As I write this article, there are about 90 pounds of ribs on my barbecue, slow cooking to fall-off-the-bone juiciness. My barbecue technique, process and sauce have been tweaked many times over the years. Today, there are fewer tweaks, and the results are consistent.
Sometimes, people ask me if I buy special ribs or if there is a special sauce, rub, smoker or type of wood. The short answer is yes, but none of these items create great ribs by themselves. They all work together in a repeatable process that isn’t hard. But there are no shortcuts.
Sometimes, we look at neighboring farms that seem to have a secret sauce to their success. They make success look easy. They get a lot of work done. But it’s more than just working hard. They don’t have a lot of drama about their ownership or employee teams. There is a solid group of dedicated, smart employees who never leave. When it comes time for expansion, somehow there is money to buy the next piece of ground or expand the herd.
It all looks easy and maybe lucky. But just like great barbecue, there are no shortcuts and no single secret sauce. Success on these top-tier farms is a series of repeatable elements that work together.
Ingredient: Alignment
Alignment focuses people on what’s important. Alignment is sometimes called a vision or everyone “pulling in the same direction.” Great alignment is the lack of confusion daily, weekly and annually. It is the lack of competing priorities between owners.
- Short-term alignment: What is the most important thing we must complete today? This week? This is often achieved with excellent task list management, delegation and teamwork.
- Intermediate alignment: What must we accomplish in the next 100 days? This year? Great farms stay focused and work on these important but not urgent items a little every week. Procrastination and lack of accountability are not part of these teams and are actively guarded against. Accountability is not just a word here; it’s a practice. They build it into their weekly meetings. Everyone has to account for what they worked on for the past week.
- Long-term alignment: This is anything longer than 12 months and is often called the vision. It is essential in family farms, between generations and between owners. Capital allocation, succession plans, family entering the business, new ventures, etc., all are part of the long-term vision. At our company, we’re big fans of crafting a three-year vision because it’s long enough to accomplish big things but short enough to stay relevant in a changing ag industry.
- Values alignment: Do we value the same things? Do we believe the same things? Do we show the same behaviors when living these values? Misaligned values are at the crux of the nastiest family conflicts. Well-aligned families don’t have a mind lock on each other, but their individual values don’t directly conflict with each other. Make sure your values are aligned before creating short, intermediate and long-term visions.
Ingredient: Momentum
Another ingredient is what I call momentum. It’s the ability and skill of getting things done, not only outside work but also inside work. Sometimes this is called working on the business. Farms with great momentum tend to meet face to face more often and have more structure in the meetings. These meetings have two functions.
- Keep people aligned on the direction of the tasks and who’s responsible for them.
- Uncover and solve any small issues or problems before they become too large to handle.
They have agendas, keep notes and have a consistent flow to meetings. These owner and management meetings don’t happen when it’s always convenient, because everyone is busy. However, since they find such great value in their meetings, they hold them even during busy times. They sometimes have healthy conflict at the meeting because important topics aren’t pushed aside. Instead, they hash things out and then make a decision. Once a decision is made, they support it and create an action plan, with accountability.
Ingredient: Healthy teams
Healthy teams are led by healthy leaders. Always. First and foremost, there is trust. Trust doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but rather it is nourished and protected at all times.
A huge builder of trust is the absence of secrets, so these teams are often wildly transparent. Transparent about how they feel about each other and their expectations. For example, some healthy owner teams set standards for entering the business that are higher for family than other employees. They not only want a healthy team but also a healthy family team. They spend time on their soft skills of communication conflict resolutions; if they have an issue with each other, they deal with it professionally but directly.
High-trust teams also tend to have high employee engagement and also low turnover. We’ve found many of these teams are very intentional about building employee engagement and tracking the results.
Ingredient: Business smarts
The final part of the secret sauce is business smarts. All farms are awash in data. Data falls into two buckets. Lead data and lag data. Every farm needs a firm grasp on both. The ultimate lag data is profits. It’s lagging because by the time you know your earnings, it’s too late to do anything about it in the current cycle. Lead data is trickier to find, but it is predictive of future lag measures. For example, if the lag measure is pounds of milk, a lead indicator could be how often the feed is pushed up in the bunk. Somatic cell count is a lag indicator, but staff training is a lead indicator that lowers cell count.
Last but most important is the focus on financial smarts. Great farms have someone, usually an owner, who understands finance and accounting. Accountants and bankers are great additions to a team, but each farm should have a firm grasp of their financial numbers, their accuracy and what they mean.
The secret to great barbecue and dairies is that there is no secret sauce. Instead of looking for a secret sauce or luck, focus on these key ingredients, be patient and tweak them over time for true perfection.
