Landscaping companies rarely train managers, leaving them to learn on the job. The industry's unpredictability—broken equipment, no-shows, weather—makes structured training feel impossible, even when promoting from within.
Chapters
You've called manager training the biggest thing missing in the trades right now. What does this gap actually look like day to day?
In the industry in general, right, we hire people, call it what it is, it's the Wild West. When the guys get there in the morning till they leave at night, you never know what's going to happen. I mean, you've got equipment that doesn't want to start in the morning. You've got guys that don't show up for whatever reason. You've got weather. Right? All these things are happening, whether it's a field person or even an operations manager, maybe an account manager. It is so hard to give them the time that they need to really train them just because there's so much happening. And usually we're hiring someone because we need the help and we're already tapped for time as it is. Hopefully they have some experience, right? So that it's not too crazy, but they still have to learn how we do business, right? How our company does business. So wherever they came from probably was not the same. In fact, I'd almost guarantee it wasn't. Maybe they've grown up in our company and we've promoted them. Well, they understood whatever their previous role was. They don't understand what their next role is. So again, we still have to train them. There's just such a lack of training. It's always learn on the fly, no matter what you're doing. It just makes it really hard.
