In Minor’s League: July 2000

Q: I am the owner of a $1.5 million landscape company. What should my responsibilities be?

A: I suspect your question relates as much to how your role transitions in the organization as your company grows as it does to anything else. This is indeed an age-old question in entrepreneurial organizations. Regardless of whether you operate a $1.5 million company, a $250,000 company or even a $3 million company, there are some absolutes when it comes to running your business. Granted, there are unique challenges at all of these levels, but there are some key leadership roles you should be playing.

First and foremost, the most important role you should be focused on in your company is being the visionary. Defining where your company is going and leading your staff in that direction is critical. This may appear to be a trite response, yet I can assure you as I have visited with landscape contractors in past years, I am amazed at what little attention they pay to this all-important area. Oftentimes, the owner is putting out so many fires and doing so much detail work that the goal of creating a vision and cultivating that vision throughout the company gets put on the back burner as a task to get to later.

You’ve no doubt heard the phrase: "work on the business, not in the business." This is easier said than done, especially when you have six angry customers calling, your operations manager just gave two weeks notice and you have four major proposals due in the next two days.

Consider what may have happened if you had defined the vision, created a team with which to make it happen and regularly communicated with your staff about what it would take to achieve your goals. Possibly, someone else would be dealing with the angry customer, or better yet, there wouldn’t be six angry customers. Maybe you would have someone "on the grapevine" to replace the operations manager, and possibly there would be someone competent to field those bids.

Sound too simple? The point is, if you spend more time planning than putting out fires, your life would be much easier as the chief executive officer of a company.

Creating a vision, though, is not enough. You also have to establish a positive culture in your organization. This culture should be focused on serving the customer and making his or her experience a satisfying one. This culture should also be one obsessed with efficiency so products can be delivered in a more cost effective manner. Finally, this culture should be focused on satisfying your staff by providing an environment where your staff feels challenged, appreciated and rewarded.

Your job as the business leader is to foster this environment. If you do, your life as a business leader will become easier and more rewarding. Certainly, you will still have to deal with problems – and there will be problems. But you will be so much farther along than those who don’t spend the time envisioning, communicating the vision and creating a first class customer- and employee-centered culture.