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New Year, New Goals

Developing big goals for your dairy this year might just move you leaps and bounds ahead.

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Updated:

October 31, 2023

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For dairy farm owners and employees alike, a new year is a chance to review, re-evaluate, or reset some goals. Often, we hear about setting SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timed – goals for our business and ourselves. Goals like "keep bulk tank SCC below 200,000 for 10 of 12 months of this year" or "have working capital at 30% or more of income for the first half of this year." These types of goals can be very effective for some dairy businesses.

Other dairies may use a cascading goal strategy to incorporate employees into the overall goals of the organization. For example, if the SMART goal for the dairy is to "keep bulk tank SCC below 200,000 for 10 of 12 months of the year," then employees may be encouraged to set work goals that are in line with the overall farm goals. For example, "follow correct milking procedures during my shifts." What is realistic and attainable here? How much drift is too much? Questions should be answered on a farm-by-farm basis, but the overall strategy is to link employee goals and motivation to the broader overarching farm business goals.

Working with a Dairy Advisory Team can be a good way to review last year's progress and set new goals for the new year. Want to focus on milk quality? Reugg (2011) has "Ten Smart Things Dairy Farms Do to Achieve Milking Excellence." Want to focus on financial health of the business? Kitchen (2015) has "Six financial targets for long-term financial success." Whatever area you want to focus your goals around, there are good resources, especially those advisors that you work with day to day and week to week in your operation. Strong goal-setting practices can help owners and managers have those tough conversations about productivity and profitability of the business. Strong goal-setting practices can provide a launch point for discussions about where the business is headed in the future and what some of the hurdles might be. Strong goal-setting practices can – and should – involve employees so that the whole team has a common purpose and focus.

An article written nearly 20 years ago in American Psychologist by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham detailed findings from 35 years of research about the effectiveness of goal setting. Some key findings included:

Setting specific, difficult goals consistently led to higher performance than just urging people to do their best.
Tight deadlines led to a more rapid work pace than loose deadlines.
Making a public commitment to a goal enhanced personal commitment.
Whether the goal was set by mutual agreement or by the boss alone didn't make a big difference in goal achievement.

This research suggests that small incremental goals, typically set using the SMART format or cascading goal strategy that links employee goals to overall business goals may be limiting overall performance. Consider the points above: Difficult, high-level goals, tight deadlines, and public commitment – all things that led to successful goal achievement. The term "BHAG" (meaning "Big Hairy Audacious Goal") was first used by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in a book called Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. The BHAG fits the characteristics outlined nearly two decades ago by Locke and Latham. Collins uses the US Space program and the Moon missions as an example of a BHAG.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced to Congress that the US should "commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

On July 20, 1969, the US Space Program celebrated Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon and safe return. So while your aspirations for the new year might not include milking cows on the moon, foregoing the usual step-by-step incremental goals of the past and developing a BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal – for your dairy this year might just move you leaps and bounds ahead.