What Not to Do During Family Transitions
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
ranch, business, conversation, family, informal conversations, generation, cattle, dad, ranchers, problem, mistake, transition, brothers, long, work, question, people, conversations, operation, called
SPEAKERS
Tom Field, Shaye Koester
Shaye Koester 00:05
Hey, hey, it's Shaye Koester and I'm your host and the founder of Casual Cattle Conversations, a global rancher education company that strives to bring honest thoughts and conversations from ranchers and leaders to other ranchers. Be sure to follow cattleconvos on social media to have more in depth conversations around the ranching business and lifestyle brought to you. If you are ready to take your operation to the next level and improve your lifestyle too, send me a message about my RancherMind group. RancherMinds, are monthly roundtable discussions for ranchers to learn from peers and experts and leave the call with actionable advice to make changes on their own operations. With that, let's see who our guest is today and what experience and advice they have to offer you to improve your own operation. Alright, so to start off with a fun question. You're on the ranch in Colorado. What animal would you be and why?
Tom Field 01:02
Oh, golly, that is a hard question. You know, we had this is gonna sound silly, probably. But we had a bull when I was in college that we had purchased, RC Mischief D48 and he was just the coolest Hereford bull. He had a great attitude. He was so easy to work with. He produced great calves and everybody kind of loved that bull. He was sort of the embodiment of our ranch. He was kind of the beach or so I guess. I guess if I can imagine myself as a as a really good bull, I'd be RC Mischief D48.
Shaye Koester 02:01
I haven't had someone that specific yet. But that's good. So just give a brief background of your background in ranching? I know you've shared with me before, but can you please share that with my audience?
Tom Field 02:14
So very much a deep family history and still today. So what is your experience with transitioning generations through the ranch and even helping other ranchers with that process? Well, so our family, really both sides. My mom's side had ranching family and my dad's side was pretty exclusively an agricultural family, from the Civil War on my great, great grandfather homesteaded in Colorado not long after the Civil War. He'd been in the Union cavalry. I think it had been a particularly difficult set of experiences. It's about the entire campaign. So he was in the Calvary for four plus years. And so we started ranching in not very far from a little town called Parshall, which is sort of in sort of central Colorado, and then moved to Kremling, which was Grand County and is where my grandfather grew up. Ultimately, then, sort of through that depression era, there were some challenges. You know, there were three brothers, my grandfather and his two brothers. And they all were able to keep things going and my grandfather got into the purebred Hereford business and had a business partner that was kind of a construction firm. They formed a company called Schweitzer-Field and that was sort of the kickoff. My dad then ran the ranch and really grew the commercial side of our business. And that's the environment I grew up in so long history of ranching in one of the craziest places to ranch. I mean, we always say somebody's wagon must have broken down when they decided to go to one of our ranches because that that one was high desert tough country with long winters. But I spent all of my early life in Ganesan and we still own that ranch and try and figure out how to make it work. Almost by default, I got interested in it when I went back right out of college went back to work for my dad and let me tell you, we did everything that you could do wrong in setting that up. That conversation was something like, "Oh, good, you're going to come back, let's go to work." That was pretty much the depth of planning and discussion that went into that transition. That was not the way to do it. I look back on that and think maybe that was planned so that I can, you know, benefit from those mistakes to help other people. So I transition back in and live the experience, which was really valuable. Ultimately went in the middle of the farm crisis and went back to graduate school. We just thought everybody better have a plan B. And ultimately I started a class called Family Ranching at Colorado State and started working with some families. I started doing a little bit of work trying to help families make decisions not only from a how to bring the next generation in, but sort of prepping leadership and transitioning the power of decision making. Certainly the estate planning piece of it, we've left up to accountants and lawyers. But you know, what I've observed over time, and I've worked not only with just ranch families, but also some ag businesses and some other small businesses helping people sort of think their way through that putting resources in front of them. And what I've learned is that we make the assumption that because we're all family, it will just work out. And I mean, that's not a horrible assumption. But it's an assumption that really stands on kind of two legs, and that third leg is about four inches too short. So you've got sort of a wobbly process in that. I think the best thing that happened is that we did it so badly. And in the end it worked out, but it was a long difficult process, which we can talk about, because I'm not at all afraid to talk about the mistakes we made as a family because we sure loaded them up.
Shaye Koester 07:03
Well, yeah, let's talk about some of those, because what are some of the main pain points you see that are causing the biggest issues for that transition back?
Tom Field 07:13
You know, I think there were three things. The biggest mistake we made at the very front end is that the depth and discussion to make the decision was about a centimeter deep. I mean, it was the shallowest discussion and we didn't talk about expectations. We didn't talk about responsibilities. We didn't talk about accountability. We didn't talk about compensation. We didn't talk about authority. We didn't talk about how we were going to structure the business. I didn't have any idea what the financials were. It was literally "Look, we got a lot of work to get done and you're strong, and hopefully, you'll work out." So my dad just put me to work and that was the biggest mistake we had in our process. And our preparation was just completely insufficient. The second mistake I think we made and I think a lot of families make this mistake is people don't take time to kind of get their mind right for that transition. It's different than when I was in high school and I'd go to work full time on the ranch in the summers. That was different than becoming a full time employee there. But, we treated it as if it were a summer job. But that just was gonna go on and on and on and on. So I didn't have my mind, right. And, to be very honest, and I respect my father greatly, but his mind wasn't right. My mom was the only one who was looking around going, this is going to be a disaster because these two fools have not had a conversation. Nobody had prepped our crew for it. So nobody knew what to do with me. I was pretty confident. I had some new ideas and I was pretty committed to trying to drive those ideas into the business. My father was pretty interested in me having to earn my way up, literally have to fight my way from the bottom level of the organization all the way up. So when he thought there was a possibility I was coming back, I think for about a year he stored up every rotten job he could think of and had nobody else do it an said, "When he gets back, we're going to just humble him up." Ultimately, that was probably okay because I probably needed the humbling. The third mistake I think we made is there was no conversation around the future of the business. When you come into a business, and you don't know whether there's the opportunity to change the mix of enterprises, change in how you're going to do business, and what the goals, the objectives, maybe even some major pivots that might occur, there was no real planning for "Okay, so what happens if my father had gotten ill or had been injured?", There was no conversation about contingency planning. So we just hadn't done any of those pieces. Those are all pieces that I really encourage people to take time to think about during transition. Business transition should be a process, not a moment in time. And, we treated it like a moment in time. That was a massive mistake.
Shaye Koester 10:52
So you brought up a good point that you came home, you had ideas and you wanted to change things. So you have the vision for the business. And I think a lot of times when the younger generation does come home, they have these, but how does that younger generation make sure that they find their place, because everyone has their different talents.
Tom Field 11:14
Yeah, I think it's a generational thing. This may be something that is through time, right? I mean, even if you read in the Old Testament, I mean, fathers and sons have been knocking heads for a long time. And I think daughters and dads and, and son-in-laws, and dads and, and brother-in-laws, and brothers and sisters, I think there's just this natural thing in humanity, where sometimes we knock heads because we're imperfect. But as I think about the process, one of the things that I wish I would have done is I wish I would have slowed myself down early and said, "Okay, let's figure out why they do what they do here." Yeah, so we would wean calves within, probably, I mean, within seven days, plus or minus off of Thanksgiving, for as long as I can remember. Everything was sort of a staged timing. We were a pretty traditional outfit and so I came in and I was challenging everything and sometimes not challenging it with the kind of humility and the kind of generosity and gentleness of spirit that was really required to really move change forward. There's a great book that I've been sort of studying by a guy named Bob Goff, a book called Love Does, and one thing he talks about is if you're going to get into a conversation where there may be some some conflict or some disagreement, instead of clenching your fists, get your palms up or your palms down, but open your hands up. I probably went into this, you know, clenched and you know, ready to do some boxing to fight my way in. Looking back, that was problematic. The other thing my dad and I did is we competed. He was still young enough we were competitive. I mean, literally, we would speed up getting to a gate. If we were both horseback and we had the crew with us, we'd speed up and almost raced to a gate so you could get their first to open it. It was like subconscious. I mean, I look back I'm like, I bet the crew was like, "Great. We'll never have to open another gate, because these two fools are so competitive." Then there were enough other ranches in our valley with sons that just came back. Then there was kind of this competition. I remember the first winter I was there. It became a competition amongst ranches of who could get cattle fed first in the morning. And it got to the point where we'd load hay at, we were feeding small bales in those days, 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the evening so we'd be ready. At first light, we'd be ready to start feeding. Then it got to the point where we're trying to stage the trucks out closer to the feed grounds and just got sillier and sillier to the point where the cattle would stand in the willows, and they would kind of look at you like, not yet. Finally, I think the moms all got together and put an end to the madness because we were, you know, we were trying to feed cows at you know, 4:30 and 4:45 in the morning, just ridiculous. But I think that spirit of competition can be really good. But when you let it get out of hand you end up competing instead of collaborating.
Shaye Koester 15:06
Right? So kind of going back to the first part where you said the conversation was a centimeter deep, and it was you were coming home to work. How, as the younger generation do you bring up or even the older generation bring up that topic? So it's not just a centimeter deep? So it's not just, "Well, I guess I'm graduating, I don't want to get another job. I'll just come home."
Tom Field 15:29
That's a really good question. I think it's a two way conversation. I think it needs to happen in sort of a staged approach. Now one thing I will say and I'll throw out that I'm not a big fan of one size fits all strategies, but in working with farm and ranch families, agribusiness families and even some other kind of small family businesses in other categories one thing I would say is that if I could wave a magic wand, every young person coming back to a family business would have to spend at least two or three years working for somebody else. The Australians are very good at this they tend to trade kids. I got a little bit that because I did a lot of work for Strang Harford's. And I got to work for Bart and Mary Strang and Meeker, especially with their show cattle and just you know, we own some cattle together in the purebred business and I love that and I respected Bart and Mary both. They were very good at mentoring me and I'm so thankful for that, because they were able to probably engage with me and get me to soften up. And so like, you've got to soften that horse's mouth up. But, the first thing you have to do to soften up the horse's mouth, if you're a good cowboy, you got to soften yourself. I think their job was to soften me up. So I think everybody ought to have that perspective of working for somebody, else seeing a different way, understanding that there's more than one way to get to the top of that hill and that there's more than one path on the map to get to a destination. So you know that I think that's the key thing, if you can get that done, that's pretty powerful. But then you've got to step back and say, okay, like if the goal is you're gonna come back first thing out of high school, or college or community college, or whatever the situation is, and it doesn't necessarily have to be right out of education, might even be somebody that's been out in the corporate world for a decade wants to come back home to the farm or ranch don't make it like you were working for a corporation and Friday at five and you walk away from that job, you moved on Saturday and Sunday and Monday morning, you're at work at the at the ranch with no conversation. That's not going to end well. It's going to be problematic. So I think having a process and literally how do you start the conversation, there are two things that have to happen. One, both parties, both generations have to come into the conversation, acknowledging this fact, one, the newest, the upcoming rising generation, you have to come into the conversation with this attitude. Mom and Dad do not owe me a job. That's number one. The senior generation also has to come to the table and say, I'm not going to make you an indentured servant. Both parties have to come to grips with that. And so you have to sort of say, is there an opportunity here? As the senior generation what am I willing to give up over time? Or am I willing to train and teach the next generation to take on responsibilities? Am I willing to rethink the business a little bit and to be open to new ideas and to figure out ways to test those ideas without breaking the company? So that's critical that that that attitude? And then secondly, how do you get the conversation going? It really is this simple and men, we probably aren't that good at it. And what I have now is 40 plus years of experience to think about where we were at when I was 22 years old. But what I wish we would have done is say look, I care enough about the relationship I have with you. This is a two way street both me and my dad my dad back to me, that we're going to go into this professionally and we're going to do our very best to keep the father son relationship as one relationship and the business relationship as another and we are gonna determine what that looks like. We were not good at that early. Later on, we got better at it. But early on, we were a mess. So, you know I think the key right is to have that conversation. I care enough about you and I value my relationship as either your father or your son or your father, your daughter, your mother, your daughter-in-law, your mother, your, whatever the relationships are, right? And say, look, I care not so much about that, before I let the business ruin that relationship, I want to have a long and detailed conversation. And, I want to also come into this recognizing there's going to have to be flexibility, and that maybe everything ought to be started with, okay, let's do a six month trial run, let's see where we're at. In the six months, let's sit down and talk about it. Let's get things on the table. And yet, you know, if you grew up in a family setting, like I did, where if somebody asked you how many cows you have? Well, that's you don't ever tell them that. If you take that philosophy too far, then you're not talking to each other inside the organization. That's also a problem.
Shaye Koester 21:07
I like what you said about, you know, sit to have those meeting points after so many months to evaluate and go through it because some like, even as family, when you get to that point where you want to maybe even avoid conflict, but then it becomes a greater problem because it doesn't get talked about and then it can blow up into a huge problem once it does get brought up. So many operations would be considered diversified operations, and the younger generation coming in wants ownership of something so bad, because they don't want to be the indentured servant. How can they work and find their place? Or maybe their niche on the operation? Because with everyone's different talents, it might not be the farming, it might not be the cattle, it might be something completely different? How can we explore those areas?
Tom Field 21:53
That's a really good question. My approach to that, especially when I work with families where there are lots of offspring, I'll say that anyone planning to come needs to be able to write a plan. They need to develop a set of outcomes, objectives, goals and vision, about what they're going to do to actually add value to that business, right? How are you going to add value to the business? That may mean, taking a hard look at the financials and saying, Look, I'm going to have to have a side gig, so that the farm ranch can afford me right now. So I'm going to have to have something on the side that gets me enough income that I can afford to be at least you know, two thirds, three quarter time in this business, for starters. If you start with that approach, what value am I going to bring? How? Because if we're going to work for somebody else, right, we'd be answering that question, right? Like, that's so funny with you? Well, because we're family, we just don't have to ask those hard questions. No, it's even more important to ask those really hard professional questions, the family members hadn't. You've also got the challenge for parents is this fair and equal thing really is problematic, because a lot of times we confuse those two terms and equal is not the goal. Equal is not the goal. If equal is the goal, you are going to sell the business. If equal is the goal, I just want to say this over and over again. If equal is the goal, you are on a path to sell the business now it may not be immediately it might take a generation and a half. It might take two generations. But if every discussion is about equal equal equal equal, then that business is going to be it's just setting itself up for sale. Okay, and then for some families that is the most important thing and I'm not going to pass judgment on that. You know, when I was 22, 23, 24 years old, I probably thought I was capable and ready to step in and start running that company right. Thank goodness that didn't happen because we would have cratered the business. I was not ready. Today, you know, I think I'm ready to do that kind of thing. So you've got to you've got to sort it out. I think about my own kids, you know which one has the right demeanor, the right skill set, the right set of emotional and technical intelligence to actually run the company someday and they are not equal in all of their talents, right? They're all talented. But which is the one with the right mix? That's a hard thing for parents to do, right? We see our children, we say, well, we love them all and we love them equally. Yes. Right. That's part of parenthood. So separating that parental role out is critical. It takes lots of conversation, a lot of discipline and the capacity to forgive each other a lot. Because it's easy to slip back into the parent child relationship. Even as an adult male, right, if something sort of would go south, I would have to make sure that I didn't in my head say, "Well, I don't know why my dad, let me do that." As if it were his fault. No, it was on me and learning to take and accept that accountability is a really huge piece of being ready to go back to business.
Shaye Koester 26:08
That's awesome. So do you recommend like, when these meetings happen, like, have them with the banker there? Have them with some outside source there? Or is it okay, if it's just the father, son, father, daughter, and just those entities?
Tom Field 26:27
No, I think there are a whole series of conversations. I think the conversations take place in a lot of different ways. One of the things that I would encourage people, if they have the luxury of still having kids who are younger, let's just say sophomores, juniors, in high school or younger, start having informal conversations with those kids and testing things by when you're faced with a situation saying to that kid, how would you solve this? Right? Finding a manageable problem, and handing it over to your 14 year old twins and see what they do with it. Don't hand them the keys to the bank, but hand them over a problem that if they get it right that's awesome. They've learned a lot. But if they get it wrong, they got it wrong. I mean, we can resolve whatever additional mistake they make, but create those informal conversations and those sort of testing grounds. But do it from a place of coaching, not from a place of judgment. That's hard. Right? And, then do you bring in outsiders? So I think there's these, like, if you can have these informal conversations, it's really helpful because then you develop trust. And if you don't have trust, if there's not trust, no amount of facilitation, no amount of resourcing no amount of books, no amount of profit is going to hold that thing together. Ultimately, the absence of trust will lead to, you know, it's again, it's like too much focus on equal, you're eventually going to sell the business or it's going to fall apart. And then each family's got its own personality. Right, and also has its own set of generational dynamics, you know, the three generation family where there's grandparents, maybe parents, and aunt and uncle and some cousins, plus some siblings, and right now we have a lot more players. I think the more players you have, the more important it becomes to develop a really thoughtful process that allows people to have a seat at the table appropriately. I'm not sure a 14 year old needs to fully have a vote, because you're not seasoned yet and your brain isn't fully formed yet. But you may be able to at least be at the table listening. I think you'll figure that out. I think the mistake a lot of family businesses make is they don't bring in outside folks. There's a value in that. And especially if they bring, you know, that sort of humble and servant leadership approach, they can just provide so much value and frankly, our family had the same banker for a long time, the same attorney for a long time. And they knew all of us well enough to kind of coach us at times when we really needed it.
Shaye Koester 29:59
You've talked a lot about coaching and love and trust and emotional intelligence. So, how do you see that? Would you say emotional intelligence is doing pretty good in some in the people you work with? Or would you say it's a major area that a lot of ranchers need to work with?
Tom Field 30:23
That's a great question. I want to be thoughtful as I think about the work I've done, and my friends and neighbors and colleagues in this business, especially for men in this business, and especially men of my generation, or we have that sort of independent, self reliant. Don't say too much, let your actions speak louder than your words, be tough, don't quit, cowboy up. I value all those things, but we probably have valued them at such a high level that we aren't authentic with the people in closest relationship to us. Right, I have a relationship with our ranch manager, where we have both had tears in our eyes trying to solve a problem, not because we were mad at each other. And he is one tough dude. I like think of myself as pretty tough, but he is one tough dude. And because we've established trust over so many years, we can share that right, it's more like brothers, than really an employee owner kind of thing. I think you have to cultivate that in yourself. I'm not talking about being weak. I'm not talking about having no spine or core conviction. But the reality is that business is filled with lots of hard conversations. If you can have those hard conversations palms up, and with an open heart doesn't mean that you are not going to have conflict, right? Productive conflict, is a powerful thing. But if you can get into those spaces and work through problems, while focusing on the problem and not on the person. That's a great skill. I will tell you my whole life, in a family business, I've had to work on that. Focus on the problem, not the person. Just because all of a sudden something triggers a memory of your brother that flashes back to when you were seven, and you're still trying to get even, you've got to have enough self awareness to say, Okay, where's that tension coming from? Is it really coming from the problem? Or is it coming from some unresolved issue in my past? Learning to let go of those unresolved things gets back to that fair thing, right? And saying, okay, when I say I forgive you, I forgive you, and I'm going to move on. When I move on, I'm really serious. I'm not moving on and secretly hoarding the frustration or the animosity. I don't think we laugh at ourselves enough, either. Because if you don't have a sense of humor, family business is really hard. It's an organization, where you bring the two biggest challenges, the things we're most tied to, which is our identity, and our identity is tied to our family and tied to what we what we do professionally, especially for men. If we can't talk through both those venues we sometimes create carnage in our wake?
Shaye Koester 34:18
Well, absolutely. And I mean, that's something we've talked about before, that's important in all business aspects too in regard to focusing on the problem and not necessarily the people and that emotional intelligence. But with that, is there anything else you want to add to the conversation today before we wrap up?
Tom Field 34:35
Yeah, two quick things. I just encourage people to do some strategy thinking together and do it off ranch. I think you do better when you do that. If you've got a generation coming back that has, you know, I don't like this term, the trailing spouse, I would prefer, you know, if you've got a generation coming back that has a significant other or a husband or a wife, or a potential husband or wife and, and maybe even if they've been off the ranch for awhile coming back and they've got children have the conversation about, okay, how do we create the right roles, the right opportunities for everybody in the game. One of the mistakes that's made is that the older generations have a tendency to get very gender specific. The women are going to be moms and they may come sort cattle, but they're gonna cook, and they're going to take care of the kids. If I have that expectation as the dad of my daughter-in-law's, given their talent, I'm not very smart. So how do I create opportunity, potentially, in the business, potentially, in the community, to bring those daughter-in-laws and son-in-laws and who may not be rank specific, but who can add massive value to our community. And by making a little investment in their business, I've also diversified the risk for the family. So I think it's being aware of a world bigger than just the ranch. I think as the world changes, and as we face new challenges and opportunities, I think it's really important to step back about every five or 10 years and say, Okay, if we weren't ranching, what else could we do? Not that you're ever going to follow through with it, right? But it's awfully nice to have that plan sitting in the wings, because that may, in fact, be the mountain that you'd want your next generation to climb.
Shaye Koester 36:39
Awesome. Thank you very much for sharing all your insight today.
Tom Field 36:42
My pleasure, lots of fun.
Shaye Koester 36:45
And that's a wrap on that one. Be sure to let me know your thoughts on the episode and if you have any further questions around the topic, take care and have a great day.
