SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/739563
50 SportsTurf | November 2016 www.sportsturfonline.com Q&A with Dr. Grady Miller Questions? Send them to Grady Miller at North Carolina State University, Box 7620, Raleigh, NC 27695-7620, or email grady_miller@ncsu.edu Or, send your question to Pamela Sherratt at 202 Kottman Hall, 2001 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH 43210 or sherratt.1@osu.edu Professor, North Carolina State University to thousands of field managers, used to say that there are three key rules for field safety: apply the best techniques given the facility budget and equipment; do it regularly and on schedule; and document that you are doing so. If field managers get at odds with their supervisors, it may be difficult to get that support back on their side. In your situation, you may have to begin by telling your directors why you use particular products and practices. Perhaps the reasons are related to economics or performance or both. Use specific documentation to prove your points. If you think a deal related to a turf product is about to happen without your input, you may want to step in and set up some side-by-side comparisons for your supervisor so they can see for themselves the implications of switching. When it comes to management decisions, one may have to be very upfront and honest on the implications of the change. A quote often attributed to Groucho Marx is "politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly, and applying unsuitable remedies." Unfortunately some of you work for practicing politicians. For that reason, I think that there are a couple of thoughts to keep in mind. First, do your best to not sacrifice the safety of the field. The users of your fields deserve safe playing surfaces and facilities. So, always give them your best. Second, do not counter your supervisor's politics with your own. Address the situation honestly. Regardless of the outcome, you do not want to sacrifice your integrity. used to say that he was the consultant's best job security, and that he ignored all the consultant's recommendations and instead continued to use his own plans. The fields looked and performed great. The organization liked the fields, so they assumed the consultant was doing a great job. While I found some humor in that situation, it is not a great position for the turfgrass manager. Consultants can be great for tweaking programs and troubleshooting, but daily operations are best managed by an on-site field manager. Someone once told me that a person's job in an organization is to always make those above you in the organization look good, while making those below you (and beside you) in the organization feel good. Of course that is easy to say, but often hard to do. Regular communication is one key. Keep your management updated on as many different aspects of your job as possible. With emails to document your work, this is now easier than ever. Even if your boss is the type that deletes emails, it is often very easy to resend those that have implications that you do not want ignored. You want your upper management to trust your abilities so that you are included on decisions that directly impact your job and/or the fields you manage. The more a supervisor understands your contribution to the success of the facility, the less likely they are to undermine your position with inappropriate decisions. Floyd Perry, a good friend and mentor Politics, politics, politics Q : I am so tired of politics! I am faced with a position of having to manage my fields using products and practices that I do not agree with because of political deals made by my directors. Do you have any advice? A : I am beginning to wonder if this election year is encouraging bad behavior from some people. It is bad enough to hear all the political maneuvering and mud slinging on TV each night, but some of you are dealing with equally bad conduct at work. Over my career, I have been amazed by the decisions made by people for the purpose of furthering their own agenda with little regard to implications for the turfgrass, the facility, and the people that work at these facilities. Within the past year I heard about an unqualified contractor getting hired to do a job just because he was a buddy to someone high up the management chain. The result was a poorly constructed field. I have witnessed significant dollars spent on turf-related products by (non-turf) managers with little to no knowledge of their effectiveness or need. I know that events were scheduled to make "the facility look good," even though the event will likely destroy the field. In most of these cases, the field manager was told to "make it work." When the field does not perform up to a standard or looks bad, it usually comes back to the field manager, not to the person that made the decision that triggered the problem. These backroom deals can really put turfgrass managers in bad situations. A few years back I knew a turfgrass manager that had significant issues with the day-to-day turf management programs provided by a consultant hired by the parent organization who rarely ever visited the fields. The field manager "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it wrongly, and applying unsuitable remedies." —GROCHO MARX