Davey Tree Flipbooks

95 94 Growth Rings Employees responded with feverish excitement. In 1986, a total 395 employees bought 13,722 shares through payroll deductions of more than $420,000. In 1987, those figures ballooned to 506 employees who bought 45,605 shares through payroll deductions of more than $540,000. By buying shares, employees were reinvesting in the company and investing in their own futures at the same time. Financially, the decade finished on a strong note. e Davey Company's total annual revenue was up more than $10 million in 1987 over 1986. Total revenue rose again by 5.7 percent to exceed $150 million in 1988. And in 1989 revenue was up 8.1 percent, nearly $14 million, over the 1988 total. Davey invested almost $14 million in trucks and equipment in 1989 to accommodate the growth in revenue and to replace aging units. e company also invested nearly $3 million in land and buildings that year to provide company-owned facilities for the high-volume R/C territories. e end of the 1980s held the promise of yet more success as several promotions were made to establish the next era of management. Howard L. Bowles, Richard A. Ramsey, and C. Kenneth Celmer were promoted to corporate vice presidents and officers of the company. Bowles and Ramsey oversaw the Davey Tree Surgery Company, with Jim Stief, who had recently been promoted to operations manager, western operations, moving from his successful territory in Atlanta to Livermore, California, to help manage residential operations in the West. Celmer was named vice president of operations for Residential/Commercial services, reporting to Donald J. Shope, vice president and general manager of Residential/Commercial services. Residential/Commercial services seemed most enticing in terms of prospects for expansion. In the fall of 1989, Celmer and Shope met with nearly 100 district managers and assistant managers to explain how Davey could become "America's Groundskeeper" by offering a broader range of landscape care services, including mowing, edging, trimming, mulching, aerification, and seeding. "One of our strate- gies […] is to develop commercial Groundskeeper Care at a 20 percent to 30 percent growth rate," Celmer told attendees of the meeting. is service was principally designed for commercial customers who preferred to partner with one contractor for all their landscape needs. At the meeting, Doug Cowan highlighted the company's desire to continue to expand by building upon Davey's strengths. "We've spent the past three years getting back to basics in all company operations – quality work, customer care, people as our No. 1 priority, and safety," he said. "We've focused on a handful of simple, concise objectives and priorities and tried not to stray from these. We've worked extremely hard at building teamwork and employee morale at all levels – in short, rekindling the Davey spirit." As Cowan put it, it was time "for the company to step up the pace, to stretch out farther to realize the company's enormous potential." Cowan continued, "e 1990s will be the decade of the environment, and it's our intent to be the environmental leader in the green industry. We have the best people in the industry, we have the best technical capabilities, we have the financial strength to pursue major opportunities and we have the independence of being employee-owners. It's within our power to become 'the best that's ever been.'" With promotions came some retirements at the decade's end, including Bill Heim, who retired in 1989 after 42 years with the company. Having served in every utility field position, Heim became an important leader in utility services by courting key clients and charting future directions for the service line. His departure had a partic- ularly significant effect on the East Coast and the corporate office. e retirement of Paul Daniel as executive vice president and general manager of the Davey Tree Surgery Company yielded a similar impact on the West Coast, where he had been a guiding voice on operations matters ranging from equipment to safety for decades. Company management found itself amidst a transitional period with the pending retirements of even more employees. Cowan recognized this looming challenge, and he appointed a key operations man to address it. Karl Warnke, then an up-and- coming manager in the Eastern Utility services, continued his ascension when Cowan promoted him to corporate vice president and assistant to the president in 1987 with responsibility for operations support services, including the equipment department. One of Warnke's first priorities was to identify and tackle the issue of succession planning within all the Davey Company's service lines while managing succession, growth, and financial stability in a very competitive utility service line. "We began by working on the Davey Tree Surgery Company in California and the Davey Tree Expert Co. of Canada," Warnke recalled in a 2017 interview. "We addressed succession planning throughout the company, in every service line and every operations support department. To properly address succession, you needed to clearly identify the issues and recognize problems." ere had been no formal succession strategy in place. "And that's what we were trying to develop," Cowan recalled in a 2019 interview. "How do we put a little structure to this thing so we can identify who the next leaders are going to be, and how do we get them trained to be ready? So we started structuring it, not rigidly, but loosely. And we tried to get all of the operations managers involved in the process." According to Cowan, succession planning is something every Davey CEO must spend time working on, including grooming potential replacements for the CEO position. "In a company like Davey, I think your CEO should be homegrown," he said. "I think that our culture is way, way too important, and it's what makes this company better than everybody else out there. […] It's absolutely critical to the future that you prepare the next generations. In a company like Davey where the tone, temperament, and the focus on people is such a big deal, you've got to home grow your leadership." At this point, Cowan and Warnke started to forge the kind of collaborative relationship that Joy and Cowan had developed over the years. Counting on each other's expertise, they started working on determining one true course for the company. Cowan relied on Warnke's intimate knowledge of the green industry and the company's operational activities, while Warnke benefited from Cowan's focus on financial report- ing and results and other disciplines of business critical to the company's success. "Doug was a great boss and mentor," Warnke said. "He knew his strengths and weaknesses and placed his confidence in the people around him. We frequently worked together on issues involving personnel, industry-related concerns, budgets, priorities, strategic direction, and of course, succession. It was necessary to begin proactively identifying and addressing all our business challenges." As the 1980s ended, the decade brought with it a few solemn notes for the Davey family. Keith L. Davey died in 1987 at the age of 80 in California. Grandson of John Davey and son of Wellington Davey, Keith Davey had retired shortly after selling e Davey Tree Surgery Company to Davey Tree in 1969. A year later, Alexander M. Smith died at the age of 77. Smith, retired chairman and president, had been involved with Davey since his marriage to Evangeline Davey, the daughter of Martin L. Davey, Sr. He served three separate terms as president in the 1960s and 1970s and was the last member of the Davey family to hold the president's office. Chapter 5 Karl Warnke and Doug Cowan during a Davey Shareholders' Meeting in the early 2000s.

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