There are more than five things that great families and teams do, but these are important ones to practice. Great families and teams don’t just happen; they are created, protected and nurtured. The steps I am sharing are all “action” items, which means they won’t happen without a diligent and determined effort to make them happen.

We all need people. Without other people, there would be no market for the large quantities of high-quality food we produce. Without people, it would also be nearly impossible to produce all that food, process it and get it delivered all over the world. We need people, and for many more reasons than just to help us produce and consume our product.

These are tough times in the dairy industry, and tough times force us to do things that sometimes won’t happen when times are good. We all have comfort zones, and even if we don’t realize it, we do things to stay within those comfort zones. Sometimes the fruit is at the end of the branch or outside the border of our comfort zone. I would like to propose two questions to get us to wander outside of that comfort zone, and maybe find some fruit that we didn’t even know was there.

I love Progressive Dairyman magazine; there is so much high-quality information in there that I barely get it read before the next edition arrives! “Progressive” sounds like a positive word, but what does it mean? I found a few definitions, but the one I like most is “favoring or promoting progress.” Progressive Dairyman lives up to its name. Its pages are often filled with information and ideas to bring about positive change; I like that.