Strengthening the business – Staying Accountable

We have all heard the saying “Getting there is the easy part, staying there is the challenge!” So it is with accountability in farm business. Developing accountability in the first place is incredibly necessary but even more important is having the right accountability in the right places to ensure the long term delivery of excellence. Last month we discussed the theory of accountability and why it is important in your farming business. Here are a few tips on how to keep accountability:

Personal accountability – being accountable is a habit. To have a great business it all starts here. If there is no personal accountability, there is no deal. Be a person of your word to everyone you are in contact with. Form the habit of under-promising and over-delivering. This provides real value to those you deal with. Have a desire to learn, grow and achieve. Measure your accountability by writing down your goals, strategies and actions with deadlines! Review these often and strive to complete actions regularly. Reward yourself for achieving great steps. Have systems in place to learn lessons from temporary defeat and then apply them e.g. analyse your own performance as if you were your own employer (many of you are). Be your own best team member. The rest is duplicating this on a wider scale to create consistency.
Accountability to your spouse / family and others most important to you. Being a person of your word is vital here – true trust, support and love are more valuable than many of us realise. Do what it takes to earn it.
Accountability to your business and business teams. Form a governance structure to help you keep accountable. Governance is about steering, not driving the operations and more governance needs to be implemented in farming businesses. This team may include your banker, accountant, coach, other farmers, stock agent or anyone else you trust to be honest and helpful. Develop systems of measuring and reporting so the team can help the business stay on track easily. GrowFARM ProfitLIVE – the online business analysis system, can be used as such.
Be accountable to those you serve – staff, customers and clients. Become known as a person of your word. Do what you say you are going to do. Also don’t promise what you know you definitely can’t deliver. Don’t renege on commitments at the last minute because another company offered you 5c/kg more for your lambs. How would you like it if that was done to you? Apologise and fix mistakes and misunderstandings straight away, even if it means you have to admit you made poor choices. Honesty with those you serve almost always generates respect for you.
Build systems to help your people stay accountable. Give good people responsibility and provide systems for them to duplicate what you are doing. Then get out of their way and help them to be the best they can be. Good leadership goes hand in hand with good accountability. Give staff a stake somehow. Reward them with something that fires them up when they meet their accountability obligations. Work with them to develop understanding and solutions when they don’t. Remember, you will get great performance from them when you are doing it too. They can also inspire you! Be prepared to help people find a more suitable position if they are not able or willing to meet their accountability obligations. Get a more capable character into that vacant role ASAP. People are not your biggest asset, the right people are!

There is a lot you can do in your farming business and as you can see, it begins with you. This can be very challenging but the up side of continually doing it well is far too valuable to not be doing it. So, give it your best to improve your accountability and you will likely find that you strengthen your business far more than you think!