MANAGEMENT IS THE DARK HORSE OF SUCCESS
What I learned from my brother’s conversation with Farm Management Canada.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Having any kind of plan is better than no plan
- Management is the thing that makes the difference in a business
- Successful planning is not a sexy process; but a successful outcome is
Reflecting on a good portion of my life, I’ll admit that I was operating more on impulsivity and unchecked notions of grandeur with some very mixed results.
It wasn’t until I got into a business with my little brother Terry that I was forced to be challenged by and accountable to others in my planning and decision making in a very different way than I was used to.
I am sure that it was as hard on him as it was on me. It’s not like the old days anymore, growing up on the farm at Langenburg, SK., when I could solve a disagreement by just dominating him with some appropriately placed fisticuffs and leave him in the snowbank at the end of the lane in order to teach him his place in the proper hierarchy of the universe.
However after over 5 years in business under my belt I have come to recognize the value of strategic planning in both my personal life and professional life, and I have seen the evidence of the outcomes accordingly.
The conversation between Joerg Zimmerman, (Chair) and Heather Watson (Executive Director) of Farm Management Canada, and my brother Terry who is on the board, and his son Holden, held so much wisdom, it was a nice confirmation of the process that is underway towards the end of 2020 in Aberhart Ag Solutions.
It looks like we will be going into 2021 with a much more organized plan. 2020 was a curve ball that no one expected, and our plan changed many times under the influence of events.
I still hold steadfast to the belief that one must plan regardless. Though it resonates when Mike Tyson famously said,
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”
Zero planning vs having a plan: it’s the equivalent of depending on the adrenaline from your theme song vs doing the thousands of reps for months and month administered by a professional coach for proper form wherein the actual fight is just a well rehearsed dance the outcome of which has been visualized accordingly well in advance.
Joerg wants to plan before the first punch is thrown.
“Farm business management is to have a plan in place.
Whether that plan is in finances or in the strategy or in the operations or in your human resource or even your mental health plan, it’s having that plan in place… you plan ahead and you try to mitigate negative outcomes, not only not after they have happened, but well before they have happened.
Every plan you make is going to be trashed, or it’s going to turn out differently anyways, but it’s the process of making the plan and understanding all the impact of what you’re doing. “
Heather sees a lot of patterns working with different businesses in her role at Farm Management Canada.
“There’s a tendency to take for granted that the business management stuff is going to happen regardless, but not realizing that we really need to make a concerted effort to manage our businesses well.
Business management is that thing that we can really concentrate on to move our businesses forward to build the capacity to succeed get everyone excited about being on the same page about the future of the farm.”
The thing that led Terry to a career in agronomy and his unique approach to business was seeing the difference management made on farming operations in his travels as a young ag mechanic.
“I started working for John Deere as an ag mechanic just out of school.
Getting called out to different farmers to go work on their equipment, there was a vast difference in operations; in the yards, the equipment, the mindsets, and the people from one farm to another, just a couple miles down the road from each other.
I quickly started realizing some of it may have been luck or inheritance, but a lot of it came down to differences in approach. Maybe I didn’t fully understand it then, but really came down to the difference in management”
Joerg has seen it on a global scale.
“I have seen a lot of farms all over the world and there’s good farms and bad farms everywhere. In my mind, the only long-term factor of competition is good management.”
Heather’s role is to raise awareness of what a differentiator planning and strategic management is.
“We see it as this dark horse that maybe hasn’t been brought to light as much as it should be.”
Beginning with the end in mind, we have to think of that future state where we have been successful as a result of the plans we have made and the discipline we applied to make it work.
Terry thinks planning should be more sexy than it is.
The song “she thinks my tractor sexy”… everyone thinks about the equipment and the landscape and all the sexy stuff of farming.
I think all the country songs are written about when you don’t have a good plan like when your dog left and your wife left and you lost your tractor and the banks come into foreclose and those kind of things.
Why don’t more people get excited about strategic planning? People look at it and feel like it’s a lot of complexity or a lot of work, but the reality is we see all the kinds of benefits that come out of business planning and the different approaches.
Why is this not something that is more sexy , why aren’t we singing about how she likes my business plan or my balance sheet?”
Heather thinks successful outcomes are what count.
“How do we make it sexy? I mean, success is sexy, right?
Even if the business planning and stuff isn’t, what we need to do is bridge the gap between. Seeing the results…hey, do you know where that came from? That came from doing a business plan or that came from doing a pretty slick financial analysis.
We were able to afford this, that or the other, or to go in this cool direction and try new things because we afforded ourselves the flexibility to try something new by having the working capital or having the right people on the staff to bring cool ideas.”
Ultimately the business needs to success so it can serve your personal goals.
Terry works on having the proper perspective about the business.
“Are you in business to serve your business? Or does business exists to serve you and your family?
I want the business to succeed so I can succeed at the personal goals that I have for myself and the family.”
Joerg says it best when he summarizes the reason many of us pursue our dreams in business.
“Farm business management is a tool to achieve your personal freedoms.”
You can catch the entirety of the conversation between Heather, Joerg, Terry, and Holden on the Growing the Future Podcast.
