Why Your Team is the Most Important Project You’ll Ever Design
Professional pond builders spend a lot of time talking about flow rates, liner durability and the artistry of rock placement. But the most complex ecosystem we will ever build is not made of water and stone.
It’s made of people.
Many contractors and business owners in our industry have likely felt the sting of a bad hire or the slow drain of a toxic culture. A project can be technically perfect, but if the crew isn’t clicking, the process is a nightmare.
A few years ago, I realized that growing my company required a shift in perspective, and it had to start with me. As the company’s owner, I had to view my team not as a labor force but as its bedrock.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make as business owners is the “warm body” approach to hiring. We land a big contract, realize we’re shorthanded and hire anyone who can swing a mattock or direct a boulder. We think we’re solving a capacity problem. But, in fact, we may be creating a cultural issue that could cost us our reputation in the long run.
Foundation of Character
When leadership hires for skill without looking at character, they gamble with the company’s reputation and the trusted brand they work hard every day to build. Skill can be taught. Integrity cannot. If a candidate has a good work ethic and mechanical aptitude, we can teach how to fold a liner or install a filter. What we cannot teach is character — caring for a client’s property, thinking five or six steps ahead on a job or supporting teammates when we’re not looking.
To move from a job-to-job mindset into a team-oriented legacy company, we stopped asking, “Can this person do the job?” We started asking, “Does this person belong on the team?” And if so, “Are they in the right seat on the bus?”
During the early days of our business, everyone did everything. While that “all hands on deck” mentality may be great for startups, over time it created a ceiling for growth. So, in mid-2024, we restructured our leadership and teams around three pillars:
- Leadership and accountability: This ensures every manager and team member knows who is responsible for specific outcomes. When a crew leader understands their “seat on the bus” and the project budget, they and their team perform at a much higher level. By creating a clear chain of command, the team focuses on their craft rather than wondering who is in charge.
- Standardized communication: This is our company’s plumbing. If communication is clogged or leaking, the project loses pressure. To help solve the problem, we implemented a digital project management system that serves as our “single source of truth.” Documenting every design detail, utility location and client preference prevents the costly rework that stems from guesswork or verbal misunderstandings.
- Cultural alignment and “the fit”: Along the way, I’ve learned that a person with an average skill set but a phenomenal attitude is more valuable than a toxic expert. You can’t teach passion in our industry. A person either has it or they don’t. Alignment means every employee understands our mission to create natural masterpieces and shares the desire to create epic experiences for our clients. If a team member doesn’t feel a sense of pride when the water turns on for the first time, they aren’t a good fit.
Identifying and Defining Core Values
The epicenter of rebuilding is core values. For a long time, I had ideas in my head about how we should work, but they weren’t written down where the team could see them. To ensure everyone is on the same page, we had to change that. First — and together — we had to define what the company’s values are.
A company’s core values aren’t just pretty words printed on a flyer and posted in the employee lunchroom. Neither are they top-down directives. Core values are no-compromise behavioral standards. They are organizational filters that ensure everyone is aligned on the ways of working that support company growth and protect the brand’s reputation.
To begin defining our core values, we first looked at our most successful team members. They’re the ones who stay late without being asked, mentor teammates and new hires, and consistently find solutions to problems.
Once values were defined from those character traits and others, we identified them as values — our shared belief in our brand and how we run our business. Today, we look for evidence of our core values during new-hire interviews.
For example, if a candidate hasn’t learned a new skill in years, they won’t fit our value of “continuous learning,” no matter how well they operate a skid steer.
Turning away talent that doesn’t mirror our values requires discipline, but it prevents infighting that breaks companies, especially during busy seasons.
Culture as a Living Ecosystem
In our trade industry, culture is visceral. It’s the vibe in the truck and how the crew reacts when a pump fails at 5 p.m. on a Friday. A healthy culture is self-policing. When everyone on the team knows the standard and believes in it, the team begins to manage itself. If a new hire cuts corners or complains excessively, veteran team members will either pull that person up to the standard or push them out.
As a result of our rebuilding, my role is changing. As the company’s president, my job is shifting from “chief problem solver” to “chief culture officer.” I realized early on that if I protect the company’s culture, the team handles the projects.
On the other hand, if I focus only on the projects, I get stuck solving the same personnel problems over and over again. You cannot force a healthy business culture. But you can create an environment — through transparency and rewarding clearly defined successes — where health is the only option.
Challenges of the Rebuild
Rebuilding a team this way is a slow, continual process and, without doubt, it is painful. Along the way, we had to acknowledge that not everyone who helped us get to where we are would be joining us in the future. Realizing that some people are “seasonal” along the journey of success is the hardest part of business ownership.
If you have a manager who is technically brilliant but refuses to adapt to new technologies or communication methods, or treats others disrespectfully, you cannot keep that person on the payroll. There’s simply not a right seat for them on the bus. Putting them on the bus anyway tells the rest of the team that your values are merely suggestions.
Conversely, we are finding that productivity increases when values are upheld because emotion is removed from decision-making. Leadership has to be the first to commit to rebuilding. They need to understand what is good for the culture they wish to build. That requires the courage to prioritize the health of the whole over the talent of one.
Invest in Human Assets
It’s easy to justify spending thousands of dollars on a new excavator because the return on investment is immediate. It is harder to justify spending time and resources on team training and leadership seminars. But the excavator doesn’t represent the company’s brand to the customer, nor does it innovate a new way to hide a skimmer. People do.
In our company, team investment is now a mandatory budget line item. We provide growth opportunities because we want people to build careers with us, not just hold jobs. Developing reward and acknowledgment systems is an investment that pays off in cohesive teams, brand loyalty and positive morale.
For us, this also includes cross-training. Having construction crews learn design and designers spend time in the mud, helps everyone understand the realities of design and construction. That builds the empathy necessary to solve problems naturally.
The Long View
In landscape design, a mature tree with an established root system can withstand storms that would easily topple shallower plants. A values-driven team operates on that same principle: The deeper the internal connection, the greater the external resilience. Once core values are defined, the technical aspects of day-to-day work are easier to manage.
People are the heartbeat of our business. Everything else is just plumbing. For our shop, rebuilding lifted the growth ceiling. It gave us the tools to take on projects with greater confidence in one another and the team.
Rebuilding for success starts by identifying what the company stands for. After that, it’s about hiring the people who stand for the same thing. As we all know in this business, if the culture is right, healthy water always follows.
