The offseason is the time to conduct a brainstorming activity. Operators and employees should be taking this time to brainstorm plans. The idea is to match potential opportunities with the skills of the operators and employees. When conducting a brainstorming activity, it is vital to think about business goals. 

Before discussing key strategic priorities, it is important to discuss farm growth. Growth is related to a farm’s long-term goals and objectives in most instances. There are numerous reasons why a farm may want to grow, including the following: reduce per-unit costs, improve profit margins, improve asset utilization, bring in new family members, invest retained earnings, and more fully use the skills of operators and employees. 

If farm growth is an important farm goal, make sure that your strategic plans accommodate that goal. Also, ensure that your farm’s competitive position, which is often related to farm growth, is part of the planning process. Specifically, ask this question: Does growth entail lowering per-unit costs and/or improving price per unit of output sold? In other words, do you focus on cost of production or adding value to traditional crop and livestock outputs?       

Farms typically identify several opportunities during the brainstorming process. Now comes the tough part: choosing one or two opportunities to explore. This is a nice problem to have compared with the alternative — no good choices. 

Related:Don’t let data scare you

What to pursue

Develop some guidelines that will help you decide. Prioritize some opportunities over others based on their relationship to your vision. If you want to be a low per-unit cost producer, does each choice allow you to achieve this goal? Next, prioritize opportunities based on the speed in which they can be pursued and the timing of costs and benefits. Just remember to use net present value techniques when comparing alternatives. Some opportunities may require large upfront costs but have relatively large payoffs over time. 

Then, use scenario planning to examine several possible outcomes for each potential strategy. Does a particular strategy have a lot of upside potential but is also associated with a large amount of downside risk?     

The last step is implementing and refining strategic priorities. Even the best laid plans don’t just happen. Develop action steps and projections, create a timetable, and promptly execute your plans.