Sep 18, 2023
By Rick McNary
Two of the most difficult parts of managing Shop Kansas Farms (SKF) for the last three and a half years has been maintaining the original vision to connect people to farmers so they can purchase the food they raise and maintaining civility. That we have been successful with both is neither an accident nor a stroke of luck; there are underlying leadership principles that guided us through creating civility in this community.
I have been a student and practitioner of leadership for almost four decades. Early on, I learned one of the most practical leadership lessons on creating unity out of chaos and confusion that has become a daily way I approach, analyze and assess almost every part of life.
How to create unity out of chaos
Whenever you gather people together, it is easy to slip into chaos. Chaos does not necessarily mean conflict, although we had to deal with a lot of that, but I think of chaos more like confusion. People aren’t sure where the group is going, what the rules are and how they can be a part of it. To get everyone on the same page, or at least reading the same book, there are three basic steps and we have consistently applied to SKF.
Create a shared vision
When I formed the SKF Facebook group, I had to define the purpose of the group so I wrote this: To connect you to the wonderful farm and ranch families of Kansas so you can purchase the food they raise.
As you recall, I started the group during the pandemic when my wife told me the meat counter was empty at the grocery store. I knew farmers and ranchers who grew food they sold directly to consumers, and I knew friends and family were looking for new ways to purchase food, so I created SKF to connect the two.
I believe a significant part of the success of SKF is because we have stuck to that original vision, which at times has been difficult and I’ve taken some heat from both buyers and sellers.
For example, numerous farms had items they created on the farm that are part of their revenue stream like leather goods, soaps, candles, woodworking, clothing, limestone fence post carvings, metal sign carvings, consulting services, farm equipment and a host of other smart and attractive items they create. Naturally, with the number of consumers on our site, the potential for sales dramatically increases. We had farms wanting to sell non-food related items and consumers searching for the same.
We also had people wanting to sell livestock and those wanting to purchase it, but one of Facebook’s rules is they don’t allow the sale of animals of any kind. Do other groups do it? Yes, but many of those groups do not have our numbers so we’ve been justifiably concerned that if we violate that rule, Facebook will shut us down.
Furthermore, we have stuck to the idea that it must be food for human consumption. And human consumption also excludes pet food, hay and other items farms produce.
Define roles
Another requirement from Facebook was that I needed to establish at least one rule. Innocently, albeit unwisely, I started off with one simple Kindergarten rule: Be nice and share or else you’ll end up in time out.
When we exploded to 50,000 members in the first five days, I learned quickly I needed more rules because people weren’t being nice. Some decided to make it political, some decided to attack farmers for their prices or the way they raised their products, (grain finished versus grass finished; GMO versus organic), some decided to attack me and accuse me of supporting one political party over another. It turned ugly immediately.
I was not prepared for the growth. I had never managed a social media platform of such nature and was also extremely busy with my existing career. I have been involved in engaging volunteers in meal-packaging events for the hungry for more than 14 years and, the day after SKF launched, I began working with the Kansas National Guard and the Kansas Department of Emergency Management to begin packaging 10 million meals for COVID-19 relief.
I’ve described those first few weeks as being like a little kid walking along a dam and seeing a plug sticking out and wondering, what happens if I pull on this? I pulled, the dam burst, and I was suddenly drowning in a social media flood. However, three people rescued me and began helping define roles and processes: Meagan Cramer, director of marketing and communications for Kansas Farm Bureau (KFB); Nancy Brown, director of policy development for KFB; and Olivia Fletcher, a friend with tremendous wordsmith skills and social media know-how. Without those three people, SKF would not be anything like it is.
They determined the two roles of the two groups of SKF: sellers and buyers. If you were a seller, there were certain expectations about where the food came from you were trying to sell. Was it raised on your farm or a Kansas farm? Sorry, Colorado peaches don’t count as local. If you were selling meat in individual packages (roasts, packages of hamburger, steaks, etc.) did you have a KDA license?
If you were a buyer, were you searching for food raised on Kansas farms? Have you looked at previous posts? When we started the map, did you look there first?
Creating processes
After defining the roles, these three stellar friends began the arduous work of creating processes. In the first few days, I had made it possible for buyers and sellers to post whatever they wanted. Well, that was a mistake.
Meagan, Nancy and Olivia began creating rules that have kept this group a civil community. Everyone who joins must agree to the rules, although we have learned some agree to them without reading them or believing the rules apply to them. You can read the rules here.
Therefore, we required that each post follow the rules and be approved before we let it through. Those three people had full-time jobs, too, and the work they did is nothing short of heroic. We would sometimes have thousands of posts every day and sorting out whether we let them through or not was a lot of back-and-forth between us and the other moderators we added at the time like Megan Gilliland, Katie Carothers, Darrel Peterson and Caitlin Henderson.
You just wouldn’t believe how many posts we’ve sorted through, and you also wouldn’t believe how bizarre, and sometimes illegal, those posts were.
Then, of course, we had scammers and con artists. We had to learn how to work with local sheriffs in whatever county the con was going on to protect our consumers and prosecute the con. I’ve even worked with the Attorney General’s office and the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks on one certain con artist.
And I, along with our admins and moderators, were all fully employed at our day jobs.
It has not been easy to keep our vision and maintain civility, but it has certainly been worth it. While we have had some critics, the overwhelming appreciation from people for creating a safe environment has been refreshing.
We have learned that most people, like you, do want to be nice and share, and we are grateful you are a part of our community.
Please consider sharing this post with others and invite them to be a part of our community.