Enchantment: The Art Of Changing Hearts, Minds, And Actions
By Guy Kawasaki
Portfolio / Penguin $33.50
Reviewed by Tom Button, CG Editor
This book certainly isn’t about farming. At first glance, in fact, it also seems to have nothing at all that it could teach farmers, being all about how to set unique goals for a business venture, and learning how to get others to believe in you — or to be enchanted by you, as the title suggests.
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But if you’re in your 40s and especially if you’re in your 30s, this is a book to look into, despite the fact that it shares the flaws of so many business best-sellers, including jargon that poses as psychology and case studies that are more about name-dropping than business. (Do publishers really think we really want to read another chapter titled “Be a hero?”)
If you’re in the above age group, however, there are two rock-solid things we know. First is that agriculture is going to look a lot different by the time you’re 60. Second is that a lot of the people you grew up with aren’t going to be there to see it. They won’t have anticipated and prepared for change, and they won’t have developed the new skills needed to keep them on the farm.
Are you enchanted by your own dream of where your farm is heading, and can you get other people to be equally excited? In the non-emotional world of farming, those are supposed to be non-questions. In most other business sectors, however, they are minimum requirements, and it’s at least worth asking whether they won’t become minimum requirements for the coming generation of farmers too.
If you doubt it, take a look at your stack of COUNTRY GUIDEs from the last year. Even just look at this issue. If these farmers are doing something different than previous generations, is it just a difference like which herbicide they use, or is it something much closer to the ideas that are operating at the very core of how they do business?
Kawasaki, the former chief evangelist at Apple (yes, that was his title) believes in the idea at the core, and ENCHANTMENT is his best shot at getting you to believe too.
ENCHANTMENT has quickly become the number one requested business book at Chapters. Buyers are reading it because they want to believe in themselves and to have everyone else believe in them too. Yes, it sounds like psycho-babble. But it might be more. Michael Gartenberg at Gartner calls it “the best overall treatise on interpersonal relationships since Dale Carnegie.” It’s worth trying to figure out why.
Every Family’s Business: 12 Common Sense Questions To Protect Your Wealth
Thomas William Deans www.everyfamiliesbusiness.com $19.95
Reviewed By Maggie Van Camp
CG Associate Editor
Here’s another book that isn’t about farming. It isn’t even about the nuts and bolts of running a business. Yet the story — which takes the form of a dialogue between two businessmen who have sold their family businesses — raises perspectives that farmers might need to hear more often.
Be prepared, though. Those perspectives are different from what you’re used to hearing. In particular, Deans believes that family businesses make and maintain more profitability when they constantly consider selling out.
His message sticks in the throat: Is success really better than longevity?
As a multi-generational farmer, it’s a message that goes against my principles of tradition, community investment, building something for the next generation, and knowledge transfer, not to mention my lifelong mortgage.
Besides, Deans also doesn’t include any consideration for lifestyle, a huge factor for most family farms.
That said, if we looked at our farms as businesses that have value, instead of as inheritances that have obligations, are there important things that we would do differently. Deans clearly thinks the answer is yes.
His 12 questions make a template for an annual review between generations. Whether the family business is a farm sole proprietorship or a manufacturing corporation, they can open communication between generations.
Essentially they ask you to lay all the cards on the table once a year and train the next generation in how to make big, tough decisions.
If you’re already working with the next generation and need a blueprint for an annual review, Deans’ questions could be useful. They do give a clear framework for analyzing the business, and also for helping you to confront the taboo topics.
Since we know that on most farms, sit-down meeting time is at a premium, I’m grouping the 12 into six.
1. What’s your vision of the farm in five years?
2. Do you want to buy/sell and to whom?
3. What is the business worth today?
4. What is your SWOT analysis?
5. Based on performance reviews, what are your goals for the coming year?
6. Who does and decides what?
Deans shows how to use these questions to separate ownership from management, and also how to use them to keep the business actively earning, and to red flag potential problems in management.
Deans deals mainly with corporations with many employees and values of $100 million. These types of businesses have more value when they’re sold at peak income.
The reality is that this isn’t the valuation that most family businesses use, including capital-intensive farms. Yet it does force you to consider the discussion of wealth versus success, and how that may play out for todays teenagers.
If you’re looking at the possibility of selling the farm instead of transferring it to the next generation, Deans may give you the needed courage and perspective. He may even help the next generation see that it might be the best move.
Conversely, if you’re going to commit to the farm, wouldn’t it be good to know what you’re really committing to?CG
