Establishing meeting ground rules can help your family find ways to communicate that work for your farm.
Here are some ideas you can incorporate into your farm’s communication code of behaviour.
- Start with the right people making the right decisions at the right time and the right place. For example, a dairy farm held Monday meetings at mid-morning coffee break to discuss operations, but during the busy season these meetings were consistently skipped. Since the bookkeeper didn’t need to attend, they shifted the meetings to Mondays at 6:15 a.m. This 20-minute stand-up meeting in the barn office provided an opportunity to compile everyone’s to-do lists into a weekly task list on a white board.
They captured further efficiencies by setting a meeting time limit and recording decisions. They also set up a separate monthly lunch hour business meeting, which included the bookkeeper, to review cash flow and to make decisions on anything worth $2,000 and more. - Get stuff done. Like most of you, I absolutely hate meetings that waste time. A common waste of time at business meetings is getting distracted by idle chit chat and tasks. Farmers are often so task-focused that they don’t give business decisions enough attention. To stop task distraction, the business leader needs to communicate clear goals about what must get done. For example, the leader might send a pre-meeting text with a list of decisions to be made and ask if anyone has anything to add.
One successful dairy farmer told me that his lawyer sister has a rule she follows for family meetings: “No agenda, no attenda.” Take a few minutes to send a draft agenda before the meeting and ask if anyone has anything else that needs to be discussed. This will eliminate surprises and provides people time to think about what they might like to discuss and to gather extra information ahead of time. This also ensures that meeting time will be well invested.
Your first meeting agenda item: what will your farm’s ground rules be? - Be present, be focused. Nothing is more distracting at a meeting than when a person is on their phone or jumps up and leaves in the middle of a discussion. Before the meeting starts, state that if someone is asked to attend, their opinion and input is essential to the meeting. A few other ground rules to follow:
- Arrive on time.
- Stick to the agenda.
- Put phones aside.
- Meet in a place without a lot of distractions.
- Share information ahead of the meeting.
- Keep it under an hour, preferably half an hour. Most people simply cannot keep focused longer than an hour.
- Be the crew, not a passenger. Your family business is a team sport so everyone who attends needs to share the air and be ready to participate. The best teammates and business partners ensure that everyone has a chance to share what they need to say. A helpful ground rule for larger groups is the 2×2 (or 3×3 or …). This means everyone agrees to wait to speak again only after two other people have spoken or two minutes have passed.
- Use a parking lot. Every meeting should have some way to set aside topics for further discussion if they’re not a priority, the discussion is getting too heated or more information is required. You don’t want to lose or forget the idea, so everyone should have the right to say, “For the sake of time, can we put this idea aside until the next meeting and move on?”
Keep a blank paper in the middle of the table to jot down these “parked” ideas (with a promise that it will be on a future agenda). On one board that I chair, I’ve added a column in their post-meeting key action notes called Parking Lot Ideas. Those ideas are fodder for future agendas and a built-in tool for resolving conflicts. Parking the idea can also give people a chance to cool off or gather their thoughts or more information before addressing a contentious topic. - Discretion, honesty and grace required. Honesty is the pillar of trust and trust is the pillar of communication and being able to work well together. This means speaking up to share your opinion. When you say nothing, it’s commonly considered that you agree. Child-parent communication tends to carry a certain level of acceptable untruths (for example, Santa, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, sleepovers-turned-parties, not inhaling), but honesty is required of adult business partners, even if you don’t want to hear it as a parent or child.
Trust is imperative for effective communication, so everyone needs to agree not to talk about business decisions/discussions outside the meeting room. Although it sometimes helps to “debrief” with a trusted outside person your business and family are not gossip to be shared at the local arena, barbershop or coffee shop.
Come to each meeting with a bucket of grace and be prepared to hear something you don’t like. Remember that it’s not personal. Instead, consider these discussions as a time to learn more, to tolerate and to teach.
Use “I” statements instead of “you.” This motivates discussion and limits perceptions of blame or shame. For example, say, “I feel that approach will take too long” and not “You are procrastinating.” - Attack the problem, not the person. Family members can be very competitive and critical so it’s easy for families to get off track, start firing insults and dragging up history. Good decision-making is not about winning or losing.
Focus is so important for making collaborative decisions. Most collaborative decisions are not “or” but rather “and” solutions. In other words, combining shared ideas creates better solutions than any singular idea. It’s not about you or your position on a topic, it’s about pulling together all the information and ideas to find the best solution. - Accountability is born from consistency, recording key actions and execution. Meeting leaders must ensure that each agenda item is allotted enough time for discussion. Once a decision is made, repeat it back to everyone and ensure that it’s written down, including the date the decision was made and the name of the person who is responsible for carrying out actions related to the decision.
In my experience, even the most important topics can usually be articulated in under three minutes. Anything beyond that and people’s attention span decreases. Split complex ideas into one or two points that can be more easily consumed then encourage discussion. Then state the next couple of points and ask for questions. If people’s eyes are glazing over perhaps you are dominating the discussion. To be more self-aware pause and use the W.A.I.T. acronym: ask yourself Why am I talking? - State whether it’s a brainstorming session up front. If you’re planning a brainstorming session, let everyone know that the meeting won’t necessarily be about decisions but about brainstorming solutions. This helps everyone understand that they’ll need to be open to ideas and that the meeting might run a bit longer. Remember when brainstorming that:
- Imperfect ideas are okay.
- Quantity of ideas is welcome.
- Blue-sky thinking is okay (i.e., exploring ideas without self-imposed limits).
- Don’t get caught up in things you can’t control.
- Tangible but not fully thought-out ideas are okay at this point.
- Progress is the priority. Answers will emerge throughout the process.
- Defer quick judgement and be willing to let ideas go.
Setting rules for how your farm will meet about business can be a difficult cultural shift for the whole farm and family, but it’s worth it. Collectively establishing a way of communicating that is more productive, professional and polite creates a culture of efficiency and respect for your farm business and family.
