Bruce Company CEO stays true to mission in all decisions

By Kay Plantes

“If you can’t get excited seeing what’s going on in our company, you must be dead,” says Bliss Nicholson, CEO of The Bruce Company.

It wasn’t always this way. The Bruce Company discovered the hard way that it needed more sophisticated management processes and leadership practices as revenue grew. With lessons learned, the company stands positioned for continued success.

Locals know The Bruce Company as a Middleton-based landscaping-services and retail garden products business. With offices in Milwaukee and Racine, the company also serves the regional corporate office and national golf-course markets.

Nicholson was hired in 1968 as an equipment operator and became president and COO in 2000. He succeeded founder Lee Bruce as CEO in 2008. Now, with more than 600 employees, the company’s continued growth eventually outpaced managers’ preparation.

One senior officer “who helped keep things running smoothly for about seventeen years,” said Nicholson, developed health problems. His absence at work “revealed an organization without any succession planning, leadership training or processes for getting the work done smoothly.”

“There were three underlying problems,” Nicholson continued. “We had too many silos, each with their own measures of success and no concern about cross-selling or the company’s overall success.”

For example, departments’ individual pricing practices added steps and margins that made retail products too expensive.

There was also a tendency to blame people for failure, rather than examine processes. The cut fresh-flower department kept falling short of its goals, with one leader after another being let go.

Finally, all the change work fell onto Nicholson’s shoulders. “Our 5-year plan had 49 initiatives and I was responsible for 45,” Nicholson laughed.

With a business adviser’s help, Nicholson and his team set out to better align people, strategy and processes with customers’ wants and needs.

Managers now meet weekly and hold themselves individually and collectively accountable for executing strategy and achieving goals.

They identify issues and unearth root causes. Plant pricing, for example, was changed to eliminate managers’ myopic focus on their own department’s profitability.

Leadership training is in place, Nicholson said. “I knew that my focus had to shift from making sure a tree was planted correctly to climbing up the flag pole and looking at the overall company. It was hard at first ... but I’m an eager student. I’ve learned a lot about leadership best practices,” Nicholson said.

How has his leadership changed? “I’m empowering people in all our areas,” Nicholson said.

“One team decided to close the cut-flower area after determining it did not really fit The Bruce Company’s business model. They’re highly motivated to determine how to fill the newly available floor space.”

Finally, The Bruce Company has become more focused on strategy. “We’ve always been a ‘jump at the opportunity’ company, but now we assess if the opportunity fits us,” Nicholson said.

He holds a clear vision for the future. “Our company is best in meeting customer needs because our employees understand why we do things the way that we do them.

“They feel great about their work and are more active participants in managing the company.”

Are you growing your team’s leadership skills? If you want to share Nicholson’s enthusiasm for the future, invest in leadership development.

Read books, take classes or work with one of the many outstanding leadership consultants in our community.
 

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