The Logjam Testing Question—Setting Priorities, Creating Clarity, and Motivating Action

Ann Adams

Around 25 years ago I earned approximately $150,000 in a month by digging footers for the supports under my doublewide manufactured home. I suspect I may never make such a good hourly wage again. How did I do it? With an army trenching shovel—and analyzing what the logjam was that kept me from my holistic goal.

If you’re like me, you wake up in the morning with a list of at least 50 things on your to do list. I’ve read a variety of books that tell you how to prioritize and give you key principles to follow like, “first things first.” I think I’ve actually always been pretty good at prioritizing on the day-to-day stuff, but I was lacking the strategic focus that would get me to the next level until I started practicing Holistic Management and learned about Holistic Financial Planning.

Lots of folks have heard about Holistic Management and think it’s about increasing your stocking rate or improving land health. It is about that, but it is also a lot more than that. To me the power of this decision making and resource management process is in making decisions towards your holistic goal and helping you prioritize your time, energy, and money. The key is in actually testing decisions and building your financial and business plans in line with your holistic goal.

Core Values

In essence, the holistic goal is like a decision compass. It’s a very simple tool that keeps you on track even when there is a ton of stuff clamoring for your attention and you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the work to do and all the choices you have to make. It works because you have articulated your core values and you can refer to them anytime you aren’t clear what decision to make.

Herb Kelleher, the longest-serving CEO of Southwest Airlines, said the reason for Southwest’s success as an airline was because they were THE low-fare airline. Their core value was to reduce costs anywhere they could. When anyone in that company was making any decision, they just referred to that core value and knew what the right decision was. Great companies know what their core values are. Great families and small businesses do as well.

The first step in creating your decision-making compass is for you and whoever else is making decisions for your operation and household to sit down and inventory your resource base (don’t forget the people and skills you have as well as land, inventory, money, equipment and other tangible assets). Now you have a clear picture of what you are managing as well as who is influencing you and who you are influencing so you effectively manage it.

The next step is to begin writing your holistic goal. I thought it was actually a very simple process, but I think a lot about my values and how to live them. The challenge is if you’ve never thought or talked about what you value or want in life. Those who have already had those conversations find it pretty easy to write their holistic goal. Those who haven’t, find this process to be rewarding and challenging as they explore those ideas with each other. You must ask yourselves: How do we want to live our lives right now? What do we value? Most folks can agree on such statements as: “We want good relationships, profit from meaningful work.” Each statement must reflect what each decision maker values.

Once you have written down your quality-of-life statements, you have to figure out how you are going to produce that quality of life. What are the beliefs, behaviors, and processes that will help? These statements might be: “We will be thoughtful and creative in production and use of money and resources. We will take time for self, friends, neighbors, and community.” Make sure you write down at least one of those beliefs, behaviors, or processes statement that addresses each quality-of-life statement.

Lastly, you need to think long-term so you don’t make a decision based only on the short-term. How do you want the landscape or natural resources that you influence to be 50 years from now? Do you want healthy soil and water with lots of diversity? How do you need to be perceived by all those people in your resource base (that circle of influence)? Do you want to be perceived as honest, generous, and positive? How does the community around you have to be to support that quality of life? Good economic opportunity? Good social services? We call this part of the holistic goal, the Holistic Vision.

I’ve kept this introduction to setting a holistic goal pretty short because I know you are all dying to find out about the $150,000. Some folks think creating this decision compass is some touchy-feely thing. It can be. But for those of us that want results, you can’t find a better tool to get people motivated to do what needs to be done. You can learn more about how to figure out your logjam in the workbook, At Home with Holistic Management. Which brings me back to digging those footers.

Huge Savings

Twenty-five years ago, I was stuck with a 10% real estate contract on 85 acres and a doublewide. The overhead of that real estate contract was killing me and I couldn’t see any way out. I had just gone through some Holistic Management training and we had focused on the logjam test which asks: “Is there something that is creating a logjam and keeping you from making steady progress toward your holistic goal.”

I had a decent enough life, but there were things I wanted to do that I didn’t have time for because I was always working just to make ends meet. So, I looked at my holistic goal and how I wanted my life to be. Then I started looking at all the things that were causing life to be challenging and keeping me from it. As I looked at it, I realized that the real estate contract was the biggest thing holding me back (that high overhead). I didn’t want to sell and move, so I started exploring options.

The first option was to get a mortgage with a lower interest rate instead of the real estate contract. Mortgage rates were at 7% at the time. The problem was that the only mortgage company I could find that would also finance land was only willing to mortgage 40 acres. It also needed the manufactured home to be approved by a structural engineer as “real estate” (i.e. on cement footers and tied down). I called around to see who did such things and found out it was people who charged a lot of money for such services. Money I didn’t have.

So, I found out exactly what was necessary and went under the house and started digging footers for each of the cement pilings on which the house was resting. I would have to say the first day of being underneath a house digging a hole with a small shovel in a very confined space made me wonder if it was really worth the effort. Smashing my knuckles against the steel girders above made me question it more. Cracking my head against them made me take a break for the rest of the day.

But each time I’d be on the verge of quitting, I’d think about my holistic goal and my logjam and crawl back in again. Luckily, the day I came face to face with a mutually-surprised salamander was also the last day of digging footers. Then I called in my resource base. It was my birthday and I asked everyone I knew to celebrate with me by mixing cement and creating a cement brigade to haul it in under the house and pour the footers. Most of those folks are still my friends, and we can reminisce about our “Great Escape” experience.

The whole experience was like the movie “The Great Escape” in which the Allied soldiers are totally focused on getting out of the German POW camp. Like them, I was trying to escape an oppressive force that was keeping me from living the quality of life I wanted. Some prisoners felt the safe bet was to live out the war in the camp, waiting to be rescued. In my situation, I knew there wasn’t anyone who was going to rescue me.

My holistic goal and the logjam test showed me what I needed to do if I wanted out. How I went about doing it was up to me. Seeing the possibility sparked my creativity and encouraged me to use my resource base to address that priority with persistence, even when the going got tough. It helped me get the refinance dropping my monthly payments by 40% and pay off 45 acres of the land free and clear.

All told, that refinance earned me $150,000 with that payoff and I have probably doubled that total with my ability to invest money in other assets as well over the intervening years. It never would have happened if I hadn’t sat down with my holistic goal and figured out what was keeping me from living the life I wanted and knowing where I needed to prioritize my time, energy, money, and creativity.