Leadership and supervision come naturally to some people, but for many others, the act of inspecting and correcting feels foreign and klutzy - something that’s often exacerbated by the fact that young people interested in working on organic vegetable farms often come from one anti-authoritarian perspective or another. The very act of monitoring other people’s work is not something most people learn in school, and telling somebody that their bunches of beets are too small, that their hoeing is too imprecise, or that they simply need to pour the crates into the brush washer a little faster, strikes right at the core of our own insecurities.
It gets much more difficult when our farms grow to a size where we need other people to step into this role.
At a practical level, the leader of a crew - whether it’s the farmer or somebody she has designated - needs to understand their role. Often it’s two-fold: do the job, and supervise everybody else doing the job. With so much on their plate, crew leaders can benefit from having some protocols for facilitating the best possible outcomes from the people whose performance they are responsible for.
Be the Anchor - First, a crew leader should, as much as possible, position herself at the end of any production line, so that she can check quality and direct changes. For example, if you're working the brush washer with your crew, be in the position of closing the boxes, rather than pouring the cucumbers in. This allows you to monitor the cleanliness and the quality of the resulting product. Likewise, if your crew is bunching beets and setting them on the ground, be the person counting the beets into boxes.
Less Talk, More Do - When giving directions, remember that you don’t have long. Experiential educators - the folks that take teenagers hiking or do jobs training in the garden - know that you’ve got to get your message across quickly. Yes, it’s valuable to provide context, but it’s just as important to get things moving. Provide context and training as you go. One of the most dispiriting things for a new manager is talking to a crew and seeing the blank stares you often get in return. We learn best when our bodies are in motion, so hit the highlights and get going.
Fifteen Minutes - Once a job is started, come back fifteen minutes later to make sure that things are going well. Give your workers the best instructions you can, then let them have some time to work things out. The first five minutes of a new job are often spent getting into the rhythm, the next five are right on, then the five minutes after that some of the instructions are forgotten. By coming back after fifteen minutes, you are inserting yourself at the right time to make corrections: before things have gone off the rails, but after problems have had a chance to surface.
Thirty Minutes - If at all possible, check in every thirty minutes after that. If you have to seed carrots down the road while your crew is picking chard, you probably won’t be able to pull this off (but don’t leave before that fifteen-minute check-in!). If you’re working near your crew, take the time to make an inspection. If you’re working the line with your crew, that thirty minutes is a good reminder to get your head out of the doing the work and to take a moment to focus on how things are going as a team - are we moving at the right pace? Are we getting the turnips clean enough?
(By the way, you need a timepiece - and one that’s not your cell phone. Especially if you have a smart phone, it’s difficult to check the time without checking something else. Put one on your wrist or on your belt loop so that you can see it without having to dig in your pocket - it’s a good reminder that farming is all about timeliness, for you and your workers)
Monitor and Correct Course - Leaders have to be willing to monitor performance and correct course when necessary. If you aren’t willing to do that, you can’t function effectively as a manager. You absolutely have to be willing to state the standard (“At ABC Farm, we expect everybody to bunch at least 50 bunches of kale an hour.”), comment on deviations from the standard (“You’re bunching 30 bunches an hour.”), and provide leadership on how to achieve the standard (“If you put the tote next to your right hand, you won’t be reaching across your body to put the kale bunches in it. That will make a big difference.”). If you’re not willing to do that, you need a different role.
An important part of monitoring is to keep an eye on when you expect a job to be done, and whether you have the resources, such as twist ties and totes, to finish the job. For some people, this is second nature - they just always seem to have an idea of how long a job is going to take, and they’re usually pretty close. I’m not one of those people, so I recommend making this estimate thirty minutes into a job (“We’ve bunched 300 bunches of kale in thirty minutes… we need 750 bunches, so we should be done in about forty-five minutes”), and again when the job is halfway done (“We’re halfway through the bed of zucchini, and we’ve filled 25 crates. We only brought forty with us, so we need to figure out how to get more out to the field.”).
You can use these tools as guidelines to keep in mind, or as a checklist to make sure you’re on track. Sometimes it’s helpful to use a more rigid structure (“I must check in with the crew exactly fifteen minutes after I’ve finished providing the initial instructions.”) as a way to establish new patterns. Once you get the habit firmly entrenched, a more casual approach may be suitable.
It gets much more difficult when our farms grow to a size where we need other people to step into this role.
At a practical level, the leader of a crew - whether it’s the farmer or somebody she has designated - needs to understand their role. Often it’s two-fold: do the job, and supervise everybody else doing the job. With so much on their plate, crew leaders can benefit from having some protocols for facilitating the best possible outcomes from the people whose performance they are responsible for.
Be the Anchor - First, a crew leader should, as much as possible, position herself at the end of any production line, so that she can check quality and direct changes. For example, if you're working the brush washer with your crew, be in the position of closing the boxes, rather than pouring the cucumbers in. This allows you to monitor the cleanliness and the quality of the resulting product. Likewise, if your crew is bunching beets and setting them on the ground, be the person counting the beets into boxes.
Less Talk, More Do - When giving directions, remember that you don’t have long. Experiential educators - the folks that take teenagers hiking or do jobs training in the garden - know that you’ve got to get your message across quickly. Yes, it’s valuable to provide context, but it’s just as important to get things moving. Provide context and training as you go. One of the most dispiriting things for a new manager is talking to a crew and seeing the blank stares you often get in return. We learn best when our bodies are in motion, so hit the highlights and get going.
Fifteen Minutes - Once a job is started, come back fifteen minutes later to make sure that things are going well. Give your workers the best instructions you can, then let them have some time to work things out. The first five minutes of a new job are often spent getting into the rhythm, the next five are right on, then the five minutes after that some of the instructions are forgotten. By coming back after fifteen minutes, you are inserting yourself at the right time to make corrections: before things have gone off the rails, but after problems have had a chance to surface.
Thirty Minutes - If at all possible, check in every thirty minutes after that. If you have to seed carrots down the road while your crew is picking chard, you probably won’t be able to pull this off (but don’t leave before that fifteen-minute check-in!). If you’re working near your crew, take the time to make an inspection. If you’re working the line with your crew, that thirty minutes is a good reminder to get your head out of the doing the work and to take a moment to focus on how things are going as a team - are we moving at the right pace? Are we getting the turnips clean enough?
(By the way, you need a timepiece - and one that’s not your cell phone. Especially if you have a smart phone, it’s difficult to check the time without checking something else. Put one on your wrist or on your belt loop so that you can see it without having to dig in your pocket - it’s a good reminder that farming is all about timeliness, for you and your workers)
Monitor and Correct Course - Leaders have to be willing to monitor performance and correct course when necessary. If you aren’t willing to do that, you can’t function effectively as a manager. You absolutely have to be willing to state the standard (“At ABC Farm, we expect everybody to bunch at least 50 bunches of kale an hour.”), comment on deviations from the standard (“You’re bunching 30 bunches an hour.”), and provide leadership on how to achieve the standard (“If you put the tote next to your right hand, you won’t be reaching across your body to put the kale bunches in it. That will make a big difference.”). If you’re not willing to do that, you need a different role.
An important part of monitoring is to keep an eye on when you expect a job to be done, and whether you have the resources, such as twist ties and totes, to finish the job. For some people, this is second nature - they just always seem to have an idea of how long a job is going to take, and they’re usually pretty close. I’m not one of those people, so I recommend making this estimate thirty minutes into a job (“We’ve bunched 300 bunches of kale in thirty minutes… we need 750 bunches, so we should be done in about forty-five minutes”), and again when the job is halfway done (“We’re halfway through the bed of zucchini, and we’ve filled 25 crates. We only brought forty with us, so we need to figure out how to get more out to the field.”).
You can use these tools as guidelines to keep in mind, or as a checklist to make sure you’re on track. Sometimes it’s helpful to use a more rigid structure (“I must check in with the crew exactly fifteen minutes after I’ve finished providing the initial instructions.”) as a way to establish new patterns. Once you get the habit firmly entrenched, a more casual approach may be suitable.
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