HARVEST LESSONS FOR STRATEGY

Being a wife of a farmer has some real benefits.

I get to experience the joy of harvest up-close and personal.

While harvesting is a joyful occasion every farmer wants to have after the long wait and prayers for a good climate, right inputs, and absence of deadly pests, it's not for the faint-hearted. 

We recently got haled out and what we would be harvesting is maybe 50% of our intended output. 

Equipment breakdowns usually occur without warning. These happened almost all the time with older equipment. 

Too much rain is not good. Less rain is not good either. 

If you harvest too late or too early in the season, the crops won't be viable. 

Markets dictate the prices, so farmers are at their mercy.

Internal and external issues crop up at during the harvest time, so agility and adaptation is key. Farmers tend to this season unceasingly with lots of prayers.

Now I can see why there are farmer suicides in many parts of the world.

A few harvest lessons I can share related to your organization strategy.

1. Your Strategy takes time, be patient with it.
Let the sun which is your collective wisdom, rain which is your internal controls, and water which is your care do their jobs. We tend to be obsessive-compulsive about it to the point where too much control leads to more dissatisfaction, lots of 'could-have-been, and regrets. 


2. It's not the end-goal, it's the transition to it that counts
The end of the tunnel is not the time to celebrate, that mostly the end of it, and the start of a new episode. What you need to account for outcomes is in the transition stage. Be watchful and observe if your realities are meeting your strategic goals. 


3. You can avoid all the traps and pitfalls, if you tend to it as a gardener/farmer not as a investor.

Tend to your strategy regularly and you don't need to be surprise if something is amiss or not on-point.  Course-correction will be the normal course of action. Beware of the file-it and forget-it mentality that sinks everything that you have done from the beginning, that would be the best recipe for disaster.

​Enjoy harvesting while in transition. The fruits cannot be far behind from the tree. 







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