At The Grow Group, the busiest week of the year annually is the week before our annual GROW! conference. Our team primarily works remotely and a few years ago they started doing something that they call "office hours" where they just turn a Teams meeting on in the background while they all work. It helped them knock out their to-do list faster because instead of having to message someone to find out the answer to "Hey, did so-and-so reply about that session?" or "Did we hear back from that person?" they could just shout out the questions as they came up. This past year, they used a group Teams channel to send messages back and forth quickly and did the full Teams call a couple of times. 

As the Grunder Landscaping Co. (GLC) team was working through some major snow events around the same time The Grow Group (TGG) team was preparing GROW! 2026, I suggested we steal this idea from Team TGG and try it during a snow event. So we set up a Teams Call that is live for the duration of a snow event and that all of our snow managers join. They can leave it on in the background as they're working and it really helped us to better coordinate our efforts. It's similar to using radios, which we also used to do back in they day, but using a tool that we have easy access to and that works off our cell phones. If you want to implement this on your next snow event, here's what we learned:

1. The host should be at the office. Brian, our Director of Administrative Operations, oversees our snow operations from the office, so he sets up the Teams link since he'll be at his desk most of the snow event. He leaves it live, and then people can join and leave as needed. The link is sent to the entire team. 

2. Pack Chargers. Leaving Teams on all the time will drain your battery, so our team makes sure they have chargers in their trucks so their phone can just stay plugged in. 

3. Yes, you can still listen to your podcasts. A group of managers stays on the Teams call, and they may jump off if they know they're going to be on one property for a while working. Most of our operators and shovelers are only joining if they have a question or need some guidance, and they can listen to their own content otherwise. 

I know, it's a little weird to be sharing a tip for managing snow storms when we've got summer weather on the forecast, but smart contractors know that we need to always be preparing for what comes next. I'll be at SIMA's event this week learning and teaching, and I am excited to be sponsoring and speaking at the Snowfighters Institute's Snow event later this year in September!

Will I see you at one of these events?

Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.