What two cousins, a dairy factory and a football club can teach us about growing community leaders
When I wrote about Geoff Boxsell and Russell Fredericks, the two cousins whose careers began around the Jamberoo dairy factory, I was struck by how many opportunities they had been given to learn, take responsibility and develop their abilities.
The manager of the Jamberoo Dairy Factory Wallace (Wally) Boxsell recognised Russell’s potential and encouraged him to learn every aspect of the factory. Geoff adopted a similar approach, ensuring employees understood how different parts of the business worked. Both men went on to lead substantial organisations, and both made a point of giving others the opportunities they had enjoyed.
What happens to a community when businesses like these disappear?
The dairy cooperatives were major economic institutions, employing local people, buying milk from surrounding farms, supporting transport businesses and creating demand for an extraordinary range of goods and services. Their products reached households across Australia and overseas.
A selection of the 41 dairy products manufactured at the Shoalhaven Dairy Factory in Bomaderry. The range demonstrates how the regional cooperative developed into a major innovator and food manufacturer.
Their influence extended into the social and cultural life of their communities. Farmers served on boards, employees learned new skills, young people found mentors, and relationships developed through work carried into sporting clubs, service organisations and community projects.
These were places where people learned to negotiate, manage money, solve problems, work with different personalities and make decisions that affected others. They could practise leadership long before anyone thought to give them a leadership title.
As regional businesses have become larger and more centralised, many of those opportunities have moved elsewhere. Decisions that were once made by people who lived and worked in a district are increasingly made in offices hundreds of kilometres away.
Consolidation brought benefits, including investment, improved technology and access to larger markets. It also changed the opportunities available to people within their communities.
Geoff and Russell developed their abilities in workplaces where experienced people recognised potential and encouraged others to try something new. Their factories were places where people understood the entire business, from the milk arriving at the receiving dock to the finished products leaving for market. Employees learned how different departments operated, how their work affected their colleagues and how problems could be solved by drawing on everyone’s knowledge.
In much of the work I do today, I see what happens when organisations lose those connections.
People work in silos, concentrating on their own responsibilities with little understanding of what is happening elsewhere. Departments operate independently, organisations working towards similar goals rarely speak to one another, and opportunities to collaborate pass unnoticed.
The consequences extend well beyond duplication of effort. When people have little understanding of what their colleagues are doing, they struggle to see where the gaps are, where resources are being wasted or where someone else may already have the answer to a problem they are trying to solve. Employees become frustrated when their ideas go unheard or decisions are made without considering their experience. Innovation slows because the conversations that bring different perspectives and knowledge together simply aren’t happening.
Some of the most promising opportunities emerge when people from different backgrounds discover what they have in common, recognise what each can contribute and begin working together. Yet our increasingly specialised workplaces can make those encounters surprisingly difficult. We have become very good at developing expertise within organisations and departments, while overlooking the knowledge and possibilities that exist between them.
Local dairy factories have largely disappeared, along with many of the local institutions that once provided these experiences. Their history leaves us with a challenge.
How do we create workplaces and communities where people can see beyond their own responsibilities, learn from one another and discover what they could achieve together?