A lot of farmers are discussing the quality of their service from suppliers and service providers recently.
From what I’ve observed, it’s larger businesses with employees lacking care for the service they provide. Which got me questioning, are our agricultural service providers losing skin in the game?
Machinery dealers, fertiliser reps, wool brokers and advisors have been questioned for getting too detached from the service they are actually employed to provide. How scalable are these services, really? We want someone who will pick up the phone at 6pm on a Saturday to help with the problem that needs solving. Some employees are great and will go above and beyond to solve the problem. Others will wait till they clock on Monday morning.
Corporate farms encounter this scaling problem regularly. They reach a certain scale and struggle to continue to grow without losing out on the quality work that got them there to begin with.
Scaling production and industry is one thing, but scaling services is another. In agriculture, services are employed because they can add an additional skill set to your business. Can someone without skin in their own game provide this, sustainably?
I attribute many of our failings of political leaders to a lack of skin in the game. Never in our history have we had leaders who haven’t actually had to achieve much to get into positions of power. Many, are lifelong politicians.
I encourage all decision-makers to consider the position of their service and input providers. How much risk are they putting on the table?