Lawn & Landscape Debuts Its School of Management

Combine lawn care and landscape professionals’ continuing search for innovative ideas with a slate of speakers including some of the most widely respected minds of the green industry, and what do you have? How about the first-ever Lawn & Landscape School of Management?

This ground-breaking event took place April 28 in Atlanta and drew more than 100 registrants away from a booming spring season for the opportunity to further educate themselves and, hopefully, uncover at least one nugget of an idea which they could turn into gold for their companies.

Along with an impressive lineup of speakers, attendees also enjoyed the opportunity to hear about recent news and product offerings from representatives of Novartis, Dingo Digging Systems and Stihl — the three sponsors of the event.

“We pride ourselves on the amount of communication we have with our readers,” noted Cindy Code, group pub-lisher of Lawn & Landscape magazine. “And many of the comments we hear from our readers relate to a need for regional events designed to address some of the key management issues facing this industry.

“Our mission is to provide the members of the green industry with the information they need to be the most effective and profitable professionals they can be,” Code continued. “The size of our readership indicates that the magazine is already doing that, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other vehicles by which we can do this to complement the magazine’s success.”

THE LINEUP. The key to any successful school is the quality of its faculty, and the common bond shared by each of the six speakers at the Lawn & Landscape School of Management is that they each earned their degree in experience.

Bill Hoopes, director of training for the Barefoot Grass division of TruGreen-ChemLawn, Worthington, Ohio, kicked off the event with an energetic presentation called, “Hiring Practices That Work.”

The importance of effective hiring cannot be overemphasized, warned Hoopes. He noted that while some estimates of the cost to a company of replacing an employee are often as high as $10,000, those may, in fact, be conservative estimates. He outlined how the costs associated with hiring a replacement — placing an ad, taking time to interview, revenue lost until the new employee is working and revenue lost during the new employee’s learning curve — can easily reach as high as $11,187.

But what good are proper hiring practices without effective training, asked Dick Ott, director of training, Orkin Plant-scaping, Knoxville, Tenn.? His session, “Bringing Out the Best in Your People,” focused on the importance of tailoring any company program centered around the employees to what they need and want. Involving the employees in the process of creating the program not only boosts their interest in the program, it will also increase the program’s effectiveness, Ott assured.

Ed Wandtke, an industry consultant with Wandtke & Associates, Westerville, Ohio, followed Ott to the podium and addressed the critical issue of “Leadership for the 1990s.” Wandtke involved attendees in a candid discussion of the differences between leadership and management that culminated with a working definition for each and ways that they apply to various types of companies. Too many company leaders spend too much time being managers, Wandtke noted, and the cost to the business may be severe.

After networking through lunch at the host Crowne Plaza Ravinia hotel, attendees returned to class so Phil Christian, pdc Associates, Atlanta, could instruct them on “Increasing Productivity in Landscape Services.” Christian illustrated the dangers of defining productivity as simply “the amount of work done in as little time as possible” and engaged attendees in an ongoing question-and-answer session about some of the specific changes they could implement in their business the very next day.

To be more profitable, companies don’t have to uncover any hidden secrets, explained Steve Derrick, Gold Kist Inc., Atlanta. Instead, Derrick highlighted a number of specific areas companies can address to improve their profitability in the areas of employees, cost controls and customer retention. For example, a recent study indicated that 68 percent of lawn care customers switch service providers because of a perceived indifference from their current company. This is a problem that can be addressed proactively by companies to increase their profits.

Tracy Morland, Horticultural Business Management, Blanchardville, Wis., closed the event with “Managing Business Growth for Today and Tomorrow.” Morland emphasized that attendees interested in growing their companies avoid focusing on growth. Instead, he said, focused on excelling at the tasks which, when done well, result in growth. This will lead to healthy growth which can be sustained and managed properly.

OVERVIEW. “The quality of this event certainly lived up to the our expectations , while attendance surpassed our most optimistic goals,” Code noted. “I think everyone involved benefitted from attending, which only serves to illustrate how valuable programs such as the Lawn & Landscape School of Management are to our industry.”

The author is Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.