Chris Senske's first planning management task was to create a five-year sales and growth forecast for Senske Lawn & Tree Care, the company
his parents founded more than 50 years ago. "I regularly go back to that graph paper I created more than 30 years ago, to
refresh my vision of where the company is headed," says Senske, now president. It was just the first lesson of many he learned.
Your company is an industry pioneer, founded by your parents in 1947. What are the three most important business things they
taught you?
Hard work, sacrifice and planning. From the very beginning, I was tasked with doing any job no one else would or had time
to do.
How did you prepare yourself to be the company leader?
AT A GLANCE
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Had I known I was going to be put in the situation where I would run the business, I might have chosen a different educational
track. I studied chemistry, mathematics and biochemistry. I might have benefited from a business and marketing education.
I ended up in the business quite by accident. I was preparing to go to graduate school when Dad needed to have someone watch
over the business while he recovered from a serious surgery.
Is there another generation of the family being prepared to run the company?
My son, Ben, is being trained as a supervisor. Like me, he worked summers in the business and has done every job in the company
operations — from customer service representative to tree climber. He loves the pest control side of the business the most
and is learning both technical and management skills there.
What is your primary role within your company today?
My primary role now is to keep the management team energized, motivated and moving in the same direction. I spend half of
my time interacting with the management team. The rest is spent looking for market growth opportunities, including organic
growth, acquisitions and new service offerings.
What's your company's biggest business challenge?
Our biggest challenge is to keep everyone focused on profitable growth. The outcomes from continued controlled growth benefit
everyone in the organization. New opportunities, personal development, as well as the energy that come out of a company moving
forward, all make continued growth a worthy goal.
How are you preparing the company for the next five to 10 years?
We set a plan of growth for the next five years and a plan of action how to get there. We are in the first phase of that plan.
We are developing operating standards and removing fuzzy lines of responsibility so there are clear-cut goals for every team
member. Daily, weekly and monthly goals, as well as progress made toward meeting those goals, are posted on the walls of each
branch office for almost every position in the organization.
Our battle cry is "Every 1 Counts." We are training every employee every week to look for ways to examine his job and the
work environment around him.
