In many regards, Groundmasters’ early days were actually simpler.
“We were pretty much begging people for work, and then we would do it ourselves,” recalled Mike Rorie, president.
During those days, if something was done wrong, Rorie or his partner, Gary Kuykendall, vice president of sales, didn’t have to look far to figure out who made the mistake. The same can’t be said today.
“When you have a company with 80 employees, you have 80 chances to let the customer down in terms of does each employee know what the company promises to deliver and is he or she committed to delivering it,” Rorie noted. “When the company is small, it’s easy to be accountable. But when you get large enough that you, as the person responsible for the company, don’t know everything that’s going on, you have to become system oriented and you have to have accountability.”
“Plus, one person can only do so much,” added Kuykendall. “In the early 1990s, our organizational structure was stifling our growth.”
LIMITING YOUR OWN GROWTH. In 1992, Groundmasters, Cincinnati, Ohio, surpassed the $2-million mark for annual revenues and encountered new roadblocks.
“We went through a restructuring that off-season that included the elimination of five employees who were not ready to go forward with change,” Rorie said, adding that those employees included his general manager of 10 years and operations manager of seven years. “The fact of the matter is that, as owner of a business, you’re responsible for its success, which will mean change at some points. If others in the business aren’t ready to change when the owner is, then they cannot be a part of that change or else it may not be as effective.”
“We had to flatten out the structure and start bestowing more accountability and responsibility throughout the organization,” commented Kuykendall.
So beginning with the 1993 season, Groundmasters employed a structure that included a department head for maintenance and a department head for landscape operations and little else between those positions and the field personnel.
Those changes proved successful, and the company continued to grow. In fact, it grew enough that Groundmasters outgrew this structure by the end of 1997.
At this point, Rorie wanted to go with a structure he had seen implemented at a number of successful companies and perfected by Environmental Care, Calabasas, Calif. To do so, he brought in industry consultant Jack Mattingly, Mattingly & Associates, Atlanta, Ga.
The new structure included a central operations manager with four account managers reporting to him.
“Each account manager manages about $1 million in business, 50 to 80 clients and 12 to 15 men in the field,” explained Rorie. “This gives us the ability to leverage our more skilled foremen by supplying them with an able workforce so they’re no longer the primary worker. And with the account manager, I don’t have to worry about having 25 guys looking for one department head for help. Instead, we’ve got three or four foremen per account manager.”
There are a couple of keys to this setup for Groundmasters, not the least of which is the ease with which the structure should adapt and allow for growth.
“Because of the prevalence of the Hispanic workforce now, we can easily add workers and crews, and the demand on the foremen is spread out as they are supported by their account manager,” Rorie noted. “This system should take us easily to $10 million without adding any more overhead other than another account manager per $1 million of new volume.”
Rorie also noted that managers making such changes don’t need to be overly concerned about the effects the moves will have on the general labor force.
“The workers won’t change,” Rorie assured. “The little change they may see comes through the tone of who they report to. The worker will deem changes good or bad based on what his or her immediate manager thinks, and that’s where you find out who’s going to stay with you through such changes and who won’t.”
READY FOR HEADACHES. In January of 1998, Rorie outlined his goals for the company for the next 12 months and said one primary goal would be to transition the responsibility of renewing customers and handling customer service issues from sales personnel to the account managers.
| Rorie on |
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Ask Mike Rorie, president, Groundmasters, Cincinnati, Ohio, what he does for a living, and he might tell you he’s a professional business manager instead of saying he owns a commercial landscape firm. “The business is really just a business now, and it really doesn’t matter what business we’re in,” he explained. “I look at the business more from a scorekeeping perspective today, whereas it used to be about enjoying a new contract or the quality of our work. But at the end of the day, all of the leadership goes into trying to grow the business profitably.” Rorie said realizing the importance of focusing on business management issues as opposed to horticultural issues took him a long time and probably holds a lot of green industry companies back. “Smaller contractors battle more fundamental issues, such as getting the next job because they need the money,” he noted. “It’s a big shift for the small entrepreneur to realize that it’s not the green part of the business you need to focus on as much as it is the business part of the business. “That happened for me in 1996 when I finally realized that all I’m trying to do as president is develop the proper structure in order to capture the best opportunities,” he recalled. “That’s true no matter what type of business you’re in.” Rorie went on to compare his role to that of a head coach on a football team. “The different managers we have are like the offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coach and so on,” Rorie said. “If I do my job as head coach, then we’ll succeed because my department heads will know their responsibilities and they’ll do them. Then we’ll have sales sell, production meet budget, the fleet and facility will be ready to serve our needs and the administrative staff will bill, track and support – and that’s a beautiful thing to watch when it works.” – Bob West |
“The account manager handles the account all year, so he should renew the contract the easiest and finesse the numbers up or down appropriately based on the client, the contract and the budget,” Rorie pointed out. “In the past, salespeople reacted to what the production department did and made promises to the customer they didn’t know if we could deliver and they weren’t involved in the delivery of. Now, that responsibility is in one position.
Kuykendall also noted that as account managers assume responsibility for contract renewals their focus has to broaden.
“The key from a sales angle is going to be instilling in the account managers the importance of the client relationship,” he explained. “In addition to being responsible for the delivery of service to the customer, the account manager is responsible for that customer’s relationship with Groundma-sters. This structure creates more accountability for the work and relationship for the account manager and requires he have a greater scope of knowledge of the job.”
“The only reason people will fire us is for price against quality against the market, and you don’t need a salesperson handling the renewal if you’ve been doing a competent job servicing the account,” he continued. “And now sales personnel can concentrate solely on bringing in new work.”
To make this transition as smooth as possible, both the salesperson who sold the account and the account manager responsible for servicing it met with the client throughout 1998 so clients didn’t feel they were being disregarded or were confused as to why they were receiving a new contact person at Groundmasters.
Kuykendall will oversee the renewal process and be available to account managers who encounter problems. “But the reality is that we should be aware of problems long before it comes time to ask for the renewal because the account manager is responsible for everything on that account,” Rorie noted.
As was expected, some problems were encountered with the transition this year.
“The transition has gone great for the sales department, but it has stressed out the production department and our account managers,” Rorie related. “There’s been a learning curve on how much we can expect out of the account manager in terms of how many jobs can they handle and how many people can they manage. But we have no doubt this is the right structure to have and that we’ve improved our communication with the customer.”
An offshoot of this new structure is the importance of the role the foreman plays in the company’s success.
“The foreman is the person determining the rate of productivity for his crew, so he has to be feeling good about the company in order to push his crew,” Rorie asserted. “So the relationship the account manager has with each foreman is crucial to our success.”
OPEN TO ALL. One significant part of Groundmasters’ structure has remained consistent over the years – its open-book style.
Charts and reports are hung on the walls throughout the office, and the goal of sharing this information is to illustrate to employees their role in the company’s success.
“We have several tracking systems that tell our employees what we’re looking for from them, be it hours worked, attendance or productivity, and that information is in front of them all of the time,” Rorie remarked. “The more measuring you have leads to more accountability. People have to be able to see what to perform to, and that typically means some type of scoreboard.” For example, Groundmasters diligently tracks direct hours vs. indirect hours.
“We want laborers’ direct time to be at least 85 percent of their total time, with indirect time no more than 15 percent,” Rorie stressed. “We look for areas where we’re able to turn control over to the employees and give them the opportunity to earn bonuses based on performance. By measuring things like this, letting people know the numbers and putting a dollar value on it, they’re motivated and involved.”
The author is Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.
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Explore the December 1998 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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