Better Business Decisions – Part 2.
In our last conversation, we looked in the mirror.
We talked about the rural bloke — the hard-working, hands-on, do-it-yourself contractor who has built businesses, supported families and communities with sheer resolve and willpower. We also acknowledged something difficult but necessary: that the very cultural identity we honour may be limiting our growth (in some aspects) in today’s business environment.
The next question is:
How do I lead differently, without losing myself?
How do I build systems, delegate, and think ahead more effectively?
Three Thoughts Below:
1. The Contractor’s Trap: Being the Bottleneck
In many Ag Contracting businesses, especially those grown from scratch, the founder becomes the default centre of everything. Every decision; all the estimating, the scheduling, the customer key contact and the HR manager.
This model works when it’s just you and a few seasonal staff, but what happens when you want to scale? That centralisation becomes a chokehold – even if it was necessary to get things off the ground in the early days.
2. Leadership Isn’t Loud — It’s Intentional
Culturally, we tend to be turned off by leadership that is loud and dominant. This however should not stop us from aspiring to be better in what we do and how we carry ourselves around staff. What we really need to be aiming to do is creating space for others to thrive.
We need to:
- Build systems that don’t rely on your memory
- Train people so they don’t need handholding
- Step back so others can step up
- Make fewer decisions, but more critical and better ones
You’re still at the helm. You’re still the heart of the business. But your energy goes to direction, not just delivery.
3. Why Thinking Environments Matter
This is not as fluffy as it sounds. In fact, it might be the most important part of your work.
The reality is: you cannot make good decisions from a state of constant urgency as the part of your brain that deals with strategy, analysis, and foresight (the neocortex) only kicks in when you’re calm, focused, and reflective.
If you are stressed, rushed, or overwhelmed, your limbic brain takes over. That’s the reactive, emotional, gut-based part — the one that leads to rash decisions and short-term thinking.
This is why contractors often hit the wall: they’re using the immediate decision making part of the brain to run a business that demands long-term thinking.
The Fix? Or at Least Steps to a Fix?
Pencil in “Off the Tools” Time
This might feel counterproductive at first. But it is essential.
How about scheduling one hour a week of uninterrupted, phone-free, non-negotiable thinking time?
Use that time to:
- Review one or two key numbers (e.g; margins, cashflow, utilisation)
- Reflect on what’s not working for your staff, or yourself
- Identify upcoming decisions (hiring, investment, pricing, team building exercises)
- Ask, “Where are we going, and what’s changing around us?”
Know Your Numbers
Contractors often go to one of two lengths with data:
- They track nothing at all. Just gut feel and bank balance – often relying on ‘Dads farm’ to subsidise when things go bad.
- They track some data. Measure some key indicators, but then struggle to implement any meaningful change out of it.
Both are not optimal and miss the point.
The key is to identify a handful of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that reflect the health of your business. Here are examples:
- Cost per job (including labour, travel, machinery) and therefore margin
- Repeat business of current customers
- Utilisation rate of machinery or crews
- Staff retention rate
If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. By the same token, if you measure everything at once, you won’t manage to achieve anything.
Start with two or three metrics. Review them weekly or monthly – then set in place goals to improve these over time. Are your current margins below 25%? Do they need to be above 30%?
Build Systems That Work Without You
This is the hard part, however it is also where the magic happens.
Systems = Freedom.
We do not have time for bureaucratic nonsense – leave that to the corporate guys. We are talking about repeatable ways of doing things that don’t rely on your memory.
Examples:
- SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for onboarding staff, pricing a job, maintaining equipment, or handling customer issues
- Dashboards (from job management software or custom sheets) that give you a real-time view of operations
- Set weekly or twice weekly check-ins with team leads or supervisors, so you’re not fielding ten ad hoc updates a day if not necessary
When done right, systems do not replace your judgement. They set a baseline from which your team can make sound decisions with confidence.
Delegation is Not a Dirty Word
One of the most consistent patterns seen in struggling businesses is an unwillingness to let go. Delegation is often confused with laziness, weakness, or lack of control. However, a lack of delegation results in staff double questioning themselves and feeling unsure when they do go to start to stick their neck out to make decisions.
Start with small things:
- Hand over some of the manual inputting of billing information to a part time office admin, or better yet, set them up with a software solution that helps to handle this
- Let your 2IC/team leader manage the daily operations planning for part of the company in the busy season
- Train a trusted staffer to handle some of the customer enquiry. Set up a cloud based phone system that will divert to the appropriate mobile phone – instantly reduce the amount of calls you are receiving to clear your headspace.
Here is the truth: if you don’t delegate now, you’ll either burn out later – or leave your business in a position where no one else can carry it forward, or purchase it.
Build Your Second Tier
We are strong advocates for building second-tier leadership – team leads, ops managers, admin managers etc. People who can run things without needing constant direction.
These are the people who:
- Manage jobs and keep them running according to target timelines
- Handle basic decision-making
- Train new staff
- Bring problems to you with pre thought out solutions
Invest in them. Mentor them. Give them responsibility. Celebrate their wins.
The Outcome: A Business That Runs Smoothly, Not Just Surviving on Fumes
When you adopt this new mindset – this upgraded operating system your business can grow without stealing all your time and energy. Your team respects your leadership, your clients trust you because you’re consistent, not chaotic like those small wanna be contractors. Best of all though, your family sees you because you’re present again.
You can begin to enjoy the business again and realise why you started in the first place.
Final Thought:
The Ag Contracting sector needs strong leadership more than ever. Less brawn, more brains. It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing better.
The small start up guys can try to do more and charge less, but in the long run, systems win.
The rural bloke isn’t disappearing. He’s evolving and in doing so setting himself up for something greater.