Reading Time: 4 minutes Last month’s column addressed outward-looking versus inward-looking businesses. The idea sensitized me to watch other organizations (and to check myself!) to find evidence of one or the other. Often, the evidence is mixed. Three examples A hotel where we have hosted CTEAM for several years had the same three young guys providing support for the […] Read more
Creating the outward-looking business
AME management: Do you know the type of culture you want for your business?
Outward-looking business
AME Management: It takes discipline, but an outward focus pays off in more business
Reading Time: 4 minutes Have you ever been disappointed that people who work for you don’t take initiative to do what you want done? You don’t feel comfortable getting away for a week because things won’t get done the way they are supposed to? You and the generation ahead of or behind you have ongoing tension that stands in […] Read more
Is there a ‘best’ farm machinery strategy?
AME management: There is never a guarantee that, without the analysis, the right strategy can be forecast
Reading Time: 4 minutes Country Guide’s editor asked whether we see a trend in the machinery strategy of the farmers who take CTEAM, our management course. Behind this is the idea that their experiences may be of value to others. The reality is that many strategies exist, ranging from turning over the complement of equipment every year, to squeezing […] Read more
The right next step
Peer Think: Brooks and Jen White have always focused on improving their management decision-making. For them, that makes a peer group a key growth strategy
Reading Time: 7 minutes These new peer groups are drawing rave reviews from their members. Are they the most inspirational and perhaps the most essential business idea of the new millennium? It’s a big claim, but it’s tough to argue against this newest iteration of farmers helping farmers. Located in the extreme southwest of Manitoba, Brooks and Jen White’s […] Read more
Numbers drive dynamic decision-making
Jeannette Mongeon and Michel Dignard use spreadsheets to guide everyday decisions and to analyze and embrace change. It’s good for the farm, and it also keeps peace in the family
Reading Time: 6 minutes This past spring, Michel Dignard carefully walked his saturated soybean fields, counting the thin, yellowing plants while some were still fully submerged in water. It was emotionally exhausting work, but at least Dignard and his wife Jeannette Mongeon knew what they would do next. They crunched the numbers. They added up the costs and yield […] Read more
From planning to implementation
AME Management: Get into these management habits. They will help you develop the strategic objectives that will drive your farm where you want it to go, and then help you achieve real progress toward them
Reading Time: 4 minutes In our past column, we reviewed the habits of successful agricultural managers. One habit is that successful managers don’t just do strategic and operational planning, they translate their plans into action — i.e. they have a process to implement the plan. Like most farmers, many CTEAM participants have had little experience or training in planning […] Read more
Growing professional
Across the country, young farmers like Holly White and Kent Sereda are building respect for a new generation of business skills
Reading Time: 9 minutes Newlyweds Holly White and Kent Sereda were already quite good at tackling what you might call their legal due diligence, updating their wills and preparing marital agreements. Then they realized they should go even further. This was the right time, they decided, to review the whole succession plan for the fourth-generation family farm that they […] Read more
What students need for future success as farmers
Top ag educators tell us the good and the not so good they see in Canada’s next generation of farm hopefuls
Reading Time: 7 minutes The future stretches and sways like a Prairie grain field, endless and heavy with possibilities. Like storm clouds, though, threats and risks also gather. What strengths and skills will farmers need to succeed in the future we’re rushing toward? With the turnover between generations accelerating, it’s a question that is coming squarely into play on […] Read more
Turn around
When brothers Ryan and Noel Flitton signed up for business school with their father, it helped their Alberta farm turn a critical corner
Reading Time: 9 minutes The allure of farming runs strong in the Flitton family, so neither Gary Flitton nor his sons Noel or Ryan make any apology for having been drawn for the same reason back to the family’s 12,000 acres of scenic Alberta grain land east of the Rocky Mountains near Vulcan. They want to live a rural […] Read more
A message from April Stewart, Country Guide's Associate Editor
