Trugreen: Why Chapter 5 Matters

As many of you know understanding and explaining strategy for individuals and companies is one of my priorities in late life. So much so I wrote a book on strategy called "Winning in a Hostile Environment". Section Two of the book deals with seven reasons companies fail. These are not common topics for business people, not taught in Strategy classes to MBA's, and seldom discussed within executive chambers as the keys to good strategy. Therefore many people do not elaborate much on these 7 points, especially executives who are more likely to follow institutional prescriptions for success.

It has intrigued me that while some may dismiss my points and not choose to elaborate on these challenges, I see examples everywhere of how companies fall prey to these snares. Latest case in point is my experience with Trugreen Lawn Care. They have really good marketing and customer plans for service. They say all the right things that customers would want to hear. They make it easy to purchase and pay for the services. BUT, exactly how do they line up with Chapter 5?

Chapter 5 claims that companies lose when they choose to approach strategic initiatives as if they were utilitarian. That may sound too academic or complex to apply, but it is very simple and profound to winning or losing. So what do I mean by the strategic point in Chapter 5? Let me give you my story and I think you will see.

I subscribe for annual lawn care service from Trugreen, which includes timely application of weed killer and fertilizer. Once a year they aerate and over seed my fescue yard. This is critical because it happens once a year and determines a great deal of how the yard will look for a year. This service is normally completed in September. They take the initiative to schedule the service and I do not even have to be home for them to execute. As expected they schedule the service, but late the day of service I get a call saying they could not do it because I didn't mark my sprinkler heads so they could avoid them. I don't have a sprinkler system. They didn't put forth effort to see this. So they rescheduled. and this time i was home. They show up after 5pm on the day of schedule, two men jump out of their truck with aeration equipment, speedily move across the yard staying 3 feet from all boundaries, such as sidewalk, drive way, and mulch areas. In less than 10 minutes they were back in their truck and gone. You might say, "good job, they were motivated and efficient."

Yes, they were efficient, but they were not effective. Two things were wrong, which left me, the consumer, dissatisfied. One is that by not taking the time to aerate near the borders, I have no holes punched for new seed to fall and germinate. The second issue, they didn't even put down any seed, although the invoice left for the service said "aeration and over seed." Somewhat befuddled, I just assumed these service technicians were in a hurry and wanted to get home. Poor employee performance was my conclusion. trump would have said, "you're fired".

Somewhat taken back by what I experienced, I couldn't wait to call and report the poor service, get a supervisor to call me to discuss these employees and reschedule. Of course, calling was one of those experiences where you give them a number and they call back in 20 or 30 minutes. I did and they did. The call center service employee was pleasant, acknowledge my frustration and put in a message for the local manager to call me the next day. The next day I waited and by 10:30am there was no call. I proceeded then to call service center again and got a different service operator. Again, she was pleasant and agreed to resend a message to manager. She said one more thing that really got my attention. When i shared that their service felt like a "hit and run" and that the service techs were running through the yard as if they couldn't wait to get home, she said an amazing thing. "It shows in our records that your yard is 2000 sq ft and that means they are scheduled 5 minutes for that job." At first I couldn't believe what i heard and then it hit me.

Those employees were trying as hard as they could to be successful. Its just that SUCCESS meant meeting the efficiency standard for the job. It did not matter how the job was done, that it significantly failed to meet my satisfaction.  Here's what apparently is Trugreen's model - to treat strategic initiatives as if they were utilitarian, a formula for failure. Trugreen sees success through efficiency lenses. Employees are doing as they are rewarded.


Here's the point of Chapter 5 - Strategic initiatives are anything a company does that affects why someone would be your customer or consumer. In this case the aeration/ over seed service is clearly a strategic initiative. BUT, Trugreen believes that success is how efficient they do the service, not how effective. Utilitarian initiatives of a company, such as accounting, mail room, janitorial, and such, need to be efficient only. That's OK. They make a good application for Lean 6-sigma. However, when things a company does that effects the customer/consumer experience is primarily about being efficient without first being effective. The company will lose.

BTW, I have since found that everyone I thought were using Trugreen had fired them already. I am the last, but its now done!!!