How to Fix or Reduce 90% of Your Problems with One Simple Trick

Profile Picture of Post's Author Robb Bender | Posted November 27, 2023

Catchy headlines are lots of fun and aspire to engage your attention. E-mails, text messages, Facebook, Twitter (X?) and more all love to grab your attention by promising a dramatic result with little effort. So, I thought I’d give it a try – do I have your attention now?

In all seriousness, I really do want to talk about what I see as a common missing link to many of the frustrations and problems that dairies experience on a regular basis. It’s nothing that takes a PhD in Rocket Science to figure out, yet most people will cringe when I mention it. The answer? Good…. old-fashioned…. COMMUNICATION!

Perhaps not everyone’s favorite word, but critically important to the operations of dairy farms. Get it right, and the dairy can run like a fine-tuned machine, minimizing problems by maximizing team engagement, staff commitment and problem-solving skills. Get it wrong (or don’t do it) and we are left with a tense environment, unmotivated staff, problems that linger without resolve and ultimately, reduced profitability.

Here are some tips to maximize communication among your team:

  • Listen! Notice I said the goal is better communication, NOT better talking! Listening is a crucial component to effective communication.
  • Periodic meetings with appropriate groups (herds team, owners, operations, etc) can be a highly effective way to promote communication among the team. Use all the good meeting skills that you’ve learned along the way – including to start and finish on time, keep them brief and valuable, and have an agenda to guide focus areas.
  • Consider using text message groups, WhatsApp chats, Microsoft Teams channels, or any other group messaging system to keep relevant teams engaged between meetings on a day-to-day basis. Use these valuable tools to enhance regular communication.
  • Figure out how people tick. There are many avenues to communicate – written, verbal, phone, message, etc. The only one that does not work is telepathy. People cannot read your mind, so please don’t expect them to know what you are thinking!
  • Listen! Seriously, it’s worth listing twice (to see if you paid attention). Actively listening is a tough thing to do. Don’t listen with the intention of responding to someone. Listen with the intention of truly understanding what it is they are trying to communicate.

Think back to recent challenges or problems you’ve experienced on your dairies. Think of the details of the situation. Could better communication play a role in eliminating or reducing the severity of the problem? My guess is that it could.

Here’s a few examples of problems that dairies have brought up during my farm visits this past week. Take a moment and view these issues through the lens of communication. Can you see how better communication could help prevent these problems?

  • Milking staff mixing up cows
  • Feed quality (mold) concerns leading to cow health issues
  • Colostrum quantity and quality concerns stemming from feed availability to prefresh cows
  • Dirty work environment – plastic and garbage littered throughout the feed center
  • Owners with different long-term goals lead to competing priorities

Try it yourself – think back to some of the issues that plagued your dairy this past week. Might an improvement in communication resolve the problem or reduce its severity? My guess – 90% of the time, it just may help. I’m not sure you’ll get a dramatic result with little effort as promised in the headline, but I’m confident that putting in some due diligence will yield significant results.

You can find a PDF of this blog post here.

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