Structure Provides Clarity

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While agriculture is founded on the deep-rooted tradition of families working together, in the end, each farm and ranch is a business. Once producers embrace that fact, they can acknowledge the importance of creating structure, identifying the roles and responsibilities of family members and others. Keep Farmers Farming legacy consultant Shannon Kubik believes most farms and ranches have some semblance of this, but putting it in writing provides clarity. and the opportunity for personal and professional growth.

“I love to show visuals and will build an organizational structure chart to put people's names in different boxes within the organization to show them there is a structure here and then talk through what that role really looks like from a job description standpoint,” shared Kubik.

For example, one person might ultimately be responsible for the cattle side of a farm or ranch, making most of the decisions on breeding, feeding, and the like.

“In the same operation, there's someone that's in charge of the crop side. So that's the person that's really interested and focused on the agronomy section of that organization. And ultimately most of the decisions roll up to them,” she explained.

Kubik says putting a label to someone's responsibility doesn't mean people don't pitch in where needed. But having structure creates clarity and can be a launching pad to greater business framework and communication, including regular meetings with updates from each enterprise on the farm or ranch.

“That really can put operations not on defense, but really into an offensive mode and help them grow moving forward,” Kubik shared.

Keep Farmers Farming legacy consultants can assist ag families in creating an organizational structure, boosting job satisfaction and momentum for the future.

Learn more about the Keep Farmers Farming program here.

Taken from a conversation with Pam Geppert of Dakota Farm Talk.