Lessons from a Farmer #1: Pursue Perfect

For a good portion of my young life, I lived on a large hog farm in the Midwest. My father would have my older brother and I do any number of jobs around the farm from pulling weeds to watering trees to working in the barns and whatever else he felt necessary. Of course, as a young kid, I didn't know how to do many of these tasks at the beginning, so each time there was a new task my father would proceed to teach me how to do it. In typical father style, of course, he had "perfected" the methods for doing said task and would take his time to demonstrate and explain the task exactly as he wanted it done. And man, was that not just the most annoying thing ever.

At some point I would say something like, "ok dad, I get it, ok, I can do it" - all with a tone of annoyance as my dad would seem to do an over-done demo and do half the job himself. I have never figured out if it was because he really wasn't sure if I got it, or if he just liked doing the job (or seeing the result of it) and so had a hard time stopping and turning it over to me.

Now nearly 40 years later, I catch myself doing the same to my own children - teaching them the perfect way of trimming the lawn or pulling weeds or how to wash a car. And they do the same to me as I did to my dad. And I love it. I mean, I don't love it, but I do. I probably won't change a thing about it, either.

As I've reflected on this lately, I have felt immense gratitude for my dad, who patiently and precisely taught me the value of quality work - that how you did things mattered. I learned that it was a good thing to pursue improvement and find the "perfect way" in order to get the right outcomes.

As an example, my father use to have us boys power wash a barn once all the hogs were moved out of it, to prepare it for new hogs. These were not small barns and could take 6-8+ hours to clean appropriately - meaning, to my dad's standard. After we would tell him we were done, he would look at us questioningly and ask, "would you eat at that trough, or sleep on that floor?" A ridiculous question, I know, but the point was that his standard was high like that, and if we couldn't honestly say yes. he'd send us back. And often he would have us come back after he reviewed the cleaning.

I hated the scrutiny, but it taught me to learn to think more critically of my own work and to expect higher of myself and to take pride in everything, no matter what the task was or how meaningless we thought it was.

So now, as I sit day after day on my computer and work cleaning up data, designing processes, contributing to meetings, those early lessons from my father come back. It comes out sometimes in hard questions and I am sure some annoyance from co-workers when I insist on higher thinking and better outcomes - I am not very good at the whole "80 is the new 100" thing - mainly because that is just not true and never will be to me. 80% is not a trough I want to eat from or a floor I want to sleep on. If you accept 80, then you will get 80. I want that extra 20% and will always work for it, advocate for it, and insist on it.

And that's how it is. Thank you dad, for teaching me what great is, even when it meant pushing manure or pulling thistles or weeding the garden. It has blessed my life, and I hope I carry on that legacy in everything I do.