#70 CHOOSING A MANAGER* (revised 6/3) part three "signature leader, signature smiles

“I would have fun with them on those spring mornings, the older ladies, dressed so nice for a Sunday outing at my little garden store. They would be clutching their purses as they bent down near the trays of yellow marigolds wishing them right along the borders of their welcoming sidewalk to their front doors. They greeted me as I passed with hose in hand pulling it carefully around them. I would stop short and grin broadly as I did each season on a May Sunday.

“Now ladies, I would say as I looked into their bright eyes, All winter long you have been reaching into that purse to give me a few of the coins you have collected. Now its spring and now it is time, Now, I would chuckle; it is time that I got all of the bills at the bottom of that purse.”

They would pull their purses close to their breasts and laugh heartily,

“Oh no, you are not getting any of them.”

The would leave happy with a cart full of our flowers and their dollars now in our pocket.


Nick Hudson
Former garden store owner

Signature Smiles

It is that welcome, that signature smile, that invitation to green garden gates that brings gardeners to our stores season after season. It is that ability to call upon our employees to look forward to an enjoyable working day. It is our store managers who set the stage for this delightful experience. This personal appeal cannot be learned. It is already part of a person. It is a special sense, an inborn ability to reach out to people and receive from people. It is the smile, the empathy, the sharing, the calming voice and eyes during the hectic hours of a springtime day. Above all, that is what we want.

Signature Leadership

In 1952, Les Schwab, the crusty old tire man, led his one store company with a small shed, a two-holer out back, and an outdoor pump for water, into the largest independent tire business in the United States. Anyone who drives up to the doors of a Les Schwab Tire Store on a cold snow blizzard day understands why it is so successful. It is the people, from the manager right down to the kid cleaning the sidewalks.

Les Schwab in his book, “Pride in Performance” sets down the leadership rules for his managers. We, at green garden gates believe in his model for leadership. Here is how Les Schwab wants his managers to perform in making all of their employees important.

1. Give them all the responsibility and authority that they can handle.

There are employees at garden stores who have the skills, experience and enthusiasm to contribute much more for their company than what they are assigned to do. For any number of reasons, jealousy, personality conflicts, different styles of leadership, they are ignored and relegated to dismal jobs way beneath their abilities. This is simply a waste. Managers must get over all of this, recognize the skills of the employee, and move them to a place where they are the most valuable to green garden gates.

2. Include employees in what’s going on

Because others have captured the title of “the deciders”, employees on the front lines of a business are often left in the dark in the process of decision making. Get them involved! Seek out their advice and council. The choice cannot be the best choice unless all of the people who place their hands on the problem each day are allowed to contribute.

3. Assign employees work which is important in their eyes, work that they can take pride in doing.

The kid that blows off the walks for the gardening customers is just as important as the accountant sitting in his shiny oak desk. Don’t forget it. Tell that kid. Make him understand that his pride in getting it clean and ready is a real contribution to the garden store.

4. Let them share the limelight now and then with you.

Don’t gather it up and keep it for yourself. Find the employees who really made the suggestion or completed the task and give them the credit.

5. Take a sincere interest in the employees as individuals

Find out what makes them tick, what has meaning for them in their lives. Explore and learn about them. Help them achieve their goals. Make their pathway smoother in their lives.

6. Never belittle or ridicule them

The surest way to lose employees is to make them small. The good ones will soon be gone and the store will be left with only the people who are forced to stay there and take the ridicule because they need the paycheck. STOP IT RIGHT NOW. If it is a bad day, take a breath and end it right there. Don’t let it spill down to the employees in your charge.

7. Ask and listen to his or her advice

Chances are the employee has a valuable answer. Go to them. Give them the problem and listen to their perspective. It could just save you much time and money.

8. Confide in them once in a while.

You will be amazed how much lighter you load can be if you share the problem with your employees, it is a team, this garden store. Remember that.

#69 CHOOSING A MANAGER * part three (revised 6/3) "face time"

A Floor Manager

“My friend Peter has owned and operated a large successful garden store in northwest Washington State. He, like so many of us, as owners, is burned out with retail customers; year after year, the same old questions, the same old problems. Recently, a consultant hired by Peter and his wife Emily to look over their place spotted Peter right away and realized how bad it had gotten. He looked at Peter straight in the eye and said “Peter, I want you to never wait on a customer in your store ever again as long as you live. Go to the back and stay on your tractor and don’t come out until closing time.”

Jack Skiller

Garden store owner

California

So many of us have just been overloaded and finished with retail customers. We can hardly keep a civil tongue and we give the shortest answer possible just to shoo them away. Quite often, as the business gets more complex, the most talented people in the organization in solving problems and selling products have worked themselves into a job description where they can hide from the customer all day long and especially in the busy hectic spring season. Take a look around. They are not on the floor any longer. Go to any McDonalds and try to find the store manager. He or she is nearly always looking right at you in the peak hours, taking the order, dishing out the hamburgers, and directing traffic.

The managers at green garden gates are truly working floor managers. They are in the mix when the money must come in. They are selling the products and fielding those repetitive, often dismally boring questions, from gardeners. They are out there with the troops watching the flow, the cadence of the operation, improving, correcting, training, and evaluating hour after hour, day after day. This is not a position at a desk with the door closed. This is face time and lots of it. We cannot accept a manager who is invisible to the gardeners.

We understand, however, that the emotional health of the manager is critical. There can be too much exposure causing harm to the store as easily as not enough exposure. Our daily formula percentage for our managers is about seventy percent floor time and thirty percent recovery time, away from the customer activity.

#7 Managers at green garden gates are floor managers involved directly in customer service and support as well as monitoring the ongoing activities of the floor.

#68 CHOOSING THE MANAGER* (revised 6/3) part two "being there and being gone

Being there



“We fish the Naknek for the beautiful Alaska Coho Salmon. It’s the wild, wild west on that river. All year we prepared for those few hours when they are running. If those nets are not out when it starts, we lose everything. It is all about being there every waking minute.”

John Eldridge
Commercial Fisherman
King Salmon, Alaska

Like the Naknek River of Alaska, a garden store, during the preparation for and the actual planting and growing season, can be a thrill a minute for the manager and the staff. There just are not enough hours in the day to prepare it and service it all for the gardeners. The manager has to be on the tip of the spear during those crucial weeks that account for nearly all the success of the business. Driving away at closing time is for another kind of business, not a garden store. We, at green garden gates, recognize this fact and it must be a given for the managers that operate our stores.

We require our store managers to be in residence, to live on the grounds of the business for a minimum of three spring and summer gardening seasons. We believe that, with this requirement, the manager will remain vigilant to the operation of the facility, be prepared to correct any problems immediately with the facility and business, and further commit him or her to the success of green garden gates. Although, our model is that of a multi-store national organization, we place great value in the concept of a “mom and pop” business. We want undivided and total attention to the store. We want the manager to be bound to the store, with no other distractions that could cause green garden gates to be allowed to drift away from the task at hand, the sale of plants and plant care products to the gardeners of the area.



"Only when you step out of the field, can you see the mud on your feet"

Chinese peasant woman to her children
on breaking away and finding a new way of looking at life





We also believe that if the manager is obligated to “feel it, hear it and touch it” at all times, he or she is best able to observe, correct, train, and review the activities of the staff. The manager, with this residential requirement, is also in the best position to change or modify the model of green garden gates for the stores operating now and in the future.

Each green garden gates is designed and built with a modestly spacious apartment for the manager fully furnished and equipped, complete with satellite television and high speed wireless connections. It can accommodate the manager, a significant other, and a child. It has an outdoor play area as well as parking facilities. As part of the compensation, it is provided to the manager on a year round basis free of charge, never to be sub-leased. It is contractually agreed that the manager, upon termination for any reason is to vacate the apartment, unconditionally, no more then twenty four hours following a termination. A reserve fund from the salary of the manager is held for any damages or repairs to the apartment and contents.


At the completion of the third season residency on the site, the manager has the opportunity to continue with the apartment or move off site. A new manager will be chosen to take up residency. At no time will a manager be living off-site during the planting and growing season.

There are several exceptions to this requirement. First, if the manager is required to leave the store and apartment for an extended medical emergency. In this case, the assistant or one of the four owners will occupy the residence and operate the business. Second, if the manager leaves the apartment for a holiday which can only occur after the spring planting season, during the summer months. Third, if the store is closed with no retail activity as in, perhaps, the winter months. The manager may move to another residence in the immediate area as long as there will be “continued and regular” vigilance to the building and grounds of green garden gates.

Being Gone



“I wish the manager would just get out of here for a couple of days. She is driving us crazy”

Sally Folk
Garden center employee
Nebraska

There are dark sides to the manager being at the store at all times. The staff needs to breathe, to be, at times, free from the watchful eye of a manager. The employees need to express themselves, spread their wings, create and be empowered to operate green garden gates. We understand that it is difficult when the manger is always on the grounds. Additionally, the manager gets tired, irritable, and loses focus by being chained to the store. It is the policy of green garden gates that the manager must leave the site for two consecutive of the slower business days each week and not return (unless there is an extreme emergency at the facility) until the close of business day on the second day. We want our managers to have another life to unwind and relax each week and blasting them off the site is the only way to do this.

#6 Our managers are to live on site at green garden gates during the growing and gardening season. Our managers are to have two consecutive days off per week during that season.