The 3 Attitudes Guaranteed to Keep You Spinning your Wheels and Unhappy

Attitude sounds like one of those soft words people use at conferences while standing beside a bowl of free mints. However, in business it matters.

For ag contractors running a large fleet and a mixture of permanent and seasonal operators, the wrong attitude can keep you treading water for years.

Busy as anything, machines moving, phone ringing, diesel account glowing in the dark. Yet, somehow, you are still not really getting ahead.

Here are three attitudes that will keep a good contractor spinning their wheels. 

1. Believing you’re the best person for every job

At the start, you probably were. The best operator. Best salesperson. Best mechanic. Best person to talk to customers. Best person to sort the invoice when the details are a complete dog’s breakfast.

That is how the business got going.

However, if you keep believing that forever, the business gets stuck at the size of your shoulders. 

Refusing to delegate does not make you a hero. It makes you the bottleneck.

Some owners say they’ve delegated when they’ve really just handed someone a job while keeping all the authority.

You want staff to take responsibility, but still correct every decision.

You want operators to think for themselves, then make them ring you for every little thing.

You want your people to step up, but won’t give them room to learn. While you’re at it, you might as well stand outside the toilet stall, and when they call out “Daddy,” go in and wipe their bum for them. Sprinkle some talcum powder too, so they feel fresh and completely useless.

Rough, yes.

But that is what happens in some businesses.

The owner complains no one takes responsibility while quietly making sure no one has to.

A business that depends on you for every decision is not freedom. It is a demanding job with machinery finance.

2. Being scared to change how the place runs

This one usually wears a faded Swanndri, gumboots from 2004, and has his arms folded like every new idea personally insulted his grandfather. 

“We’ve always done it this way”, “the boys won’t use that”, “we’re not big enough yet”.

Lovely. Also, often complete rubbish.

A lot of contractors are not scared of the hard slog, but hiring a 2IC? Saying no to low-margin work? Introducing proper systems to benefit themselves and their operators?

Suddenly, the arms are crossed real quick.

The truth is, change feels risky because someone might complain. A staff member might push back. A customer might grizzle. You might find out that some work you’ve been proudly doing for years is making you bugger all.

So you stick with familiar, even if familiar is slowly fleecing you.

Doing nothing is still a decision.

Decide instead to pick one thing and change it properly.

One person trained to run and record the toolbox meetings, one type of work you stop taking because it never pays.

You don’t need to rebuild the whole engine by Friday.

But you do need to stop pretending the current rattle is normal.

3. Blaming staff and customers

“No one wants to work hard like we used to”, “fuel is killing us”, “customers always change their minds”, “everyone is undercutting”.

You’ll hear all these in plenty of yards, workshops, utes, and smoko rooms. Fair enough too, some days it does feel like the whole world has formed a committee to make your life harder.

However, If that becomes your main explanation, you have handed control of your business to everyone else.

The staff. The customer. The weather. The fuel supplier. The cowboy down the road doing work for the price of diesel and a box of piss. 

Blame feels good for about thirty seconds. Then it does nothing.

Worse, it spreads. If the owner blames everyone, the team learns the same trick. Operators blame the office. The office blames the operators. Everyone blames the customer. Nobody fixes the actual problem.

The better question is not, “Whose fault is this?”. The better question is, “What part of this can I control?”

If staff keep getting it wrong, have you trained them properly? 

If everyone is undercutting, have you actually shown why your service is worth more?

Ownership means you stop waiting for the world to become easier before you sharpen up.

If you want independence, time freedom, or one day to sell the business for what it is worth, you need people who can think, decide, and own outcomes without you standing in the middle of everything.

So be honest, which of those three has you by the throat?