Building Your Team
Watching teams competing in the baseball playoffs leading up to the World Series has given me another reason to appreciate our winning team of employees and associates at Landscape Warehouse. You can see most of our team members gathered for a photo in the Clipper’s October issue. It was taken on our recent company fishing trip…which was a blast.
The fishing trip is a way to thank our employees for a job well done in an atmosphere where company positions do not matter, only having fun does. Also on the trip were key non-employee members of our expanded team including manufacturer reps, suppliers, business consultants, friends and customers. The event gave the employees the opportunity to hang out and network with our associates, which helps to strengthen their relationships, both business and personal.
If your company does not have similar events that gather employees, associates and friends together for some fun activities, you are missing a great opportunity to build employee morale, solidify associate relationships, and build customer loyalty.
“Doing business on the links” has long been an accepted way of developing relationships with potential clients on the golf course, or striking deals with individuals you know. I am finding out that the time between fishing stops in a day on the high seas provides similar opportunities. And you don’t have to wait for the refreshment cart to drive by, because the ship’s galley is always just a few steps away.
Building your team can be more difficult than it sounds. One reason is that it conflicts with the attitude that many entrepreneurs have, the “I can do it better myself” attitude. Perhaps that’s true in some instances, but how many of you are there to go around? With the endless number of tasks it takes to run a small business, you need to develop a team to shoulder some of the work, and with the opportunity to share their viewpoints. If you are in business, I know you have people doing some of the work, but are they given the opportunity to share their views and suggestions? If not, they are just “workers” and not team members. And if you want to grow your business, it would be impossible without a trusted team that exhibits open communication. The days of successful Lone Rangers in business have long past.
Many business teams grow around their founder, as is the case with Landscape Warehouse. Chances are your team was built around you. It took on your character, your hopes and dreams. There’s nothing wrong with that, except there must be room for new ideas and differences of opinion, or all you will have as a team is a bunch of “yes men,” which is worse than no team at all. Starting out in business, each time I encountered a need, or had to get a problem solved, or obtain additional information about something technical, I looked for someone who could resolve the issue or show me how to do it. Over the years, several of these individuals have become contributing members of my trusted business team. I value their input on every important decision we make.
A while back I came across the idea of a “Success Team.” This is a small group of people whose only goal is to help every member of the team get what he or she wants. Reports are that these groups have an excellent success record. I may look into how I can incorporate this idea into my current team structure. I started out this article talking about the teams presently competing in the baseball playoffs. I might as well end it on the same subject. Go Dodgers!
– José Robles, owner, Landscape Warehouse