Each month we put one question to a few members and share their answers, unfiltered. This month we asked:

What is one change you have made in your business in the last 12 months that has delivered a measurable improvement?

Hamish Murray, Owner & Director, Green Valley Gardening

Hamish brought in a business coach to go through the company properly, numbers, margins, pricing, structure, systems, all of it. Before that he was pricing largely on instinct and reacting to whatever came up week to week.

Getting a clear view of the actual margins let him rebuild pricing from the ground up, and net profit margin has since lifted into the low thirties percent. He says just as valuable has been having a second pair of eyes on the business, and someone to talk decisions through with. Running a business can be lonely, and it is easy to lose perspective when it is all in your own head.

His advice: get outside input, even if it is uncomfortable at first. You cannot fix what you cannot see clearly, and you do not have to carry it all alone.

Christian Winfield, Managing Director, Winfield Landscapes

Christian had spent years on the tools himself, and once he stepped back into a director role, he found himself constantly micromanaging the crew, telling them exactly how he wanted each task done on site.

What he did not realise at the time was that this was taking away their ownership of the job. The team started focusing on doing things exactly the way he told them to, rather than taking pride in the work and finding the best way to get it done. Jobs started taking longer and finish dates kept getting pushed out.

Once Christian recognised what was happening, he made the conscious decision to stop micromanaging and let the crew take ownership of their own work. The results have been better than he expected. Team morale has improved, jobs are getting completed faster, and the quality of the finished work has gone up.

His advice is blunt: do not micromanage. Give your team the ownership to do the job right.

Michelle Mace, Managing Director, Mace Landscapes Group

Michelle’s focus has been on the systems and support behind the scenes. Finding great admin and support staff, and genuinely valuing the work they do to keep things running, has freed up her leadership team to focus on what they need to be doing, whether that is executing work onsite or developing their divisions.

Both of those things are essential in a competitive market, but they can quickly become bottlenecked by the sheer volume of information and communication required every day, especially now that everything moves instantly. Having a clearer focus on the systems that manage this, and staff who take real ownership of them, has made a big difference in keeping visibility over operations and keeping information organised in a way that is actually useful.

Michelle is upfront that it is a work in progress, with more to do in each division as technology keeps moving. But getting the team to buy in, and finding people to champion it, has put the business on the right path.

The takeaway

Hamish, Christian and Michelle each made a different change in their business, but there was a common thread running through all three. They had to let go of something they had been holding onto tightly, whether that was pricing by instinct, controlling every task on site or trying to manage information without the right systems and people in place. Once they did, they began to see real gains. Their experiences are a useful reminder that business improvement does not always come from taking on more yourself. Sometimes it comes from creating the right structure, stepping back and trusting the people and processes around you.

From the finalists: why they entered Young Landscaper of the Year and what they got out of it

Andrew Rae, Weka Landscaping (YLOY 2012)

Andrew entered when he was about to turn 30 – his last opportunity to compete. He didn’t hesitate.

“I wasn’t the most academic at school, but I really found my passion with landscaping – doing this competition really gave me a lot of confidence in myself.”

After competing, Andrew went on to enter the Young Horticulture competition before deciding to start his own business. He hasn’t looked back.