5 Tips to Optimize Your Time and Your Team
There was a time when dairy farming wasn’t fun anymore for Sonya and Johan Koke, dairy farmers from Dublin, Texas.
Their phones were ringing 24/7.
They were burning the candle at both ends, running two dairies.
Not to mention, raising six kids.
There was no break from the day-to-day.
Johan, a Dutch immigrant, and Sonya, a California native, were both living their American dream as first-generation dairy farm owners in the United States, but the constant hustle had them nearing burnout.
“When you get to a point that you feel like the dairy is running you, instead of you running the dairy, that is when you need to step back and you need to reevaluate,” Sonya says on Uplevel Dairy Podcast Episode #30.
With the guidance of their consultant Bruce Vande Steeg, DVM, Leiden LLC, Sonya and Johan did just that. Today, they are able to trust in their team and even take time away from the dairy without worry.
Here are five steps they took to optimize their time and team at Blue Jay Dairy and Blue Bonnet Dairy:
- Make a list of the employees to promote to leaders.
Their consultant advised them to make a list of employees that could be promoted to a higher level of leadership. “You're looking for the person that even though it’s not their dairy, they're invested,” Sonya says. “They are going to see the problems, they're going to try to fix the problem, even though you didn't tell them to.”
- Establish a chain of command and stick to it.
Instead of fielding all the problems as owners, Sonya and Johan learned to build trust within their team by creating a chain of command. For example, if a member of the milking crew had a problem, they report to the parlor leader, who then reports to the herdsperson. This is a change from the past when Sonya and Johan fielded all the calls from the dairies, but their commitment to building up their leaders meant allowing them to lead and navigate challenges themselves.
“That was a change, and it was hard for the guys because they always were used to calling us,” she says. “... but do not overstep the manager. Don't do it.”
- Communicate with the management team.
Each Monday at 11 a.m. is the one-hour management team meeting. Each manager starts with stating a positive event from the past week - either in their personal life or work life at the dairy. Then, any problems or challenges are discussed and the managers work collaboratively as a team to find solutions.
“It took two to three weeks, and we saw productivity go through the roof … because everybody knew they could rely on someone else and didn't have to fix it themselves,” Sonya says, “and that's including us.”
Outside of team meetings, the managers use WhatsApp to communicate. Sonya and Johan can pop in to keep a pulse on the conversations, however, they practice allowing the managers to work through problems without their intervention.
- 5 minutes, 5 days per week.
Five-minute check-ins, five days each week provide a point of contact for the ownership to interact one-on-one with their managers. Sonya calls it a “stand-up meeting,” where she meets the managers where they are at and simply asks a few questions about how they are doing at work and also what is going on in their personal lives.
- Schedule time to solve problems.
During the 5-minute daily meetings, if a manager expresses a challenge that they need some coaching to work through, Sonya dedicates time to do so and follows through by scheduling additional time to meet. She tells her managers, “Let me look at my calendar, then can we sit down and actually conquer this problem and talk about it more in depth.”
To listen to the entire podcast, go to: #30 - How to Optimize Your Time and Your Team - Sonya Koke by Uplevel Dairy Podcast (spotify.com)
