Transition, change and growth are a constant in our enterprise. Partly driven by our values that promote entrepreneurship, innovation and change. Partly driven by our belief in diversification, integration and differentiation as the core principles to guide our operational growth. And partly driven by the realities of the agriculture industry, where events out of our control such as weather, pests and disease require us to adapt swiftly. 

Transition, Change and Growth in Operations

Alejandro Barba and Luke Sepe working on the MAF Globalscan7, a grading system that allows IMG Citrus to sort fruit appearance with precision and also internal quality through shape and density.

Operationally, this year was no exception and we continue to plan for growth in FY23. Our ornamental plant brokering activities grew in revenue by 40% in FY22 and are poised for another 49% growth in FY23. We launched our Curbside e-commerce business in FY22 reaching into a new market segment of small to medium landscape contractors. In FY23, we will expand our e-commerce business to the retail market, and invest in agritourism on the Cherrylake campus. We expect our citrus import revenues to increase by 22% in FY23 and plan to invest in further infrastructure to support exponential growth of the import programs moving forward. We planted our first crop of Ruby Red Grapefruit in Citrus Under Protective Screen (CUPS) structures this year. We will build a second CUPS structure trial in FY23 while continuing to refine the best methods to grow and harvest Florida citrus in this new, controlled environment. No doubt, our operations are dynamic and evolving.

Growth + Change in Team Members

FY2022 also brought many changes and transitions to our people and organizational structure. To support our growth in operations, we created new positions and onboarded new team members, increasing our full time equivalents (FTE) by 9% for a total of 598 FTEs in FY22. Some of these new roles include Groves Fertility Leader, Agricultural Applied Research Leader, Logistics and Dispatch Leader, Curbside Business Developer, Sustainable Landscapes Intern, Farm Landscape Coordinator, and Digital Marketing Specialist. As we grow our operations, we must also grow our teams.

The Great Resignation (or Great Shuffle) – the national ongoing economic trend in which employees voluntarily resigned from their jobs en masse in early 2021 was certainly felt within our enterprise, too. Our Shared Services teams were most touched, notably Information Technology and Marketing, where our talent pool more readily competes with vast remote work opportunities in national and international environments. While creating uncertainty and change, this proved to be a great opportunity for us to onboard new team members who have expert skill sets that align more closely with the evolving goals and priorities of operations. It also allowed us the opportunity to promote existing team members and rethink some of our organizational structures. 

Transition in Organizational Structure

Organizational structure is undoubtedly an area where we have been intentionally creating change and innovation as we seek to promote collaborative leadership. Our goal is to reduce the organization’s reliance on hierarchy to move actions forward. Instead, we want to create an organization of peers who call on the wisdom, knowledge and experiences of all members of the organization to find solutions to relevant problems, make informed and decisive decisions and communicate with all stakeholders. We believe this model of organizational structure will allow us to be more responsive; it will enhance our ability to sense and respond to opportunities and actively engage all of our team members.

FY22 was our first year operating our Farm Sales Team without an assigned Sales Director role. Instead, we have a team of experienced and passionate Sales Representatives who seek advice and help from each other. They are supported with direct access to expert teams and peers such as the Pricing Team, the Product Management Team, the Marketing Team and the Plant Health Team. They are motivated with a shared incentive program, based on the success of the collective Sales Team – not the individual sales territory. They are equipped with multiple dashboards to provide objective, real-time feedback on key performance indicators such as sales, claims management, inventory age, logistics and Outsourcing growth. They are learning and modeling a collaborative, self-managed organizational structure. Other areas of the organization have also made large strides towards reorganizing around the principle of collaborative leadership, notably our IMG Citrus Harvesting Team and our Cherrylake Landscape Maintenance Team. 

We are confident in the vision to transform the organization towards these peer-based leadership teams, yet we acknowledge the need for the transition to be organic and not abrupt. The catalyst for creating these flatter, peer-based structures can and will be wildly different between teams. For the IMG Citrus Harvesting team, it was sparked by the growth of an activity that requires more resources and too much pressure for one person to carry the burden of responsibility. For the Cherrylake Landscape Maintenance team, succession planning for our Director of Maintenance accelerated a peer based leadership system. For the Farm Sales team, the resignation of our Sales Director provided the opportunity to formalize a new culture of leadership. Whatever the circumstance, each team met the challenge of the new organizational structure with enthusiasm and continues to benefit and learn from this new way to manage.

Wilson Builes was featured in Humans of Cherrylake. He is a Superintendent with our Construction Group as well as a talented artist.

The Foundation for Organizational Transition

While we can’t predict when the trigger for change will happen, we know we must create the foundation for collaborative leadership so that the teams are ready to embrace it when the opportunity comes. We believe this foundation is based on 5 key elements:

1) A clear, common purpose between all members of the organization and team. At a macro-level, our WHY words help define this purpose, as does our IMG Enterprises vision statement: We are a sustainable, diversified, family-owned enterprise, rooted in the land and agriculture, which contributes to the health and well being of people and the environment. On a micro-level, we have encouraged teams to create strategic maps with their priorities that can tie back to the larger organization’s strategic map and be shared with others. We are encouraging SMART goals to be set bi-annually, and shared with team-members so that individuals can support each other. By engaging and informing others of our strategy, our goals, and our purpose, we create the connection and opportunity for collaboration.

2) An unwavering commitment towards living our company values. Our 7 values define the way we work, and provide stability amongst a backdrop of changing structures and operational activities. We continue to promote these values through our culture interviews prior to a hiring decision, our onboarding collateral, and programs such as our CEO Awards that recognize 7 employees each year who portray our values in an exceptional way.

3) Building trusting teams where healthy conflict can flourish. Conflict is healthy when its aim is to improve the outcomes for the team; when it is respectful, not judgemental or personal. It is healthy when it is out in the open, visible to all members of the team and available equally so everyone can safely participate. Healthy conflicts require openness and an ability to entertain others’ ideas. It requires setting aside egos, and staying curious about why others may have a different viewpoint. We are currently focusing on a Conscious Communication Workshop series using the principles of Non-Violent Communication and continued work on self-awareness to develop our capacity for healthy conflict at the individual and team level.

4) Promoting the advice process. Critical to collaborative leadership is encouraging team members to seek advice from others, not a decision from others. It requires reviewing our processes to ensure decision points do not escalate through a hierarchy for approvals. It means re-training our leaders to have the key words and behaviors to give space between their advice and the decision. It requires our leaders themselves to be disciplined to seek advice with the stakeholders of a decision. It requires the belief and grace to know that mistakes will happen, but these mistakes are our best opportunity to learn and coach others. 

5) Dashboards and shared goals. We continue to build expertise in collecting and analyzing data, and creating live dashboard reports for our teams to use. This provides real-time, objective feedback on the progress each person or team is making. It also gives us the ability to design incentive packages that are team-based and tied to key performance indicators. Rather than waiting on a manager’s subjective feedback, an individual and his/her team can refer to real-time data to understand what initiatives are working, where improvement can be made and what should be the top priorities. Individual stakeholders are given access to key metrics to drive decision making.

It is clear to us that as our operations and enterprise grow through innovation, opportunity and change, so must our teams and organizational structure. We are eternally grateful for our team’s commitment to the vision of the Enterprise and their openness to change not only in our operations but also in our organizational structures. It is for our people and also thanks to our people that we can live up to our Organizational Development vision: “We are a purposeful community. Our team members are supported, fulfilled and growing. Together we thrive.”

This article written with contributions from Chloe Gentry, Co-CEO.