John Clair has spent the better part of his life serving on boards, working on projects ranging from building a school for his local community to charting a new course for the Canadian Wheat Board.
A sideline that started as a local 4-H project leader morphed into a second career for the Radisson, Sask., farmer. It included stints as a Saskatchewan Wheat Pool delegate and Canadian Wheat Board director.
It was a gradual evolution from community leader, where he made decisions affecting a few hundred people, to corporate director formulating policies that would impact thousands of prairie farmers.
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Clair said it was a good transition.
“I’m sure not the only one that started out getting a little involved in my local community and then just stretched out,” said the 59-year-old, who still serves on several boards.
His experience as a regional 4-H president and local school board director proved to be valuable training for higher-profile jobs that followed.
“It was just a nice ladder to go up,” he said.
But a consultant with extensive experience working with farm boards said more often than not that ladder is broken back on the first rung.
Jim Brown shudders when he weighs the time spent serving on farm boards against the results.
“That would be a sad equation,” said the founding partner of Strive, a management consulting firm that coaches boards of directors.
A shrinking farm population is being asked to devote time and effort on a growing multitude of boards, and much of that time is wasted due to duplication of effort and inadequately trained directors, he said.
Twenty years ago, farmers served on boards for the major grain and livestock organizations. Today, there are boards for everything from organic chapters to ethanol projects to animal welfare groups. Often, their mandates overlap.
“There is this huge demand for farmers to be on boards beyond what they can really commit to. The time just isn’t there,” said Brown.
Also, farmers are often ill-prepared for the important job of setting policy for the organizations they represent.
“Greeters at Wal-Mart get more orientation than any board member normally does,” said Brown, author of The Imperfect Board Member, a book on corporate governance.
Murray Fulton, agricultural economist at the University of Saskatchewan, has a different take on the evolution of farm leadership roles.
While there may be more agricultural organizations with a board, there are far fewer service club, school, church and hospital boards, he noted. Also, the extensive delegate structure that existed under the three prairie pools has shrunk considerably.
Fulton said those community boards provided a way for farmers to hone their leadership skills in a small organization.
Now, they are gone.
“It doesn’t allow the same kind of opportunity to learn by doing,” he said.
Community and local organizations were ideal venues for producers to gain insight into board politics – how to form coalitions, broker side deals and tap into a network of information.
“They really gave you a pretty good introduction into the rough and tumble world of giving and taking,” said Fulton.
Brown contends there are still lots of small-scale organizations where producers can get their feet wet before taking on a directorship role for an influential farm group.
But he argues that is not necessarily a good thing. Producers can develop bad habits early in their farm leadership careers when thrown onto boards without training. That hinders them down the line.
“They are just carrying forward the dysfunction of the boards that they were on.”
Brown said Canadian agriculture and the individuals who guide it would be better off if there was a streamlining or consolidation of farm organizations in addition to better training and mentorship for those choosing to undertake farm leadership.
