As a farm leader, it’s ideal to be a lifelong learner who is open to looking into new ideas and approaches as the operating environment keeps changing.
A learner’s mindset is key, especially when it comes to areas of the farm or farming where we might not have as much experience or knowledge yet. There’s a lot we can pick up just from staying open to learning and constantly challenging ourselves to improve our skills.
However, the main responsibilities of leading and running an operation can sometimes make it difficult to dive deeply into new knowledge. And there are times when the operation needs more than what can be picked up quickly through reading a book or attending a brief training seminar.
What do we need?
It can also be difficult to figure out whether the problem or situation we’re facing is something that we or an employee in our operation can handle – the “do it yourself” approach – or if it would be helpful to bring in a different person with greater expertise or knowledge around that aspect.
In farming, we tend to gravitate toward the “do it yourself” mentality, so we’re likely to attempt to figure it out on our own first. What we may find, though is that the problem or situation requires a level of deep knowledge or expertise, and we’re not going to be able to devote enough time or attention to it because of our leadership responsibilities. Ultimately, we’re nowhere closer to a solution.
Four questions to ask
Here are four questions to ask yourself about the problem or issue you’re facing in your operation. This can help sort out whether you or someone in your operation is well-suited to handle it without investing a lot of time, or if your operation might benefit from bringing a third party into the mix to provide perspective.
What, exactly, is the issue or problem we face right now?
What level of expertise do we currently have in our operation around this issue and how to solve or improve it? Who in our operation is knowledgeable about this already? Can they devote additional time to learning and working on it?
If our current expertise is low, how could we deepen our knowledge? What would the investment of time, money and resources need to look like? Try to quantify that investment.
What benefits would there be to bring in an additional outside perspective on this problem or issue?
After working through the questions, there are times when you might choose to invest in additional training for someone in your operation who is willing and wants to learn more. For example, that might mean some agronomic training for an employee who wants to become an “agronomy specialist” inside your operation and will be responsible for all the crop scouting in the future.
Or you may discover that getting some outside perspective would be useful. There are several different areas where farmers have found this to be helpful. If you’re looking for perspective and assistance with creating grain marketing plans, our advisors for the farm are ready to talk with you.
The opinions of the author are not necessarily those of Farm Futures or Farm Progress.
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