Why Your Team Won’t Follow Through (And Why It’s Probably Not Their Fault)
You’ve tried everything.
You hired the new account manager. You added the Monday morning huddle. You rolled out a new process, then a new spreadsheet, then new software. You’ve had the hard conversations. You’ve had the soft conversations. You’ve had the conversations you’re not proud of.
And the team still isn’t following through.
If that sounds like you, the first thing we want to say is this: most of the time, the real problem is structural. Once you can see what the structure is doing, the fix becomes a lot clearer and a lot less personal.
In our work with landscape companies across the country, we see “my team isn’t following through” can mean three completely different things. They sound the same when an owner describes them at the kickoff call. Yet, they are not the same problem and they do not have the same fix.
Diagnosis #1: Right Person, Wrong Seat
This is the one most owners reach for first, because it’s the most familiar. Someone on your team is talented, hardworking, loyal, but falling short.
We work with a $10M maintenance company (in X city) whose General Manager came up through the field. He’s a strong leader. The crews respect him. But the role he’s in now requires sitting behind a computer, pulling reports out of Aspire, analyzing estimates, and making sure work tickets are processed correctly. In reality, he’d rather be out on the jobs with his crews. So the desk work doesn’t get done.
The cost is cash flow, mostly. Jobs that should be invoiced sit open. Tickets close before all the labor is allocated. Estimates miss the mark and nobody asks why. Nothing dramatic; just a steady leak that adds up to real dollars over a season.
This is a seat problem. The fix here is to move him into a role where his strengths actually compound (production, training, field-facing leadership) and put someone in the GM seat who is wired for the data side of the role. If you want to get sharper on what the data side of that role actually looks like, our piece on tracking executive-level KPIs in Aspire is a good place to start.
Diagnosis #2: No Seat At All
The second pattern hurts the most because it shows up as a people problem when the real driver is structure.
We recently sat with a $20M landscape company (in X city) that didn’t have an organizational chart. They could finagle through who reports to whom in conversation, but it wasn’t written down, and it wasn’t consistent. So when a project went sideways, three people thought it was someone else’s job, two people stepped on each other trying to fix it, and the owner was the only one with the full picture, which meant they were the only real backstop.
You can’t hold a team accountable for lanes that don’t exist.
If your company doesn’t have a clean org chart with named roles, written responsibilities, and a clear chain of accountability, what you’re really dealing with is a no-seat problem. Building structure comes first, and every role on the chart needs a written job description.
We wrote more about that here if you’d like to learn more: The Importance of Job Descriptions.
Diagnosis #3: When the Problem Comes From the Top
This is the hardest one to face, but it’s important work.
Sometimes the reason your team won’t follow through has nothing to do with the people on the team or the seats they’re sitting in. The signal is coming from leadership.
A few signs you might be looking at this kind of problem:
- Every new process or roll out is met with push back or hesitation
- Tools you’ve invested in slowly die on the vine
- “That’s how we’ve always done it” is the prevailing answer to most questions
If those patterns sound familiar, the signal is coming from leadership. The team has learned what actually matters around here, and follow-through isn’t on the list.
A new account manager won’t change that. A cleaner org chart won’t change it either. The next person you hire walks into the same room and reads the same temperature within a week.
This is where most owners get stuck, because the diagnosis points back at them and there’s no team member to coach through it. It’s also, not coincidentally, where executive coaching does its best work.
🔥 The 212° Move
One small thing you can do this week to push from warm to boiling.
Open a blank Google Doc. Type out every role on your team by title, leaving the person’s name off. Beside each role, write three things that role is accountable for. Just three.
If you can fill in three for every role, you have an org chart and a starting point for accountability. If you can’t fill in three for one or more roles, you’ve just found a no-seat problem in your own company. Consider it a diagnosis, and the diagnosis is where the fix starts.
So here’s the question to sit with: when you look at the person you’re frustrated with right now, are you sure you’re looking at a wrong-person problem?
Or might you be looking at a wrong-seat problem? A no-seat problem? A culture problem wearing a person’s name?
If you can’t answer that, that’s where we come in. Many of our executive coaching engagements start with exactly this question, and the answer almost never turns out to be the one the owner walked in with.
If you’re ready to have that conversation, book a 30-minute call with our team. If you’re not quite there yet, start with the org chart exercise above. Pull it up, print it out, and ask whether everyone on it has a written set of responsibilities. If they don’t, you’ve already found something to fix on Monday morning.
Either way, it’s probably not their fault.