What should we work on first?

Perhaps the most important task when setting your goals for your farm is to prioritize those goals that have been agreed upon by you and your family.  Of course, this can be a challenging task.  In reality, most farm succession and business plans will have a hard time trying to satisfy all goals.  That is what is called “compromise”.  You might be married.  You get it.

Prioritizing your goals can help ensure that the most important goals are focused on first.  Listed below are a set of questions that your planning team might consider for each goal to help identify those that should be the highest priority.

1. Which goals are most important for immediate family well-being, current business success, and/or retirement success in the future?
2. Which short-term goals, if attained, would help you achieve your long-term goals? 
3. Which short-term goals conflict with or impede your long-term goals? 
4. Which goals are sooooo important that they should be attained even if it prevents you from reaching other goals?  For example, if a goal is to provide a secure retirement, that might conflict with bringing in and having the business support three additional families

"Times of transition are strenuous, but I love them.  They are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities and be intentional about new habits.  We can make our new 'normal' any way we want."

- Kristin Armstrong

After working through these questions, each of your team member’s should list their top three to five goals in order of priority.  Then, compare notes.  Are there differences?  This is where compromise and discussion will come into play once again.

The process of sitting together and discussing everyone’s goals almost has as much value as achieving the goals themselves.  It’s the process that often helps families best.

BEWARE!   It is common to have some disagreements  (Well…duh Jim!).  As the business leader, your role is to help lead the team toward gaining mutual agreement and commitment on something as simple as the top five priorities for your business.  If that cannot be accomplished, you and your business will likely face serious challenges in meeting ANY of its goals.

When all team members of your business know and understand the top goals for your business, and everyone is working in unison towards those goals – Oh baby.  Look out and have fun!