Lucy’s learnings from the Advancing Beef Leaders (ABL) program
Our Client Manager, Lucy McGilvray, is currently a third of the way through Advancing Beef Leaders (ABL), a tailored leadership and professional development program for emerging producer and community leaders.
Following a recent supply chain tour through Toowoomba, Brisbane and surrounds, we caught up with Lucy for a Q&A about the program.
What have you learnt about the beef supply chain through ABL? Did anything surprise you?
The power of good leadership, good workplace culture and a good team has been a recurring message throughout ABL so far. It’s something I feel very fortunate to have within Black Box, but it’s also very interesting to see how this is put into practice in other businesses.
Many producers are happy to be honest about their experiences within the industry, the problems they have faced and how they’ve overcome these challenges or are working to do so. Being in an open and honest environment really prompted rawness among the group of participants, and demonstrated the power of sharing experiences and knowledge, and gaining a different perspective.
Despite Black Box already working hard to provide an avenue to support information sharing across the supply chain, it was still very surprising to learn about the disjointed flow of information along the supply chain; an issue for the processor can be completely unbeknownst to the producer and vice versa.
Tell us more about the supply chain tour.
As part of the tour, we got to visit Rangelands Quality Meats, JBS’ Dinmore processing facility, Stockyard Beef’s Kerwee Feedlot, and Jim’s Jerky.
At each visit on the tour, we had the opportunity to hear from the leaders of each business about their experience within the industry and, in particular, their leadership journey.
How will you apply these learnings to the work you do at Black Box?
Learning about the importance of leadership and how different people within the industry view leadership has been a great catalyst for reflecting on the leadership at Black Box and makes me even more grateful for the team I’m part of. Shannon and Emma are both perfect examples of what was highlighted as such important and powerful skills and traits of quality leaders in the industry, such as:
Willingness to just have a good crack
Setting an example
Accountability
Integrity
Network and equip yourself with all the tools available
Respect and value your workers as a team
What else have you learnt during the ABL program, and what are you looking forward to for the remainder of the program?
Power of learning
Power of networking
What a great industry we are in
The value of identifying your vision and goals, both personally and within the industry
Through the program, I now have a team of 22 wonderful contacts, ready to make change within the industry, ready to help me whenever I need them, and ready to team up to fight for what we believe for the industry - something I think is so powerful.
Anything else you’d like to add about ABL?
A big thank you to the key sponsors, Meat & Livestock Australia, Rabobank and Meridian Ag for their involvement, and to the ABL Foundation Board for all the hard work behind the scenes.
It truly has been a revolutionary experience for me, giving me confidence, equipping me with tools and providing a platform from which we can bounce off for the betterment of the industry and our leadership goals within it.
