Successful Employees, Successful Teams

By Quint Finney, Midwest PMS

In today’s environment, finding and retaining solid employees to fill feed yard positions is tough, to say the least. Turnover is a problem. Properly executed interviewing, hiring, and onboarding processes are expensive and time consuming. Loss of productivity and efficiency directly (and negatively) impact the bottom of line. No new news here.

Considering these particular difficulties, the industry has somewhat recently decided to put forth more effort towards developing procedures and processes to deal with what most consider an employee crisis. Buzzwords like culture, teambuilding, and development are all the rage. But, while there are some organizations that are very effective in these areas, are we really doing enough?

I believe the cattle feeding industry is indeed in a crisis situation relative to adequately staffing feed yards. Many industries are. For example, consider the current number of job openings in construction, the food service industry, manufacturing, and the list goes on. I also believe there is a need for effectively executed processes that deal with positive cultural and personnel development, leadership skills, teamwork, and communication, all of which contribute to higher productivity and efficiency, and all of which, obviously, revolve around people.

I started my career in the Cactus organization 36 years ago. When I was a twenty-something-year-old bunk reader, Paul Engler told me: “These feed yards are only concrete and steel without the right people working in them.” It was true then and it is true now. Currently, tech companies are spending millions in research and development to create technology to effectively eliminate people in the workforce. “Eliminating people” is actually their sales pitch, which is counterintuitive to what many believe to be an important part of the foundation of the cattle feeding industry: people and passion. I am a fan of technology and the undeniable potential that it provides relative to accuracy, production, and efficiency, but I think we are missing opportunities if we put all our eggs in the technology basket.

I have had the pleasure of working with Dr. Pete Anderson and Dr. Nels Lindberg during the last couple of years to develop and present seminars that focus on effective cultural development, leadership, and education relative to the cattle feeding industry. Pete is a colleague at Midwest PMS, and Nels is part of the PAC veterinary group. It is an effective collaboration because we share a passion for the industry. More importantly, we share a passion for the people in the industry. We agree that people are our most important asset. We also agree that people are our biggest opportunity and that any leader, in any organization, should truly want those they lead to be successful.

So, what defines successful employees? It probably depends upon who you ask. Feed yard managers and department supervisors may have very different answers than the members of the production teams. As managers and supervisors, we have a tendency to focus on the tangibles when evaluating employee success. Punctuality, dependability, honesty, work output, and job skills are some of the ways we define employee success. But what about the definition of success from the viewpoint of the production folks? How do they define their personal success? It is our job as leaders to know the answer. It means getting to know the teams and working to develop effective professional relationships with those we lead.

I would guess there are similarities in how people define personal success. The ability to pay the bills, pay for college, make and/or pay off the mortgage or rent, pay off the car, and still have a little to put away for retirement are certainly all measures of success. But I would suggest that most people have little true passion for these things. I would also suggest that these things have little to do with how people identify themselves.

I believe that most people on this earth want to be involved with something bigger than themselves. I also believe the cattle feeding industry and its leaders have opportunities and the responsibility to make that happen and help people be successful. If we can effectively motivate people and help them understand the value of their contributions, we increase our ability to be more productive, efficient, and effective, and we help them realize success in their professional lives. If we are serious about their professional success, we go deeper and help them make the connection to personal success.

So, it all sounds good, right? But how do we go about truly helping people achieve success in our industry? In my opinion, it is all about people understanding why we do what we do and communicating the purpose of the organization. It starts with a basic understanding of cattle performance measurements and how their respective responsibilities impact them. We communicate results and coach to performance. Teach them that we are in the food production business. We feed people, and that is a big responsibility. These are the initial steps in creating accountability and instilling ownership mentality into the culture. When people possess an ownership mentality, they will likely experience success.

In the Midwest PMS-PAC seminars that I have been involved with, Dr. Anderson speaks about the importance of engaging employees and suggests that this process is a “every employee, every day event”. It is the responsibility of leadership to make it happen. Making people feel valued is key. In addition, he makes the point that we accept that responsibility when we accept a management position. Dr. Nels supports those theories in his coaching presentations and makes some points that should resonate. He explains that when you take care of your people, they will take care of you. When we fail to serve our employees, customers and companies suffer. He also provokes us with the Simon Sinek quote, “Average companies give their people something to work on. The most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.”

Our jobs and careers, at least partially, define who we are. But, at the end of our lives, what we did professionally will not be emphasized nearly as much as how we did it. We have the opportunity to have a positive impact on the lives of those we lead. It is the right thing to do from a human perspective. And, it will more than likely have a positive impact on the success of the business.

Quint Finney is a management and operations consultant with Midwest PMS. He works with multiple cattle feeding organizations across the country, focusing on productivity and efficiency through effective personnel development. Contact him at qfinney@mwpms.com or 620-655-6138.