Have you ever caught yourself frustrated with a team member? Wondering “Why can’t they just think like an owner?" or "Can't they just make this decision like I would?”
🙋 Been there. And truthfully, I was mostly frustrated because it felt like nothing was working, and I was constantly overwhelmed by the burden of decision-making. I wasn’t sure there was anything that could be done about it, and for a long time just accepted that “well of course they won’t think like the owner, they aren’t the owner.”
But truthfully looking back, my team wasn’t thinking like owners because I wasn’t giving them the tools, information, or push to do so. Here’s what we changed:
- We realigned our interests.
- We refined our systems.
- We shared information.
- I trained myself.
Realigning Interests
We looked at our compensation plans and the metrics we were evaluating performance on and made some updates to better align our company’s best interests with the team member’s personal best interests.
The result: simplified metrics. Our production team members receive bonuses based mostly on their utilization rate – we’re rewarding efficiency, knowing that call-backs for quality issues from rushed work will hit that rate even harder. Our sales team receives commission based on gross margin for their jobs – selling unprofitable jobs to hit your topline revenue goal is bad for them and bad for the company.
(Don’t worry – we did a similar reevaluation for our administration and leadership teams)
Refining Systems
I’ve had many salespeople (ok, maybe myself included) over the years who have monkeyed with the gross margin rates in order to win a competitive job. Often, this bites us in the posterior.
Today, our pricing is set through kits that our sales team uses. Kits are built in our software and approved for the whole team to use and ensure profitability and consistency in our pricing – Salesperson A isn’t giving a better rate for maintenance than Salesperson B – and to adjust pricing beyond the kits requires approval from Seth, our President & COO. This is sometimes necessary because of specific site conditions, so it’s important to have a process, but kits have solved for the rule, and then we can manage the exceptions.
Sharing Information
We were worried about information being used against us, so we kept a lot close to the chest in our earlier years. Today, we share a lot of information with our team, but we’re also intentional about what we share to make sure it’s metrics that are actually impactful. We focus on metrics that our team can impact: utilization rate, sales objectives, backlog, hours worked and hours remaining, and pipeline to name a few.
Training Myself
I was the problem for a long time on this front because when a team member would come to me with a question, I’d just handle it. It was difficult to train myself not to do this as I added more capable people to our team. We had to get away from the mentality that “Well, Seth said no, but I’ll just go ask Marty. He might say yes.”
The problem: I was often saying yes, thinking that I was taking something off Seth’s plate, when instead I was undermining his leadership of the company. I don’t make that mistake anymore, and you’ll frequently hear me say “I’m not sure, we'll have to check with <leader>."
Yes, it’s my company, but we all work better together when we can focus on what we do best. I hired great people who know more about their functional areas than I do, I don’t need to jump in. I need to let them handle it and support their decisions.
We're opening up our shop so that you can learn from these talented leaders this year, too. Join me at Grunder Landscaping Co. in 2026 for one of our GLC Field Trips. Our first one is coming up soon on June 3-4, and then we have more dates available in the fall. These events tend to sell out as space is limited. Register now to lock in your spot!
I hope to see you soon!
Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.