Assessing your current situation

Knowing where you are in both your business and personal life, provides the clarity required to identify the gap magnitude between your present situation, and where you want to be. 

How do I gain clarity?

• Benchmarking

  Compare your business with other farmers' and determine where you can make improvements. One way to benchmark your business’ financial and physical performance is to use DairyBase.

  Benchmarking your business against other similar farm businesses and against your own business over time helps you:

  • Better understand your farm's performance between seasons and against similar farm businesses
  • Identify opportunities to drive profit
  • Make confident and effective decisions
  • Track progress towards long and short term goals
  • Keep a tight rein on farm working expenses.

  Use DairyBase

• Farm fitness checklist

  Take an honest look at your farm business and identify key focus areas to fulfill your vision and create structure around achieving your farm business goals. Where does your business sit? Where do you want your business to sit in the future? What will you do to get there? 

  Assess your current position in different areas of life and business, then prioritise which areas to work on. DairyNZ have bought together the Farm Fitness Checklist to help you do this.

  

  Download the farm fitness checklist

  Work through the booklet, complete the main farm business areas checklist here.

  Looking for key information in each area?

  Follow these DairyNZ website links:

  • Personal wellbeing
  • Business management or financial management
  • People
  • Feed
  • Environment
  • Animals

• Are you in charge of your direction?

  Success comes from determining what you want to achieve and making sure you take daily steps leading in the right direction.

  Are you sailing your chosen course to your dream destination, or are you getting tossed around by the currents and winds of life and business? Take a few moments to complete the following questionnaire and identify whether you are the captain of your own life journey.

  Complete the are you in charge of your direction? self assessment and gain clarity.

• SWOT analysis

  A SWOT analysis enables you to build your personal and business strengths, take advantage of opportunities; manage, support or avoid weaknesses, and steer away from threats.

  Identify your business Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and determine the best strategies to achieve your vision. 

  What are your business and personal:

  Complete a SWOT analysis

  Strengths

  What do you do well? What advantages (e.g. skills, education, connections, and resources) do you have? What do others see as your strengths?

  Weaknesses

  What could you improve? What areas, lack of skills or resources hold you back from achieving your goals? What things are others likely to see as your weaknesses?

  Opportunities

  What good opportunities are open to you? What trends could you take advantage of? Looking at your strengths, how can you turn these into opportunities?

  Threats

  What trends could harm you? Looking at your weaknesses, what threats do these expose you to?

Next steps?

Now that you understand your current situation, set your goals and actions.

Control your own destiny, or someone else will.

Jack Welch, American retired business executive