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In 2004, Chase Hazelwood joined Go-Forth Pest Control. The 22-year-old had just left college and was determined to bring his father’s High Point, NC, company into the modern age, but things didn’t go exactly according to plan.
“When I came to the company, I really messed up a lot and was really abrupt. I was young enough to have all this fire and ambition; naive enough that I didn’t know what wasn’t going to work, so I still tried everything and broke a lot of expectations, ”remembers Hazelwood.
This approach was not so well received by the employees, around a third left the company. It was only after learning some tough lessons that Hazelwood was able to successfully make changes that increased the company’s annual revenue from single-digit percent to 20 percent.
Changing an organization is not an easy task. According to a study by the management consultancy McKinsey & Company, 70 percent of corporate transformations fail. Whether you make one or more changes, success depends on the following factors:
EMPLOYEE BUY-IN. According to an article titled “Managing Change: An Overview” by Drs. Nancy Lorenzi and Robert Riley in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (2000), people do not automatically resist change; rather, they refuse to have it imposed on them. “It doesn’t work well when the leader of an organization tells people what the change will be,” explains Dr. Carole Barnett, Organizational Change Expert and Associate Professor of Management at the University of New Hampshire.
Instead, the manager should involve and support the employees in the change process. “It takes sincere, collaborative and creative interpersonal communication between executives, managers and employees so that people not only understand what the change will be and what is necessary, but also what the change process will look like? What do we have to do? What do we have to learn? “She says.
And more than just the obvious people may need buy-in. A change in the routing software, for example, can affect not only field workers, but also employees who work in operations, in training programs, incentive programs, in sales and even in accounting. “They all need to be involved, and if so, then everything will be fine,” says Barnett.
EMPLOYEES FEAR. For those involved, an organizational change usually means a real or perceived risk of personal loss, according to an article in the American Medical Informatics Association’s journal. These threats can range from fear of losing your job to anger at disrupting established routines.
A leader should take the time to fully understand these concerns. “The senior leader needs to be able to learn more about employee needs than he currently knows,” says Barnett.
It is also important to understand which parts of the organization may be more resilient, which will vary depending on the nature of the change. Resistance is not just about employee attitudes. “It’s about the function for which you are responsible. Some functions are less flexible than others, ”recalls Barnett. Therefore, employees can resist change if they feel that it is hindering their ability to complete tasks.
Focus groups and open group dialogue can help leaders understand employees’ specific and not always obvious concerns, adds Barnett.
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WHEN TO PRINT. Early on, Hazelwood and his team realized that Go-Forth’s competitive advantage lies in its ability to adapt to changes in the market compared to its major competitors. “So we really focused on being able to change quickly and quickly. Some of our people didn’t want to deal with that, ”he says.
His drive for change was also driven by the fact that the company was not making money. The employees didn’t have nice service vehicles or equipment. “We were in debt to the limit,” recalls Hazelwood, frustrated that change was not going any faster. “I didn’t have the patience.” He also had the feeling that nobody was as interested in the company as he was. “That was naive,” he admits.
As a rule, employees need time to understand the reason for the change and the benefits and to get involved in the change process, unless it is a crisis situation. “When there is a crisis, people behave differently; People react differently to the demand for change, ”says Barnett. When the need for change is urgent but not necessarily obvious, it is up to the manager to communicate the benefits of acting quickly.
It’s harder to change a large organization. “The more people there are, the harder it is to make change quick and effective,” says Barnett. Companies large or small with a collaborative, respectful, and happy culture are more receptive to change; Organizations with dysfunctional cultures characterized by loss of trust or antagonism find change much more difficult, she says.
DEVELOP SUCCESS. “In the beginning I had completely unrealistic expectations of what people would achieve. I didn’t develop systems to make people succeed, ”recalls Hazelwood, who was more focused on improving performance metrics than developing people to improve those metrics.
He learned how important it is to document processes and to keep people to these standards. “If you don’t teach them how to do it and then you don’t blame them for doing it that way, you’ll never get what you expect,” he says. Consistency is essential, he emphasizes, be it in the maintenance of vehicles or in the maintenance.
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When there aren’t procedures that need to be followed or reviewed to hold employees accountable, managers get trapped in the mindset that they don’t have good technicians, resulting in a revolving door of hiring and firing, Hazelwood adds. As such, he has since developed systems that cover everything “from filling the coffee machine to working with termites”. He has also developed extensive programs to promote the personal and professional development of employees.
CALLING OUTSIDE HELP. At first, Hazelwood was inexperienced in the industry. “I didn’t know how to build a profitable pest control business. We didn’t make any money. I really didn’t know how to make something grow fast, ”he says. He started a lawn care service, but it only served as a “big distraction” and made his other problems worse. He realized that he needed help managing people. “I really had to reinvent myself,” he admits.
The 38-year-old has a strategic HR consultant who helps him and his managers focus on employee development. “I would never have considered that in 2005,” says Hazelwood, who bought Go-Forth in 2013. In 2020, the company had nearly $ 10 million in sales.
In addition, Hazelwood has a personal business coach and participates in a CEO forum attended by executives from large companies with thousands of employees. He said these organizations give him feedback that he may not necessarily get from industry associations.
“There are some leadership challenges that require the insight and wisdom of outside helpers,” agrees Barnett.
According to the workplace survey conducted for PCT and the National Pest Management Association, published in the PCT January 2021 edition, 31 percent of pest control professionals said their companies offer outside mentoring programs.
Three quarters of respondents said leadership courses offered by the pest control industry would be of value to their business.
The survey was created by the independent research company Readex Research and sponsored by BASF.
