In our last newsletter, I reflected on the importance of setting a sustainable pace—how real growth, whether in business or in nature, depends on rhythms that support long-term health and productivity.
This time, I want to look at the ebb and flow of balance itself—and how being out of balance is not something to fear, but something to navigate.
Spring Is Not Balanced. And That’s the Point.
On the farm, spring is beautiful chaos. The pace quickens, and the usual routines get turned upside down. Sleep gets sacrificed, muscles get sore, and everything becomes urgent. The days feel long because they have to be. If you don’t hustle now, nothing will grow later.
The same thing happens in business.
Recently, we’ve been building out new service offerings. It’s exciting, but it’s required stepping outside of our comfort zone—taking on extra hours, stretching capacity, and navigating new challenges daily.
At the same time, we’ve been navigating a strategic pivot—shifting from how we’ve always done business toward a model we believe is more sustainable and valuable for the future. But here’s the catch: during the transition, we have to operate in both models. Different sales pitches. Different delivery approaches. Double the mental load.
Sometimes we also get hit with something completely outside our control—like losing a client due to an economic shift, policy change, or a shift in technology. It’s a gut punch. And it throws things out of balance fast. Suddenly, we’re backfilling work we thought was solid, filling gaps to keep things steady while also pressing forward.
Balance Isn’t a Constant—It’s a Rhythm
These moments are uncomfortable—but they’re also necessary. Growth rarely happens when everything is neat and tidy. In both farming and business, we push hard in one season so we can rest and restore in another.
I’ve come to appreciate that balance isn’t something you achieve and then keep. It’s something you move in and out of. What matters is learning how to return to center.
Some things that help me rebalance:
A quiet early morning walking the rows of the garden.
Reflecting with the team on what we’ve learned—even in the chaos.
Saying “no” more often so I can say “yes” to the right things.
Celebrating progress, not just perfection.
Growth Requires Both
Whether it’s responding to an unexpected frost or a shift in client demand, disruption comes with the territory. These moments test you—but they also prepare the ground for what’s next.
So here’s to leaning into imbalance when the season calls for it—and trusting that balance will follow.
One of the most important lessons I’ve learned—as both a business leader and a farmer—is this: sustainability doesn’t happen by accident. Whether you’re building a consulting practice or growing organic vegetables, long-term viability requires intentional planning and a steady, sustainable pace.
There’s a temptation in both worlds to cram—pushing hard during crunch time, then burning out when the pressure lifts. But over the years, I’ve learned that the real secret to success is found in rhythm. It’s about setting a pace that’s not only effective but also repeatable.
At ThreeWill, we’ve structured our business cadence using the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). It gives us a framework that helps us stay aligned, grounded, and focused on the right priorities at the right time. With a 10-year target, a 3-year picture, and a 1-year plan, we zoom in and out regularly to stay on track. But the heart of our rhythm lies in our 90-day world. Every quarter, we set our “rocks”—our biggest, most important priorities—and we stay accountable to them through weekly L10 meetings. It’s not about doing more; it’s about doing the right things consistently over time.
And here’s the good news—it’s never too late to adopt a system like EOS. At ThreeWill, we were over 20 years into building the business before we fully adopted EOS. It came at a critical time, as we made a heavy pivot to refocus our company around providing managed services that help businesses get more productivity out of Microsoft’s platform. That shift required clarity, alignment, and strong execution—all things EOS helped us cultivate.
A special thanks to Tabetha Sheaver, Certified EOS Implementer®, who guided us through the transition and helped us lock in a cadence that continues to serve us today. Her leadership helped us navigate change and move forward with confidence.
This same mindset has carried over into how I run Iron Mountain Organics. While my crop planning isn’t quite as complex as our EOS framework, the principles are strikingly similar. Each season, I take stock of what sold well, what thrived in our specific soil and weather conditions, and what simply didn’t work. That reflection feeds into a plan—one that’s informed by the past, grounded in present capacity, and aligned with future goals.
And just like in business, farming demands pacing. If I try to plant too much at once or introduce too many changes in a single season, the quality suffers—both in my crops and my own well-being. Instead, I’ve found that thoughtful, incremental progress rooted in data and experience yields the most sustainable results.
Whether you’re guiding a team or growing organic vegetables, sustainability comes from having a clear plan and a regular rhythm. You can’t grow what you don’t nurture—and that nurturing requires time, space, and intentionality.
Call to Action: What rhythms help you stay grounded and on track—whether in business, your garden, or life in general? I’d love to hear how you plan and pace yourself for sustainable growth. Drop a comment or share your thoughts!
Tommy Investing in Building Healthy Soil with Applying Mulched Leaves to the Soil
Many principles that lead to success in business also apply to gardening. Whether you’re cultivating a thriving garden or building a profitable company, the same mindset—planning, investment, care, and risk management—is essential.
1. Planning and Strategy: Laying the Foundation for Success
Just as a business needs a solid business plan, a productive garden starts with a well-thought-out strategy. Before planting, you consider factors like seasonality, soil conditions, and plant compatibility. In business, the same logic applies—you identify your market, assess demand, and develop strategies to position your products or services effectively. A lack of planning in either domain can result in wasted resources and missed opportunities.
💡 Business Parallel: Conducting market research is like testing soil quality before planting. Both help ensure you’re set up for success before committing resources.
🌱 Software Tip: If you’re looking for a planning tool that helps you map out your garden and visualize your layout, I highly recommend Seedtime. As a software person, I’ve been very impressed with what they’ve built—it allows you to create planting schedules, track tasks, and optimize your space efficiently. Just as businesses use project management tools to streamline workflows, Seedtime helps gardeners stay organized and productive.
2. Investment and Resources: Fueling Growth
Every garden starts with an investment—seeds, soil amendments, tools, and labor. Similarly, businesses require capital, equipment, and human resources to grow. Both endeavors demand careful budgeting and prioritization to maximize efficiency and yield.
💡 Business Parallel: Entrepreneurs must decide how to allocate resources, just like gardeners determine where to focus energy—whether on high-yield crops or long-term soil health.
🌱 Garden Tip: Compost is the magic resource that pays dividends both for this year’s crop and the future of your soil. It transforms Georgia’s dense red clay into loamy, nutrient-rich earth teeming with microbial life. Just as businesses reinvest in infrastructure and people to build long-term success, adding compost is an investment in the soil’s health, improving fertility, water retention, and resilience year after year.
3. Maintenance and Care: Consistency is Key
A garden doesn’t thrive on autopilot, and neither does a business. Regular watering, weeding, and pest management keep plants healthy, just as ongoing customer engagement, product development, and process optimization keep a business running smoothly. The key is consistency—small, daily efforts compound into long-term success.
💡 Business Parallel: Proactive customer service and continuous process improvement are the “watering and weeding” of business—ensuring it remains competitive and resilient.
🌱 Garden Tip: Proactive weeding is one of the best investments you can make in maintaining a healthy and productive garden. Removing weeds early prevents them from competing with your vegetables for water and nutrients, giving your plants the best chance to thrive. Plus, a well-kept, weed-free garden is not just more productive—it brings peace and satisfaction rather than the stress of managing an overgrown, chaotic space. A little effort each day keeps the workload manageable and the garden enjoyable.
4. Growth and Harvest: Reaping What You Sow
The joy of gardening comes when plants mature, and the harvest begins. But just as a thriving business doesn’t happen overnight, a bountiful garden is the result of patience and persistence. Whether you’re launching a new product or waiting for tomatoes to ripen, success requires endurance, adaptability, and the ability to learn from setbacks.
💡 Business Parallel: Entrepreneurs celebrate milestones—new clients, increased revenue, or product launches—just as gardeners rejoice when their crops are ready for harvest.
🌱 Garden Tip (and Sales Tip 😉): One of the greatest rewards of a productive garden is sharing your harvest. Selling at a local farmers market is a great way to connect with your community, and for me, bringing homegrown vegetables when meeting a new client is a unique way to share my passion. There’s something special about handing someone a perfectly ripe, sun-warmed tomato—it almost always brings a smile. Just as businesses thrive on relationships, sharing what you grow builds goodwill and deeper connections.
5. Risk Management: Preparing for the Unpredictable
Every gardener knows that unpredictable weather, pests, or disease can ruin months of hard work. Similarly, businesses must navigate economic downturns, shifts in consumer behavior, and industry disruptions. Mitigating risks—through diversification, adaptation, and contingency planning—is crucial in both fields.
💡 Business Parallel: Just as a gardener plants multiple varieties to hedge against crop failure, a business diversifies revenue streams to stay resilient during market fluctuations.
🌱 Garden Tip: Start seedlings with 10-20% more than you need to account for poor germination or early losses. Having backups ensures you won’t have gaps in your garden if some plants don’t make it. Also, for crops you really want to succeed, practice succession planting—sowing new seeds every 2-3 weeks. This spreads out your harvest, reduces the risk of total loss from unexpected frosts or pest damage, and keeps your favorite vegetables coming in continuously. Just as businesses adjust strategies to market conditions, gardeners can use these techniques to build resilience and ensure a steady, reliable yield.
6. Sustainability and Long-Term Vision
A short-sighted approach—depleting soil nutrients for quick results—will harm long-term yields. The same goes for business; focusing solely on short-term gains without considering sustainability can lead to burnout and instability. Investing in regenerative practices, whether in soil health or company culture, ensures future prosperity.
💡 Business Parallel: Businesses that invest in employee well-being, ethical sourcing, and long-term customer relationships build enduring success, just as sustainable gardening practices ensure fertile soil for years to come.
🌱 Garden Tip: The secret to a garden that improves year after year? The 3 C’s: Compost, Compost, Compost. Nothing builds soil health like organic matter. Adding compost consistently enriches the soil, feeds beneficial microbes, improves water retention, and boosts plant resilience. Just as businesses thrive by reinvesting in their people and systems, a garden flourishes when you continually replenish its foundation. Over time, what starts as struggling soil transforms into rich, loamy earth that practically grows abundance on its own.
Final Thought: Cultivate Success Like a Garden
Whether you’re running a business or tending a garden, success comes down to strategic planning, resource management, daily care, resilience, and a long-term perspective. Both require a mix of patience, adaptability, and a willingness to learn from nature. By applying gardening principles to business—or vice versa—you can cultivate growth, resilience, and abundance in both areas of life.
In both farming and business, the fundamentals matter. Without them, progress can become unsteady, and distractions can lead us away from what truly drives success. That’s why at Iron Mountain Organics, we’ve embraced the tagline: Know Thy Food. It’s a call to return to the basics—understanding where our food comes from, valuing whole, nutrient-rich ingredients, and making conscious choices about what we consume. But this principle doesn’t just apply to farming and nutrition; it’s just as critical in business and leadership.
Iron Mountain Organics Logo
Know Thy Food – A Return to the Fundamentals
Modern food systems have made it easier than ever to be disconnected from what we eat. Processed foods, long supply chains, and misleading labels create a gap between us and the source of our nourishment. When we step back and focus on whole, real food, we reconnect with something essential: the power of unaltered, nutritious ingredients that fuel our health and well-being.
By knowing our food, we honor the soil, the farmer, and the process that brings food to our tables. This isn’t just about physical health—it’s about understanding and respecting the work that sustains us. And when we stray from this knowledge, we lose sight of what really matters: quality, sustainability, and trust in the food we consume.
Know Thy Business – The Fundamentals of Leadership
This idea of “knowing” extends beyond food—it’s fundamental in business as well. Just as we can become disconnected from our food, we can lose sight of the fundamentals in leadership and company culture. We can get caught up in trends, overcomplicated processes, and shiny new tools, forgetting that the core of business success remains simple:
Making and keeping commitments – A successful business is built on trust. Just like healthy soil produces strong crops, a culture of accountability creates a thriving organization.
Knowing your people – A great leader, like a great farmer, understands what their team needs to grow. What motivates them? What are their strengths? Investing in people and relationships fosters loyalty, engagement, and innovation.
Focusing on long-term health over quick gains – Just as industrial farming can deplete soil for short-term yield, businesses that chase immediate wins at the expense of sustainability risk long-term damage. Companies that prioritize foundational values over fleeting success create lasting impact.
The Risk of Straying from the Fundamentals
When we lose sight of the fundamentals—whether in food, business, or life—we create instability. Poor diet choices lead to declining health. Poor leadership choices lead to disengaged teams. But the solution is always the same: return to what works.
At Iron Mountain Organics, Know Thy Food is more than a tagline—it’s a reminder to stay grounded, to ask the right questions, and to focus on what truly matters. The same applies at ThreeWill. When we help businesses maximize their Microsoft investments, it’s not about chasing trends—it’s about making the fundamentals work better, increasing productivity, and improving employee experiences.
As you reflect on your own habits—whether in nutrition, leadership, or decision-making—consider this: Where have you strayed from the fundamentals? And how can you get back to what truly matters?
Planting Seeds for the Future
Success, whether on the farm or in business, is about doing the right things consistently. It’s about patience, discipline, and knowing that the best results come from a strong foundation. So let’s get back to the fundamentals—let’s Know Thy Food, Know Thy Business, and Know Thy People.
What fundamentals do you come back to time and time again? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Spending time in the garden teaches you a lot—not just about plants, but about how thriving ecosystems work. And if you pay close attention, these lessons extend beyond the soil and into business, leadership, and life.
🌱 The Mycelium Network: Hidden Strength in Connection In a forest, trees don’t grow alone. Beneath the soil, they’re connected by a vast mycelium network that allows them to share nutrients, warn of danger, and support one another. Strong businesses function the same way—when teams, departments, and even competitors collaborate, the entire system becomes more resilient. If trees understand that their strength comes from connection, shouldn’t we? For a beginner-friendly exploration of this fascinating underground network, check out Kew Gardens’ article: Mycelium: Exploring the hidden dimension of fungi.
🥕 Interplanting: Diversity Reduces Risk In gardening, planting a single crop (monoculture) invites disaster—pests find easy targets, and disease spreads quickly. But when you interplant different species, the diversity confuses pests, strengthens plant health, and improves resilience. Businesses are no different. A team filled with people who think alike is vulnerable, but one built on diverse ideas, skills, and backgrounds is naturally more adaptable and resilient. For those new to interplanting, the Old Farmer’s Almanac offers a comprehensive guide: Companion Planting Guide for Vegetables.
💡 1 + 1 = 3: The Power of Different Perspectives A thriving garden isn’t made up of just one type of plant—it’s a collection of plants, each playing a role in creating a balanced ecosystem. In business, diverse perspectives lead to unexpected innovation. When you bring together different viewpoints, the outcomes can be greater than the sum of their parts. Innovation happens at the intersection of unique experiences.
🌾 Soil Health: The Foundation of Growth Healthy soil is alive with bacteria, fungi, and microorganisms that break down nutrients and make them available to plants. The more diverse the soil life, the more resilient and productive the garden. This mirrors how businesses thrive—when you cultivate diverse skills, backgrounds, and experiences within your team, you create an environment rich in potential and growth.
🤝 Do What You Do Best: Lean on Others for Strength No single plant in a garden does everything—some fix nitrogen, others provide shade, and some attract pollinators. In business, we thrive when we focus on what we do best and trust others to bring their strengths. Diversity allows each of us to lean into our passions while relying on those who are passionate about what we aren’t.
The garden teaches us that diversity isn’t just about variety—it’s about survival, strength, and synergy. Businesses and leaders who embrace this lesson build teams that aren’t just productive but truly resilient.
How have you seen diversity create resilience in your work or life? Drop your thoughts below! 👇
Pruning—whether in gardening or business—is always a painful process, but it is an essential part of maintaining a healthy ecosystem. It requires tough decisions and sometimes difficult losses, which is necessary for future growth. This reality isn’t limited to plants or companies; it’s something we also see in government. Recently, we lost a three-year client contract with the DOGE effort. I will not get into government pruning, because this is a charged topic, but hopefully some of what I share concerning gardening and business will be helpful. All pruning is painful, but I look forward to how the collective we bounce back and flourish from the pruning we do in the garden and our businesses.
The Power of Pruning in the Garden
Pruning is an essential practice for a thriving garden. It involves cutting back overgrown branches, removing dead or diseased parts, and shaping plants to improve their health and productivity. While it may seem counterintuitive to cut back something that’s growing, strategic pruning leads to stronger plants, better yields, and a more resilient ecosystem.
In my own organic farming experience, I’ve seen firsthand how pruning tomato plants increases airflow, reduces disease, and ultimately leads to a more abundant harvest. By removing unnecessary growth, the plant can focus its energy on producing high-quality fruit instead of wasting resources on excess leaves.
Pruning in Business
The same principle applies in business. It’s easy to fall into the trap of accumulating too many initiatives, projects, or even team commitments. But just like in gardening, unchecked growth can lead to inefficiency, burnout, and reduced impact.
Pruning in business can take many forms:
Eliminating non-essential projects – Are you working on initiatives that no longer align with your core mission or priorities? Cutting them can free up energy for more meaningful work.
Refining your focus – Are there services or products that no longer serve your company’s vision? Letting go of underperforming offerings can strengthen your brand.
Evaluating team workloads – Are your employees stretched too thin? Removing unnecessary meetings or streamlining processes can help your team be more effective and engaged.
Letting go of outdated systems – Are you holding onto tools or workflows that are no longer serving you? Simplifying operations can increase productivity.
The Courage to Cut Back
Pruning requires a certain level of courage. It can be hard to remove something that once had potential. But just as a gardener knows that a well-pruned tree bears the best fruit, a business leader understands that strategic cuts lead to sustainable growth.
At ThreeWill, we often talk about helping businesses get more value from the Microsoft tools they already own. This aligns with the idea of pruning—rather than constantly adding new technology, we help organizations refine and optimize what they have, ensuring that their digital workplace is effective and efficient.
The Season for Pruning
In gardening, pruning happens at the right time—whether it’s winter pruning for structure or summer pruning for shaping. The same applies in business. Periodic evaluation of what’s working and what’s not can ensure you’re focusing on what truly matters.
As we move through this season, I encourage you to consider what needs pruning in your work, your business, and even your daily routine. What’s taking up space without adding value? What can you remove to allow new, healthy growth to emerge?
Prune wisely, and you’ll set yourself up for a stronger, more productive future—whether in the garden or in business.
I’ve spent years leading a technology services company, helping organizations improve employee experience, boost productivity, and create meaningful work. At the same time, I’ve been cultivating something very different—healthy soil, fresh food, nurturing my local community and a deep connection to nature through organic farming.
At first glance, these two worlds may seem unrelated. But the more I dig in (literally and figuratively), the more I realize the lessons of leadership and organic farming are deeply connected. Both require patience, care, and a long-term vision. Both thrive on strong foundations—whether it’s company culture, employee productivity or soil health. And all are about growth—not just in numbers, but in people, ecosystems, and communities.
That’s why I’m launching Sowing Success, a newsletter exploring the intersection of culture, productivity and organic farming—three passions that have more in common than you might think.
What to Expect
Over time, I’ll share insights from both fields, drawing connections between:
🌱 Cultivating Growth – What farming teaches us about leadership, resilience, and innovation.
💡 Productivity & Sustainability – Lessons in efficiency, whether in the workplace or on the farm.
🌍 Community & Impact – How businesses and local food systems can both serve people in meaningful ways.
🔄 Seasons of Life & Work – Managing cycles of growth, rest, and renewal.
Whether you’re a business leader, an entrepreneur, a farmer, or just someone passionate about building something meaningful, I hope this space sparks new ideas for you.
I’d love to hear from you—what are some of the most unexpected places you’ve found leadership or business lessons? Drop a comment and let’s start the conversation!
As we settle into new ways to get work done in the workplace, creating a healthy work environment has become more important than ever before. With the increasing stress levels and fewer in-person interactions, it is vital to nurture your employees and provide them with the tools and resources they need to succeed.
As a business owner and large-scale gardener (small scale farmer), I would like to explore how gardening can be used as a metaphor for creating a healthy work environment. Just like gardening requires nurturing, cultivating, and patience, creating a healthy work environment requires intentionality, care, and a consistent approach.
The Importance of Nurturing
Similar to how plants require sunlight, water, and nutrients to grow, employees need support, recognition, and encouragement to thrive. Nurturing your employees means investing in their growth and development by providing them with the necessary tools and support to perform their jobs effectively. This can include providing project opportunities that build skills, mentorship opportunities, and ongoing feedback and coaching. By investing in your employees’ growth and development, you can create a culture of learning and continuous improvement.
When employees feel supported and valued, they are more likely to be engaged and motivated, leading to increased productivity, creativity, and job satisfaction. Moreover, nurturing your employees can also help minimize attrition and reduce recruitment and training costs.
The Power of Collaboration
Gardening is often a collaborative effort, with different people contributing their skills and passion to get to an end product of a vegetable. There are a variety of underlying tasks that get to the point of having a vegetable. Picking what to grow, knowing when and how to grow it, the labor of sowing the seed, cultivating the ground, and harvesting the vegetable are a few of those tasks. Similarly, creating a healthy work environment requires collaboration and teamwork. Encouraging collaboration can lead to better communication, increased creativity, and a greater sense of belonging. You can create a sense of shared purpose and a more cohesive team by fostering a collaborative work environment.
Collaboration can also lead to diverse perspectives and ideas, which can help in problem-solving and innovation. Team diversity can produce stronger results by bringing in new ideas that just one person could never conceive, but you must be open and patient when considering ideas that are not your own. This has been a personal challenge of mine, but as I have learned to be more vulnerable to other people’s ideas, I have found that this has provided personal growth for me and others. Moreover, when employees feel included in the decision-making process, they are more likely to be invested in the organization’s success.
I have also found that being open to new ideas in gardening has been a significant part of my growth as a gardener. Be open to what my neighbors are trying and not think I do not have anything further to learn about a gardening topic.
The Benefits of Patience
Gardening requires patience, as plants take time to grow and flourish. Not only do you need the patience to wait out the time needed for a plant to grow, but patience with failures that inevitably come through making mistakes or trying new things. Similarly, creating a healthy work environment requires patience and persistence. Change doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s important to stay committed to the process, even when progress seems slow or you suffer setbacks when trying new things or setting goals beyond your current capabilities.
When creating a healthy work environment, it is essential to have a long-term perspective and not expect immediate results. It takes time to build trust, foster collaboration, and establish a culture of continuous improvement. By staying the course and remaining patient, you can create a work environment that is supportive, productive, and fulfilling.
Moreover, patience is also necessary when dealing with conflicts and challenges. Instead of taking a reactive approach, it is essential to address the root cause and work towards finding a long-term solution. Getting to the root cause is essential to growing beyond the current problems you face. I have found that putting a weekly discipline that operationalizes getting solutions in place is essential to your company’s growth and morale.
it is about creating healthy environments
In conclusion, gardening provides a powerful metaphor for creating a healthy work environment. By nurturing your employees, fostering collaboration, and practicing patience, you can create a culture that promotes growth, learning, and success. Just like a well-tended garden, a healthy work environment requires ongoing care and attention. But with the right approach, the rewards can be almost limitless.
Creating a healthy work environment is just beneficial no for the employees but also for the organization as a whole. It can lead to increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, improved employee engagement, and a positive brand image. Therefore, it is essential to invest in creating a culture that values and supports its employees.
quick side note
I find that there are aspects of my personal passions that I find beneficial to bring into my work environment. I am amazed at how much my gardening experience informs me of the natural laws of a work environment. Do you have a personal endeavor outside of work that informs you about improving your work environment? I would love to hear about that in the comments if you do.
Working with the land is a great teacher of natural principles that are transferable to leadership. The principles I have learned from vegetable farming can be carried over into our professional lives.
Law of the Harvest
Stephen Covey was a strong influence in the building of the consulting company ThreeWill. My brother (and co-founder) and I would take early walks before our workday to discuss the values of our future company. One concept that stuck with me from reading Stephen Covey was the “Law of the Harvest.” He shares the lesson you learn on a farm and you can not rush the process.
Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.
Stephen R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
For example, if you want to harvest green beans. There are some things you can do to shorten the time to harvest, but you still will need to wait at least 45 days to get green beans from the time you decide to grow green beans. You just can’t plant a green bean seed today and expect to harvest green beans from the plant tomorrow. As Steven Covey says, there is no cramming in farming.
Natural Laws on the Farm
In an instant gratification society (Amazon next day delivery and ordering fast food as examples) we can lose sight that accomplishments that you are proud of come through an intentional planned effort. In vegetable farming, there are several factors that go in a well planned harvest. I would like to share my experience with three of these concepts: Creating Fertile Ground, Planting Seeds and Tending the Field.
I will share some brief thoughts (these concepts can be their own posts) on these natural systems that occur in nature and then how that understanding can be translated to business and leading teams.
Creating Fertile Ground
You feed your plants by feeding and caring for the soil. In organic vegetable farming, one key way to do this is through compost. In addition to compost, you can feed the soil through cover crop to increase biomass and carbon in the soil. Creating healthy soil will feed the plants and allow plants to have strong resistance to diseases and pests. This foundation of healthy soil is one of the key elements of a successful vegetable farm.
Planting Seeds
As simple as it sounds, you can’t have a harvest unless you start with a seed. With planting seeds, you need to think about what seeds to plant based on your goals for the farm and what plants you are prepared to nurture. One of the biggest challenges with farming is planting too many seeds and not having the time to properly take care of them.
Tending to the Field
Removing weeds early. Walking the field to see when an area of the field is suffering or under stress. Noticing the small things that could turn into bigger things. With farming, things can quickly get out of control if there is lack of care provided at early signs of stress or problems. For example, when you find blight on tomato leaves, you want to remove the leaves early before that blight spreads further into the tomato plant causing you to potentially lose the whole plant.
Translating thisto Business
Creating Fertile Ground Through Creating a Healthy Culture
A healthy company culture creates the fertile ground needed for ideas to “germinate and thrive!” The culture of a company can be compared to the soil on the farm. A heathy culture is a key foundational part of a thriving business. Just as poor soil yields unproductive crops, poor culture yields low trust, lack of common ground and overall can impact how your company can come together as a team and achieve challenging goals.
Planting Seeds By Casting a Vision
On a farm you sow seeds. In a business, you sow seeds through ideas, vision/mission and belief in your team. As mentioned in “Planting Seeds” above, you need to be careful to only sew the number of seeds you can tend to and nurture. It is easy to get overwhelmed with “sewing” too many ideas. It is better to have a business plan for the year that determines what are the right number of ideas (seeds) that need to germinate within your teams. Speaking from experience, a team can get easily get overwhelmed or confused if you plant too many seeds. Those ideas (seeds) compete with each other which will decrease the chances of that idea to come to fruition (or in farming terms – bear fruit).
Tending the Field through Understanding the Needs of the Team
Planting ideas (or seeds) in an organization can be the fun part. Coming up with the next great idea is exciting, but we all know the hard work is seeing that idea through to completion and getting good results. Seeing an idea through to completion requires showing up each day and “walking the farm.” Walking the farm to see what needs attention and to connect to what is working and not working through in person observations.
The plants of the farm can be in some way compared to the people of your organization. Your team needs the constant interaction to see what is working or not working along with getting a sense of what needs help before it becomes a true problem. For example, as a pepper plant matures it can get top heavy and topple over if you do not stake it. You want to do this same preventative maintenance with your teams. You do this by staying connected to your team members to be sure they are healthy and have the support they need to play their roles as they get their jobs done to the best of their ability.
Two Other Points of Comparison
Showing Up
Showing up is a key to the success in farming and success in business. Expanding on law of the harvest and tending to the field, it takes a consistent commitment to see results over time. It is the constant attention to detail over time that will show up in progress in the long term. If you don’t keep consistent with “showing up,” then things can degrade. You can get overrun with weeds or disease on the farm or have your business wither without attention to the health of the people in your company.
Embrace self governing systems
There is value in letting natural systems self-govern as much as feasible. Creating an environment where plants use their natural ability to adapt to their conditions will help make the plant stronger. You do not want to create dependencies to things that are available naturally. For example, you do not want to provide fertilizers if nutrients occur naturally in well amended soil (usually through nature provided nutrients in compost). Nature has a way of taking care of itself without our help (just look at an old growth forest). There are times we just need to get out of nature’s way. That also can apply to the people we lead. We sometimes need to get out of the way and let them learn through natural consequences that reinforce what works and does not work. If we shield people from failure, then they cannot grow from experiencing natural consequences.
In summary, I have reaffirmed what works in business through observing laws of nature and general experience that comes with the hard work of vegetable farming. These natural laws are not just limited to the farm, but carry over to our personal and professional lives. I would love to hear from others on how they see nature teaching them concepts or principles based on personal observations. You would be amazed to see what comes to mind when you stop and think about it. Please share your thoughts in the comments below. It does not have to be vegetable farming. It could be vegetable gardening, taking care of flower beds or just growing one plant on your porch. Looking forward to learning from others.
