What Cause Will Lure the Next Generation to Your Farm?
July 21, 2020 If you are the owner of your specialty crop operation, succession planning is probably foremost on your mind: Who is going to carry on your business to the next generation?
Many members of your family may have their own question: Why would I want to?
They may not share your passion for growing. They may see a career in agriculture as hard work, dirty, too remote from the excitement of the city. More than likely, they have heard you complain at least a few times about regulation, labor shortages, slim margins, etc.
Want to turn their heads around? Want to completely change the conversation? Start talking more – a lot more – about the cause, the fundamental purpose, that drives you and your business far beyond the typical bottom line. I can almost guarantee you will have a completely different conversation, a potentially transformative conversation – not only with your possible successors but with all of your current and potential employees as well.
Stand Out in a Sea of Sameness
A few years ago my wife Jackie Freiberg and I wrote a book titled, “CAUSE!: A Business Strategy for Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness.” Our core premise is that cause drives culture, and that defining a business as a cause has the power to inspire a movement. These are the keys to awakening people’s passion, creating innovative solutions for all people, attracting the best talent, restoring dreams, creating brand enthusiasts, and ultimately changing an industry.
Experience the cultures of Apple, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods, and Medtronic in the U.S. Something is going on in these companies beyond making computers, flying people from one point to another, selling organic food, and manufacturing medical supplies.
You quickly get the sense employees are caught up in a cause that touches them at a deep emotional level – something that transcends profitability and the bottom line. They believe the products and services they create have great social value. The emotional connection they have with this larger cause releases a powerful flow of passion, pride, perseverance, and productivity. The revolutionary spirit, maniacal focus, missionary zeal, and upbeat attitudes make these places feel more like crusades than businesses.
And guess what? These companies typically blow the doors off business-as-usual when it comes to profitability and shareholder value.
Offer an Invitation to Change the World
Consider Southwest Airlines as a case in point. Even in today’s trying environment for travel, most of Southwest’s impassioned employees show up to work every day fully awake, fully engaged, and firing on all cylinders. Why? Because they are working for a cause. The people of Southwest Airlines believe they are in the business of freedom. That is, giving people from every walk of life the freedom to go, see, and do things they never dreamed of doing.
Think of your own operation. What higher cause will motivate family members to join your business? What pushes employees to bring their best selves to work? What impels applicants to apply at your operation rather than some other business in town?
An invitation to change the world.
When people find something noble and heroic to be part of, their lives and work take on meaning and significance.
Think about it: Feeding the world is awfully noble and heroic. Coaxing a plant from the soil, even when Mother Nature throws her best curveballs, is awfully noble and heroic. Ensuring plants, fresh fruits, and vegetables successfully make their way to consumers — even amid supply chain disruptions — is awfully noble and heroic.
Articulating higher purposes such as these can, in fact, be especially powerful in times of great change such as we are living through today. Change is difficult and messy. It doesn’t always go according to plan. So, what fuels the fires of perseverance when the critics are firing arrows and the demons of self-doubt set in? It’s a conviction that you are solving a problem that really matters.
Higher purposes of fruits and vegetables such as for health and economy once were more common in produce branding and marketing. Operations today should define and express their “cause” to help them stand in a sea of sameness.
What Is Your Operation’s Cause?
You likely have your own ideas about your operation’s cause, its core purpose, what makes it stand out in a sea of sameness. If not, allow me to offer a few suggestions to help get you started.
Bringing good health. Hospitals long ago reframed their image as providing “healthcare” as opposed to a place to go when you are ill or injured. Multiple studies show gardening is good for your health and well-being. Shouldn’t the growing operations that collectively cultivate oxygen-rich plants and provide fresh produce draw a more direct line between your products and good health?
Providing good nutrition. Evidence is plentiful and irrefutable that fruits and vegetables are not only essential to good health, they are the key to vitality. So are you in the growing business, or the good nutrition business?
Where man and nature meet. Farms today are technology-intensive, but as many of us know, the use of technology to grow crops can be a double-edged sword in some people’s perception. Perhaps a better way to frame the higher purpose of your growing operation is that it is one of the most important places in our country where man and nature meet to produce the food we all need. What could be more heroic than to play a role in solving a problem that really, really matters: feeding 10 billion people by 2050?
Making the good life a reality. Through the ages, art has used the symbols of fruits and vegetables to impart the idea of leisure, luxury, the good life. The cause of your operation – of the produce industry as a whole – is that you are making the good life a reality for countless families, and typically at prices that probably would have been unthinkable a half-century or century ago.
These are just a few examples, but you get the point.
The more you can show family members and your employees how their individual contributions link to the overall cause for which your business fights, the more heroic they will feel about what they do. And that sense of heroism will draw out of them a drive to succeed, a will to win, and a deep-seated passion that is unlike anything you’ve ever seen!
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