“We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” Jim Rohn Some of you might already know my story, but I will add a very brief history for those of you who don’t. I began in […]
Category Archives: Insights
16
Mar
Mar
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.” Jim Collins. “Take our best 20 people away, and I tell you that Microsoft will become an unimportant company.” Bill Gates About halfway through my 26 years as the owner of Creative Roots Landscaping, I started to hit the same roadblock that most overly ambitious, chaos-thriving, “I can […]
23
Feb
Feb
The Wake-up Call “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” ~ African Proverb This article has all the elements of a well-written story – a plot, a setting, characters – along with conflict and resolution, and serves as an introduction to my journey and one of […]
15
Feb
Feb
The famous French composer Claude Debussy said “Music is the silence between the notes.” Years ago, when I first started to think about business operations, I had the idea that they were typically only divided into the front-end and back-end tasks that you and your team believe are a priority and must be performed in […]
18
Nov
Nov
Last week, the company I started over 25 years ago with a shovel, a truck and some elbow grease held its 12th High Involvement Planning (HIP for short) meeting. I want to tell you that if you are not having these you are missing out on a BIG opportunity. You did the math, right? So […]
02
Nov
Nov
Before the luxury of GPS, stars led travelers home – and the North Star was a constant. If your team can’t point to your North Star, you might be having a hard time keeping your company on course. The Organizational North Star: A Purpose Statement It can be easy to get off course. Day-to-day routines […]
17
Jun
Jun
Ryan put this together to show at the LMN Leaders Summit in 2018. It’s our team talking about why they like Open Book Management.
15
Jun
Jun
Financial and Non-Financial Scoreboards – our “jumbotrons” I loved playing sports in high school. I learned that teams worked well together on a common goal – winning the game – when we could all track our successes and failures in real time. It just took some time for me to understand how I could apply […]
29
Apr
Apr
(Why a Piece of Garbage Tells a Story) Full disclosure: I generally try to stay out of the way when it comes to hiring, because I’m not that good at interviewing people. I consider myself a good judge of character, but for the nuts-and-bolts of an interview process, I tend to step aside. Our leadership […]
29
Apr
Apr
We all fall into this trap as entrepreneurs at some point. We get into the habit of thinking we have all the answers. We built the business…we’re the authority, right? Wrong. Sometimes a good leader needs to listen to others…especially when those “others” are the people out in the field every day representing your company […]