Hiring Management Advice

[farmers_son]

Not a lot of activity in this forum but here goes...

Has anyone hired management advice? How did that work out? Would you consider using management advice for your farming operation and if so in what area? What do you think management advice would be worth or what would you be willing to pay per hour for the advice you need?

[Hopperbin]

Management 101 if you need to pay for management advice, fire yourself, no shit. Just joking, if someone can explain to me how to keep an employee then that is worth money. Other than that its basis get off your ass. I have seen farmers pay for that Cargill spraying etc advice and they basically needed more help than what they were getting. Accounting help is valuable.
Succession planning I will admit I need help.

[wmoebis]

Succession and accounting help are for sure worth the help.

Succession is something that everyone does once in a lifetime and is very individual. We have one chance to pass on our wishes.

With accounting programs, change so often and in mid stream, good accountants stay up on these changes and can often very valuable.

Chemical and equipment dealers offer advise and seminars that are generaly given for no up front costs. It is then up to us to try them to see what one suits our operation. There is no doubt that paid unbiased advise may be a benifit but the ultimate decision is ours and that usually come from experience.

The one area that I think is of benifit is marketing. There are so many different marketing skills that must be understood and in some cases, change so often that it is hard to stay on top of them all. Anyone that has taken marketing classes at a college has a better understanding, however there is constant changes that refresher courses and advise can be of value.

So, we have informed ourselves and done the best we can with the tools we have learned and tried to grow the best crop we can. We have looked at all our different marketing tools but where many fail is on understanding what quality we have grown.

The most of us go to the people who are going to buy our product for thier assesment. We do not have the skills to constructively discuss the quality value of our product we have for sale, nor the understanding of those qualities on the end use.

This becomes very stressful for us and the agents as there is often conflicts between the agent and producer. How many of us can tell if the agent is assessing our product in the proper manor as described in the Guide. We usually take his assesment and if we don't agree we go to next agent and so on until we find one that gives us the best offer. How do we know the best offer is what it actually is?

Agents make honest mistakes, do we have the ability to catch these mistakes or check thier work? Most guys don't even know if agents are preforming dockage in the proper manor or how to assure that we are getting the proper protien assesment.

If we were working for a pay check we would not run from bank to bank to see which will give us the most for it. We would know the value of it before we went, only acept full value and then negotiate for the service they will give us. If said banker made a mistake counting cash we would correct it but do we have the same ability to correct our product assesment, which is our pay check?

[rook]

How does one educate oneself on their grain quality to be on equal footing with the buyers?

[wmoebis]

Glad you asked.

There is a couple of ways. Olds college puts on a short course that is very good through their continuing ed. program. I have had personal involvement and you can look it up on thier web site. It is very limited space and only offered once a year but may have room to expand if need be.

Also there is a couple of Gov't dept's that are showing some interest in sponsoring community workshops. Get in touch with FCC at anyone of thier offices and tell them your interested. I have already approached thier head office, but they need to know that there is a demand before they will proceed.

I would think that if there was interest shown to any of the marketing or other farm groups they would help set up seminars, it is important to know what you have to market before you can market it.

I have a couple of other ideas and contacts so if anyone would like to discuss this important issue with me further, you can reach me at wmoebis@telus.net

I doubt if your grain buyers would be interested in you learning this side of grain marketing. However it would make communication with them alot better if you both new what was for sale and how/why to assess it.

[wmoebis]

Sorry that should be:
wpmoebis@telus.net

[farmers_son]

Obviously there are a lot of management skills needed on a farm.

In general I think farm management skills could be grouped as "general manager skills", such as grain or production marketing and "CEO skills" into which I would group succession planning, determining a vision for the farm, business planning etc.

I was struck by Hopperbin's remark re being fired if you need to pay for management skills. That got me to wondering how many producers could get hired as a CEO of a farm. I think most of us are CEO of our farm strictly by virtue of ownership not ability and if we get "fired" it may be by the banker. I have seen farms operated by professional managers, more so in the United States, and generally those farms are well managed.

I think even the most senior CEOs of large corporations bring in management advice on a regular basis. In fact there is a industry made up of people with specific skills that provide services such as retreats, team building, strategic planning services to all manner of organizations, large and small.

I think it is likely that many farm owners/managers attempt to make up for any deficiency of CEO skills with production skills possibly general manager skills. However one is not a substitute for the other. Some winter meetings offer informal CEO level instruction to producers.

I dare say every farm could benefit from bring in management advice. That said I wince when I see accountants offering management advice to producers. It is my opinion that their expertise seldom goes beyond tax planning yet their advice goes well beyond tax planning into areas where they have no specific training.

Back to asking questions...has your farm ever had a team building retreat to discuss important issues with the farm stakeholders? Does your farm have a written business plan? Does your farm hold regular meetings with written minutes? If not, why not? I know the best managed farms do these things. And if your farm is not among the best managed farms then does that raise questions about how long your farm will continue into the future?

[gustgd]

Does anyone know of good facilitators for the type of year end meetings, goal setting, general airings.
Does the farm management council handle this type of thing? or is there someone else.

I was thinking another skill to add to the tool box would be one of negotiation, or high $$ value sales training.
sometimes it would be good to know how sales people are working us?