About This Episode
Ask a farm what is not working and communication tops the list almost every time, across nearly every operation Ag View sits down with. Chris Barron's answer is three Rs, and the first is reflection: look at your own part in the breakdown and ask people for constructive criticism. Bringing a third party in changes what people can hear. A son tells his dad they should do X, Y and Z and gets a cross-eyed look; an outsider says the same sentence and it becomes a good idea. It runs both directions.
Second is roles defined, and that means decision rights rather than a chore list: how far someone can go, how much money they can spend, what they can decide without asking. The same gap shows up in instruction. In the busy season a farmer puts somebody in a machine with about ten percent of the information needed to make good decisions, then calls the resulting mistake the employee's fault. If the expectation was never said out loud, the owner owns the outcome.
Third is regular reviews, taken from the book Traction: same agenda, same place, same people, same time. Barron admits his own operation falls off that wagon every spring and fall. The tool he pulls from the same book is IDS, identify, discuss and solve. Farms handle the first two well, then everybody leaves the room with nothing decided. Solving means naming who does the work, setting a timeline, writing it down, and having it already closed the next time it comes up. Everybody brings an issue to the meeting.
“The most important part of the IDS is solving the issue.”
— Chris Barron
Key Takeaways
The three Rs are reflection, roles defined and regular reviews. Barron wants you to write them down and grade your own operation against each one.
A third party in the room changes how an idea lands. The son's suggestion gets dismissed and the outsider's identical suggestion gets adopted, and the pattern runs both ways.
Roles means decision rights: how far someone can go, how much they can spend, what they can decide without asking.
Before blaming an employee, ask whether the instruction was given. Handing someone ten percent of the information is a management failure.
Regular reviews hold the same agenda, place, people and time. Barron's own operation loses the habit in spring and fall.
IDS from Traction is identify, discuss, solve. Solving means an owner, a timeline and a written record, or the same issue comes back a third and fourth time.
Full Transcript
Chris: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Chris Barron here to have a little conversation with you around the idea of communication. This seems to be the number one challenge that we run into with clients, with our peer groups. All types of operations and businesses deal with communication conflict or issues, and so I want to spend just a couple of minutes here for you all to think about how is communication in your farm operation or in your business and how could we improve that? So what I want to do is tell you about the team communication principles that I think are very effective, some things that we try to work on in our own operation. We're not perfect. We make a lot of, a lot of problems and, and things just by virtue of not communicating like we should. So let's start out, and I want to give you what we call the 3 Rs. Number 1 is reflection.
Number 2 is roles defined, so defining the roles. And number 3 is regular reviews. And so I want to start with number 1 first. First and just talk a little bit about reflection. And it's kind of like, you know, look in the mirror and see what you see. Sometimes we don't want to see that, right? So we, we look at ourselves and we're like, well, maybe I did this wrong, maybe I don't quite do this right, how could I do some things differently? And one of the things that I encourage people to do is ask for some constructive criticism. What things could we be doing different in the operation? What things could we be doing better? And, and be open to that. Another thing too with reflection. Sometimes we can see some things if we bring third-party people in to just kind of watch how we communicate and how things are going with meetings and such. So, so think about that.
You know, it's always interesting to me when we sit down with a father-son operation or, or just business partners that are farming or, or working together in business, and if somebody in the organization makes a comment and everybody else has to receive it It could be pretty much any type of a comment that they may or may not take very well. But it's always interesting if the third-party person brings that idea to the table. It's like, "Oh, well, yeah, that's a pretty good idea." We see that all the time with fathers and sons. You know, the son will say, "Well, hey, Dad, I think we should do X, Y, and Z." And the dad looks at him cross-eyed like, "What are you talking about, kid?" You know?
And if we would say that or if the third-party person in the room makes that almost exact same thing, it's like, "Oh, well, yeah, that's a good idea." But I'm not just picking on, you know, the dad in this case. I'm also picking on, you know, the son. Maybe, you know, it can go both ways in communication. So just be reflective. Number 1, step back, look at how the communication's going. Are you open and are you listening to it? Number 2, roles defined. This is something that Shea and I work on a lot with farm operations and businesses to define what expectations are within the business. And a lot of times conflict in communication occurs because We just don't know for sure who's doing what and what the expectations are. So it's defining those roles. It's, it's deciding, you know, who's, who's doing what, you know, what are the decision rights, you know, so how far can you go?
How much money can you spend? You know, what things, what, what decisions can you make? And so that's really an important thing is just sitting down and saying, okay, let's, let's define these roles. And, and, and maybe I had an expectation of somebody in the operation and they just didn't meet it. Well, if I didn't tell them what that expectation was, how am I supposed to expect that they did that, you know? And we see that a lot with instruction. A lot of times, you know, as farmers in particular, we do it, you know, we get busy and we're in the busy season and, and we need to throw somebody in a piece of equipment and we give them about 10% of the information they need to make good decisions. And so, you know, is that their fault or is it our fault? You know, if an employee makes a bad decision, we need to take ownership in that and say, okay, did I explain that to them?
Is that really their fault? You know, and so again, it's back to that reflection, looking at yourself. So let's go to number 3 and the final one here, regular reviews. And this is something that actually we took out of the book Traction. If you get a chance and you have not read that book, I highly recommend it. It really It really helps with communication. It really helps you to kind of give yourself a picture of your operation and how would that fit. Again, that book is Traction. And so I wanna give that book credit for what I'm gonna say next in these regular reviews is not only having regular meetings, but is having a meeting with the same agenda, same place, same people, same time. Now that's something that we struggle with in our operation because we get busy in the spring and fall and sometimes we fall off the wagon there and we need to get back to that.
So that's something that we all struggle with, but that doesn't mean that you don't understand that and understand that everybody needs to get together in the operation. You need to have some conversations. What happens though, unfortunately, is when we have those conversations, a lot of times we will do what a lot of operations do and we'll just talk about a topic until we're all blue in the face and then everybody leaves and there's just no solution. There's no, okay, like, what are we going to do about it? You know, so we just talk and talk and talk, nothing happens. So what we took out of the book Traction is a term called IDS. The I stands for identify, the D stands for discuss, and we're all really good at that. We can all come up with all kinds of issues with our business, and issues can be good and bad. So, you know, it's identify, discuss, but then it's solve, right? IDS, solve.
The most important part of the IDS is solving the issue. Well, how do you solve the issue? Well, we sit there and we talk about whatever the issue is, whether it's good or bad, and something needs to be done. Okay, well, if something needs to be done, then who's doing it? What's the timeline? And do we document that? And so if we can all do a better job, especially those of us who are in the leadership roles of our operations, you know, are we documenting some of these issues? Are we getting them out there so that when we come back and talk about it the third or fourth time, it's already resolved, it's already solved? And so again,
IDS: identify, discuss, but most importantly, solve. And then what we really want to get to and the bottom line of this whole discussion is accountability. Okay, so if, if it's you in your operation, it might be somebody else in the business, it might, it might be, you know, somebody that's working in operations for you, it might be somebody that's helping you in accounting, it might be some suppliers that you work with very closely in certain business apparatus. And so think a lot about how you do this. Again, IDS— identify, discuss, solve. Make sure that you solve the issues, decide who's accountable, and then go from there. So again, I want to go back and review, and if you get a chance, go back and listen to this again, get a piece of paper out, take some notes, and then look at, look at yourself and say, how am I doing here? Number 1 of the 3 R's— reflection. Okay, look at yourself.
How are you doing? What do you need to change? How do you need to take constructive criticism? Number 2, defined roles or role definition. Think about those roles. Are you defining them? Does everybody know what their expectations are, including you, from your employees? If you're the leader listening to this, and then the final one, regular reviews. Again, those meetings, having those discussions, bringing the issues to the discussion. Everybody should bring an issue to that meeting, identify it, discuss it, but ultimately solve it. And create an accountability for those discussions. And so hopefully this was helpful.
Again, I just wanted to bring this up to our listeners for the Ag View Pitch because when we sit down with farmers this time of year and we ask them a really key question, what's working in your operation, what's not working in your operation, and a lot of times we see at the top of the list of what's not working is communication. And it's consistent among almost every business we work with. So again, hopefully this was helpful. Got questions or any other ideas or things you'd like us to address, let us know. Again, team communication principles, the 3 Rs. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch. If your operation has issues with communication or struggles with defining roles or accountability, please contact us.
You can reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com and we can assess your situation and work with you to to see which of our services can best assist your team. English.