HMI Certified Educator Kelly Sidoryk developed a series of videos about how to do strategic and succession planning on your farm or ranch for the Canadian Cattlemen's website. Kelly has taught a number of succession planning courses for HMI.
Kelly integrates a combination of Holistic Management tools like the weak link analysis with traditional business tools like a SWOT analysis to help families determine how they can move their businesses to the next level or help them determine what people issues need to be addressed in order to successfully transfer a business to the next generation.
People skills such as how to negotiate conflict are critical to the success of any business. Many agricultural businesses are family run and so these businesses also have to deal with family dynamics as well.
Kelly's "Getting to Yes" article is the perfect example of how a few questions can help a family mired in conflict or confusion move to the next step in looking at what is their vision for their ranch or farm and how they can create some strategies to move them forward.
Kelly references William Ury's classic Getting to Yes and his four principles of effective negotiation:• Separating people from the problem.• Focusing on interests rather than positions.• Generating a variety of options before settling on an agreement.• Insisting that the agreement be based on objective criteria.
With the tool of a holistic goal, people can determine what their common values are to help them focus on their interests and then use the decision-making process to help them separate themselves from proving each other wrong and instead focus on creating a solution that moves the management team toward their holistic goal. Developing concrete action steps and monitoring criteria is part of that process.
To learn more about the Holistic Management goal setting and decision-making process, download our free Introduction to Holistic Management e-Manual or take an online course.