‘Getting hot under the collar, bemoaning the poor quality of many government officers, wringing your hands about the lack of integrity and honesty of many politicians, all amounts to being distracted by the warthog. Forget it! Keep your eye on the buffalo.’
When lions MOVE IN FOR A buffalo kill, they don’t get distracted by a warthog, baboon or even a wildebeest crossing their path. They’re locked onto the buffalo and nothing but a full-scale frontal attack by the entire buffalo herd will distract them. It’s absolute single-minded focus and commitment.
I once attended a session run by an ex-game ranger who’d skilfully packaged a training programme drawing parallels between the behaviour of a pack of lions and a team of business managers. Introducing the session, he played a video of a lion pack on the hunt, phase by phase:
The watch-and-wait period = market research.
The pack yawning, stretching and moving = team communication and coordination at its best.
The orchestrated pack mobilisation = timing, which is so important in business.
Positioning of the team i.e. stalkers, chasers, ambushers = each member knowing their role and executing it to perfection due to strategy, training and teamwork.
Finally the precision, power and ruthlessness of the kill = strategy implementation and operational execution excellence.
I was reminded of all this when I read the letter by Blessing Mphela, the acting chief land claims commissioner, published in Farmer’s Weekly of 27 January. He was responding to an article on land restitution by Dr Theo de Jager, deputy president of Agri SA. Mphela is a civil servant behaving in a decidedly uncivil manner, attacking an individual and the organisation he represents. I couldn’t find a shred of useful substance in his letter. It’s simply vitriolic spew about De Jager’s personal shortcomings and Agri SA’s long-standing deficiencies. Complete drivel, but read it if only to pick up a few tips on how not to respond to someone whose views you disagree with.
I don’t know what De Jager thought when he read this letter. I don’t know what the leadership of Agri SA thought or their 70 000 members who might have read it. But I imagine they were probably wishing Mphela and his kind were the buffalo under attack!
But that’s just the point, they’re not the buffalo. They’re the equivalent of the warthog, the baboon or the wildebeest crossing the lion’s path. And just like a lion pack on the hunt, don’t get distracted. Keep your focus, your commitment, your energy and your mind locked on only one objective – the sustainable management of a profitable farming business.
Getting hot under the collar about ill-informed and hostile talk from politicians or government officers like Mphela, spending time bemoaning the poor quality of many of our government officers, wringing your hands about the lack of integrity and honesty of many leading politicians all amounts to being distracted by the warthog. Forget it! Keep your eye on the buffalo.
People like Mphela simply represent one of the many risks you face. Do a rational assessment of your risks – reread my column of 13 February and you’ll develop a perspective on the risk Mphela poses. You’ll find it’s far lower than many other farming risks you’ve comfortably coped with for years. Let’s recap. Farming risks fall into one of five main groups:
1. Production risk – loss of production due to pests and diseases and weather.
2. Market risk – variability of product prices.
3. Financial risk – availability of capital and interest rates.
4. Government risk –tax, land claims, minimum wages and incompetent government officers.
5. Human risk – bad management, poor security, death or disablement of key people.
Mphela is part of risk number four. While I don’t underestimate it because we’ve seen in many African countries how it destroys business, at the moment our government risk is low. But just as you manage other risks, you need to mitigate government risk. And there’s really only one way – get as close to the politicians and relevant government officials as possible.
They need to understand more about you, and you about them. They’re only human, with preconceived ideas and prejudices like all of us. Get to know them personally. Invite them to your farm for the weekend, just to talk and to understand one another, and for them to see what goes into running a profitable farming business. Mother Theresa of Calcutta once said, “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to you enemies.” Right now, Mphela seems to be an enemy of farmers. I hope that De Jager and his colleagues don’t rise to the bait and shoot off further letters, which will achieve nothing other than making matters more heated. It’s simply good management to mitigate risk and by getting closer to Mphela and his colleagues. That’s exactly what De Jager and Agri SA would be doing for all of us. – Peter Hughes ([email protected] or call (013) 745 7303). |fw
