By Clint Schwab, The Maschhoffs
The business lessons and challenges amid the current pandemic have clearly started to pile up for each of us. One thing is certain: We’ll all be adjusting to a new normal on the backside of the pandemic.
Around every corner is a new pressure point on each of our businesses. Whether it’s continued global spread of African swine fever, chaotic markets, labor shortages or fluctuating export demand, the risk surrounding each of our businesses has reached new heights. This added volatility surrounds what we know to be a mature commodity industry that generally has large capital requirements and relatively small margins.
This isn’t new to anyone participating in our industry, and yet we remain persistently bullish of the future. Maybe it’s because we’re incredibly stubborn, or maybe it’s because we remember weathering the storms of the past, trust our experience and are connected to the higher purpose of what we do. Ultimately, we must accept the fact that we don’t know what we don’t know, and we need to adjust to the new inevitable realities coming our way — both in the form of new opportunities and areas where we need to sharpen our pencil.
Control the Controllable
At the bare minimum, we each need to do our best to control the controllable. Production efficiency and cost management are paramount to ensuring the staying power of our operations. For all roles in the organization, maintaining a laser focus on items within our individual control is even more important in times of added volatility. The coming year will require new levels of execution and connecting every role to where they can directly influence profitability will help ensure the right priorities are in place and everyone is pulling the rope in the same direction.
Explore New Ways to Communicate
One thing COVID-19 has illustrated is we’re more capable of managing remote connections with people than we thought. This opens a door for establishing new avenues of communication and engaging our teams, and those that can capitalize on that opportunity will benefit. Whether video conferencing, instant messaging or social media channels, each of these platforms represent new ways to connect teams together. I believe the opportunity here is not only more proactive execution but also higher levels of employee engagement and ultimately, retention. The technology isn’t perfect, however, and we need to be sure to not exclude the most critical roles — the farm manager and their team. This is one aspect of a need to double-down on our investment in people in the coming year. They make or break an organization, and we should consider every opportunity to better position ourselves in this realm going forward.
Embrace Innovation
New sectors of innovation are starting to emerge that can and will have material impacts on our businesses. This is not an area for complacency and clinging to old paradigms if you want to capitalize on the opportunities. If we embrace them and apply creativity to how they’re implemented, many of the new technologies that are available can help simplify execution and unleash new efficiencies. New sensor tools, for example, have the capability to provide detailed, real-time information in a wide array of dimensions, which can lead to more informative leading indicators, better decisions and greater animal care. Within the coming year, it will be interesting to watch growing examples of other applicable technologies such as automation; however, it’s also important we don’t underestimate the impact of the incremental improvement of existing processes. Sometimes it just takes another look with a creative mindset to identify a better [and simpler] solution to an old problem.
Focus Your Priorities
We all want success, and many of us have the tendency to pursue every opportunity that comes our way. In reality, a focused and finite set of priorities linked to a clear and defined strategy will yield the best results. Defining what you’re not going to do can be just as important as what you are going to tackle. Now more than ever, the coming year will require businesses to contemplate their individual strategic priorities. We will all have a slightly different approach to creating competitive advantage. In each case, know your needed trajectory, measure your progress and benchmark to competition. Adjustments will be inevitable, but without clear priorities linked to a defined business strategy, we’ll put our competitive position at risk through decreased focus and ultimately, slowed improvement.
Even though it’s not perfectly clear what the new normal will look like going forward, it’s safe to say the business environment is likely to be different than what we’ve grown accustomed to over the years. 2020 is a year many of us want to put in the rearview mirror, but it has also illustrated our ability to rapidly adapt to the myriad of challenges that come our way.
More from Farm Journal’s PORK:
U.S. Pork Outlook: Will 2021 Be Different?
It’s Anyone’s Game: How Will the U.S. Pork Industry Diversify Pork Exports?
