Feature Succession Planning Depends on Communication by Jeff Gaye
A lot of things about agriculture are hard: the physical work, the long hours, and dealing with uncertain markets, unpredictable weather, and uncooperative livestock.
So she will often ask a question like “where do you see this business in five years, or 20 years?”.
But Patti Durand says the hardest thing for many farmers and ranchers is just sitting down and talking with their families about the operation’s future.
“If you’re not going to say much, we’re just going to sit there. And that’s not to be cruel, but it has to be shared. People are notoriously bad mind readers,” she said.
Durand is an agriculture transition specialist with Farm Credit Canada. She says, she sees it all the time: a family gathers to discuss the succession plan, and there’s hurt feelings all around because nobody told anybody else what they were thinking—or what they had been assuming.
“One of the lines I quite like is ‘you expect a lot, but you don’t tell me what you expect.’ You really need to be clear.”
There is some truth, she says, to the cartoonish stereotype of a rancher who speaks in one-word sentences: “yep” or “nope.” But when your family’s future and your operation’s future are on the line, Durand says “silence is not okay.” “When our team members are sitting down with farm families, often the various parties on the farm assume they’re aiming for the same place,” she said. “So they have not actually discussed what their future vision is, or their goal, or what they personally care about the most. “And as a result, we encounter some of the friction and hard feelings that happen when you’re actually aiming in different directions, and each thinking the other person is just being difficult.” Though she deals with families, Durand puts things on a businesslike footing right away—we’re not talking about parents and kids, but senior partners and junior partners. And while family dynamics invariably come into play, succession planning works when everyone is working on the same path to the same goal, with clear expectations.
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And then she’ll wait for an answer.
It goes both ways. Durand says many younger people are looking for some certainty. But their parents’ generation, the senior partners, never experienced certainty in their own lives, and are hardpressed to promise it. Just say so, Durand advises. “Just say ‘you know what? I really want you to have this farm. I really want this farm to continue. I don’t have a clue how to do it.’” “The land values have gone up, people are living longer, there’s a lot of risk, and they just aren’t sure how to crack that.” One of the keys, she says, comes from Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: start with the end in mind. If you don’t know where you want to go, it doesn’t much matter which road you’re on. Do any, or all, of the junior partners want to take over the operation? On what terms? What skills will set them up to succeed? What do they lack? Does the farm earn enough to support the senior partners’ retirement? Once you have a clear picture in mind, even if it remains flexible, you can take stock of where you stand and determine your course. There’s always risk associated with moving an operation forward, and deciding on a goal together can reduce some family
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friction—most of the time. Durand says her team’s role at FCC is to grease the wheels, to reduce the friction, and set the operation on the right track. “If you’re deep in friction it’s hard to get out without some help,” she said. “Sometimes you need a third-party adviser, whether it’s a facilitator or a mediator or a lawyer. But it’s best when you can avoid those pitfalls in the first place.” The first thing you can do, she says, is drop the adversarial approach—even when you disagree. “Number one, you guys are on the same team. Get on the same side of the table,” she said. “That shift is a really strong visual for me. Get on the same side of the table, get shoulder to shoulder. Let’s get this done.” And even when you don’t see eye to eye, she said it’s important to trust that your partners have good intentions—“most people aren’t going out trying to piss someone else off, they’re not going out there with that intention,” she said. Families obviously have different dynamics from one to another, and a family business will operate differently than other workplaces. Most of the time, that’s a good thing—people are more inclined to put the enterprise ahead of themselves when it’s a family venture. But it’s possible to put yourself out too much if the effort isn’t seen in its proper business context. “There are sacrifices that will be made, because it’s family, that you wouldn’t do in any other situation. And there are things you won’t say because it’s family,” Durand said. “A good business structure is what can preserve that family.” continued on page 32
NOVEMBER 2020
