I know, you just can’t lose with a new computer.  It boots up fast, has the latest software package, and makes working remotely that much easier.  It was a great choice and if you think about it, making a choice on a product is usually based on features, benefits, cost, quality and reputation of the vendor. You get all that to line up and the product you choose generally rises to the top.

But the other key was the support provided by the vendor BASF chose to remove the old PCs and install the new ones. This was tricky given the scope and scale of the operation, plus everyone has the irrational fear of losing all their work on their current PCs. You had to clear time on your calendar for delivery of the new system and were not allowed to move from your appointed time.  Sounds somehow like a distantly painful upcoming visit to the dentist, right?

There were some minor glitches, nothing is ever perfect, but overall I was wowed.  These guys came into our offices and one-by-one delivered the new PCs and scooped up the old ones. They had a plan, worked the plan and it was a success.

I was delighted by my experience and am enjoying my new computer.  It’s one of the best on the market, but the formula for this success was simple. Take a top notch product; develop a plan and work to execute the plan flawlessly.

So if I think about the turf & ornamental business, the New Year reminds us that we are starting over; it’s a new beginning so before we begin, let’s double check the plan, or make it if we haven’t already done so.  Let’s make sure we’ve got the resources needed to execute the plan.  If the plan just sits on the shelf gathering dust or is under delivered, you can predict the results will be, at best, below average.  

At BASF we’ve got great products, like our Intrinsic™ brand fungicides, still the only fungicides in the turf market with Plant Health on the labels. These products are the best, they rise to the top. So great products separate us in one way from the other guys, but how else do we provide value? With market leading technical support, a strong network of distributors and agents, training, a full pipeline of innovations for our customers, and the wherewithal to stand behind our not only our products, but also our people.

Can others make those claims?  Maybe some of the claims but certainly not all of them.  And so if you buy from BASF, we expect to impress turf pros like yourself this year.

You too can take these axioms and apply them to your own business. Develop the best product you can, make your plan and work your plan. More often than not, you’ll exceed your expectations and be the best.

Brian Lish

After they ribbon cutting, other BASF team members from Research Triangle Park, NC, and I were taken on a tour of the facilities. The tour was both eye opening and inspirational. Many of the key products we sell from the BASF Turf & Ornamental group are manufactured in Sparks. These include Honor® Intrinsic and Insignia® SC Intrinsic brand fungicides that provide both disease control and plant health benefits to golf course superintendents. In addition, the team at Sparks will be producing two new products you will be hearing about soon, Pillar™ G fungicide and Siesta™ Fire Ant Bait. Sparks also manufactures key products for the crop protection and pest control solutions businesses at BASF.

This expansion means they are ready to take on even more new products. The workers with whom we met were proud of the work they do today and looking forward to using the market leading technology that’s been added in the expansion to create more great products for our customers. Seeing such pride in workmanship and genial attitudes about the work they do was infectious. So I made some new friends while I was there and many took the opportunity to share some ideas for improvement in processes, packaging and finished products. All with an eye for making things better.

The little suggestions they made were good and many are easy to execute. So I plan to return to Sparks very soon for another visit, and I will bring along some key members of my team so we can strengthen relationships and make more improvements.

Sparks and Research Triangle Park are not that far away, but it took an extended visit around this ribbon cutting ceremony to make this connection. That got me thinking… Who else I can get closer to in my business to improve my performance? So I’m hard at work on that these days.

But what about you, as a turf professional, who can help you with your business?

Perhaps it’s that quiet person on the team or that contact in your network whose call or email you haven’t had time to return. Maybe a nearby supplier or business associate whose opinion you respect. As you think about these friends and contacts think about asking them for their thoughts on a challenge you have, or challenging them to make an improvement to the business.

You can always get better and usually your success becomes mutual success when it involves team members and business associates.

We can all get by with a little help from our friends.

Brian Lish

If you go to the doctor and he or she says you are normal, that’s good. It means you are healthy and okay. But apply the word normal to business and it’s just not a fit. It never was. Normal is just a synonym for the word “present or past” depending on how it’s used.

Think about it.

In the past, it used to be that work was left at work. Now more and more of us stay connected with laptops, iPads and smart phones. We email, text and even once in awhile use the phones to talk to someone. Some might say staying connected 24/7 is the new normal. I would say it’s just a way of describing the present day work environment.

Change is the only thing you can count on. That’s why this season won’t be normal. Don’t expect it. Be prepared and expect the unexpected.

One way to prepare for disease on the golf course is with our family of Intrinsic™ brand fungicides. First launched into the golf market, last fall, Insignia® SC Intrinsic brand fungicide and Honor® Intrinsic brand fungicide, in addition to providing superior disease control, have plant health benefits to help turfgrass and other plants endure and overcome stress events such as drought, moisture, temperature extremes and aerification.

By enhancing the root system of turfgrass, Intrinsic brand fungicides prime its immune system, improving its tolerance to stress and making the physiological processes of the plants more efficient.

Choose a fungicide that delivers both superior disease control and the added bonus of plant health. This season take control and make stresses for your turf and yourself a thing of the past.

Brian Lish

I am an avid runner. I love getting up at 5:00 in the morning to go pound the pavement. In fact, I am quite selfish with those 60-90 minutes. It’s my time – my time to run and my time to think about almost everything in my life.

Well, I have had the opportunity to change that just a little bit. I have a nine year old girl named Cami. She loves to run too. So this year, we’ve been running together a day or two a week. This morning as we were flying down the road at a 13 minute per mile pace, I realized that some changes are good. Life is short, and the time I have to share with Cami is limited…

So as we reflect on last year, I am sure we did many things right. I am also sure we can all identify some things we want to do a little differently moving forward. Perhaps that includes making the time to coach new employees to be more successful. We may want to look to new ways to do our jobs so we work smarter and more efficiently.

It might mean learning more about social media or how to use an iPad to better communicate with customers. Although these tools may seem unnatural and intimidating to you. For the next generation and kids like my daughter Cami, they are as natural and intuitive as our first car stereos and home video game systems were for my friends and me.

Just think of how technology and communication has leaped ahead in the last 25 years. We now discuss Facebook, wireless networks, and Flip video. Meanwhile words that meant cutting edge to us (but stymied our parents) like microfiche, videocassette recorder and Walkman are all but vanished from the lexicon.

It moves faster every day and that's why at BASF Professional Turf & Ornamentals, we work hard to stay ahead of the game and anticipate new technologies to give you that extra edge to be successful and develop new solutions to deliver on those unmet needs of the turf professional.

Make that commitment to embrace new technology in 2011 so that if nothing else, it saves you the most valuable commodity there is – time. Because as hard as we work in this industry, taking time out to spend it with the ones you love matters just as much as it did 30 years ago when I plugged into the Atari for a game of Space Invaders with my big brothers.

These days when I get up and run with Cami I know I'm really hard at work…making memories that will last a lifetime.

Brian Lish

I’ve always been a glass-half-full kind of guy, so I’m glad to report I see brighter things on the horizon and that scorching summer that beat up so much turf across the U.S. is history too.

It’s time to close out the year and look to the promise of new opportunities in 2011.

Individuals making personal commitments are what move our industry. So what did you accomplish this year? What promises did you keep?

At BASF Professional Turf & Ornamentals, we’re committed to enabling your successes and that means listening to challenges, anticipating needs and driving innovation. In short, it means keeping promises.

Promises to innovate and connect
Turf pros want products that work and a bonus is realized when those products add greater value, such as saving application time and labor, and extending efficacy and breadth of disease, weed and insect control. We know the pressure you are under and continue to follow through with our promise to provide a portfolio of products to help you succeed.

In 2010 we extracted more value from our R&D resources to help customers be successful with innovations such as the family of Intrinsic™ brand fungicides. First launched into the golf market, Insignia® SC Intrinsic brand fungicide and Honor® Intrinsic brand fungicide, in addition to providing superior disease control, have plant health benefits to help turfgrass and other plants endure and overcome stress events such as drought, moisture, temperature extremes and aerification.

In addition, we understand this industry’s urgent nature and need for 24/7 connectivity. When disease strikes or questions arise you want – and deserve – immediate support.

And in 2010 we took that to a new level by launching one of the golf industry’s first disease program mobile applications to help golf course superintendents conveniently access disease control information based on seasonal conditions within their region. This free tool is available at the BASF Turf Talk blog (www.basfturftalk.com) and represents another promise kept in helping turf professionals succeed.

Whether saving time, labor, money or other resources. We know what’s at stake every day for you and that’s why when we make promises, we keep them.

Tell me about your accomplishments and promises kept in 2010. We’ll post any and all feedback here on our blog.

I promise.

Brian Lish

Stress is generally understood as a physical, mental or emotional reaction that causes tension or harm. Hear that? It’s your turfgrass agreeing with that definition.

This summer most parts of the country have already experienced countless days of above average temperatures and this extreme weather has become a survival challenge for many turf pros and the turfgrass they manage. The turf is stressed out on nearly every front by both disease and a super sized dose of the hazy, hot and humid stuff.

On golf courses the order of the day is temporary greens, and if you’ve got cool season turf to manage for your lawn care customers you are battling burned up turf from the transition zone and all points north, east and west.

A recent blog post on the subject from Kansas City reported a golf course superintendent recording a two inch soil temperature of 101 degrees.

This is the kind of year that really tests your mettle and might even make you rethink your career. The upside is everyone can understand the stress you and the turf have been under, the downside is some pros have faced being relieved of their duties.

Stress Management

So while some decide to leave the turf behind and take on new career challenges, those who stay will undoubtedly learn from the experience and be better prepared the next time around. In the meantime, to keep some peace of mind you could ramp up on time tested cultural practices such as hyrdojecting and needle tining greens.

And if you haven’t already done so, you might also want to give your crew a respite from the heat and put any big projects on hold until fall. Then you can put the exclusive focus on doing everything within your reach to ensure the best turf possible for your customer. Trust me, they will notice the effort, and that still counts for something these days.

Then as temperatures moderate, especially at night, you can begin the process of speeding up the greens, overseeding and fertilizing the damaged turf and putting this summer in the rearview mirror. As you start to plan for next season, you’ll want to plan to be on top of your game and have all the tools needed to face that next stress event, whenever and wherever it pops up.

And that’s where we can help. BASF is launching a new family of fungicides for the golf market that will be associated with the brand name Intrinsic™. These Intrinsic products will not only provide superior disease control for your turf, they will also have plant health benefits to help your turf endure and overcome stress events.  In fact, these will be the first fungicides in the turfgrass market that have plant health benefits on the product label.

More information on how Intrinsic brand fungicides can help you relieve your stress will be coming to you soon.

The technology it takes to accomplish this is nothing short of amazing. Yet the idea itself is easy to grasp: a floating oil rig is essentially attached to a large pipe to pump oil deep inside the Earth through the ocean to the surface so it may be shipped to a refinery.

It's simple in theory, but what if this pipe somehow breaks or ruptures in some way from a storm at sea or some kind of accident. How do we keep the oil from leaking into the ocean? Hindsight is always 20/20, but you don't need to be an expert to think about what could go wrong and what has occurred in the Gulf of Mexico.

The lesson here is no matter how unlikely the event, if it could happen you should have a plan in place to manage the issue. You might not be able to control the event and prevent it from occurring, but you can control your readiness for it.

Thankfully most of us don't worry about environmental disasters on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but turf pros are stewards of the environment and must be ready for the likely and the unlikely.

What's the worst that could happen? Think about it and think about how you would handle it and who you may rely on for help.

Does your team know its role when that worst case scenario becomes reality? Do you have a plan ready to pull out and follow? Have you run through the plan in some kind of drill or rehearsal to see if it plays out as well in real life as it reads on paper?

The old adage that people don't plan to fail, they fail to plan, is true.

So what is your plan for something that is likely to occur? It could be drought or too much rain. Maybe it's vandals who tear up the course late one Saturday night, or disease that wreaks havoc on your greens before a big tournament. Perhaps it's a customer whose yard is now full of crabgrass or damaged ornamental plants because you did not calibrate the correct rate for the preemergent herbicide you applied earlier this spring.

I'm betting you have some plans for those issues and I know that BASF can play a critical role as you encounter them. If it's greens stressed by summer heat we've got Honor™ fungicide and Trinity® fungicide to ward off disease and improve turf playability. We've got Drive® XLR8 herbicide and Onetime® herbicide in case those grassy weeds, sedges and broadleaf's spoil your plans for perfect turfgrass this season.

If you've got BASF chemistry in your shed, you've got more than just plans; you've got products that deliver results for almost any likely turf disaster. Call us if you encounter that unlikely disaster as well.

If we can help, we'll be there to help execute your plan and help you control what you can control. You've got my word on it.

Thank you,

Brian Lish
Business Manager
BASF Professional Turf & Ornamentals

Having recently joined BASF Professional Turf & Ornamentals as its new business manager, my first weeks on the job have been a whirlwind of customer visits, new product updates and meeting turf pros like you across the industry.

Whether it’s talking with superintendents at the Golf Industry Show, visiting distribution partners all across the U.S., or chatting up a lawn care operator, it’s apparent that the economy and this rough weather remain on the minds of all involved in our business.

We’ve had snow in 49 out of 50 states and record low temperatures. Yikes. You know the disease is out there percolating with all this moisture, plus the freeze and thaw cycles we have seen.

Still, you can tell the real turf pros are licking their chops a bit about these prospects. The weather will turn and while you don’t want your turf to get eaten up by disease, the challenge is in your own precision to put together the right IPM strategy and keep the turf healthy for your customers.

The economy? Not where we want it yet, but things are beginning to turn and we’ll take it. The old axiom of slow and steady wins the race can apply here. It’s important to remember to keep things in perspective, work hard and control what you can control. Do that, and more often than not, you’ll do alright.

That’s why I’m excited to be part of the industry and why I think BASF can help. We’ve got a market-leading portfolio of products to keep your turf disease- and weed- free. We’ve got more innovations coming, and we are pleased to sponsor and take part in the upcoming Plant Health series in Golfdom magazine.

Plant Health is a much discussed issue for the turf industry and we have an important science-based message to share with turf pros. BASF products can help your turf during weather-related stresses and stretch your IPM budget dollars farther. More on that is coming this year.

Another facet of our innovation is how we are using social media. You as a visitor to this blog or as a follower on Twitter know BASF as a leader in this channel as well. More is on the way as well, so stay in touch and use these platforms as another way to engage us.

And I’d like to extend that offer directly to you. Let’s start a dialog: Tweet us, post to our blog, reach out and tell us what’s on your mind.

Let’s open the season and have a great year together.

Thank you,

Brian Lish
Business Manager
BASF Professional Turf & Ornamentals