Taking the Temperature of Company Culture
September 8, 2021
By the time this is published, pretty much every company owner/manager in our profession knows who the solid and engaged team players are. And who they aren’t.
But do you know why?
The answer is most often found in the space between policies and actions. That’s where company culture is demonstrated the best. Buried in between what is supposed to happen, and what actually happens when ‘the boss’ isn’t looking or within earshot.
This is a great time of year to really step back and assess the pulse of your company culture. Slow down. Take stock. Now is the time of year when pretty much everyone on your team has been onboarded, oriented and are well into their training plans. In other words, culture should be at it’s most consistently demonstrated-best right now. So, how’s it going?
As a part of our 10-part series of Business Bites, last month I had the pleasure of hosting Joe Salemi, Landscape Ontario’s Deputy Executive Director and Director of Operations, to talk to our Peer to Peer Network Members on ‘Walking the Talk’ in company culture. Joe brought lots of great advice, including the trending differences between great and not-so-great company culture. Here are his key points on each scenario:
If you were to take these two lists to each of your employees and allow them to indicate which of these settings and perceptions they experience on a daily or weekly basis…. What points do you think that they would select?
Consider the importance of this for a moment, and how culture absolutely impacts the ability of your company to attract and retain good people. Good people whom, as Mark Bradley might say (CEO of LMN) “They have to be able to finish your sentences and carry your wallet.”. While your staff might not ever check off all of the great cultural ‘BE’ characteristics shown here, their list should at the very least outweigh the bad culture ‘don’t be’ scenarios shown above. In addition, your key staff in particular can likely articulate why they selected what they did from each list.
As a business coach, I have been inside many companies, worked with many teams, and have seen the whole range from awesome culture, to horrible work settings where there is neither any joy nor engagement. Based on my experience, the old adage ‘the boss is the last to know’ holds true most of the time. Often, the business owner has a much more positive perception of the company culture than that of the team (and sometimes the customers).
I believe that it’s important to start the conversation… one on one… or anonymously if that’s the only way people will open up… but start asking for feedback, listen to it, and start to challenge your status quo thinking about what it’s like to work in your company – by starting to identify the actions, words, expressions (or lack thereof) that contribute to both the wins and losses on the healthy company culture quest.
Join us on the Peer to Peer Network’s next Business Bite session with Scott Wentworth – and learn how to identify your ideal client avatar. Go to https://horttrades.com/peer-to-peer-network-main-page to register.
Thank you for reading! Until next time.
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Every now and then, something comes across your desk or into your inbox that is worth paying attention to. If you’re a contractor who sells services to your customers, which include labour and materials, equipment and overhead costs, then this article is worth your time to read. Unless you are either entirely recession proof in your market, or aren’t trying to improve profit in your business. But if you are working hard to figure out a way to be more profitable, read on. Sometimes the most successful businesses have all of the cutting-edge technologies, software, apps, equipment and training. And some businesses have all of that, and still aren’t profitable enough to pay the owner well, build equity and an engaged, career-minded team. Enter J. Paul Lamarche, and his industry-altering pricing system. JPL’s estimating and pricing system was officially adopted by Landscape Ontario in 2005. In 2010, he wrote the book: What the Market will “Bare”. 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How to deploy a simple, inexpensive estimating system using the calculator on your phone and a few important basics. In this easy-to-follow book, the main premise is that if your company has no debt load, then you’re more competitive and have a lower cost of doing business, which leads to more profit. The trick is how to get to no debt load (i.e. leased or financed vehicles/equipment) from where you are now, and stay there. When I first heard about JPL and his mathematical system 20 years ago, I went to a few seminars, glazed over when he started doing math on a white board, and left, thinking that I could figure it out on my own. Several hard and low-profit years later, I called him and hired him to come into my business as a consultant. It was 2007. I was 15 years into my landscape maintenance company with 20 employees, doing a million in sales, and made about 6% profit (EBITDA) after I’d paid myself fairly well. I wanted an exit strategy. I wanted to find a way to build value in my company, and have it run without me working 80-hour weeks. I wanted to prepare my business to sell. From the easy-to-use formula’s in this book I learned to build a budget, right-size the fleet and equipment, charge properly, eliminate ‘leakage’ on labour and materials, and gain ROI on my investment in the fleet. By 2014, I had only grown sales by 10% (by choice), but I reduced the number of staff by 25%, increased my own pay by 20%, upgraded the ‘fleet’ with no debt load, had a team of 3 managers (admin, sales and ops) running the day-to-day and increased profit (EBITDA) to 18%. By the time I sold the business that year, I was only at the office 1 day a week, and selling the higher end soft landscape projects 2 days a week on a 6-figure salary, with six figure profit on top. “What the Market will BARE” was my blueprint for success. At first, it was a bit daunting, but taking the time to go one chapter at a time, one example at a time, and learning the ‘math’ was well worth the effort for years to come. In this book, you’ll learn: How to calculate your overhead and ‘break-even’ How to calculate your true labour costs, including labour burden Benchmarks – and how they relate to your business Understanding the difference between markup and profit margin Setting a budget to guide your pricing Understanding Return on Investment Here’s just one example of a mistake in pricing that’s made by the majority of business owners, that this book teaches the reader to correct: You buy a load of plants for a project that cost you $1000. You decide that you want 30% profit on them. So, you take the $1000 you spent, and multiply it x 1.3 which = $1300. So you think you have a 30% profit on the plants. Right? But you don’t. $1000 (what you spent) divided by $1300 (what you charged) = 76.9%. 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So you now have a 30% profit on the plants… the $1000 you spent on the plants = 70% of what you charged for them. This is just one example of simple corrections you will likely make to your business every year, sometimes every day, on pricing and profit by reading and applying this industry-endorsed pricing system. There are many more valuable lessons in the book, that will touch on and fix leakage in all corners of your operations, improve the decisions you make, and correct your pricing. On a personal note: Paul was not only my business coach, we became friends, meeting for lunch several times each year to ‘catch up’ on business, for over ten years. He helped me sell my landscape company, and he mentored me in setting up my consulting business. Sadly, Paul passed away in June of 2020 at the age of 70. His widow, Stella, has kindly offered to give all of the proceeds of the sale of Paul’s books to the Landscape Ontario Scholarship Fund, to support education of our newest up and coming landscape professionals. I hope that you purchase one, and improve the profit in your company.