Getting It Right or Getting It Fast
A young rancher attended his first Executive Link meeting a few weeks after completing a Ranching for Profit School. He showed his EL board the long to-do list he created at the end of the school and worried that there wasn’t enough time to get everything done that he needed to do. “I’m constantly putting […]
Sustainability: What’s In A Name?
Maybe it’s just semantics, but I think the words we choose are important. 40 years ago, when I was in college, “sustainable agriculture” was a revolutionary concept. Forward-thinking universities created Sustainable Agriculture Departments. Most farm and ranch kids enrolled in the Animal Science or Crop Science programs while the hippies enrolled in Sustainable Agriculture. But […]
A True Story About A Real Manager
About 15 years ago I met an absentee owner who was responsible for a family ranch that was losing money. It had lost between $200,000-$300,000 year after year for a long time. Over those years she’d made several threats to the two managers that if things didn’t turn around, the family would have to sell […]
Smart Resolutions
A lot of people make New Year’s resolutions. Gym memberships go way up in January. By Valentine’s Day that box of chocolates is looking pretty good and gym attendance is way down. It isn’t that resolutions are bad ideas. They’re not. Or that people can’t change. We can. It is that most resolutions don’t provide […]
What is Sweat Worth?
Most family ranches are subsidized with free, or underpaid, family labor. Sometimes the difference between what family members get and what it would cost to hire someone else to do the work they do is made up with the promise or expectation of sweat equity. But sweat is not a recognized form of currency and […]
It’s Hard To Find Good Help …
… but it is even harder to find a good boss. I often hear employers complain that it is hard to find good help. I rarely hear them ask how they can be better bosses. Personally, I think most people want to do a good job. I don’t think employees want to be inefficient or […]
Hiring Good People Isn’t Enough
Good people? What’s that supposed to mean? Compared to what? Bad people? With the exception of the Hillside Strangler and Jack the Ripper, I’m hesitant to label very many people as “bad.” I’d like to think that nearly everyone is mostly good. Almost all of us want to be moral and responsible. The real problem […]
The WOTB Test
Most people blame things beyond our control like the weather, government regulation, low commodity prices and increasing costs for their failure to make a healthy profit. These are the things most often discussed at producer meetings and in the coffee shop. These are also things we can do little about. Making them the scapegoats for […]
Read MoreAn Hour A Day
I asked a group of our clients what difference it would make to their operation and their life if they had an extra hour a day of productive time. Most folks said they’d get more done, or they’d get the same amount done but feel less stress doing it. Then I reframed the question, “Instead […]
What Does Mom Want?
We use a process at RMC to help families and business teams create a shared vision and a plan to achieve it. We start by asking a very basic question: What do you want? Each participant answers individually by writing several short statements describing how they’d like things to be in three to five years. Once […]