Building the best team to look after your property

For most Ag Investments, the key to creating and implementing effective management strategy is to build a team around the skills required, with the on-farm manager prioritising the foundational skills needed to operate the farm.

Skills required

The skill set required centres around three functional areas: the foundation skills, management skills and strategic skills.

Having staff available with these skills will better equip any agricultural business but it is rare to find someone who holds all three of these skill sets proficiently, objectively and consistently.

Hiring on capability vs. skills

It is a common trend in the world of recruitment to focus on capabilities before specific skills. The central idea behind this theory is that skills can be taught, but core abilities or tendencies are more inherent. We certainly support this theory and there are a set of characteristics or attitudes we look for when hiring a member of the team for ourselves or on behalf of a client.

• Bravery: acts with courage, comfortable with challenging the norm, prepared to go the extra mile and committed to delivering results
• Humility: open to acknowledging weakness or mistakes, a team player and stellar communicator
• Growth: driven to learn, confident there are always ways to improve, open to adapt and be creative in their approach, curious and enquiring
• Persistent: doggedly determined to deliver results, patient when required, proactive and resourceful
• Practical: able to manage what is possible, utilise resources efficiently, and strong prioritisation skills

What works

Where we see enterprises performing well consistently, there is a great team behind them. On-farm resources exceed in operational roles and skills and the link between owner/investor and operator is strong. This may be a direct link, but more often than not, there is a third party of some kind. The key role there is to fill the gaps for the on-farm manager and act as the translator between day to day operations and investor expectations.

If you have any questions about what it takes to build the best team, get in touch.

Read our article on What does the farm manager of the future look like?