Real Estate and Construction
Greener pastures
How to build a company with a desire to win
By Mike Cottrill
Smart Business | October 2009
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Stanley H. Greene, president and CEO, Sprinturf
Stanley H. Greene has an administrative assistant answering his phone at Sprinturf that can brighten your day with her charming disposition.
“And what that does is that says something positive about Sprinturf,” Greene says.
That attitude is something Greene, the company’s president and CEO, wants to see in all 160 of his employees. So he and his senior leaders put five major expectations in at the growing and innovative synthetic turf installer that has done fields for pro teams, including the Philadelphia Eagles, and college and prep teams across the nation. The first three of those expectations are: a positive attitude, a desire to win and a willingness to be a proactive team member.
“And if we do those things well, it will lead to the fourth thing, which is delighted customers, folks that will be raving fans and will tell folks you absolutely have to use Sprinturf,” he says. “And if we do those things right, it will lead to the fifth, which is profitable growth.”
Smart Business spoke with Greene about what he learned from the late Chuck Daly on getting things done and how you can build a desire to win in company meetings.
Look for a positive attitude first and foremost. Everything starts with an attitude, and we hire around that more so than we do the expertise because we can always train. If you have the right attitude, it would be easy to train you to do what it is we do.
I used to play basketball for the University of Pennsylvania, and Chuck Daly, who was a two-time NBA championship winner, was my coach at Penn, and we were the last college team he coached ... and he taught us what’s key is that you’re always thinking about how you can get things done as opposed to thinking about what’s wrong. We want to make sure we hire people that think along those lines, and one of the ways you do it is with your interview questions. This is not unique to Sprinturf. The common thread is you want them to have a positive outlook and be open. In an interview, I’ll ask different people the same question and I’ll say, ‘Tell me what you think about positive attitudes; tell me what you think about negative attitudes,’ and get their perspective on it, and it tells you a lot. I remember years ago working in cable in hiring for a service tech job, and for the finalist, I would always at least talk to them and get a sense of them and ask certain questions. And I recall hiring a service tech, and these are the guys who fix the television, and you may ask, ‘Tell me what would you do if you were presented a situation if you’re with a customer who is really irate and really upset about whatever may have happened.’ And the person, the tech type that may not understand the value of turning attitudes around, will usually say, ‘Tell them to call my supervisor and they’ll deal with it.’ But I’ll never forget this one guy ... he said, ‘I’d do everything possible to make that customer happy.’ And just that attitude, the approach, the thought that that’s what he needed to do and he believed that he could do it meant that you had 80 percent of what you needed solved because it’s all about dealing with people and customers.
