David Horsager:
Welcome to the trusted leader show. I’m your host David Horsager join me as I sit down with influential leaders from around the world to discuss why leaders in organizations fail top tactics for high performance and how you can become an even more trusted leader. Welcome to the trusted leader show it’s David Horsager. I have a special guest with today. He’s part of leadership team of the largest John Deere ag company in the world. 38 ag stores, 10 material handling stores. They were 14 stores when I started working with them and got to know them. So they’ve grown from under a couple hundred thousand to significant well over billion organization. And what’s more, he’s just a plain, a great guy. And so I’m grateful to have you on welcome to the show Kent Senf.

Kent Senf:
Hey, thanks, David. Glad to be here. Super excited to talk with you today,

David Horsager:
Kent, you you, you run a great home. You’ve got two beautiful daughters, so and Bergen, and you’ve got an amazing wife and they’re golfers and they’re academics. And it’s tell us just before we get into kind leadership and, and other parts of life, what a couple other things to know about Kent SEMP.

Kent Senf:
Well well thank you for my for sharing about my daughters. Actually I’d love to take credit for it, but as you know, my wife, Beth does, does most of the hard lifting there’s they’re they’re great kids. One is one is going to St. Ola college in Northfield, Minnesota. It plays golf there and is getting ready hopefully to go to law school at some point in time. And my youngest is a senior in high school and doing great things there, but a little bit about me. I’m from Fairmont Minnesota farm town kid, much like yourself just happen to be really fortunate and blessed to be where I am today and be around people like yourself and many others that I work with every day. So I, I just, I consider myself extraordinarily blessed.

David Horsager:
Well, I am too. And just to know you, and I will tell you one of the most fun things. One of the first times I worked with you, this is over a decade ago, I think, but we jumped in your, your your, your team jet. And we went out to several of the dealerships and got to talk trust. And we’ve done several things since then, but we’ve had some, some fun journey together and you, your team has been doing some amazing things. What do you think if we jump right in and we’re gonna talk personally, we’re gonna talk leadership. We’re gonna talk company wise, but you’ve, you’ve led in many different ways. What, what do you think it takes to kinda have an effective high performing culture built on trust?

Kent Senf:
You know, let me, let me step back to David for a second and say thank you. So back, I, I can’t imagine if it was 12, 14 years ago. It was 14 years ago when I started at CMB. We were a regional player at the time and really was coming into an organization that was doing good things, but I really needed to focus on some clarity and and really get an understanding of the goals and where we wanted to head and, and consistency and, and where we’re at. So we brought you in as well as some others. And one of the first things that we did back in the day is we looked at the mission statement of the company and, you know, mission statement at that time was a lot of words. And people didn’t read ’em all the time.
And so we broke it down really into three things to make it very clear. We broke it down into, we wanted to be the dealer of choice really dealer or supplier of choice. We wanted to be the employer of choice for engaged employees. And we wanted to be the investment of choice for our stakeholders, stakeholders being customers and community and employees and, and suppliers and bankers and owners and everybody else. But what it really happened was we talked a lot about that. Three-Legged stool. And if the, if one of the legs felt a higher priority than the others, well, then one of the, one of the core features of our mission statement felt outta balance. And so just by clearly going through the mission statement, getting everybody on page, and then consistently talking about it in a very organized fashion, I think led a lot to where we were going and how we were gonna get there. And then you could break down the key goals from, from there. And, you know, a high performance organization has to have performance measurements and that investment of choice side of it. But if you take so much of your emphasis there, you forget about your team and you forget about your customers. So I want to, as I look back, one of the, the best things that we did was really build a foundation upon that

David Horsager:
It’s been amazing to see, and it’s been fun to watch. What, what, when you take and think of cascading a message, and you’re so distributed, you get locations all over the country a couple different kinds of locations. And for everybody to know with, with all smiles on my face that most people can’t see, you know, I live in a hobby farm these days with my wife and four kids, and we have all green because of this relationship. And we have tractor and Gator and snow removal and a lot of green equipment. All John Deere were happy as can be with it. And we’re looking at looking at getting something new here before long, my dad, as you know, I grew up on, we, we joke kind of a multicolor farm where we had red and green tractors, even yellow ones, but dad in his later days when he was 80, I think it was 82.
He bought his first brand new tractor and it was a, it was a John Deere tractor. And you know, he’s 93 in a couple in a month. Wow. And and he is still running the farm and you know, up there and he is fixing some, the hurricane came through a few months ago and he’s up there putting, putting tin on one of the sheds himself. And it’s been fun to see, but you know, you got a lot of great you know, great brand. You got a great great organization, great dealers, but, but yet it’s distributed. How do you keep that common language going? You say, we got this common language, you’ve got this mission. Now we got this three-legged school stool. You’ve built many things now on trust. How do you cascade that from, you know, Idaho falls to Alabama?

Kent Senf:
Well, it’s first and foremost, I think it is, is the consistency of the character of the people that we have. And if we, if we’re all on the same page, if we have the right intent, you can get a lot done. And so I think it, it, the foundation of it all is the people that we have, the team that we have. And, you know, we have, oftentimes we talk a, a lot about if it’s right for the customer, if it’s right for the companies that we work for, or work with the suppliers, if it’s right for our company and it, and it’s right for our employees and it’s morally legally and ethically correct, make the decision. And we empower our people at the local level to make some really, really important and great decisions for our customers and for our employees.
And so you know, we are, we’re, we’re very much all over the place. Like you said, we have in our ag stores, we’re in six different states with material handling, we go out to 10, 11 different states and we have customers all throughout the world. But the reality is that the foundation of the morals, ethics, and values and, and who we are you don’t have to talk to everybody, everybody, or every day to tell them what to do and how to do things. There’s a great deal of trust because they live the character that we’re, we’re looking for. And then how, how

David Horsager:
Gonna jump in here, Kent? How do you hire for that? Because you got a lot of people say, well, yeah, I wish I had that. How can you say, oh, you have all these high character folks, how do I actually create that team that does have the right values and morals that, that fits us that can make decisions on their own at a high level? How do you, how do you do that? That’s what I can hear people asking.

Kent Senf:
Sure. Absolutely. Well, number one, we get lucky sprinkle some magic dust everywhere. Right. and not always do we have everybody that way, but I would say the vast majority of it is, and I, if I look back at it, we we have instituted regional managers who are really high quality regional managers. They, they work with our VPs all the time. And, and in doing so, we, we have a work, hard, play hard relationship at our company. And, you know, I often think about it this way, David, that you can fool somebody for 20 minutes or half an hour or, or maybe even an hour. But when you have a work hard play hard relationship and you build those connections that are deep if you are not following the same moral, legal, ethical characteristics, then that shows up it comes up and it, and it shows up over time.
And so once you build that, I, I think kind of people weed themselves out in our, and the character of our company stands firm and stands strong, and you want to work with, and you want to connect with people that are much like yourself. So starting small you know, it’s really building connections. And I think about it just, it, it let’s take it in a different way if we could, for a second. The reason I know you David, is because one of my childhood, lifelong friends, Ross, Bernstein connected us well, Ross wouldn’t have connected us if he didn’t think it was mutually good for you and mutually good for me, he wouldn’t have connected us if he thought our morals and ethics and values were different. He would’ve refrained from ever having that connection together. But now, you know, that was what, 14 years ago. And you and I are as connected sometimes as Ross and I are. And I, I think that’s true for our employees as well.

David Horsager:
Absolutely. Well, Ross is an amazing human being and a dear friend and definitely a lot of, lot of when, when he recommended you, it was like absolutely as well. How do you how do you, you know, keep your people, I’ll give you two questions at once. You know, retention is a big problem right now, how do you keep the right people? And how do you said you build connection? How do you actually build connection? Whether it’s with your leadership team or with those people? I think a lot of people are having trouble right now, building connection, especially here you sit, you know, at the corporate office and you’ve, and you know, you, you’ve got people way out here, way you’re buying that new property or new, new LN location down in Alabama or whatever. Like how do you, how do you increase connection and how do you actually retain the talent you want to keep?

Kent Senf:
Yeah. Well let’s talk a little bit about what people often refer to as, what is it, the great reg resignation and quiet quitting and all these different things that are out there today? Right. Well, the reality is we’ve been very fortunate not to have that. Number one. We have not seen a, a large reduction in people that are employed with us and largely is that largely because I think we care. And we’ve connected in a different level. I’ve been blessed to work with, and for the Burwell family for years. And so much of, of what they offer is is really this connection piece. It it’s talking and working not just the normal eight to five hours, but we’re, we’re connecting on, on a personal level. We go do things together. And in fact, during work hours, we do things like so we have a community impact day where we’re going out into the community, the whole store, whether you’re in billings Montana, or you are in Treeport at Louisiana, that team goes out at as a whole, they select a charitable organization to work with and we pay them that day to go out into the community, do something great.
Well, the reality is I think people love the purpose of working together for something greater than themselves and great, you know, greater actually than just the business themselves. And so when you combine all those things together, I think it’s been really, really cool. I’d also say some of the things that we have done here in the last little bit have also connected in a, in a meaningful way. So inflation has come into our environment pretty significantly. We recognize that in a lot of our employees, whether you’re making a little bit of money or a lot of money, they tend to spend the money that they make. And so when you go and you go from $3 gas to four 50 gas or, or whatever it is that that has a significant impact on what the family can do. So we instituted and gave everybody in the company a 5% raise just out of the blue in, in announced that January 4th and said, we understand what the in economy is like, we wanna do the right thing for you, cuz you’re part of the family.
you know, those kind of things. And then most importantly, remembering that that our team has, has obligations into the community and into their family and recognizing the importance of that. I think has people really interested in who we are? We’re, we’re blessed to have this really good connected team. And I, I think it comes from years of, of working together with them hand in hand, close together and, and Rob Burwell used to say, Kent it’s a couple different pieces of advice he had for me is number one, you can’t have experienced people if you don’t give them experiences. So go out there, give ’em experiences, but don’t do it for ’em. And he often said as well let them put holes in the boat. Just don’t let ’em sink it. Well, you know, the reality is we’re looking for leaders, we’re looking for people who can connect, who can connect with customers in a meaningful way.
And if you, if you tighten down what they can do and what they can say so much. So they’re not really leaders for who, for what the customer wants and what we want. They’re people that are carrying out a MIS are carrying out a, a tactic. If you will. We try to keep it more broad and say, you know, again, if you can do the right thing for the customer and the supplier and the company and and the employees and it’s morally legally and ethically, correct, make the decision, have broad. If you will, lanes that people can walk within, not tight, tight sidewalks,

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David Horsager:
What’s your, how do you hold people accountable? Like how do you hold ’em cuz you have, you have amazing connection. You have amazing people. I’ve met many of them. And they’re just, I do see this values driven environment. I see the work hard part for sure and play hard but at some point you gotta hold ’em accountable to the KPIs and everything. So some people there’s a lot of talk today about just connecting, just showing care, just showing compassion. And yet I see the, the, the, the healthiest companies, you know, have this, this mix of a, a healthy accountability. And you see, I see frustrated CEOs, well, they’re all saying do this and this and this for my employees. And then I found out there aren’t even doing anything for us and I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta take care of the stakeholders. So you have this mix. I feel like of what you say what’s for many would be trite. Oh yeah. Play hard, work hard or work hard, play hard, but you do it. And they are working hard and they are hitting KPIs and they are moving the organization forward and they are motivated. And yet there’s some sort of clear accountability. How do you do it?

Kent Senf:
Well, thank you. But and hopefully it didn’t sound trite as much as it is the characteristics of the team of we go out and we go do things collectively together, but really we’re a performance based organization. We talk performance a lot every week, in fact well, let’s, let’s go back every day. We’re measuring our, our key KPIs as you put it and making sure we’re doing the right thing where we trend a lot. We look not just at a point in time, but rather a trend in which way we’re going. You can have a, you know, the, you can have a scenario where all of a sudden something falls off, but if the trend is going in the right direction, we, we tend to follow more of the trend. Then the actual individual score, if you will. But we were watching it on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
And on the weekly calls that we have with our, our team, we cover those same same dashboard measurements over and over again, every week we cover whether the week was a good week or a bad week, we generally start our meetings a little bit wider, open. So we, we talk more about the company and then we narrow it down into the scope of the, maybe the department or the store or the person. And then really we recognize high performers you know, and it’s, it’s high performers that are doing the right things, not just high performance for high performance. And, and I think, you know, the long and short of it, we’ve built also an, an incentive plan and a pay plan that rewards people for hitting this investment of choice. And, and by the way, we’re, we are a for profit company.
We have to provide profits for the company to be able to provide back to the employees. And it’s that three-legged stool again, if we, and, and we talk about it often, if, if we cannot perform to the level that we can perform to, we can’t do the other things really, really well. We can’t invest in technology. We can’t invest in taking care of the customer if we can’t also get a reward for it as well, ourselves. So I think a lot of it really is the, the commitment to a standard smaller list of KPIs. I think it’s consistency that we bring with it in, in talking about it and working through it often. And I think once I believe that once, you know, somebody falls out of that, we definitely show grace, but but you have to be an active participant in the improvement of, of it as well. And if you’re not that demonstrates not an engaged employee. So I’d like to say, it’s this Nirvana place. It isn’t absolutely Nirvana, but it is a place where high, high, productive highly engaged employees do really well.

David Horsager:
You say if it’s hard to sell, make it easy to buy.

Kent Senf:
Yeah.

David Horsager:
Tell me about, I’m gonna give you a couple of your quotes back to you that I hear from you. And then I’m gonna get land the plane on a couple personal leadership thoughts, but give, give, give the idea. That’s a quote around CMB and your world. It’s it’s, if it’s hard to sell, make it easy to buy, how do you do it?

Kent Senf:
Well, you know, you gotta think of the customer and what they’re looking for from a, from a standpoint of not a feature and benefit, but what’s the value that we can produce for the customer, and then turn that around and, and help the customer see the value. First. I think there’s a guy, one of your friends Phil Jones says it really, really well, and that there’s this value proposition with your hands. And, you know, you gotta be able to, if, if your, if your value is extended out further than the price and the price, and then the it’s all about price, but if the value extends closer or brings closer, it’s about the value. And oftentimes I think a lot of sales sales people, even within our organization, they cut right to price. They cut right to something that, that doesn’t extend the value in really what the customer’s looking for. And to first create value, you gotta listen, you gotta have curiosity, and you have to have compassion for where the customer is at. And when you go from curiosity to compassion, you can really go into and, and help that customer find the value proposition. So we like to find those reasons why the customer really would like to buy the product is as opposed to selling something that that’s, that’s really not what the customer needs.

David Horsager:
I’m gonna give two more quotes than I’m gonna land the plane with a personal, personal question. But I, I like these things that you have said, and I have heard one you’re allowed to be critical only when you’re creative in helping find the solution.

Kent Senf:
Yeah. You

David Horsager:
Got an example of, yeah, go ahead.

Kent Senf:
Yeah. I use that one all the time. In fact, people use it back on me as well. So, you know, it’s part of the culture. When, when all of a sudden you come in and you say, why did you do that? Or why didn’t we hit this? And, and they say, well, what’s your creative solution, Kent. And if you know, you know me well, well enough, I’m a highly creative visual guy. So, so it’s, it’s fun to be a part of part of those conversations, especially when they use it back. But I will tell you we, we talk about it often. You can be, you can be highly critical of a person or a process or whatever, but in that phrase, in that moment, help us understand how are we gonna do it better from your perspective? And if you can’t be there, then, then don’t bring the argument up. And and that often leads into David too. Another one that we say fairly, fairly often, that if it doesn’t stand the a, a good debate, a great debate in our, our boardroom, it will not withstand the marketplace. So let’s, let’s be honest. We have a thing, or we talk about it often times too. You, when you come through the threshold of the meeting, you get into the get honest room, we’re very honest with each other. But you can’t be adversarial honest. You have to be creative in helping us find the solution.

David Horsager:
I love it. CRE, I got a new one here, then I’m writing it down. Creative, honest versus adversarial. Honest.

Kent Senf:
Yeah.

David Horsager:
Good word. So, well, there’s lots more, I love what you’re doing. I love that idea. What, what the, the critical piece, what we just talked about. It, it keeps people solution minded, right? When we think of, oh, okay. But be a part of the solution. That’s what we wanna drive people toward, be a part of the solution. Yeah. There’s more we can do than you think we can do. When we get solution minded. It also reminds me of my own work where, you know, I, I teach these eight pillars. I’m very open with the team that I’m imperfect at all of them, just ask my teenagers . But I, I, I believe in it to my core, I’ve seen it on six continents and across industries from pro sports teams to companies and you know, corruption issues and whatever. But but I’m imperfect at it.
And one of the things I teach and preach is the first pillar of the eight pillars, which is clarity. Yeah. And one of the models we have is ODC teach, you know, when you expect something from whenever you’re managing someone, give ’em a clear outcome, a deadline for the next phase. It doesn’t have to be the end, cuz you may not know the final and then give a space for clarifying questions, ODC. And I’ll ask something and not have given a clear deadline or given a clear outcome and they go right back at me. Okay, Dave, what’s the ODC, what’s the OD. Did you ODC that? And I love that when there’s a safe enough space in your organization where people can push back on you. And I know the reason people can do that with you is you’re great leader and you’re a humble learner, always learning and willing to take it.
And I just think it’s worth saying today, cuz the last call I was on with a significant leader, we talked about this, how those that are, there’s a lot of arrogant leaders today and here’s one truth about arrogant leaders. They’re all opposed. There’s something in our universe that opposes the proud it opposes. But there’s for those that are humble, people want to get behind one them. They want to you know, they want to, you know, work for them. They want to follow them because they know they’re hum. They will take another opinion. They will listen. Maybe not always. But that humility that you have, I think in the midst of competency and strength and in a lot of wisdom is a, one of the things that makes you a great leader. Kent, let’s go personal. I’ve learned that great leaders do something well at home. They have certain habits. You’re, you’re imperfect like I am, but they, whether it’s physical or with the, you know exercise with their family, we, you know, we all want to do other things differently. You have a beautiful family. That’s amazing. But what are some habits, any habits you have at home that keep you either physically or emotionally fit so that you can be a great leader at work.

Kent Senf:
Oh wow. Well thanks for also for the comments a second ago. So when I think about habits things that maybe that are characteristic of who I am and what I do on a daily basis, a couple of ’em probably that stand out is I wake up every morning at 5:00 AM or five 30 and I never really set an alarm. In fact, my wife is often amazed that I I’ll need to get going and, and travel six o’clock in the morning or whatever it is. And I don’t set an alarm. I just have a the, I guess the old farm boy mentality of get up before everybody else doesn’t get the work done. I am Maynard Sam’s son. And even at 53 years old that still connects with me today. My dad was also a person who taught me that work hard.
you will not outwork me is his saying you know, and work starts in the morning. And for me it’s different than what it was for my dad and work is oftentimes starting. And I, I like to read or listen to books, podcasts news, first thing in the morning, a lot of times, 30, 45 minutes, I’m, I’m, I’m learning about what’s going on. And, and I, I like to, I travel enough. I, I, I like to listen to, to books on tape as well as have them in person as well. And and take notes. And you know, one of the fun things is I’m I’m right back to Dave ER’s daily edge that I did. I, I got your book a long time ago. I went through it, but as I took on this president role, one of the things that I wanted to go do is get back to some of those daily edge tactics that you have in, in really, really mind mapping is something that I didn’t, I call it something different, but I use that most, every morning, I’m a, a visual person, a creative person I’ll oftentimes draw what I want the future to look like.
And then and then use that to help get people, to see what, what I’m, what I’m envisioning or what I want to envision. And then once I believe that they can see it, David, I believe that they will believe in it and they become committed to it and they act on it as a result. And I spent a lot, I spend a lot of time probably most often in the morning, just connecting with those kind of E either I’m reading or, or I’m listening to a book on tape or a podcast, or I’m taking the time to reflect and say, where do we really wanna be three months, six months, nine months a year down the road, or, or at some point in time. And I, I have a notebook, oftentimes I’ll I’ll write those down in the last one. I, I have picked up, you know, in the last probably year or so. Success leaves clues that’s another one that’s that’s a big saying out there, but I’ve created a notebook that anytime that we’ve had this a recent success or I look back on success, I’m jotting those down and I’m trying to figure out where did that success originate from? And then and oftentimes going back to that and saying, how do we replicate that same success? So I don’t know if that was what you were looking for. Love it. But that’s what I do.

David Horsager:
I love it. Read, keep putting good input in podcast reading, take time to journal. I can’t tell you how many leaders I work with. When I say, what are a few year success habits? Journaling is one of ’em. And that’s like, you’re talking about journaling, drawing it out, mind, mapping it, whatever it is, because there’s something that happens when pen hits the paper and we kind of write through the problem or think through it or whatever. So, so everybody, there’s a one final question before we get there. We will put in the show notes where you can find Kent on LinkedIn and more about C and B operations and his great work and his role there. We’ll put all those links in the show notes, trusted leader, show.com, but we always have one final question. It’s a trusted leader show Kent who is a leader you trust and why?

Kent Senf:
Oh my gosh. Well so I guess if I’m gonna go think back to all the different leaders I’ve had and I’ve been a, I’ve been blessed to be a part of, probably one of the ones that stands out most to me is a personal one, a guy named Bob or Robert Robert Radcliff. And he was the founder of AGCO corporation. And unfortunately he passed away in 2017, but I was very fortunate to, to work with him when I was at AGCO years, years ago. And one of the reasons why I probably liked his leadership style the most is he was very, very performance oriented David, and he knew the numbers extraordinarily well, but one thing that stands out and stands firm with me in thinking about RA Bob rat Ratliff, excuse me, was that one day he came up to me and he said, Kent how’s things going. And I said, well, you know, Bob, we’re a hundred and X percent of plan and we’re we’re doing this. Cause I knew he was a very performance based person and he had these big, huge hands and he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, no, Kent, what I ask you is how are you doing? I can read the numbers too.

David Horsager:
Powerful, cared about you. Mentee who

Kent Senf:
Cared about me,

David Horsager:
Kent. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing with all of our guests and our audience. This there’s lots more we could say. I’m just so grateful for our friendship. All the good work you’re doing in work and in play at home and around the world. So thank you so much for joining us. This has been the trusted leader show until next time stay trusted.