Creating a Culture of Ownership - Doug McDuff - Leaders Who Scale - Episode # 011

Leaders Who Scale

Many companies struggle with retention and engagement amongst their employees, but there are lots of ways to mitigate this. Doug McDuff, the President of Landscape America, shares the struggles his company has faced and what they’ve done to overcome those challenges. Get ready to take a lot of notes on constructing a culture of ownership, business model changes for service companies, and some best practices for hiring for your team

Takeaways:

• With a distributed workforce in the field, leaders really need to reinforce the company’s culture to create a feeling of ownership amongst the team.
• Using open-book management is a great way to engage your team. Employees take on more responsibility and ownership because they understand how the financials impact them and how they impact the financials.
• Invite some employees of every level to planning meetings. By doing this, they will better understand the process behind the business and they are able to have their voices heard.
• Working on your business entails a lot more than just sales. You need to be fully committed to working on the business as a whole in order to make progress and scale sustainably.
• If your company offers both one-time installation work and recurring work, consider focusing more on the type of jobs that provide the company with recurring business as this will result in more revenue in the long term.
• Consider what roles in your company would be best filled by promoting from within or by hiring from outside the company. For some companies, inside hires excel at roles related to production, while outside hires work well as account managers and salespeople.
• For largely seasonal companies, look for ways to find work during the offseason so you can keep your employees on the payroll year-round. This will really increase retention and employee engagement.

Quote of the Show:

• “It’s driving our culture to create a feeling of ownership thinking amongst the team” - Doug McDuff

Shout Outs:

• Dan Foley - Business Coach
• Jack Stack - Author of Open-Book Management: The Coming Business Revolution

Links

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doug-mcduff-5110a01b/
• Company website: https://landscapeamerica.com/
• Company Blog: https://landscapeamerica.com/blog
• Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/landscape.america/

Ways to Tune In

• Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/337eea2a-f8ab-4b4f-8a36-fe4143b5913b
• Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/leaders-who-scale/id1609131634
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5PFtdxDlXcnaojG8jJk74T
• Google Podcast: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubGVhZGVyc3dob3NjYWxlLmNvbS9mZWVkLnhtbA
• YouTube: https://youtu.be/ytuM5G-whqk