“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who will argue with you.”  -John Wooden

Although I never met him, I consider John Wooden one of my mentors.  I have read his books and studied his Pyramid of Success.  Today, the quote of his above bears mentioning.

Some recent promotions in our company are worth mentioning.  James Schwartz, who has been with us just a year, is moving into landscape design sales, or Outdoor Living Specialist as we like to call it.

Micheal Metcalf, our ASLA Certified Landscape Architect, will switch roles slightly for the 2016 season and become Landscape Operations Assistant to long-time Team leader Brett Groves.  

But the biggest change for me comes with the promotion of John Williams to General Manager.  He will move into my office after January 1st, and I will office out of my house. 

No, I am not retiring; just redirecting my time into an advisory role, and getting out of the way to let these talented people do the work we do.  But I will be pursuing some other interests as I can outside the fences of KN.  

All this wouldn’t be possible without the supporting role that many others also. There are many members of our KN team not mentioned in this article that have contributed to and helped to grow our business to be able to create this opportunity for me and for themselves towards our bright future.

Yesterday on a day trip I drove past the headquarters of a couple landscape companies that we used to “do battle” with in the past.  

Back in the day when our company was bidding every commercial landscaping and irrigation project all over Idaho and every surrounding state, we often ran head-to-head into these companies through the competitive bid process.  Their locale to a major bidding market, plus the fact that I often wondered if they really knew what their costs were by some of the numbers they threw out, usually meant that they outbid us.

From driving past their domiciles yesterday, I couldn't help but smile at the correlation between what was going on (or should I say not going on) at their facilities versus ours.  When I left my place of business yesterday morning, there were over 20 people working on various projects and schemes; building some new jumbo pallets for plant transportation, servicing of vehicles, tools, and equipment, inventory, design proposals for clients, meetings on improvement concepts, etc.  

As I passed these nemesis of the past, both places were noticeably empty.  Of course, this time of year in the landscape industry isn’t exactly over-your-head like other times of the year, but these places looked like they were all holed up and battened down for the winter.  Layoffs had obviously occurred, vehicles and equipment sat out in the elements, left as they were parked after the last job of the year was finished... I think you get the picture.

As I write this, the first winter snow storm is making its presence felt outside. Over the past few days, when the threat of this snow became evident via the weather forecasters, we have had a deluge of calls for future snow removal services.

Although we fully appreciate people thinking of us for their snow removal needs, our planning for snow events like today dates back to September.

Like all snow removal contractors, we are limited by three factors:  The number of equipment pieces, manpower, and the time frame to push snow all contribute to how many snow clients we can effectively serve.

Given the region we live in and its usually limited snowfall, no contractor can justify the expense of a piece of equipment just for snow removal purposes only.  Therefore the limitation is on equipment we already have.  That being said, we pride ourselves here at KN for using attachments designed only for snow removal.  Backhoe and loader buckets cause a lot of damage to curbs, speed bumps, parking blocks, and asphalt when used for pushing snow.  We don't use any of those on our clients properties.  But we are still limited by the quantity of equipment we use otherwise during the growing season.

Manpower is another issue.  It is very difficult to get temporary or even seasonal help to be dedicated, engaged, and well trained enough to answer the call sporadically in the middle of the night to come shovel snow.  We at KN commit to year round work for every team member at the foreman level or above.  This crew then becomes our workforce for snow removal in winter.

Time frame is probably the biggest issue.  Most accounts want their snow removed by 8:00 am each day.  If we try to service too many accounts, it could snow again (or more) between the time we plow their lots and the time they show up to work, or in the case of a residential account, the time they have to leave for work.  

As I said, our planning must start in September.  Getting equipment ready, confirming and noting changes to our clients properties, routing crews and vehicles, and going through extensive training/re-training consumes a lot of time.  We also have all operators visit each site on their routes prior to any snow events.  Things look much different during the night in a snowstorm, so these site visits are critical.  Google maps are printed out and properties are highlighted with notes specific to each place we push.  Every driver carries these maps with them.  

“Painting is easy to do when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.” -Edgar Degas

I stumbled on to this quote the other day.  This man Degas was a French artist back in the mid 1800′s.  I imagine his quote came after he observed some apostasy of a painting hanging somewhere publicly.  

However, this quote struck me as how a novice at any particular trade may perceive the necessary skill level to achieve acceptability. Of course, I couldn’t help but think of our own landscaping industry, and conjure the same feelings as Mr. Degas regarding some of the work I see.

So many folks think that landscaping is something that can be successfully accomplished by anyone with a pickup truck, a shovel, and a strong back.  So many projects I see as I drive around scream of the shortcomings of novice work.  

Yes, it seems easy when you don’t know what you are doing.  But situations like wrong trees in wrong places, small shrubs that get to be huge planted in small spaces, drainage and grading issues, irrigation systems that don't function properly due to inexperience or cut corners, and generally committing design and artistic faux pas  such that Degas himself would cringe.