I recently watched the winner of the national spelling bee successfully spell out the final word of the competition and was announced the champion. As always, I am amazed how bright these young people are and how bad a speller I am. Then I started thinking about the upcoming Summer PLANET Leadership meeting being held on June 24-27 with the Suppliers Summit occurring at the same wonderful location on June 23rd in Washington. All of a sudden my spelling improved dramatically, I could spell many words with just one word, PLANET; words like leadership, networking, friendships and success just to name a few of the words when I think about PLANET. Heck even I can spell those words.
My partner Harvester Ed and I will be traveling to Washington to be part of this annual meeting. We haven’t gone to the Summer Leadership meeting for some time and we are looking forward to getting involved with this great group of leaders. Each time I rub elbows with all of these energetic and enthusiastic people I get recharged and have a great sense of pride that indeed I have picked a fabulous vocation. The Summer Leadership meeting is where members gather in a very relaxed environment and along with their commitment, ideas and desire, they plan the next year’s priorities with their colleagues. Veterans and newcomers are welcome to attend and are encouraged to help map out association initiatives and make some lifelong friends along the way. This is a great opportunity to help form the green industry’s future and assume a critical committee or leadership role.
I was lucky enough to help facilitate the recent Educational Committee meeting at the Student Career Days in Pomona, California and I can assure you what this committee has come up with will shape the way landscape professionals will be doing business for a long way into the future by using all of today’s technology and information access. WOW! If you are wondering what this is all about just spell PLANET UNIVERSE and then keep your eyes and ears open for this launching, coming soon.
By the way, my partner, colleague and life long friend Ed Laflamme and I met at the Summer Leadership meeting held in Michigan almost 15 years ago. It was definitely worth the trip then and it is definitely worth attending now more than ever.
Ed and I will be conducting our own spelling bee of sorts during a leadership training session at this meeting and we have called it: How do you spell success? Success is spelled PLANET. We will review the most critical areas that a leader must focus on to be successful in today’s challenging environment.
So whether you are a veteran and haven’t attended for a while or a newcomer to the PLANET membership, I highly encourage you to attend and I look forward to sharing with you some of my new spelling talents. PLANET, P L A N E T, PLANET !!!!
For more information or to register for the Summer Leadership, visit PLANET’s web site.
