Building Organizational Health

Part 3 of 3 - The 6 Critical Questions

By: Dr. Nels Lindberg Production Animal Consultation

Organizational health requires alignment of your frontline team and your leadership team. Alignment takes extreme communication and clarity.

This issue, we are continuing with Part 3 of our series on working to achieve organizational health. As we all know, working on “smart” things is comfortable for us, but building a healthy organization with minimal politics, high morals and very little turnover takes more in-depth work.

As leaders of feedyards, ranches and caregiver teams, we must work to understand our people, not to be understood. Organizational health requires alignment of your frontline team and your leadership team. Alignment takes extreme communication and clarity. If leaders at the top are not aligned, then alignment in day to day logistics will not occur, and alignment, when it is needed for challenging days, weather and markets, will not be achieved. We must empower our people with a clear and consistent message to achieve alignment that a mission statement cannot provide. Clarity is created by answering the six critical questions outlined in this article. I challenge you to sit down with your team, whether that is your crew leaders, your caregiver team, or even your family if you are a family operation, to go over and answer the six questions together.

QUESTION #1

WHY DO WE EXIST?

As discussed in the first article of this series, the livelihood of agriculture is noble, and our just cause is greater than most as we grind it out every day with a purpose of feeding the world. Our very daily existence can be a differentiator if we would communicate it. While this is the easy answer to the question of why we exist, I would challenge you to think more deeply. At the end of the day, every leader and every healthy organization’s goal is to make the lives of their people better. If you are the head cowboy or caregiver, your existence is more than producing beef; it is also to make your crew members’ lives better. For all feedyards, ranches, farms and families, your people do not want to simply come to work to make you or the owner more money. They want to come to work to win at life. They want to come to work to win for their family, not just yours.

QUESTION #2

HOW DO WE BEHAVE?

This question is strictly about your core values. We must behave and act in accordance with our core values. We must also embody our core values. Core values create culture. Every organization has a culture, whether good or bad, intentional or unintentional. A set of clear and communicated core values can attract team members and customers who identify with those values and behaviors. If you have not defined and written down any core values, identify people on your team or others that embody the business and the winning behaviors you appreciate. Dissect those behaviors you want everyone on your team to have and write them down. Write down other values and behaviors you hold in high esteem that have been a part of the legacy and history that have gotten the operation to where it is today. Also identify people and behaviors that do not embody the beliefs of your business. There are behaviors you want everyone to have and there are certain behaviors that you cannot tolerate. What are they? Write them down. This process will help you identify your non-negotiable core values.

QUESTION #3

WHAT DO WE DO?

This is simply a one-sentence definition of what your crew, feedyard or family operation does each day. What we do every day is very simple: we create healthy animals for healthy beef. This is often a great starting point when answering question three. The answer can change over time, and I challenge you to look for a deeper answer as you continue to grow yourself, your crew or your team. As a consultant, my job is to offer help and encouragement to feedyard teams in all areas of animal health through education, communication, and simplification of the technical in the daily trenches of feedyard life. I also help to develop, grow and nourish more leaders in organizations from top to bottom. Many of you are also developing leaders by challenging those around you to achieve what they never thought possible. If not, you can start today! Answer question three for your team, and over time, look at answering it personally for yourself!

QUESTION #4

HOW WILL WE SUCCEED?

When we answer this question, we are describing our strategy or our plan for success. This plan includes intentional decisions to let us thrive and win at what we do. Create a list of all things that have gotten you to where you are today. Ask the question, how will we succeed? Will we achieve success through improved daily communication, through better horsemanship and stockmanship training and education, through better daily intentional focus, by growing our people opportunities, or by knowing and understanding the data better? There are many ways to succeed and get better. What are they? What will allow us to win more than we are winning today? What are those patterns or processes, and how do they fit together to create improved processes for success?

QUESTION #5

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW?

This is a question that can be answered each day or can be answered with a longer-term thematic goal in mind.

Regardless, all too often we have too many things we need to get done. We spread our people and equipment too thin, and we get mediocre results. We fail to execute the most important issue right now at a high level. If everything is important, then nothing is. If we do not have a common goal, then “silos” develop (as described by Patrick Lencioni) and each person, team or department starts to work on their own thing instead of working together to achieve the organizational common goals. As leaders, we must break down silos by clearly communicating what matters and what is most important right now. Maybe what is most important right now is the reduction of untreated respiratory deads, or maybe it is achieving and then maintaining lower hospital populations. Whatever the objective is, define it and apply focus and attention to that objective.