While many senior executives continue to talk about the "voice of the customer," few demonstrate their commitment to this concept by spending time with customers. Many continue to use their intuition or `golden gut' in their attempt to provide superior customer value. Unfortunately, `senior executive intuition' is rarely attuned to the needs of their customers. While the competitive environment continues to intensify, executives have cut back on the time devoted to customers just when it should be increasing. This article discusses the need for senior executives to spend time with customers and provides examples of the benefits that this approach will provide.

The measures provided by Roy's safety-first rule are popular among farmers managing their short- and long-term business risks associated with various no-till transition strategies over an investment horizon. The short-run rule provides more sensitivity to inter-year financial risk than other commonly used criteria. Results have revealed that the speed of adoption has influenced the probability of successful transition more than the sequence of drill acquisition methods; higher equity and larger farms have a greater chance of transition success; and the slow acreage expansion with a custom or rental drill reduces risk until a no-till yield penalty is eliminated.

Despite considerable methodological progress in the past (Buschena and Zilberman), there has been a concern that standard risk analytical methods including expected utility/ stochastic dominance have not been practical for agricultural extension use (Just and Rausser; Selley and Wilson; Anderson and Mapp). Castle cited a need to fill the ‘communication gap’ between farm managers and risk analysts. A survey by Selley and Wilson indicate that many producers want to know specific strategies and probabilities of success or failure. Safety-first rules, which explicitly consider probability of experiencing an unfavorable outcome, have been recognized as a viable alternative (Hardaker, Huirne and Anderson; Dillon and Anderson; Buschena and Zilberman).

Among the three variants of the safety-first rule (Katoka; Telser; Roy), Roy’s rule which minimizes the probability of falling below a critical level of net cash flow is the simplest. Telser’s and Katoka’s rules require potential challenging elicitation of safety constraints and do not report performance as a simple probability of adverse outcome. Selley and Wilson reported that ‘expected frequencies/probabilities’, as in Roy’s rule, ranked 1st in a survey of 229 extension and research faculty as their preferred tools in risk education programs. Among the risk education tools evaluated in the survey, expected utility and stochastic dominance ranked much lower in communicating risk information to farmers and ranchers. Indeed, even faculty with predominantly research appointments reported probabilities as their favored communication tool in outreach work.

An Operational Approach for Evaluating Investment Risk: An Application to the No-till Transition, short- and long-term business risks, methodological progress, risk analysts, frequencies/probabilities, Safety-first rules, agricultural extension.