The light bulb is always on

When Sean Carrington hired Phil Carlson as a landscape designer at Carrington Lawn & Landscape, he had no idea he’d found someone who would transform his company.

Brought on board in 2012, Carlson was hired to design and sell jobs after the Middleton, Wisconsin, company’s designer left. Carrington, company owner, picked up the sales duties from the departed designer, and it was taking its toll.

“I had people interview and they just didn’t have the skill set of what we were looking for,” Carrington says.

Enter Carlson – a 27-year-old who had had one job after college, but an entrepreneur’s approach to the position.

Through a mutual friend, Carlson heard about Carrington, an owner who was looking for an entrepreneurial mind. Four years later, Carlson, now a landscape architect, has implemented ideas that have benefited the company, which has 21 employees.

Not only has he improved the overall culture with a reward system, but he’s facilitated training and multiple certifications for landscape foremen, established regular company meeting schedules and recruited and instructed the company’s first landscape architecture intern.

He also sold more landscape work in 2015 than any other season in company history and sacrificed a bonus so it could be distributed to employees.

He assisted in hiring a new office manager and established complete job descriptions and training.

“Phil has brought a work ethic and level of professionalism to our company that’s rubbed off on other guys,” says Lance Bright, an arborist who was been with the company for more than a decade.

“We’ve gotten bigger over the years and that means more stuff piling up on Sean. When Phil came along I could see some of that weight lifted off of Sean’s shoulders.”

First impressions.

Carrington says he liked Carlson’s confidence in his interview, but also his ability to recognize where he could grow.

“He didn’t come in saying ‘I’m the world’s greatest landscape designer,’ but he spoke confidently in what he had done,” Carrington says.

Those qualities showed up soon after he was hired. Carlson was supposed to receive training a month before even attempting to go on a sales visit, but due to an early spring, those plans changed. By the third day, he was thrown into the fire.

He made the sale and was off and running.

But it wasn’t until he made it through his first year that Carlson really started to make his presence felt. After succeeding at selling and managing crews, he saw deficiencies in the company.

He decided if he was going to make a positive difference and move up the ladder, he had to not only present Carrington with ideas, but also systems to implement them.

More bees with honey.

One major change Carlson made involved how the company would handle absenteeism, which had become a problem.

When someone was late, they’d get written up, but Carlson didn’t think that was a very effective way to change behavior.

“Reprimanding somebody is not necessarily the best way to get them to do things you want them to do,” Carlson says.

He went the other direction and proposed a reward system based on a pool of money employees could win for doing the basics. When you commit an infraction, you get a stroke and those with the lowest amount of strokes can earn the most money in rewards like a Visa gift card.

“Essentially our pitch to the guys is this is free money,” Carlson says.

“Do your job, the minimum expectation, show up on time. If you’re not going to be here, you need to inform us using the proper method with the appropriate amount of time ahead of time so that we can accommodate you not being here.”

Carrington said approximately half the company received a reward for this system in the fall and a third of the company mentioned they really liked it. They’ll continue to tweak it as needed.

“I’ll say more than anything, it boasted a little bit of camaraderie with the guys and friendly competition, and it was the best money that the company has ever spent,” Carrington says.

Even though Carlson’s ideas have helped shaped the company, he recognizes that ideas only become reality when the people at the top are willing to listen and allow action.

“Part of what I’ve been able to do has been because Sean trusted me and gave me the rope and the resources to explore these things,” Carlson says.

“For him, he sees the investment and he can trust me to come back with results and improvements.”