And just like that, it’s 2013. It’s early in the year, so I figured now’s a good time to ask the question: How’s your New Year’s resolution/to-do list going? Have you even started? Of all the bad habits we can get caught up in, procrastination has to be one of the worst. Well, actually, smoking crack is probably a lot worse than avoiding the dentist or that pile of work on your desk.

If you struggle to motivate your milkers or are frustrated by your middle managers’ track record for solving problems, Drive written by Daniel Pink might be a book for you to consider reading. Drive compares the most common tactics used to motivate productivity, from those that evolved out of the Industrial Age (think factories and manufacturing lines) to those now needed in the Information Age (think iPads and the application of technology). While the book doesn’t have a single reference to dairy cows or milk production, I think its messages can be extrapolated to managing a dairy.

A great awakening is happening across the dairy industry as many dairy operations are beginning to engage in price risk management. It’s a whole new management frontier to explore. And it’s another responsibility on the farm for someone to do or oversee. When a new endeavor is first adopted on a dairy operation, it often takes a while before that task becomes fully integrated. At first it is part of someone’s job description by default.

When it comes to working with Hispanic dairy employees, never make an assumption. That was the key message and theme behind the panel discussion, “Managing Hispanic labor … is it about the culture or is it about the rules?,” held during the Midwest Dairy Expo November 27-28 in St. Cloud, Minnesota. More than 75 producers and dairy industry members attended the one-hour session moderated by Jorge Delgado, on-farm support manager for Alltech.