To the Progressive Publishing team, it feels like the beginning of a new year. Our staff was hard at work over the summer, finalizing issue dates, establishing deadlines and discussing plans for 2015. We held our annual company meeting at the end of August to analyze the past year and take note of improvement areas.

To evaluate progress towards the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy’s (IC’s) goal of becoming a “consistent supplier,” a system of metrics, underlying data and a one-page “dashboard” assessment was developed to provide an at-a-glance snapshot of U.S. dairy industry performance in the global marketplace. The Globalization Dashboard measures advancement toward four goals laid out by the IC’s Globalization Operating Committee.

The Great American Milk Drive is a collaborative effort between MilkPEP, Feeding America and the checkoff-funded National Dairy Council. The goal is to drive consumer donations of milk for those who need it most – hungry Americans. Hunger is an issue that impacts one in six of us. And, 95 percent of food banks say they don’t receive enough milk to meet their clients’ needs.

What emotion do you think I observe the most when I visit with employees and their supervisors? The answer is: frustration. Many employees are very frustrated with their jobs and their supervisors. Many supervisors are frustrated – even exasperated – because their employees are frustrated and less productive than desired.

Recently, I completed a 12-week cardiac rehabilitation program. A part of the program is nutrition education – what I should eat and not eat to prevent heart disease and maintain a healthy heart. Among the program’s nutrition recommendations are: if you drink milk, drink 1 percent or skim; better yet, replace cow’s milk with an almond or soy beverage (I cannot call it milk); stay away from butter; yogurt should be non-fat; cheese should be lower-fat varieties; and try to stay away from ice cream, but if you do eat ice cream limit the indulgence to one scoop and not very often.

They say it takes one generation to start a farm, the second generation to grow it into an empire and the third generation to run it into the ground. For most young farmers today, they are the cursed. The issue isn’t skill, knowledge or networks. The issue is entitlement and inner drive.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in a series about coaching dairy leaders. The first article appeared in the April 1, 2014 Progressive Dairyman. Click here to read this article. Coaching can generate results quickly for dairy leaders, yet there is much of coaching that is leveraged over time as skills are acquired and new perspectives are gained. It can be difficult to define return on investment (ROI) for coaching because of this very aspect.

What happened to common sense? Is work ethic part of the past? Why can’t my employees get the job done on their own? These are questions I’ve heard frequently from business owners, not just in agriculture but all industries. It’s becoming increasingly perplexing and frustrating to manage people.