I really enjoyed working with FCC Services at the Forum for Ag Lenders this summer. I spoke with an excellent group of leaders on applying critical thinking in their roles as financial professionals. Here are the evaluation results for my presentation:
- Overall session content: 50% rated “excellent,” 95% rated “excellent” or “good”
- Overall speaker rating: 47% rated “excellent,” 92% rated “excellent” or “good”
Comments from participants:
- “Great session with added value for everyone. Although the concept seemed basic, he broke it down and dug deeper – revealing that maybe it’s not so basic after all.”
- “Very important topic that is helpful for all employees in Farm Credit System.”
- “Excellent presentation with many challenging thoughts.”
- “Great Job!”
- “Very well put together presentation.”
- “Very entertaining!”
― Farm Credit
“Our ownership group was struggling to make strategic decisions and to bring the next generation fully into management. Rich worked with us to resolve conflict, to clarify our management roles, and to design a much better process for top-level business decisions. The next generation is much more engaged now and we have a clear leadership structure that helps us work together and take advantage of opportunities.” – Allen Behrer, Dairy Manager
Thanks Allen, it’s a pleasure to work with your team. I’m glad to see steady growth from everyone as we build leadership for the future.
― Lion Country Dairy
“Our farm and business has grown over the years. We continue to hire more employees and they have less farm experience. It was becoming harder to consistently train and educate employees on our policies and tasks. We decided we needed a concrete plan to introduce our policies and reinforce our training. Rich was able to develop a solid employee handbook and job descriptions that focused on general ideas while breaking down into specific applications on our farm. Rich was also able to produce visual aids for routine jobs at our farm. The visual aids are a silent reminder for each employee as they learn their new jobs. Finally we worked on pay scales and related benefit plans, to give more consistency within our workforce. When we started the project it looked very daunting, but Rich simplified the process and took a lot of the leg work out of it for me. Human Resources was something I knew we needed to address but never wanted to tackle it on my own. Rich provided the expertise and guidance I was looking for.” – Donny Bartch, Owner/Manager, Merrimart Farms
― Merrimart Farms
Ag Workforce Development 