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Home > Michelle's Blog > Previous Postings > 01/29/07
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Previous Postings |
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January 29, 2007:
Calling All ManagementI spent two days calling about 30 General Managers/CEO's/Presidents of my customer base and talking to them about attending our San Antonio Executive Conference. This conference is a great way to see what others are doing in the industry - where is the future heading regarding software and agriculture. It also gives me a good excuse to just talk to other leaders in the industry - one of my favorite things to do!!!
I called leaders from many areas and sizes of businesses - Ken Cadillac at Skagit Farmers North of Seattle, Washington to George Secor from Country Springs Coop in Northern Ohio to Mike Nail from North Central Coop in rural Iowa. A few interesting conversations - I talked to Dan Walski from Luckey Farmers Coop, who has been the leader at that company for over 30 years. At the end of our 10 minute conversation, he said, "Keep up the good work young lady - we really like the what you are doing." That is such a great feeling to have someone who has led for that many years to give you a short, simple compliment.
Like Ed Basanko from WFS in Truman, Minnesota said at their annual meeting that I attended last week, the number of coops in the state of Minnesota in 1987 was 425. Today there are 225 and in 2020, there will be only 100 remaining coops. Another interesting fact - WFS is a $250 million coop with 218 full time employees and 46 part time employees. Of those, 33 are women and that is a pretty good percentage in the ag-industry. I found that interesting - 18% of the employees in a $250,000,000 company in this day and age and that is considered a high percentage - it's shocking, but real.
I'm reading a book called "The Contrarians Guide to Leadership" by Steven Sample - the President of USC. I tried reading it about a year ago, and nothing was sinking in. I guess I wasn't ready to approach leadership from a "Contraire" perspective. Now, I can't get enough of this book. I read many things that seem to hit very close to home. For example, these past few weeks, I've been reading about artful listening.
As the leaders of the company, we need to be careful when a person tells you that "our customers want this" or "our employees want that" or the "team is upset about such and such." If you get that statement made to you, as a leader your first response should be "Who is saying what to whom?" Often times, when we hear a few people say things that comports with our own agenda, we can exaggerate it into a whole body of people feeling or saying something, when in fact, it was only a couple people, but it's what we wanted so we make it bigger.
The other topic with this idea is that we, as leaders of the company, need to be careful when expressing our opinions openly to our employees. A slight slip of the tongue and everything you say that is positive, can be totally wiped out with in a few seconds. For example, the leader could be talking about incorporating a "No Blame" policy - the act of using teams to work through problems without blaming the single person who is perceived to having cause the problem. And when the leader explains this policy, actually uses an example of blame - this may cause the person responsible to not buy into this policy.
We continue to grow as leaders and insure our people see us as leaders of our company and not as a team of people that do not have to live by the same rules that we try to implement. Remember - Many people want to be leader, but few want to do leader; if you're not in the latter group, you should stay away from the leader business altogether.
Keep Smiling!
Michelle