Agriculture
An active leader
How to work together with your employees
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Miami | May 2008
Page 1 of 1
Juan C. Vila
CEO, Vila & Son Landscaping Corp.
Juan C. Vila considers his
employees part of his family.
As co-founder, president and
CEO of Vila & Son Landscaping
Corp., Vila today employs many
of the same family values that he
used to start the company with
his dad in 1984.
Instead of staying holed up in
his office, Vila makes sure he is
out among his 700 employees,
sharing information with them
and making sure they see how much he loves his job at the
landscaping company. He also
treats them like individuals, not
like numbers, and takes time to
visit with employees and get to
know them. And he’s created
unique activities — including
gatherings and soccer tournaments at his home — to make
people feel like family, a focus
that’s helped him grow his
company to 2007 revenue of
$63 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Vila about how to create a family
atmosphere by being visible
among your employees and by
staying focused.
Stay engaged. Stay engaged at
all levels, not just at the executive or branch levels. Stay
upfront with employees and
have contact with them. Tell
them where you’re going and
what you want to achieve
together. Treat employees like
a person and not a number.
Keep in contact with them.
Make them part of the team
and communicate with them all
the time and in all activities and
have constant motivation.
Be out there and visible and
be constantly available for
employees. Be transparent. If
the information and numbers
are available for management
and employees, be upfront with
them and share it. Being a
transparent person is just not a
‘go there in the morning and
walk around’ attitude, it’s more
of a family-oriented culture and
being open to that.
When you’re upfront with
employees, they trust you
more. When there are challenges, they will say, ‘I’m with
you; I don’t know where we’re
going to go, but I’m with you.’
When you are upfront and
open with them in the difficult
times, they feel like they’re part
of the team.
Stay focused. Stay on target and
keep motivating people and
working with them so you
don’t lose focus. Work with
people to align them with the
team and coach them so they
will follow you. No matter what
the circumstances are, keep
moving forward and staying
focused.
You’ve got to do what you’re
passionate about doing, what
you can be the best at doing
and what you can make money
out of doing. Combine those
three things in any business,
and you will be successful.
It’s not just a paycheck and
go. No matter what you do in
life, you’ve got to get passion
for it and love what you do.
Motivation doesn’t come from
money because it will only
motivate you temporarily.
That’s not enough; you have to
love what you do.
When clients come to you
and say, ‘What a great job
you’ve done,’ that’s powerful.
Pat employees on the back and
tell them that, and that culture
starts getting into the company.
Employees start thinking that
it’s not just a job, it’s that you
love what you do. That helps
employees stay focused and
loyal. You then will have people
who follow you.
Set measurable goals. Establish
and set aggressive goals that keep a focus of where you
want to hit the target. Set the
goals of what your vision is and
where you want to go, and then
follow the mission to achieve
those goals. It’s good to do
aggressive goals but also goals
that you can focus on and can
be measurable, that are not
unrealistic goals.
Continue to check the goals
to make sure you achieve
them. When the goal is not
achievable or it’s not done or
complete, make sure that you
reinstate a new goal and stay
focused to be able to achieve
that new goal.
The benefit of having measurable goals is to stay on focus
and on track and that you have
a target to aim and shoot for
that you want to achieve. We have aggressive goals, but they
are achievable and keep us on
the right track and motivated.
Make employees part of the team. Engage the employees and let
them think. Coach them, but let
them think by themselves. Be
out there with them on the field,
share the vision with them, and
give them not just a job but a
career opportunity. People
know that whatever they put
into the company they’re going
to get back because they’re part
of the family.
It’s great culture because no
matter how big the company
is, when you have that family
culture, the employee feels
like they’re not just a number,
that they’re going to be treated
right and that they’re going to
grow in a healthy company environment and will keep
moving forward. When
employees feel like they’re
part of the team, they want to
grow with it.
Share the vision. Have people in
place who can work with you.
When you have great people in
place, they don’t need much
motivation or management.
Then they can help you successfully achieve the vision and
follow that with the rest of the
team. Engage the best people
you can get, and you will have
great results.
If the vision is there, you can
make it successful. When you
shoot high and you have a
vision that you can follow forward to a mission, you get your
employees engaged.
HOW TO REACH: Vila & Son Landscaping Corp., (305) 255-9206 or www.vila-n-son.com
