Creating an Effective Place to Work

The best ranchers I know have effective places to work. Now I’m not talking about a comfortable pickup or a fancy chute-side area. I’m talking about effective places for ranchers to work on their business (WOTB). WOTB is the $500 – $5,000/hour work.  The planning/strategy work on the big ticket items. This often, but not always, occurs in an effective workspace. An effective workspace is somewhere different from where you serve your roles as parent, spouse, son or daughter. Most farm and ranch business leaders try to do their WOTB in their pickup, from their recliner or on the kitchen table. It’s no wonder why the WOTB is often undone or not done well.  

Let’s step away from ranching for a minute … You’ve just inherited your great uncle’s shares of a multi-million dollar business that makes a cool product that everyone needs and enjoys. The business is worth millions on the balance sheet and is run by a small team in a complex system where everyone has a role in the production process. With these shares comes a seat on the board for the company. You’re excited to see how the company is run and get to know the CEO, so you set up a meeting. The CEO gives you a residential address for your meeting location. Weird, but OK. When you show up for your meeting the CEO is out on the production line trying to fix one of the broken machines they use. He breaks away from his work to meet with you. You explain you’re a new major shareholder and board member so you would like to see the high-level metrics for the company to allow you to better understand your new asset.

He walks you from the production line into his house that is next to the production area and you sit down at the kitchen table. The table is covered with business receipts piled high and mixed in with his family’s personal things. His kids had breakfast there this morning and one of them spilled their juice all over some of the reports he got from the tax accountant to show you. He hands you a pile of complex and difficult to understand financial statements. He doesn’t seem to understand these financial statements, commenting that the tax accountant compiled these for the IRS but he doesn’t find them very useful. You ask for his projections and actuals of the company performance but he just shrugs. He lets you know that the owners haven’t received any dividends in decades but also haven’t had to pay any income tax either. All the proceeds of the business are used to keep the business going and he, the CEO, had to forgo much of his own salary many of the last few years just to keep the business solvent. The business has 3 other employees, all are relatives of the CEO. You ask to see the position agreements along with an organizational chart of roles and responsibilities for the business but again he just shrugs. “We all do what needs to be done” is his answer.

He can’t show you clear metrics of the business performance, there doesn’t seem to be an effective place to hold team meetings for the business, nothing is on the walls for communicating the plan for the week or if the business is meeting its targets. The CEO is obviously ready for you to leave because he just got a call that another machine on the production line just broke and he is the only one who knows how to fix it. You leave the meeting far less excited about this new asset you just inherited. You reflect on your drive home that while the CEO might be a great person, who is obviously hard working and dedicated to the business, he isn’t a competent CEO. As a major shareholder and board member you know what needs to happen.

The picture that I just painted is how most farms and ranches are run. Unfortunately in agriculture, the production focused, but incompetent business leader is often celebrated rather than being held to a higher level of professionalism. As an outside owner of a business not consistently hitting profit targets, you’d be right to want to fire that CEO and find one that actually is capable and willing to run the business in a professional manner. This professionalism starts with having an effective place to work.  

In my many years of working with some of the best farm and ranch business leaders, I’ve got to see many examples of effective workspaces. Commonalities include:

• Physically disconnected from the home – preferably a healthy distance away from the home
• It is a comfortable and inviting place to be
• Good lighting
• Individual workstations for key individuals in the business
• A conference style table with enough chairs for all to sit around it
• Space to enjoy meals together
• Planning tools on the wall that are updated regularly (maps, grazing plans, key targets and progress, workflow metrics)
• The entire space is relatively clean and uncluttered
• The business’ mission is clearly posted 

Maybe you are not currently running a multimillion-dollar business but perhaps someday you want it to be one. It is never too early or too late to start behaving like the leader your business deserves. The leader and the culture of the business must become great first, before the business can become great. Not the other way around.

Below is a video of Logan Pribbeno and TJ Ellicott of Wine Glass Ranch from Imperial, Nebraska showing us around their office. I hope many of you take to our social media pages and post pictures or video tours of your office space and show us what your set up looks like and what you wish it had.