Planned redundancy

By Dave Christiansen, President & CEO

I know it may appear that many of my articles are just short of carbon copies. For some of you, it may seem as though I have droned on about the same things since my arrival at MKC. If that is your perception, I appreciate the fact that you've been listening!

I use the same theme in every article and presentation that I have the opportunity to do and in every conversation I have with growers, vendors and employees.  Don’t look for this to change.  I may bore you to tears, but you’ll never wonder what the initiative of the month is. 

We recently completed our strategic planning for next year as well as the next few years.  While our daily activities contain some action plans that may appear different, our overall strategies (or corporate initiatives) remain intact.  We share these frequently and I’ll share them again now. 

Our strategic objectives will be to focus on growth in scale of the company and in financial strength.  We will remain focused on our customers by providing programs, products and services that they find of value, not just for today but for the next 5 or 10 years. We will continue to seek out and employ the best people.  And finally, we will continue our efforts to renew this organization’s infrastructure.

I’ve written many times about our intentions to grow.  Consolidation in the cooperative industry will continue and will result in vendors chasing those who have or can deliver scale.  MKC has to be that company.  The impact of our continued growth is clear when you stop and consider the tools we can deliver to our growers.  Our current scale provides for vendor relationships that give us access to tools that smaller companies don’t get. That puts additional money directly in your pocket.  A medium-sized grower recently told me our programs and people have put an additional $150,000 in his pocket over the past two years.  Now that is what we are trying to do!

While our customer focus hasn’t changed, it continues to be refined.  Not only do we focus on having the right structure to deliver what customers need, we continue to refine our programs, products and services that are critical to your success today and in the future.  We must be diligent in our efforts to understand the services that young producers require in order to advance their profession. The needs of this group certainly are different than those of 30 years ago.  This group generally has a much better knowledge base to start from, with many having an education in agronomy or ag business. However, they are faced with greater volatility than has existed at any time before. We are working to help them manage that volatility.  You will see more effort by us to insure the overall customer experience is improved in multiple areas. We acknowledge there is plenty of room in which to raise the bar. 

Our effort to attract, retain and develop the best and brightest talent remains robust. Great people are critical to the success of not only your coop but to your operation as well.   In addition to the traditional employee who is smart, diligent and loyal, we’ve added other criteria.  Today’s employee has to be passionate about our mission. They have to be creative and willing to take the initiative no matter what position they hold within the organization.  Creativity and innovation will continue to drive our business. 

We continue to see a transition from embodied technology (such as Roundup® Ready seed, hybrid seed corn, cell phones and guidance technology) to knowledge-based technology.  Examples include integrated pest management, site specific data, veris rig technology analysis, risk management assessments and tool utilization in all areas.   We must have creative people with the skill set to interpret this data coming at us daily. 

Seeking talented people for all facets of our business is just part of the challenge.  Another challenge we face is when we do our job to help employees develop their skills, others in the industry take notice and recruit them from us. We will develop some and lose some and each time we will feel some pain. We’re proud that we’ve helped them pursue their personal greatness and they helped us be a better company along the way. 

As I hope you’ve noticed, we are making many investments throughout our organization.  We understand that in order to deliver on our promises to you we must have the people, the processes and the scale required to be effective. 

Over the next year our members will be much more involved in our planning process.  We will be asking many more questions of you through formal and informal surveys. The number of meetings I have with members will also increase.  We are seeking your input in order to continue positioning MKC and TMA to be the companies that are your partners of choice in the future. 

It’s tough for you, our customers and members to get excited about the future of our company if we don’t share our plans.  My intent is to be clear about the direction the board has given the management team and to build an execution strategy around it.  As many of you have pointed out, we have opportunities to improve consistency in performance in many areas.  We agree and are making corrections daily.  Our size and strength continues to help us go about this process.