People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”
That’s one of the core messages from Simon Sinek’s famed book and TED Talk, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.
While the inspirational author and speaker certainly has his credibility, I’ll take a good dairyman’s word over Sinek’s any day. In fact, there are two I recently heard say similar things –not just about getting people to “buy” a product, but rather, to “buy in” to their dairy’s protocols and goals, particularly in the place that can challenge even the best manager: the milking parlor.
One of them was Hans Nederend, owner of Nederend Dairies in Idaho. On the Uplevel Dairy Podcast (Episode 92), he shared how one of the keys to his team achieving award-winning milk quality consistently across his two dairies and 9,000 cows is to explain and repeat their “why” for each step of the milking procedure during quarterly milking schools.
“We want them to understand the science behind the ‘why’ of what they are doing and why they’re doing it. We want them to care as much as we care,” Nederend said. “They have to buy into our ‘why’ for all this to be successful.”
I heard this again from Joshua Hoffmann, a dairy producer who also serves as a coach and consultant with his group, AgVance Solutions, based in Texas. During a middle manager training, he, too, reinforced the importance of ownership and management viewing the “why” as essential to success.
“To be at that next level, to be a long-term competitor in this game, you have to share the “why,” Hoffmann said.
What is the consequence of failing to do so? Unclear expectations among the team, resulting in unmet goals.
“If expectations aren’t clear, you’re not managing anything,” Hoffmann added. “This all comes before accountability.”
Dropping in those “why” conversations can be as simple as devoting 5 minutes during the milking shift lunch break.
Nederend added, “It’s our job as managers and owners to be there constantly to remind [people] what they’re doing and why they are doing it. You just can’t tell your workers to do something that means nothing. That is an easy thing to do, but to be successful, you have to do the hard things like being on repeat with your encouragement and your corrections.”
And while this may seem so very simple, it’s often the little things that we all stop doing, without realizing that those were actually the big things.
