Are you wondering who will take over all that you have accomplished? How can you step back and enjoy the fruits of your labors? When a recent farm owner and client realized they would not be passing down their operation to a family member, they hired a COO referred by AGJOBS, LLC to continue business as usual and facilitate their retirement.
"We already have resumes of COO's and CEO's in our data base who are interested in similar positions on farms," says Tom Mickelson, President, AGJOBS, LLC. "By-pass the family meeting (s), power of attorney, personal wills, what to do about non-farming siblings, business growth, debt. Hire yourself a Chief Operating Officer (COO) and /or Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to run the farm."
Baby-boomers need not be involved in time-consuming and legal activities centered-around family succession plans. All you need is an agreed-upon job description that delineates the division of responsibility between you as the owner and the "chiefs." The chiefs do not have to come from the agricultural industry. They have transferrable skills from manufacturing and financial industries, for example. As long as they have successful "chief-experience" they might bring the qualifications you feel you would be comfortable with to run your farm.
Think about ignoring all the complicated and time-consuming guidance from consultants and succession planning experts who will tell you that you need a plan to replace yourself as farm owners or key farm leaders. They may say that this might be a 10- to 15-year process with the first 10 years basically being a test period to see if and how the plan works. They might suggest that by your early 50's, you should be pretty actively engaged in at least thinking about what kind of succession plan you want.
Instead, consider reorganizing your operation by breaking down the tasks that you and your key leaders perform and then listing these tasks in new job descriptions for COO's and/or CFO's. Share these job descriptions with AGJOBS, LLC and tom.mickelson@agjobslive.com and they will convert these descriptions to web-site postings. This will attract specialized talents from within and outside the agricultural industry who have professional accounting/financial skills and technical operations skills. Or better yet, tap the current stable of resumes and harvest these types of professionals already in AGJOBS, LLC data base. Succession plans – forget about it!! We will help you create job descriptions and find top-notch COO'S AND CFO'S to run your farm NOW!!
6.16.2016
