Building Organizational Health

Part 1 of 3 - The 4 Disciplines of a Healthy Organization

By: Dr. Nels Lindberg Production Animal Consultation

The business of agriculture is the most noble business on the planet. Agriculture is driven by die-hard, relentless, tough, gritty, extremely hard-working people on farms, ranches, stocker operations, feedyards and more. We all get up and grind it out each day, working to produce food for the world. We all love our noble cause. But we are often lost in the insane level of work required to produce food for the world and lose sight of any sort of big picture. We do not have the time to put any focus on working on our business and developing the people we will need to execute long-term growth. We focus on the health of our animals 365/24/7, but when was the last time you evaluated your business (the animal) for sickness, identified a list of potential opportunistic areas (disease potentials), and came up with a diagnosis and a treatment plan for your business?

This article is intended to stimulate your thought processes around this area and, more importantly, to provide a road map of why we do what we do every day and what greater success looks like.

The single greatest advantage to any organization is organizational health. Most organizations do not have good health because they think it is beneath them or even too simple to be an issue. Most leaders are cynical and condescending of anything touchy-feely related to achieving organizational health. But we must be humble and take a deeper look at creating a healthy organization, through the lens of world-renowned author and business leader Patrick Lencioni.

Organizational health is about integrity. We must be whole, consistent, and transparent. We must also have minimal politics, have high moral and ethical values, and work to have very little turnover. Lack of organizational health results in lack of performance. We can make cattle perform as well as anyone, but what is our organizational performance? It is easy for leaders to work on smarter, but most do not want to work on health! Working on smarter is comfortable for us. Working on politics, behavior, and habits of our teams is not comfortable for us. We just want people to show up, shut up, and work. But it does not work that way anymore. Our people want to hear from us; they want our continual care, guidance, and mentorship.

This article begins a three-part series on how to improve organizational health. Throughout this series, I want you to think about and take action for more discipline, common sense, consistency, transparency, simplicity, humility, and open doors. I want you to think less about egos, politics, ambiguity or secrecy, dysfunction, bureaucracy, closed doors, and making things complex and difficult.

The following are the four disciplines needed for organizational health:

1. Build a Cohesive Team. To do so, each member must be able to be completely open, vulnerably honest, and willing to passionately debate. Team members need to hold each other accountable, call each other out, and always keep the common goals in mind. Harmony and balance among a leadership team occurs when every member gives up all ego, personal interests, and individual desires for the good of the farm, ranch, or feedyard. When all members can speak up without fear of retribution and without fear of derogatory comments or action, the team becomes one. If any one member is insecure, complacent, arrogant, or authoritarian in nature, then a cohesive team will never occur because not everyone will be completely open and vulnerably honest.

2. Create Clarity. To do so, we must overshare information, have daily check-ins, and have leadership team meetings and whole yard meetings. We must constantly set and share expectations on values, behaviors, daily actions, logistics, and where we are headed. Your leadership team needs to always be on the same page and communicate the same objectives in the same way to everyone. We often fail our teams when different leaders communicate different objectives to the same people, creating massive confusion and distrust.

3. Over Communicate Clarity. Repeatedly and enthusiastically. Repeat, repeat, and repeat. The goal is to be so clear and so transparent that cascading communication automatically occurs down through the chain with no misinformation or confusion. If there is ever any misinformation or confusion, that rests solely on leadership.

4. Reinforce Clarity. Reward those behaviors that support our purpose. When was the last time you “caught someone doing something good” and handed them $50 or $100? We are excellent at hammering on the mistakes and shortcomings of our team members, but how often do we reinforce clarity by rewarding good behaviors, actions, and attitudes? We still have to reinforce with clarity our expectations daily, but if we reward the behaviors that support the purpose and mission of the operation, we will create small armies of people more willing to carry out our whole mission rather than just part of it. Your people will also become volunteer teams of culture builders!

The goal of this article and the remaining two in this three-part series is to prompt you to reflect on, assess, and resolve your operational goals, as well as to grow as a leader. With each article, I challenge you to come up with three action items to execute, whether you are the manager, assistant manager, yard foreman, head cowboy, head of maintenance, or head of the mill.

What are your 3 action items? Write them down and tear this page out, or write them in your leadership notepad. Take action! Remember, your organization will only go as far as you grow. You and your leaders are the “lid”.

The remaining articles of this series are How to Build a Cohesive Team and The 6 Critical Questions Any Business Needs To Answer. And remember, we write these articles not just for your reading but to engage the thought processes of you and your teams as you come up with action plans to grow yourself, your teams, and your operation!