A Different View
My four-year-old, Reagan, recently took a test at the local school to judge her developmental progress. It was a matching game and there were two cards that purposely did not have a match. She looked, paused and said to the teacher, “Do you have children?”
“Yes, but they’re grown,” the teacher replied. “Why do you ask?”
”Did they play with these when they were little? These don’t have matches, so maybe they lost them,” she reasoned.
That comment brought home how having a different perspective can change what one sees. You may notice a few things that show we’re changing our perspective. We are making an extra effort to provide information to you through the magazine, at TopProducer-Online.com, Web seminars and our Moneywise eNewsletter.
We are being more overt in our dedication to focus on The Business of Production Agriculture. This covers a whole lot of territory for sure, but it’s a constant reminder of our mission to relate everything we do back to your business: producing feed, food, fuel and fiber for the world.
In Outlook, we’ve enhanced our Adviser Track Records chart so you can see how your sales stack up with the leading minds in the business. On the Web, you can get information on their futures and options positions as well. You can also see historical records going back more than a dozen years.
Top Talk is a new magazine feature where we’ll interview leaders from different sectors of the industry. This month, we get the inside scoop from Washington on the increasing rural/urban divide. Next month, you’ll learn how the shift to grain in the South is impacting Southern agriculture and culture.
Finally, as a follow-up to the “Family…By Invitation” article in our Spring issue, Danny Klinefelter of Texas AgriLife Extension offers some advice on our Web site on how critical thinking can change your business. There was no shortage of comments on this story, and much of it was negative. That’s understandable, but Klinefelter cautions that dismissing what we don’t like can be detrimental. He shares a few of the things he sees from the best managers he works with and how they learn from things they don’t necessarily like.
Top Producer, Summer 2009
