Landfill Manager’s Notebook: How to Be a Change Agent at Your Waste Facility

The waste industry is dynamic—no two ways about it. The rules, goals, and processes are constantly changing. And you, as the manager, must help your operation change right along with them. But simply having a good idea is not enough—you must also be able to implement that idea. You must be able to sell it—to upper management, to the council, and to the board of directors.

You must sell your idea to the board to get approval for that new piece of equipment. You’ve got to sell it to your regulators to get that permit modification you need, and finally, you must sell it to your crew so that they understand what you want to change and why you want to change it. Despite the negative connotation, the fact remains: to be an effective manager, you must also be a good salesperson. You must be able to sell.Let me explain. The first thing you must do is explain why. You need to tell a story, because despite your charming personality, people won’t buy in simply because you tell them that they should. They will buy in when they understand the goals, the reason, or the problem. It’s just human nature: We all want to know why.

One of the best communicators I know is Brooks Stayer. Brooks is a good friend, and the Director of the Merced County Regional Waste Authority in Merced, CA. When Brooks stepped into that position, the organization was deep in debt. The facilities were seriously over-staffed and over-equipped, and the inbound tonnage revenue wasn’t sufficient. The facility was on track—for a train wreck.

One of the first tasks as the new director was one of the most difficult things that any boss ever must do. He had to reduce staff. In that first year, he reduced the staff from 43 to 30 people. He sold 16 pieces of excess heavy equipment and generated nearly a million dollars of cash.

“I found that visual presentations were the most effective,” says Stayer. “A picture is worth a thousand words. We also gave the board options and the anticipated results. For example, they could have raised rates but that would not have been popular with their constituents.”

Difficult as it was, he immediately began implementing change. Over the next couple of years, Brooks went on to implement several operational changes based on something I’d call process improvement. He and his team reduced airspace consumption by reducing soil use from the historic 46% of annual airspace consumption to 8%, and along the way they also reduced operating costs by a couple million bucks per year.

In order to get buy-in from his team, Brooks gave them the same presentation pitch he gave the board. “The inclusion helped them relate positively to the issues we faced,” says Stayer. He wanted his crew to know that they were crucial to solving the problems and making improvements.

Today, the two landfills in their system are lean, competitive operations, to the point that they have attracted additional tonnage (i.e., revenue). Looking back, it seems so simple, but at the time it wasn’t simple at all. And it darn sure wasn’t easy.

Now any manager will understand that the changes Brooks made were also tough for the landfill crew. Change like this is always difficult…and often painful. But through it all, this landfill has become one of the most efficient municipal operations I’ve ever seen—and having worked with something north of 500 landfills, that’s saying something. What’s especially exciting is that many members of the crew have become change agents in their own right.

While conducting Comprehensive Operations Review (CORE) assessments or onsite training, we regularly point to this operation as an example of how those concepts can really make a difference—especially when there is a change agent like Brooks to champion the process. It’s also encouraging to other managers to see that not only is change possible, but here is a real-life example of what it looks like.

I often hear from the operations folks, directors, and managers that they know what changes are necessary, but they have a hard time getting buy-in from upper management. Our advice is always the same: you must tell a story. You need to explain the situation clearly and honestly so that decision-makers can grasp the situation and understand how you plan to change it.

Think about it from the perspective of those who you are trying to convince: the board of directors, the city council, or county officials. Your operation is just one of perhaps dozens of important activities that they are responsible for. You are competing for their attention, their approval, maybe for their funding, so to be successful, you must do a great job of communicating your story—of selling. You must be a change agent.