

Because of this, irrigation companies are working to provide products that are more advanced, environmentally friendly and speed up installation time for contractors.

Benefits beyond saving water.

The primary advantage of drip irrigation is ultimately water conservation.

“It’s the most efficient form of irrigation because it’s putting water directly where it’s needed,” says Peter Lackner, product manager at Toro. “And that’s especially true of subsurface irrigation where it’s putting water directly at the root level.”

Rick Foster, principal product manager with Rain Bird’s landscape drip business unit, calls drip irrigation a problem solver, since it eliminates overspray that winds up on cars, parking lots, sidewalks and other areas where it’s not wanted.

Foster says another perk of choosing subsurface drip irrigation is it reduces acts of vandalism.

“Drip irrigation can be installed subsurface…which means you don’t see it. And if they can’t see it, they can’t damage it. Unfortunately, vandals see a spray that’s popped up and they give it a kick,” he says. “It happens.”

The amount of water needed to run a drip irrigation system also attracts more contractors.

“As the population increases, and there’s more and more demand on the infrastructure, we’re losing more water pressure,” says Rick Hall, market development director with K-Rain. “Drip irrigation, by nature, is a low-pressure delivery system. It’s not going to suffer the same long-term effects of an overhead system.”

Hall adds that during times of droughts, where water conservation is critical, some communities give relief or exemption to water restrictions where drip irrigation systems are installed.

Advancing the apparatus.

Since drip is becoming increasingly more popular, irrigation companies are making a wider range of products to keep up with demand.

Netafim has been working to provide more options when it comes to flow and spacing.

“Dripline used to be about .9 gph (gallons per hour) flow and 12-inch spacing. Most manufacturers still only have one or two flow rates,” says Mauricio Troche, vice president of sales for specialty markets at Netafim. “With our farming background we understood the need for multiple flows to meet different soil or plant types.”

Netafim manufactures equipment with flow rates as low as .26 gph to as high as 1.16 gph, coupled with spacings from six inches to 24 inches.

Troche says the company is also making more check valves for slope and elevation changes.

Rain Bird has been making advancements with check valves too, by adding them to each emitter in the dripline system.

“In a drip zone, or any irrigation zone, when you complete the irrigation cycle and the valve turns off, typically all that water drains out at the lowest point in the zone,” Foster says. “And that’s a lot of wasted water…so, one of the other advancements that’s happening is the integration of check valves inside each tiny, little drip emitter.

“So, instead of having an in-line check valve, which have been around for years and years, that are big and bulky and the size of your fist, the industry has developed tiny check valves that are located in each individual drip emitter,” he adds. “And what that means is, when the zone shuts off, all the water stays in the drip line.”

Rain Bird also has a patent for its copper chip technology in its new XFS Subsurface Dripline.

“When you go subsurface, you have to protect the devices from root intrusion and that’s a big problem,” Foster says.

“One of the most important advancements is the use of copper located right in the drip emitter itself. Copper is known to resist root growth, so as roots get closer to a high concentration of copper, the growth of the root is interfered with.”

Hunter is also getting into the copper game, and Robb Kowalewski, product manager for Hunter’s valves and micro-irrigation division, says a copper dripline will debut in Q1 of 2021.

“I think the way people design will probably modify globally…and because of that, drip irrigation will continue to grow and be more and more relevant.” Robb Kowalewski, product manager for Hunter’s valves and micro-irrigation division

However, Kowalewski says one of the company’s tried and true products is even better at preventing root intrusion.

“What we consider to be our better invest is our Eco-Wrap and our Eco-Mat,” he says. “The Eco-Wrap is a dripline that has a fleece lining wrapped around it. It is more root-resistant than copper and, because of the fleece, it actually moves the water better under soil.”

Lackner says Toro still has a flagship products, the DL2000, which uses a cylindrical emitter that’s also tolerant of debris.

Additionally, Lackner says Toro is working on creating products that ease installation.

“We revamped our drip zone valve kits about three years ago, and with anything with drip, it’s important to have a filter on the line as well as a pressure regulator,” he says.

“The revamp we did was basically consolidating our regulators into one model that can tolerate a wider range of flows. We’ve got essentially a universal flow pressure regulator…that makes things easier for the contractor to install.”

Furthermore, Toro’s tri-lock fittings fit multiple size driplines, which helps contractors when retrofitting or dealing with maintenance issues.

Rain Bird has also been working to speed up installation.

“We’ve developed pre-assembled units we call control zone kits,” Foster says. “Instead of having to go find all the individual components, and confirming they all work together, we’ve done all that work for them. ”

Netafim has created its wheelbarrow tubing dispenser and Techlock Fittings with the motto “keep it simple” in mind.

“The tubing dispenser is just that. You put a roll onto the wheelbarrow. Like a lazy Susan, you’re able to move it around easily and dispense tubing quickly,” Troche says.

“The Tech Lock fittings are meant to be used instead of insert fittings when you think you might move the tubing again or want to change the design down the road. They are meant to be used in smaller spaces.”

Making drip a mainstay.

Hall believes that drip’s popularity plays into contractors being more educated on the subject.

“I can recall years ago that drip was considered a splurge or a luxury,” he says. “But today it’s become common practice in a lot of areas. Irrigated areas are becoming smaller and smaller as populations expand, so drip is very much mainstream today.

“The need to throw water great distances are limited to athletic fields, golf course, large parks and places like that.”

And Hall says drip irrigation will only continue to evolve.

“I would suspect that as drip continues to grow in popularity, you’re going to find more companies offering creative ways of quickly installing it,” he says.

Lackner too believes more people will embrace drip irrigation, and other sustainable measures.

“I anticipate we’ll see more fluent water infrastructure expansion and people using more retreated water to water their landscapes,” he says.

Troche says Netafim has been looking to encourage more people to use reclaimed water as well.

“As more water agencies and states require the use of reclaimed water, we have developed two options,” he says. “We’ve always had a reclaimed option that drained completely and with our emitter filtration and new copper oxide root intrusion technology, we now offer a reclaimed check valve version for projects that have elevation changes.”

Kowalewski also says an increased focus on the environment will lead to more landscape designers to incorporate drip.

“I think drip irrigation will continue to grow at a higher pace than overhead sprays,” he says. “I think the way people design will probably modify globally…and because of that drip irrigation will continue to grow and be more and more relevant.”

But with so many options out there, Kowalewski says it can be difficult for contractors to know exactly what to choose.

“I think there are some many (products) that it’s confusing so I think companies will probably consolidate products,” he says.

Foster says simplifying the installation process is more important now than ever.

“Sometimes, simple innovations like pre-assembling a system may be very helpful for customers,” he says.

“I think it’s important especially with a tight labor market, and COVID-19, contractors want to do work with smaller teams and get in and out of the jobsite quickly.”