Landfare posted a “Value Statement” on their website on or around August 11, 2017. This is a good thing and hopefully they live their stated values. The good news is they took my advice from earlier this year as I told Zach how without values, they have no source of their work. This was in my last days of trying to kill them with kindness to perform. (Note Zach’s admission of rework on an item that had been outstanding for almost 2 years. Zach openly admitted they had to do tons of rework all the time.) I even provided him a link to the core values at my company as an example.
I just wish Landfare had adopted “Results Matter” as a value. As a client, I hired them for a result, not a relationship. I’m already married. Relationships help sales typically. Results REALLY help relationships. Embrace challenges, but make sure you can execute on them. Accepting a job you don’t have the ability to expertly complete is NOT being honest. (Being honest isn’t not lying. It is also telling the WHOLE truth.)
A selfless person would not be telling the landscape designer to talk the client into accepting the wrong brick so that the contractor doesn’t have to go through the effort of returning it. Yes, we could hear Landfare through the upstairs window that day as they planned how Carol would talk me into accepting the wrong brick and pressed her to adopt the Landfare narrative.
Remain teachable and admit when you are wrong. Be honest. Landfare would have told me much earlier in the project that one of their key people was having substance and work issues and thus their results were suffering. I was apparently the recipient of their poor workmanship as John finally admitted to me over a year into the project. John also said Zach was unwilling to fire this person as there was too much work and they “needed him”. As a result I get to suffer? So much for moving forward with boldness.
Landfare should have pulled them from the job ages ago rather than sending them back repeatedly to make things worse. Instead, Landfare always tried to talk me into salvaging this person’s work rather than scrapping it and starting over. To me this is like a waiter dropping your steak on the floor and trying to convince you rinsing it in the sink is a reasonable remedy.
Value are worthless if they are written on the wall and not lived. Here’s hoping Landfare lives these values and even iterates them to make the better. As they are written now, their core values and explanations more serve themselves, not the customer.