Leadership Lessons: Scott Jamieson

What have you been up to since you were a leadership winner?
In 2008, The Care of Trees (TCOT) was sold to Davey and I moved on from my role as president and CEO.  After a much-needed sabbatical, I joined Bartlett Tree Experts as their vice president of corporate partnership and national recruiting.

The role focuses on industry relationships, national accounts and ways to improve Bartlett’s visibility with potential clients. The recruiting piece is primarily at major universities where we recruit for career positions within the company. Many of the things I am doing now are leveraging relationships that I had built over the many years in our profession. Although the company I work for has changed, my values and focus have not. 

What kind of adjustment did you have to make going from a top executive to a lower level one?
Bartlett is over three times the size what TCOT was so, although the role is different, the scope is similar. Many of the things I do today I was doing at TCOT. The biggest adjustment has been meeting and getting to know new teammates. It has been easy as Bartlett has the type of culture we were cultivating at TCOT – caring, respectful, professional. 

For a company that is over 100 years old, there is no resting on laurels or complacency. It is full speed ahead. What is exciting for me personally is the opportunity to contribute in some new ways for Bartlett and to help them specifically in some markets that I have expertise in. That’s rewarding. 

What do you miss about being a president and CEO? 
Building a team, developing people and seeing the results – there are a lot of things I don’t miss that most people never realized I had to deal with, but that is the role.

I miss the many great people I worked with and although we keep in touch, it simply isn’t the same. 


What advice would you have for a president or CEO who is going through the sale of company like you did with The Care of Trees?
The key for me up until the very end was to support and lead the organization with confidence and honesty.
There were questions I could not answer and I let people know that. Communication is always the most important element even when you can’t talk about it.

People still need to hear from the leader. It is in the vacuum of information that rumors are formed.

If you don’t tell people what is going on, they will make something up.

When you have their trust, it is your responsibility, your moral imperative to communicate to them during times of transition.

The role of the CEO is to lead the company with the vision and values that have previously been in place, regardless of the decisions that ownership is making during the transition.

People need a North Star in times of uncertainty and the CEO has to provide that even in the toughest of times.


What’s your take on how the industry will recover from the economic troubles of the past couple of years?
Three years of growth are coming – so says someone I really trust around economic trends. The “new normal” is now a cliché but it is also true. Like many firms, we have trimmed back, cut costs and improved our efficiencies. Our leadership, however, made it very clear that we are here for the long-term and we have not cut into the core values of the company.

We have retained the right people, we continue to invest in training and development of those people, we continue to conduct research on the latest tree care practices that will benefit our clients and we continue to hire great talent for our future. We think we have seen the bottom and are making the long climb out of it.

We have stayed close to our clients realizing their pain is our pain, and we have adjusted with them.

We don’t operate our business quarter to quarter, we operate it decade to decade.

When you have been around over 100 years, you tend to look at the big picture and stay centered around your values.

What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve ever received?
The best leaders are those who know themselves better than anyone. Be observant of yourself more than anyone else and when you are self-aware you will function from consciousness rather than being on automatic.

 
Where do you think the industry will be in 2020?
For the industry, 10 years is a long time. Technology will continue to impact how we do business--from social media to the vast amount of information that is now only a few keystrokes away from our clients. Labor will remain an issue as the people equation will not leave our industry for many years to come. The lines between tree care, landscape contracting, landscape architecture, lawn care, etc will continue to blur. When is a landscape contractor an arborist and when is an arborist a landscape contractor? Associations will consolidate just like the industry continues to consolidate.

Associations are actually under the most pressure they have ever seen both financially and in how to best serve diverse and consolidating memberships. I really believe the industry will be seen as more professional--that is the current trend and I believe it will only continue. 

How do you see social media impacting your company and the industry?
Still figuring that out, but I see the benefits. I see the ability to build a community, a conversation online. I see relationships being built and even a form of trust. I am not sure how the economics of it works yet, but when there is budding trust and relationships, business follows.

I have experienced the positive effect of "knowing" someone on Twitter or Facebook and continuing the conversation with them the first time I happen to meet them at a trade show or industry event. It is real, but doesn't replace face-to-face interactions. I do, however, believe it can enhance them.

In your Leadership profile you said: “For me, as a leader, I go back to that question of what’s the right thing to do right now for whatever constituent I’m dealing with. Ultimately, though, it comes down to what’s the right thing for the organization.” Do you still agree with this? Why or why not?
I do. I believe decisions in the "now" shape the future. For me it has always been about doing the right thing now because I believe that is really all we are given. Many people live in the past, many live in the future and surprisingly few live in the now. You have to look ahead and plan.

You have to look in the past and learn but most of your time is often best served by living in the present. I used to live with a sense of urgency of what could I do TODAY to help make the organization safer. What could I do now to make a difference? Tomorrow might be too late. And one day, tomorrow simply does not arrive. We only have now. 

When you lead a company, division, office or crew it really is about the greater good. Sometimes being "fair" to one is unfair to the organization and I always tried to put the organization first. And this was because I viewed the organization as the collective community of everyone who worked there. Even if the company is owned by one single person, the company truly is the collective community and the common interest is almost always served best when it that group is served. When a teammate would say, “Why are they doing this, or they doing that?" I would ask "Who is they?" The reality is "they" is you, me, Joe, Bob, Sally – the community called the company. There is no wizard behind the curtains in Oz. The company is us. When you can align people around that, and it isn't easy, magical things happen.

Have you had any personal/life-changing events that have influenced your professional career or the way you do business?
Certainly having to change teams after 20 years was a life-changing event for me. I have had to learn some things about reactivity and having compassion for others when it is the hardest. But that event has also reaffirmed a long held belief of mine that things do happen for a reason and that there is a natural rhythm in the universe. Things happen, we adjust, we improve, we move on. I would not have had the fortune to work for a great company like Bartlett if other events had not occurred. I would not have had the opportunity to try to make a difference in two industry leading companies. None of this changed how I approach people, clients and certainly it did not change my values. If anything it caused me to reaffirm my values and understand that not everyone sees it the same way. We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are.

This spring my father passed away and people who have been through that phase in life know that it simply edges you closer to the same fate. For me, that event just encouraged me to work harder at making a difference, cherish the present moment and stay close to those who mean the most to me.
 

Click here to read Scott Jamieson's 2007 Leadership profile.