No. 1 January 2011

A recent newspaper headline stated that “Snowstorms Bring Winners and Losers.” How true that is. The winners are sellers of snow throwers, snow plowing equipment, sand and salt as well as landscapers who push snow in the offseason. The losers include cities, businesses, and landlords whose budgets are strained by the cost of all that snow to plow -- and the locals dealing with messy streets, rutted alleys, and missing mail deliveries.

The other headline currently catching the attention of the OPE industry is E15, which is gasoline with an ethanol content of 15 percent. The following statement presents a fair picture of the situation: “Tools such as trimmers, mowers and blowers generally use engine technologies long abandoned by carmakers such as air cooling, carburetion and, often, two-cycle engines fueled by an oil-gas mix. Ethanol blends cause engines to run leaner and hotter – modern auto engines can adjust for that; lawn mowers and chain saws cannot.”

Critics of E15 say “A 15 percent ethanol blend would shorten engine life and make equipment more prone to fuel leaks and fire hazards. Apart from causing engines to run hotter, ethanol eats away at rubber components. Ethanol also absorbs water and makes fuel unstable and destructive to engines when seasonable equipment is stored for months on end.”

Get ready to do more explaining to your customers, as they unhappily bring in equipment for repair more often than ever before. The impact on our businesses could be huge – negative and positive.

Dan McCarthy, whose “Great Leadership” Blog is one of my favorites, touched on a management maxim that he disagrees with and one that I have no great love for either. You often hear, “There is no such thing as a poor performer, there are only poor processes” or “Don’t blame the person, fix the process.”

McCarthy says, “I’m sorry, but does anyone other than those that teach and sell this stuff, and maybe criminal defense attorneys, really believe this?

“One of the most important lesson’s I’ve ever learned in leadership development is from Jim Collins, author of ‘Good to Great’ – you start with getting the right people on the bus. Everything else follows, i.e. strategy, structure, processes and training. Without the right people – great ‘A Players’ - the rest is doomed to failure. The same is true in talent management – selection trumps training every time. No amount of training will overcome a poor selection decision.

“It makes me crazy when an organization or team will spend hundreds of hours in meetings covering walls with post-it notes in order to design idiot-proof ‘perfect processes’, when what they really should have done is just remove the one or two idiots and turn the rest of their employees loose. It’s a cowardly way to avoid dealing with performance issues at the expense of everyone else.”

McCarthy concludes with this thought, “The key to success is to hire and develop great employees (and managers) – then empower them to deliver extraordinary results. Yes, the lack of clearly defined processes and roles may trip them up now and then – but you need to trust them that they’ll figure out a way – they always do. I’ll take a team full of A players over a perfect process anytime.”

I’m looking forward to reading the profiles of the selected winners for “Most Influential People in the Green Industry” that you’ll find in the January 2011 issue of Outdoor Power Equipment. I recognize some friends on that list like Fred Whyte, president of Stihl Inc. or Ed Nelson, president of Rotary Mower, or the retired Dane Scag, who is always a treat to be around, or Jim Starmer, executive VP at Dixie Sales.

You see, that’s the wonderful thing about this industry...anybody can be your friend no matter what they do or who they are; they can pull you up when you’re down; they’ll listen to you when you need someone to listen; and they’ll share ideas with you when you really need them. It would be an honor to spend some time with everybody on that list, because they’ve all made a positive difference in their chosen professions. We all need to strive to be on that list. What a wonderful honor that would be.

No. 10 October 2010

It was recently announced that two prominent commercial mower brands will disappear at the end of 2011. Ariens Company decided to phase out the EverRide and Great Dane brands and focus its com­mercial brand resources on Gravely, as its core professional brand.

In a press release issued by the Ariens Company, the most interesting comment was made by Dan Ariens, President and CEO of the Ariens Company, when he said, “This move will also create a bit more clarity in a market­place that frankly has too many brands of commercial mowers.” Finally, an industry leader made the statement that we have all known to be true for many years. Every time a new commercial mower brand was announced — and there were many over the years — I wondered how it would differenti­ate itself from the other existing commercial brands. All of those brands gave new mean­ing to the term, “dime a dozen.” I consider this another smart move by the Ariens family.

An editorial that recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal summed up my feelings about the federal government’s actions taken to try to stimulate our economy. The editorial noted, “(Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) and President Obama and their economic coterie really believe that govern­ment spending can stimulate growth by triggering private ‘demand,’ that tax rates are irrelevant to investment decisions, that waves of new regulation can be absorbed by business with little impact on costs or hiring, and that politicians can assail capitalists without having any effect on the movement of capital.”

The editorial continued, “If prosperity were a function of government stimulus, our economy should be booming.” And it con­cludes, “Never before has government tried to do so much and achieved so little.” My response: “Amen!”

I have a special fondness for rapidly grow­ing family-owned businesses. I know the giddy feeling of being a part of that type of growth. It’s a wonderful and exciting feeling that I will never forget.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed reading about the growth of Certified Parts Corporation (CPC), the Janesville, Wis.-based company that pur­chased the assets of TecumsehPower Company in 2009, and now provides produc­tion engines and parts for TecumsehPower (Lauson) engines. In 2010, CPC purchased the assets of Hoffco/Comet and restarted produc­tion of units and parts in its Wisconsin facilities. Then, in September 2010, CPC entered into an agreement with Liquid Combustion Technology (LCT) of Travelers Rest, S.C., to jointly manufacture air-cooled engines for the OPE market.

This new agreement with LCT provides CPC with the engineering, manufacturing and sales capabilities to reintroduce the Snow King line of snow thrower engines and other engines formerly manufactured and sold by TecumsehPower. The engines will be represented and sold through LCT under the Snow King, Lauson and LCT brands. CPC will service all these brands through the existing TecumsehPower dealer/distributor network.

I’ve met the LCT principals, heard their business story, and came away impressed with them and their business plans. I still am. I haven’t met the CPC principals, but suspect they are very much like my family was, growing a business and learning or try­ing something new every day while enjoying success. These two companies will both gain from their new relationship. But only time will tell if there is a place in the market for Lauson engines and two-cycle and four-cycle snow thrower engines. With Briggs and Stratton and MTD both making their own snow thrower engines, demand is a lot different today than it was a few years ago. And we all know that snow throwers, like generators, are opportunity sales. Nevertheless, we wish this new partnership good luck in their new venture.

This is an old story, but it never fails to bring me a smile.  Several men are in a golf club locker room when a cell phone rings. A man answers the phone. “Yes, I’m finished with my game so I can talk. You’re out shop­ping? And you want to order those new carpets? Okay…and they’ll include the cur­tains for an extra $5,000? Sure, why not?”

The golf buddies start to laugh.

“You want to book that week-long cruise? They’ll hold the price at $12,000? Sounds good to me. How about two weeks? If that’s what you want, okay by me.”

The buddies start to wonder where he’s been hiding the money.

He continues: “And you want to give the builder the go-ahead for the house addition? $75,000 if we say yes today? Sounds fair — sure, that’s fine.”

Glances of amazement all around.

“Okay, see you later. Yes, love you too,” says the man, ending the call. 

He looks at the other men and says, "Whose Phone is this anyway?"