The Moos Room™

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[cow moos]
Joe: Welcome to The Moos Room, everybody. The OG3 is here. Bradley is driving, so we'll take that into account when you hear his audio.
Emily: [chuckles]
Joe: We'll just won't let him talk very much. That'll be the solution.
Brad: I was doing dairy stuff today, Central Plains Dairy Expo, meeting the industry folks, getting out there. Not sitting in my office.
Joe: I do like that. I love getting out of the office. I'm out of the office today. I'm actually in Morris where Bradley is supposed to be, but he isn't here yet. Getting out to drive around the state, see some different farms, going to talk at a meeting tonight. I'm excited to eat whatever's for dinner. It's always an amazing meal.
Emily: [laughs]
Joe: Emily, are you at home?
Emily: Yes, I'm just in Rochester. No exciting travel for me today, but I had that earlier in the week. My early week was travel heavy.
Joe: Sometimes year travel is awesome, and this time of year, it is not. Like tonight, we got big weather coming in and I got to get home before the ice and the snow and everything else starts up here in Morris. The wind, don't ever forget the wind in Morris. Not my favorite time of year to travel in the shoulder season.
Emily: Absolutely agree, so I am happily at home today. [laughs]
Joe: Perfect. We've got a topic today that kind of blends the two worlds here. Emily is our farm safety and mental health expert on the show. Brad and I like to think that we're cow experts.
Emily: Brad and Joe are just here. [laughs]
Joe: That's just how it works, doesn't it? That's fine. The concept today came up working with a colleague of mine, Tim Goldsmith. Shout-out to him. He'll probably be on the podcast someday soon. We were working together and we were talking about basically, what we termed, common versus special causes of variability, where there's a difference in perception of what we have control of within the system that's predictable and manageable versus what's coming from outside the system and is truly random and uncontrollable, and the difference in perception of what is under control versus what is out of control and how you perceive that balance. Then, talking to Emily today, she told me there's actually a term for that, which I'm not even going to try to explain. I'll let her explain what that term is.
Emily: All right. Today, we are discussing mastery. Mastery, in its simplest form, is our perception of what we have control over and what we don't. Mastery is really a natural part of being a human. As we grow and develop, we develop greater senses of mastery in some areas and sometimes lose our mastery in other areas. It's just this idea that we have an idea of the pieces we have control over and the pieces we don't.
Joe: This is something that we talked about with this when it came to common versus special causes of variability or mastery, it's what do you have control over and what do you not have control over? Then, how does that look when you talk to different producers and farmers and veterinarians? What are their perceptions of what you do have control over and what you don't?
More and more, I'm finding that there's a lot of things that we do have control over and that are predictable and manageable that we think we don't have control over. That's a reframing, trying to figure out how to explain that we do have control over some of those things. There's a lot less of the things that are random and uncontrollable than we initially expect. One of the things that's always probably, and especially now, going to be random and uncontrollable is the weather. We still have some aspect of control over the weather when it comes to calving season because we can choose when our calving season is, so there's still some control there.
Emily, I guess my question to you is, when you are faced with this needing to reframe your thinking, how do you go about that or start that process when it comes to mastery and figuring out, "Oh, what do I have control over and what do I don't, and how do I evaluate if I'm thinking about this correctly?"
Emily: What you're basically explaining, Joe, is what we call adjusting mastery. I'm going to take a little bit of a sidetrack here, just to mention that adjusting mastery is actually a really useful, resilient strategy. It is something that yes, really means thinking again about what you do have mastery over, what you control and what you don't. In doing that, you also build some resilience, and so that can both help you in crisis and then prepare you for future crises as well.
This is a really great topic. I'm so excited when Joe brought it up because I was like, "Oh, I have slides about this." [laughs] Getting back to adjusting mastery and what to think about or how to do that process. Adjusting your mastery really means you're going to temper or enhance your own sense of mastery. You're going to think about, "What do I actually have control over?"
A really important piece of this that I want to mention is, in this process, you also need to recognize that the world is just not always fair. That sounds a little trivial, but I think we've all been in those situations where you do everything by the book, everything you're supposed to, management was perfect, you had all this stuff figured out, and the cow still died, because sometimes, that still happens. Part of it too is recognizing again that the world is not always going to be fair. Not in the way we want it to be, so keeping that in mind is really helpful.
The last, and I think the most important piece of adjusting our mastery is about externalizing blame. Not all of it being, "I don't have control over this because I tried and I failed, and it's all my fault I'm having to do this." We really want to externalize that blame, and that's part of knowing our mastery of, "Yes, I did everything right, but this thing I don't have control over happened. I did everything right, but a tornado still hit our farm." Some of those things, and recognizing again, that you can't hold all that blame on yourself because that is not going to allow you to actually adjust your mastery, because you're still fighting the idea that there were things out of your control.
Just a quick recap, the three main points when we think about adjusting mastery, enhancing your own sense of mastery, recognizing the world is not always fair, and externalizing blame.
Joe: I think to make this a little more concrete, the best way to do that is to give an example of what I'm talking about. I think that one of the best examples is dystocia. When we talk about dystocia, or assisted calvings, or difficult calvings on a beef system or a dairy system, it doesn't matter which one we're talking about, the general idea initially is that, almost all of that is out of my control because difficult calvings happen and that's just the way it is. It's all random and uncontrollable. I think that that thought is, in a lot of cases, incorrect. Because if we look at the factors that contribute to dystocia, we look at calf birth weight, dam breed, cow pelvic area, calf shape, cow age, cow nutrition, calf sex, gestation length, cow body condition, cow weight, sire breed, heterosis, calf presentation, and then season or the temperature outside.
That list, when you really pare it down and go topic by topic, there's a lot more there that's in your control than there is out of your control. Now, the weather is hard to control, but you still pick when you're going to calve in a cow-calf system, what season you're going to calve in. That's under your control as well. Calf presentation isn't necessarily within your control. How that calf presents, whether it's a breach or not, that's the only one that I really can't come up with an argument for that we have control over.
Now we're looking at, "Okay, we have control over a lot more than we initially think, so we really have probably control over 90% of it." When initially, if you just glance at the issue, you may think, "I only have control over about 10% of that because it's a random uncontrollable thing." I think looking at these issues closer and looking at the management of it and how everything in the system is connected allows us to see, "Actually, if I work through the management side of things and I'm looking to prevent problems, I have control over a lot of these factors, and a lot more than I thought I did originally."
Emily: You touched on a really important point there, Joe, that I want to follow up on, and that is this idea of systems thinking. That's actually another component in adjusting mastery, and that is systems-based thinking and taking the time to reflect on the functioning of whatever system you're dealing with, so in this case, it would be your calving system, your cow management, et cetera. Again, I just think that's an important point that we need to really examine this as a system and every little component that goes into that system is going to play a role in what the final result is.
Joe: I think this is one of those things, if you think about things in this way, looking at what do I have control over, what do I have no control over, and what is truly random and uncontrollable? You can just pick a topic. If you work through that thought process, there's going to be a lot more under your control than you think and conveniently, most of those things come back to management, which is what we preach on this show.
Emily: It all comes back to management always. When we talk about random and uncontrollable things, these special causes, we're really stretching. This can be the wildest stuff, like I said, tornado, barn fires. Thinking about those things, as the things that are truly outside of your control, and I find that list to be short, and it's usually really preposterous, or full of things with a lower likelihood. Whereas, when you look at the pieces you can control, that list is robust and there's a lot of components there that you can work on, and that are really approachable and clear, and not so ambiguous and random.
Joe: I love this thought process. When we look at trying to solve problems without a needle, it really hammers out what do I have control over? What can I get ahead of, rather than trying to put a band aid on afterwards?
Brad: I have a question for Emily. We talked about mastery and things you can control, things you can't control, how do we manage all of that when there's milking parlor stuff, we're breeding, we're calving, we've got employee challenges to deal with. How do we use this in a every day situation when we've got multiple things going on a dairy or a beef farm, or you name it?
Emily: Bradley, I'm so glad you asked. One of the easiest ways to facilitate adjusting mastery in the midst of all the other stuff you have going on, is self-regulation. Self-regulation, very simply put, is things like sleeping, taking some quiet time for yourself, whether that's in the form of meditation, or just, "I'm going to sit here and just look out the window and get lost in my thoughts for a little bit." Some of these things that are already baked into our day, are part of what helps facilitate this adjustment of mastery and this self-review of mastery, giving ourselves that space.
This is something that we can even think about while we're sitting in the tractor cab, or driving somewhere. That's a really big part of it and I think, also, this is one of those things, when we think as resilient strategies go, this is a pretty easy one to do. Again, when you just think about, that giving yourself time to think about things, and giving yourself time again, to examine the functioning of the systems of whatever issue you're addressing. It really comes back to also, we struggle to adjust our mastery, when we continue to see
ourselves as failures or putting all this pressure on ourselves to get over it and so instead of actually getting over it, we're just fixated on the fact that we're not.
This is a natural step in moving on after something goes wrong or we make a change or something. I'm hoping that in this explanation you're finding this isn't a big, "Now you need to make time in your day for this whole other thing," but it's more, "In the five minutes you might spend walking around the farm yard during the day. "Can you just think about this for a little bit," and even remind yourself, "This is what I'm doing because I have control over this part."
Another useful thing here, and this is a useful tool for all sorts of things, but especially when we're in the adjusting mastery phase, we're likely also trying to solve a problem and so that can also be what slows us down, because we're really fixated on, "I'm not going to be over this until this problem is fixed," and so I'm still thinking I have this control over it. A good way to figure out how something can be fixed or why something happened the way it did, is using a practice that I've recently learned about actually, and it's called the Five why's.
Basically, what you do is whatever thing you're thinking about, you just ask yourself why five times, and of course, each time you ask it, answer that question. An example of this, let me think of an easy one here. Okay, and this is of an unrelated to farming, okay? The issue I'm going to address is, I am always 15 minutes late for everything. Why am I 15 minutes late? Well, because I mismanage my time in the morning. Why do I mismanage my time in the morning? Well, because I get distracted. Why am I getting distracted? I'm getting distracted, because I'd rather sit in bed looking at my phone than actually get ready. Well, and why would I rather do that? Well, because it's easier, it's more comfortable and I'm not fully awake yet.
That's how I use it. I got from, I'm always 15 minutes late, down to, I just struggle, I need extra time to wake up in the morning because I want to stay in bed and be cozy. From that, maybe the solution is I just need to wake up 30 minutes earlier, to allow myself that time to just putz around a little bit. That's a really quick example of how to use the five why's, but hopefully, you saw is you just let yourself keep taking that path as you continue to ask yourself why? I'm going to say, when I started, I didn't know what my later responses were going to be. I just was going with what came to my head at the moment.
That's another piece that you can use to help you figure out, do I have control over this? How do I have control over this? I maybe can't control that my body needs some extra time
to get fully woken up in the morning, but I can control how much time I allow myself to do that, can give myself more time knowing that that's the problem.
Joe: That makes a lot of sense. I like that chain of why's. I'm going to try it on some farms and see where I go.
Emily: Oh, you will be amazed. You'll have to report back. It's a really cool thing to do and especially with farm stuff, you get to things you normally never would.
Brad: I could think about that from a example, calf scours perspective and asking why, and it might lead you on a path back to something that you never even thought of. I like that idea.
Joe: I think that's a great spot to end. I don't want to get into this subject too deep. I think we've introduced this way of thinking, I'm sure Emily could talk for another hour on this subject and how to work yourself around it. This is a good way to think, a way to step outside of your system and look at it from a bigger picture view and see if you can find some solutions. I think we've given you some tools to do that. Hopefully, this is helpful as you come across all the things on your farm that are either controllable or uncontrollable and try to figure out what you do have control over and what you don't.
Emily: With that, we will leave you so you can spend some time adjusting your mastery. If you have questions, comments, or scathing rebuttals about today's episode, you can email those to themoosroom@umn.edu That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu. You can also call our listener line and leave us a voicemail at 612-624-3610. Find us online at extension.umn.edu and find us on Twitter @UMNmoosroom. That's a wrap, folks. Bye.
Joe: Bye.
Brad: Bye.
[cow moos]
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[00:19:59] [END OF AUDIO]

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