We’re investing in different technologies that help us answer those questions that we can stand behind as a company and, hopefully as an industry over time. We have an immense responsibility in sustainability, but we have, to ourselves internally and as an industry, a bigger responsibility of telling the great story that we have to the world. Because like I said in the beginning of our conversation, we have this amazing opportunity in the United States with all of these resources and technology to do it the best in the world. And I think our sustainability numbers and measures should be a reflection of that. What kind of leader are you, Greg? That’s a great question. I ask myself that every morning in the mirror, I suppose, right? And you change daily . I think about leadership, and what’s my leadership style? It starts with understanding your people. And when I say that, it’s not about just a phone call or a simple conversation. It’s about going out and working with your people. And I’ve been blessed to have many opportunities to go on a farm and work with, whether it’s our service staff or senior leaders, or someone who’s farrowing pigs or someone that’s raising pigs in a nursery, and talking to and working alongside them. And what I’m looking for is how is the organization helping the individual get the work done? Are we blocking or are we providing? And if we’re blocking, we can change that. And if we’re providing, we can offer more of it. That lens helps guide me in terms of what initiatives we should be focused on as an enterprise. And more importantly, how do we make our work more effective in the field, and increase our productivity? And quite frankly, enjoyment in the workplace is a big part of it. So I would say I have a few core tenets as well that I think about. Being an engineer, I’m big on measurement. I believe if it’s not measured, it’s not managed. And if you don’t have good data and you have to make a decision, it’s fine. But get data and use data to its fullest so that you can make accurate decisions and have good impacts and results at the end of the day. I also think a little bit about failing. I failed many times in my career and I look for that. I look for leaders that allow their people to fail once in a while, but help support them through that, but also so that they understand what is the emotion of winning. And they’ll appreciate a lot more if they’ve had the odd non-success,
let’s call it, in their career, and have been able to pick themselves up, dust off and move on, or move to better things in terms of approach or new way of looking at things. Over the years I’ve realized that in our business, we’re so focused on excellence and productivity that sometimes we don’t give ourselves the latitude to fail once in a while. That’s where research plays an important role: It gives us the chance to fail small and win big. I mean, it’s part of the fabric of the company and the organization. So giving people venues to learn and grow and develop is a big part of what I would call leadership. It’s about serving and supporting others. The organization does not serve me. I serve the organization, and I expect my leaders to have that same mantra in how they show up and lead every day. What about strategic goals? As you step into this leadership role, are there the top three goals that you’ve set for CF over the next five years? Part of my role, even in the past, was strategic planning. I’ve always known us to have a strategic plan we’ve operated on, typically lasting over five to seven years of guiding principles. With that, a good strategic plan in my mind has to connect with your people and the capabilities to get where you want to go. The capabilities of your people also need to match up with where you’re going. Our latest strategic plan, we called it LEGUP 2030, has a few pillars in it. Some are business related, mission critical to our productivity and the results that we want to achieve. But two of our five pillars are very people-centric. We cast our last strategic plan about three years ago. We had developed the plan prior to the pandemic, but held off on launching it for a couple years. We knew that to be successful in our industry, we had to lean in on developing our people — what we often refer to as the “grit” of our people. That meant focusing not just on technical and management skills, but also their leadership skills tailored to the different layers in the organization that we have. So that’s a very important one. I already mentioned the innovation in data and data infrastructure. So we’re redoing how we consume our data, how we organize it so that we can have one version of the truth leading to data science, and better analytics across the organization.
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