Leadership Lessons: Bill Arman, Head Harvester, The Harvest Group

Bill ArmanTell me what you have been up to since you were a leadership winner in 2006.
I left a career of over 32 years of working in the corporate world with two best in class organizations and co-founded a national landscape coaching/consulting firm called The Harvest Group with Ed Laflamme in September of 2007.

Three years later, Ed and I along with our fellow Head Harvesters Cindy Code and Steve Cesare work with companies in over 20 states and three countries – from an idea born in my basement with my buddy Ed and a bunch of flip charts to a very fun and rewarding enterprise. By the way, I kept the flip charts. It has been a great ride.           
   
Why did you become a consultant?
My passion has always been toward helping people with their journey to success. Being a consultant enables me to play to my passion and my purpose in helping people harvest their potential.

This has been a vision come true with over 12 years of planning and building programs prior to our starting The Harvest Group.

I now get to travel all around and meet new people faced with challenges and help serve as their guide for their company to become a best in class organization. So, I guess the answer is freedom, fun and having new challenges while meeting new people and helping with their success.

What’s your take on how the industry will recover from the economic troubles of the past couple of years?
Most of the companies we work with are well on their way, not only to recovery, but to success.

They really didn’t know how to harvest their potential. They just needed some system tune ups, a game plan and some encouragement. Even our most challenged companies have now stopped the big pains in their business and are recovering quite well. It wasn’t easy for sure but after making some fundamental changes they are in pretty darn good shape. My take is stop whining and start winning. 
 

Where do you think the industry will be in 2020?
This industry has the profound opportunity to affect the environment in which we all live in many positive ways. Just think about it. If we are doing our jobs right, we can actually put our signature on virtually every aspect of the living environment that affects everyone. The opportunities are boundary-less. This industry has no limits to its potential, especially for the ones that understand this fact. 

In your Leadership profile, you said, “One critical component of a leader is to make it crystal clear what the expectations are.”  Do you still believe that?
Absolutely. One of the most important qualities of a great leader is to make certain everyone knows exactly what is expected of them and how that links to the overall success of the organization.

When this is in place, each person will be in alignment with the organization’s path to success.

Organizational alignment is a powerful place to be and saves a lot of time, money and energy.

These resources can then be directed to more important areas like making your customers become partners and your employees being focused, productive, positive, loyal and on purpose.

What trends are you seeing in the industry?
Many of the construction firms are trying to morph into maintenance folk – some morph better than others. Once the economy starts moving along again, most construction folks will morph back into construction types.

There will continue to be some great innovations and the organizations that can learn, adjust, adapt, change and innovate the fastest will do the best.

Also, shifting away from the account manager position in maintenance. Many companies now have client reps that deal only with the customer and with no field ops responsibilities.

They have supervisors or production managers deal only with the operations side. It was too hard to find account managers that could do both.

Getting green: Being sustainable, using less resources like water and having a smaller carbon footprint are all coming up in many areas especially in California. Being a LEED certified company is a good thing. 
  
Landscape makeovers: Older landscapes being redone and modernized with newer irrigation and plantings – less turf and more shrubbery being used as a result.

Good old fashion service: People/clients have gone cheap with the recession and are finding that you get what you pay for and they are moving back to the better service providers.

Technology use: Using GPS, Google Earth, Go iLawn for better cost tracking and estimating.

People: hiring sales people and middle managers – Companies are gearing up and hiring sales people and middle managers now. The companies who position themselves best with these two positions will be poised for success.

Overall: There will continue to be some great innovations and the organizations that can learn, adjust, adapt, change and innovate the fastest will do the best.
 

How do you see social media impacting your company and the industry?
Any tool that helps to better serve your customers will have a positive impact. Just keep asking yourselves, how can this help us better serve our customer's needs? Or how can this help us deliver our services more effectively and efficiently?  

What inspires you as a business owner, and how has that changed since you first started your business?
Knowing that there are an absolute ton of people and organizations that need our services. Nothing has changed since we started. Our Harvest Group has one heck of a lot of potential just like our clients. We are truly excited about the abundant harvest ahead.

Have you had any personal/life-changing events that have influenced your professional career or the way you do business?
Only continually recognizing that I am truly a fortunate guy with a great family, friends, faith, colleagues and clients that I get to be around every day – I am rejoicing and very glad every moment.
 

Read Bill Arman's Leadership profile from 2006 by clicking here.