"You can’t sell a dead plant"
You’ve got to hand it to the people who work in the gardening sector to be able to turn a phrase.
Sitting over breakfast with three senior leaders in this sector, the comment was in the context of creating business growth.
Plenty of past stories of how financiers attracted by healthy profit margins had come into the sector with the intention of driving profits. And an equal number of stories of how they had failed due to not understanding the core nature of the gardens business.
Which is all about nurture, of long term thinking, of planting seeds, water, sunshine and patience. Both of plants and of people.
The impatience of money and returns can be so overwhelming it drives out the nurture.
It’s about understanding the fundamental nature of the nurture business.
I was asked if I’d ever been to a B&Q and seen a handful of dead plants? (I had). It’s all to easy to skimp on the long term nurture and the consequence is dead plants which are pretty tricky to sell.
In the garden centre business, the lack of nurture shows up pretty easily in dead plants - the dead profits take a little longer to follow on.
In your business, how does a lack of nurture show up in your people?
Disengaged, demotivated, burn-out or that phrase which I keep hearing of quiet quitting?
You can have a pretty good bet that dead profits follow from disengaged people.
Yes of course, have an eye to the bottom line, but its worth a taking a leaf out of the garden centre book and focusing on nurture.
When you put people first, the results will follow.