In this monologue, Mike Andes outlines his non‑negotiable expectation for general managers in his lawn‑care business: they must not only spot problems using scorecards and metrics (e.g., drops in efficiency, close‑rate, profitability) but also present concrete solutions. He explains that as the company scales from a single location to multiple sites, the manager’s role shifts from pure execution to strategic problem‑solving across areas such as HR, public relations, and customer complaints. Managers who can only identify issues and rely on Mike to fix them become a bottleneck, turning him into an “errand boy.” Consequently, he fires any manager who cannot independently devise and propose solutions, noting that early churn often stems from hiring strong executors who lack solution‑oriented thinking.
Chapters
I expect you to come up with a solution and then you will run it by me in our meeting and then you will execute. And so if they don't see certain things as a problem, that's when the metrics can usually give, hey, this is a problem. But if they can't identify the solution, I'm going to fire because the role of a general— of a manager is to create solutions, not to come to you like, I don't know what's going wrong. Like they're the closest one to the fire. They should be able to know why efficiency is down, why close rate is down, etc. And if they can't, they're not a manager. We can use the numbers to identify the problem, but if they cannot identify the solution, they are not a manager. And honestly, it comes down to like kind of the whole notion of like, if I had 5 locations, I cannot be the person everyone just comes to with their problems. Like, it's not working, I don't know why. It's like, then you're not to get up for this position. And that's why a lot of times I see churn in the first couple managers is 'cause it sometimes takes a while to realize early on that this person is great in execution, they just stink at figuring out what solutions are. So like, problem's very easy to identify, we're doing scorecards. They're great executing, but they never come with solutions. What do they do? They come back to me like, I don't know why we're not profitable. I don't know why the close ratio is— if they can't come up with a solution, I gotta let them go. Especially because when you have 3, 4, 5 locations, if you have 4 general managers that can only identify problems and execute, you will just become the constant errand boy of like, oh yeah, you need to solve this and here's how you fix the closer. They need to be able to come with solutions. And that's like very difficult because you can get a working GM, especially if location's really simplified, to kind of operate at a decent margin and do pretty good. Without coming up with a lot of solutions 'cause there's not a lot of problems. But as you begin to scale and you become less and less involved, there will be problems like employee, HR problems, PR, like that stuff happens, customer complaints, they'll need to come up with solutions. And if they're not a solutions, like if they can't come up with a solution and I've gotta come up with it all the time, I'm gonna fire them.
