Growth through adversity

Regardless, anyone prior to our grandparents had it bloody tough….no car….no power…..no Iphone….crikey even to be warm, fed and a good pair of shoes was next level….

So what’s come up a fair bit ever since I managed my own dairy in NZ, then corporate dairies in Australia and now with a circle of work relationships and friends spanning from Israel to Russia to China to America to Brazil to Sri Lanka to Ireland to our own backyard, is how we manage a generation that enters the workforce and/or management with virtually no real adversity in their lives….

This isn’t intended to be millennial bashing, the reality is the younger generation entering management roles have had different critical thinking, and crisis management training compared to Boomers and GenX.

Experienced managers are used to things going wrong….I don’t know

• A dairy farm manager who hasn’t had 3 major things go wrong before lunchtime
• A crop farmer who hasn’t lost a season’s crop due to drought
• A sheep farmer who hasn’t had to sell his lambs at $6/kg when his costs are $7/kg and harvest a wool clip at $4/ewe when the shearer charges $5/ewe.

Then literally as I was writing this article, this popped up on my feed…..New Years resolution to scroll less 🙄

OK, I’m pretty open minded…..and this may be an odd example….and probably best I don’t seek my father and grandfathers analysis….I will only look forward optimistically with relatively positive outcomes…..at the same time as my creative genius son maybe did a line, and forgot to shift a 200 calf mob on Sunday with an automatic gate opener and Halter at his disposal 😡

Previously young Australasian farmers did a hard day’s shearing, lamb marking or had a close game of footy, and a few beers for adversity related development and bonding.

Nothings really changed, good farmers learn from mistakes, whether it’s feeding dairy cows 5kg DM on a rough day instead of 10kg and pugging a paddock, or a 50-ewe smother after pre lamb shearing, lessons are learnt hard and skin gets thicker.Unfortunately, the education system and society teach us this is a feedback loop disaster…..Farming with its climatically dependent nature has and always will experience adversity often on a daily basis, struggling through drought and floods, often in the same year.

Many GenX and boomers learnt the hard way, ‘thrown in at the deep end’ a normal developmental strategy, however our offspring can go to the mines, be a tradie or do a degree and work ‘normal’ 38-hour weeks and earn a good living. The solution is leadership with a bit of orchestrated adversity, let staff see what happens when they go away for a weekend when the electric fence is only going 3….and let them clean up the mess on Monday. Don’t panic…..you learnt your best lessons making mistakes.

Let’s embrace adversity for its wonderful development benefits.