Lesson 2: Introduction to the Messy Middle

As we noted in the introductory zoom meeting you either attended or watched the recording, we designed this course to help you to address your stress. Research has shown that having a plan can bring you peace of mind and provides you opportunities that you would not be able to recognize or act on in a timely basis if you didn’t have plans. We want to provide you the structure, the space and time and the facilitators for you to develop a plan that addresses the ‘farm challenge’ that you and your farm partners/family members feel will make the most positive impact for your farm and for you. ​

You will work through some materials in the next lessons that will help you further describe where you and your farm are now. ​

This program is going to be implemented over a few weeks. Thoughtful and impactful planning takes time, and it takes mental energy. I don’t know about you, but these types of meetings can feel more exhausting than a long day of physical labor on the farm. So, we’re going to take it slow and build on the activities as we move through each step. With that in mind, I want to caution you that you may very well be feeling a bit unsettled as you continue this course. 

Feeling unsettled and perhaps not having a clear direction of what to do next brings us to the Messy Middle. The Messy Middle is a term I first learned about from a Brené Brown podcast, Brené on Day 2, as the term for the middle of any experience where things get rocky, or we hit a wall. She compares it to a three-day conference. Day One is all excitement about new ideas, concepts, and new possibilities. Day Two is the “oh, crap, how is this going to work in reality” day.  But we need Day Two to get to Day Three.  When thinking about this in regard to group decision-making, Sam Kaner and his colleagues call it the “Groan Zone” in their book, Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. This is the time after differing ideas and opinions are voiced and there isn’t a clear path on how to take the best pieces of each idea and synthesize it into a decision or a plan.​

 

​You may need a facilitator or someone outside the business and family to help you move through the Messy Middle – which is where deeper conversations and mutual understanding of the needs of the farm and farm members can be discovered. Mutual understanding can lead you out of the Messy Middle into the right side of the drawing, where the best of all the ideas and opinions are examined to decide which one or combination of them will best address the issue or stressor you’re trying to address – and when that’s done, the fun part of planning and acting on decisions can happen. ​

But if you try to avoid the Messy Middle, you risk leaving great ideas on the table unexamined and you risk leaving key people out of the decision-making process. 

​The main points are when you get to the Messy Middle:​

• Don’t panic! And now you have a name for that unsettled feeling so you can acknowledge it and dig in a little deeper. ​
• Resist the urge to go back to the left side and pick an idea because that feels comfortable.​
• Resist the urge to skip over the Messy Middle – and think you’re fast forwarding the process – you need to the Messy Middle!​
• True group decision-making has to have a messy middle​
• Remember we’re building upon these activities to have a better plan at the end. ​

To learn more about the Messy Middle in the context of farm succession planning go to the article The Messy Middle of Farm Succession Planning.​

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