Last updated on November 26th, 2024
Thanksgiving, as we know it today, is rooted in a harvest feast celebrated by the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag in 1621. This marked a moment of giving thanks for a successful harvest after a tough year.
The Pilgrims, who had settled at Plymouth Rock, were ill-prepared for the harsh New England winter. They suffered from exposure, scurvy and outbreaks of contagious disease, which ravaged the population, reducing the Mayflower’s original 102 passengers to about 50.
The Wampanoag, a Native American tribe, showed them essential survival skills, including how to grow corn, fish the rivers and extract sap from maple trees. In gratitude, the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag shared a three-day feast. This event is often cited as the first Thanksgiving, although it wasn’t called that at the time. President Abraham Lincoln declared it a national holiday in 1863.
Since then, Thanksgiving has evolved into a day where families and friends come together to share gratitude with meals, parades and football games.
In this vein and this time of the year, I wanted to share my leadership life lesson called “The Laws of the Harvest.” It’s in the book under Rule No. 3 – No Surprises. Just like the early Pilgrims understood that a good harvest isn’t always a guarantee, we’ve certainly learned in the post COVID-19 years that is true for us in the business as well. We’ve all had to get adjusted to the new normal and get some of the best practices put back in place since our world was turned upside down during the pandemic.
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Growing up in western Oklahoma, I was in tune with the process of harvest – the term we used when it was time to cut wheat. There are some great lessons in farming. And I feel the laws of the harvest offer great guidance on how to conduct ourselves in business and in life – if we truly understand that a good harvest is a process with laws in place whether we agree with them or not.
Before we can talk about the harvest, we truly must understand the process. And as anyone who has ever been involved in it knows, it’s not easy. Sometimes, we create our own surprises because of unfounded expectations. When we have the wrong expectations, it leads to us getting surprised when we don’t need to be.
There’s an old saying, “You never plant the wheat today and pull into the field tomorrow to harvest the wheat.” Throughout my career, many people I’ve worked with simply don’t understand that business is the same way.
They want to have a meeting to talk about launching a new initiative. Following the discussion, a plan is put in place. Then, within a few days, if the sales don’t immediately turn around, they are disappointed.
These experiences got me thinking about intent, process and expectations, and they inspired me to come up with the “Laws of the Harvest” as it relates to the grocery business.
Law No. 1: We reap only what has been sown
If we want to harvest wheat, we plant wheat seeds. Here are some of the seeds we plant in our business:
- Trust • Team focused
- Integrity • Right people in the right seat
- Kindness • Product innovation
- Care • In-store experience consistency
- Customer focused
If we truly understand how seeds produce crops, we have to focus on the seeds in our business that set us up for a good harvest. And make sure we don’t have seeds being planted that will not do anything to help with a good harvest.
Law No. 2: We reap in a different season than we sow
There are four seasons in our annual calendar. In Oklahoma, wheat is normally planted in September and harvested around the first of June.
The business connection here is that we need to know the expected season we should expect the harvest to show up. Most business initiatives take months or years to produce a good harvest. In today’s world of instant gratification, it is difficult for some team members and owners to patiently wait for the harvest.
Law No. 3: We reap in proportion to what we sow
If we buy cheap seeds and plant sparingly, don’t expect a record harvest. In business, I’m always amazed at the high expectations of better sales, better-performing teams, higher customer engagement and more efficient technology results without investing a single dime in systems, training programs, employee incentives or better equipment to help produce better results.
We can’t be cheap-minded and expect anything any different from the results. And in many cases, it is a simple math problem in our business – expecting high-level results from low-level investment. Everything has a return on investment.
Law No. 4: We reap the full harvest of the good only if we persevere
We will have circumstances beyond our control. We have risk of success of the harvest every year. If it’s too cold or too hot or there is too much or too little rain, it will affect the outcome of the harvest. A devastating hailstorm may hit at just the wrong time and wipe out what was going to be a good harvest.
In business, there are so many things beyond our control. Yet when bad things happen – and trust me, they will – we still expect to have the harvest we would have had without them. Just think about the recent hurricanes that have hit Florida and North Carolina and their devastating impact on the expected harvests in those states for years to come.
I’d say nothing impacts grocery shoppers more than the weather. If it’s pouring down rain, customers just go home after work and don’t shop that day.
If there is roadwork in front of the store, don’t expect the same sales as last year when there wasn’t. If a new competitor has opened a store nearby this year, don’t expect comp sales until its honeymoon is over.
In this law of reaping the harvest, we have to learn that the season could be up to a year before things turn around and we begin to see the numbers we hoped for before the event happened.
Law No. 5: We can’t do anything about last year’s harvest, but we can about this year’s
The biggest mistake most people make is not putting last year to bed and focusing on this year. We can’t change a single thing that happened last year, but we can change almost anything in the coming year.
For all the reasons listed above, we had a few harvests in Oklahoma when I was growing up that were just awful. It was imperative that we put all our focus on the next year’s crop and try to do some extra things in the coming year to help offset the loss.
I’ve experienced bad harvest years in the grocery business as well. The majority of the time, it was due to things happening beyond our control. We faced new competition, hurricanes, supply chain/trucking disruptions, increasing fuel prices, manufacturing interruptions and employee challenges due to worldwide health issues. These issues have recently played a major role for many businesses both large and small.
This is a life lesson for everything: Don’t be surprised if some years the harvest yield is not what we hoped for. No farmer would ever say they’ve had 10 years in a row of record harvests.
Now, to bring this all together. Celebrating Thanksgiving is more than a nod to history; it’s a reminder to appreciate the present. Expressing gratitude can boost mental well-being, strengthen relationships and improve physical health. It’s a chance to pause and acknowledge the positive aspects of our lives, whether that’s connections, achievements or a good meal in front of us.
In order to be thankful, we have to keep the frustrations out of our lives. So many times, it’s about unrealistic expectations adding to this frustration by acting surprised when the results come in.
For those in a leadership role, everyone on the team is looking for hope and encouragement when a harvest comes in short of expectations. Having a positive attitude about that is paramount to going forward.
So let’s be thankful for the harvests we’ve had this year, and learn from the changing landscape in our business and lives and stay focused on the big picture and the main thing – and that’s our people. Happy Thanksgiving!
Steve Black is CEO and founder of abrighterday.life, a business and leadership coaching organization devoted to helping people and companies with personal growth and implementing simple leadership principles. With 47 years of expertise in the retail grocery arena, Black has been an integral part of companies that are regarded as innovators and trailblazers, including Rouses Markets, Lucky’s Farmers Markets, Sprouts Farmers Markets and Sunflower Farmers Markets, among others.
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