Part 1 of 5 introducing new business units.
Farming Smarter instituted some organizational restructuring that could help them grow in size, quality and impact. Ken Coles, Executive Director of Farming Smarter, says restructuring the organization into smaller business units will help it meet some goals.
Business units divide the tasks, create ownership and accountability, foster a culture change for program managers, give focus to skill development and creative thinking. It also inspires unit growth.
The culture shift takes each program managers' role from simply conducting research or extension, to focusing on growing and enriching each program with a business objective. Now each manager must think about budgets including revenue and costs, sales, and client satisfaction. An increase in skills and creative thinking go hand and hand with this, since now as Coles said, "We may all be research nerds, but now we have more smart people thinking and learning new skills like business planning, marketing, sales, etc."
The division of tasks helps out the teams since there is a lot to do, it's easier to have units that have leaders with clear roles and responsibilities. Ownership and accountability give autonomy and a chance to be recognized or held accountable. All these goals should eventually lead to more growth and innovation for the organization.
Read about the business units
The custom research unit, led by research associate Trevor Deering, does research for private companies on crop protection and management products and techniques.
Lewis Baarda, On-Farm Research, leads the Field-tested unit doing field-scale research with farmers and farm managers.
The research unit run by soil scientist, Gurbir Dhillon Ph.D., and research coordinator, Mike Gretzinger, leads grant-funded research projects either led by Farming Smarter or in collaboration with researchers from other institutions.
This unit's goal is to share learning that comes from Farming Smarter and other researchers. The unit produces all external communication and extension.