Tag Archives: Nicaragua

In the End

In the end, organizational strengthening is all about respect, care and love.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve departed a bit from my usual observations about our work in Nicaragua and focused instead on some of the content from The Gathering of Games, the national open-book management conference in St. Louis.  The themes from that conference- knowing the organization’s numbers, broad participation of all members and the power of people working together- are so basic and essential that I thought they were worth the amplification.  So if the essays here of late have sounded a bit academic or instructional, well, I confess that they should have!

In the end, though, building a successful organization is not about any specific leadership methodology or magical program that will cure all organizational ills; organizations are far too diverse for any single strategy to fit all of them.  But if we could take the time to examine the most successful approaches to organizational strengthening, to “peel away” the layers of public relations and hype and esoteric terms, we’d most often find three elements: respect, care and love. Continue reading In the End

Culture, With Three C’s

I referenced here last week in my entry, “It’s All In the Game,” that The Gathering of Games Conference is one that is full of energy and, frankly, full of joy.  It sounds strange to refer to a business conference in those terms, but I think they’re appropriate descriptions.  First-time attendees like my Nicaraguan colleague Rene Mendoza recognize it immediately and cannot help but comment upon it.   In fact, I overheard one participant ask, “Where does all that energy come from?”

The answers to that question could take many forms, because there are many ingredients that constitute such a sense of excitement, including the personalities of the attendees themselves.  But one of the conference break-out sessions provided one perspective that I thought stated the organizational reality pretty well.  It’s not a formula, but wisdom seldom presents itself that way.  In this case, the insight comes in the form of three C’s:

CHARACTER

However one might try to define it, character is the glue that holds organizations together.  Even if an organization is temporarily performing acceptably, that performance will be negated in the presence of motives that are personal to its leaders.  Leadership lack of character cripples organizations.

Some leaders simply love the power or their position and the ability to manipulate others with it.  Some seek their own self-promotion.  Others might recognize the chance to leverage their authority for the sake of a few.  And within these instances, the seeds of mistrust, doubt, fear and indecision take root to destroy organizational hope.  It may be assumed that leaders will deeply respect the responsibility entrusted to them, but character is not always sound or automatic.

The character of an organization- its sustainability and chances for positive impacts- is shaped by the character of its leaders and followers alike.  Where members seek to serve as good stewards of their authority and resources, their organizations have a much better chance of surviving and thriving into the future.  And good stewardship simply means the motivation to nurture and protect the the interests of all members and the community-at-large.  It’s the care exercised when members have entrusted to their leaders their economic, social, cultural and community futures for safe-keeping.  Character is the measure of how any of us cares for such precious matters.  “Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.”

COMPETENCE

Of course, organizations must possess the intellectual and energy resources to accomplish their objectives.  But before anyone dismisses this need as too obvious, consider the kind of competence needed.

First, there is the need for the personal competence of the organization’s members.  In a corporation or non-profit entity, members are hired according to the specific knowledge or experience they can contribute to the institution’s success.  In a cooperative or non-profit, members are added according to the specific knowledge or experience they can contribute to the organization’s success; the members must be added on the basis of their common objectives with the other members, and their willingness to contribute personally to the strength of the group.  Too often, organizations are weighed down by the tonnage of unwilling and therefore incompetent members, people who have joined only for the benefits and none of the work.

Secondly, the organization itself has to demonstrate competence.  Throughout its ranks of members, the organization has to ensure that every player is is clear about what is expected.  In successful enterprises, organizations are specific in emphasizing the needs for everyone’s contributions, that without each member supplying his or her piece of the puzzle, the picture can never be completed.

Competence also builds upon the need for the right character.  Character, and all of the expectations of it, can be a learned attribute like any other.  When individuals and their organizations become clear about the need for certain competencies, a high level of ethical behaviors rises to the top of the list.  Such actions only become the norm when the organizational culture expects it.

Finally, if the organization has acquired or developed essential competencies, it can begin to work on business competence.  In short, the members must know, truly understand, how the organization will succeed.  Members have to know the “business equation,” what actions will drive success, what each of them must contribute.   If each player in the game does not have such insight, they might well be playing a different game altogether.  And when members are playing by different rules, seeking different outcomes, the organization loses.

CONSISTENCY

As if the first two matters of character and competence weren’t demanding enough, it turns out that when our organizations have finally experienced success, it’s not enough.  Exercise of stewardship character and personal/organizational competence have to become the habits of a successful organization, practiced, repeated and refined consistently by its members.  Habits are no more than repeated patterns of behavior, and every act by every individual every day has the potential to become habit, good or bad.  Strong organizational consistency is the ability to reinforce the strengthening habits and eliminate the weakening ones.  The best organizations have discovered the importance of teaching its members the differences between the two.

Like competence, consistency builds upon the issue of character.  The strongest organizations maintain a reliably consistent posture with regard to issues of integrity; there are no “situational ethics” which permit decisions that are not in keeping with the organization’s character.  And the greater the consistency of character, the easier it becomes to demand the same of every member.  There are no exceptions to what is right.

The three C’s described above constitute a big part of the high energy experienced at The Gathering.  People become naturally enthusiastic in environments where there is trust, where members can be confident that their teammates have accepted their responsibilities, and that such behaviors can be counted upon day after day.

It’s true for organizations in the U.S. and ones in Nicaragua.  It’s true for businesses and non-profits.  It’s true for secular and church.  It’s true everywhere because it resonates with the human soul.  Organizational environments like these free people to become more than they may have thought possible.  That awakening creates energy, and makes the hallways at The Gathering alive with dreams….

 

 

It’s All In the Game

I’ve just returned from a particularly interesting business conference, “The Gathering of Games,” with a colleague of mine from Nicaragua.  Rene Mendoza is the Interim Director of NITLAPAN, an institute specializing in research on and the creation and publicizing of new, local, rural and urban development models and methodologies.  We thought that the themes from the Gathering- teaching financial transparency, broad participation, engagement of an organization’s people- fit closely with the development workshops that Rene and his colleagues have undertaken recently with rural coffee cooperatives supported by Winds of Peace.  We were not disappointed: the wide range of organizations and speakers represented at the conference of over 400 participants provided story after story of transformational success, with results to make even the skeptics say “wow.”

The Great Game of Business is the title of both a book and a movement.  (If you haven’t acquainted yourself with the concept and the company, I urge you to do so.)  But it also stands for some of the most basic needs of organizational life and development, whether in a business, a government agency, a non-profit or other organizational model.  Come to think of it, they’re pretty good guides for personal life, as well.  And within the simplicity of these basic ideas lies the unqualified success of the concept.  In short, they change not only the organizations that people inhabit, but the lives of the people themselves.

Rule Number 1: Know and Teach the Rules.

Every organization- every organism, in fact- has a formula for success.  There are certain things that have to happen in order to experience surviving and thriving into the future.  For all too many organizations, those rules, those keys for success, are known to only a few.  Maybe it’s because it’s because things have always been done that way.  Perhaps access to such knowledge is regarded as a “perk” to a select few in the organization, a sort of “special secret” made available as a badge of honor to high-ranking members.  Or just possibly, these essentials are simply unknown to the majority of people in an organization and there has been no perceived need to know them, that they are, in fact, the province and concern of others.

Whatever the reason, when organizations reserve the understanding of the success equation to only a few, the organization has limited itself, and sometimes fatally so.  To play any game, the entire team has to know the rules, what strategy is being followed and how to score.  It’s not enough for only some players to know, because they’re not always the ones who are capable of scoring.

If I don’t know the rules, it’s essential for me to learn them.  If my colleague doesn’t know the rules, it’s essential for me to teach him/her.  We only win together.

Rule Number 2: Follow the Action and Keep Score.

The only way to know whether we’re winning is by keeping score.  In a cooperative, it might be measured by how much harvest is produced, or how much is paid for it.  In a business, it could be the total sales made, or what kind of profit was generated.  For a non-profit, it ought to be a measure of the impact made in the lives of its clients, however measured.  Whatever the enterprise, it’s not really worth undertaking unless there’s a means to measure the outcomes.

But it turns out that those final outcomes are also made up of many smaller actions, activities contributed by every member of the organization, in some way, big or small. And before we can expect to measure positive outcomes on that final scoreboard, we need to be tracking those smaller, individual contributions that make up the final score.  That’s the responsibility, the duty, of every organizational member to every other member.  It’s the fabric that holds the organization together, that makes it strong or weak, that allows it to grow into the future.

Sometimes it’s hard for individuals to feel personal responsibility for an organization populated by many others; it’s easier to let others take on the obligations.  But that’s like asking a teammate to do all of his work as well as yours, while expecting the same rewards in the end.  It’s not fair, and it doesn’t work.  Being engaged- following every bit of action- is the price that each of us must pay in order to win.  It’s what feeds the scoreboard.

Rule Number 3: Everyone Needs A Stake in the Outcome.

There are no hangers-on in successful organizations (or at least, not many or for long).  That’s why a stake in the outcome is critical to organization strength.  And that stake in the final score comes about in at least two ways.

First, a stake comes about by an individual and all members investing themselves in the organizational group.  It requires a commitment, a pledge, a willingness to do the things that must be done in order to succeed.  If all the planning, or all the financial support, or all of the field work is done by someone else, it’s hard to feel any sense of ownership of an enterprise.  But it’s that sense of ownership, the pride in having something that belongs to you, which drives people through the difficult times and allows for no quit.  Care for an organization only happens when its members have invested a piece of themselves in it.

Second, a stake comes about in the form of rewards, the reason that people invest in the first place.  And on any team, if anyone wins, everyone must win.  If a World Cup soccer or World Series baseball team paid only a few of its members after victory, that team would dissolve in chaos and anger.  Other organizations are no different. It’s neither just nor sustainable to allow only a few to reap the benefits that have been created by the many.  And there is no more certain way for a team, a coop, a business or any organization to fall apart than to allow an individual or group of leaders or a family to be rewarded with benefits that belong to the entire group.

It turns out that organizational development is the great game.  Behind the three basic rules above, there are a myriad of techniques and methodologies designed to build trust and values and genuine caring for one another, and I’ll address some of those in the days to come.  But for starters, the week just ended has affirmed for us that it all begins with the three very simple and wrenchingly-difficult tenets above.

As is true for many games, sometimes it comes down to how badly one team wants to win….

 

 

The Last Firefly

I’ve been enjoying one of Nature’s great phenomena, the common firefly, as it lives out its cycle of life this summer in our yard.  At dusk, these small flies emerge from somewhere in the grass or trees and commence with a light show that is every bit as remarkable as any laser extravaganza.  Every ten seconds or so, every one of the thousands of fireflies lights its abdomen for a second, performing its best to attract a mate, doing what it must to survive and thrive.  It’s a daunting task, this, considering the scores of competitors who are trying to achieve the same attractive result.  But the effect for those of us in audience is astonishing: hundreds of tiny flashlights in orchestrated choreography through the deepening darkness of evening.

I can watch the dance for hours.  Their performances are limited to a short time, so the time for appreciation is limited.  But every night their appearance is as fresh and mystical as the previous night, as if I had never witnessed their tiny, plaintive dots of light ever before.  On special occasion, one might even choose to light on my outstretched hand, as if looking for a momentary place to rest from constant flight and flash.  And when it happens, I am touched, in the same way as when in the presence of a giant redwood tree or eye-to-eye with a penguin or beholding some other treasure of Nature.

There are lots of people who have never seen a firefly.  Fireflies aren’t visible everywhere, so when describing their short summer life, I might encounter quizzical looks and expressions of surprise; there is always wonder at things we don’t fully understand.  Folks are usually surprised to learn that they can be found around the world, even in places where one would not expect.  (However, they are not found everywhere in the U.S.  No one is really certain about why this is so.)

Fireflies have an elemental quality about them.  Ask anyone familiar with “lightning bugs,” as they are sometimes called, and he/she is likely to tell you stories of warm summer nights, during a simpler time in life, of following the luminescence where it would lead, of loving the feel of at least the memories, if not the realities.  (We like to cling to the recollections which make us feel best; the harsh ones fade with time.)  Fireflies, like most awakenings to Nature, fill us with questions and wonder.  They have always been with us, as I suppose they will always be.

I find that there is a great deal to learn by watching fireflies.  It’s not so much that I know a great deal about them or that I’d really like to be a firefly, for that would be a dangerous thing!  There are too many predators who prey on the small to warrant that desire.  But observing their flashing, silent drifting on the night air always gives me pause, to reflect, to wonder, to be grateful, to be humble, to recognize my own life from the center of this sometimes-puzzling creation we inhabit.  I’ve discovered quite a bit about myself, just sitting in the yard with these tiny lights around me.  If you’ve never had the opportunity to be immersed in such illumination, I can highly recommend the experience as breathtaking, even fulfilling, to all one’s senses.

And so with the passage of summer into August, fireflies begin to dim their accents.  It’s not that they will go away forever, but that my awareness of them will fade for a time, until the next generation emerges to remind me of both their plight and radiant joy.  Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t see them very often which endears them to me, makes their life cycles both unremarkable and yet inspiring at the same time.  Whatever the reason, I have come to treasure fireflies.  And later this month, when I find myself on the front porch tracking what could be the last firefly of the season, I know that it’s life-light signals the reality of generations yet to come….

 

 

 

 

A Voice for the Poor

I attended a forum recently where the topic of discussion centered on the notion of happiness, and the elements that contribute to that state of mind.  As someone who thinks of himself as a “happy” person (however one might choose to define that term), I’m always interested in learning more about where that attitude comes from and what makes some of us more that way than others.  Discussions about the topic are always interesting because it’s a subject that virtually everyone has feelings about, and our perspectives about our happiness are so diverse.  Nonetheless, the makeup of this group proved to be without great diversity: caucasian, middle-to-upper class, college-educated, and  I can’t say that anyone presented a startling new view.  But I did come away with an affirmed belief about happiness and the poor.

At some point in the discussion, as they inevitably do, the topics of wealth and income inequality were broached.  “Money does not assure happiness,” someone observed, and I thought of Santa Maria de Wasaka in Nicaragua where there are few financial resources of any sort.  “But a base level of income to meet essential needs is a given for that statement,” our facilitator amended, and I called to mind the women of Genesis cooperative who worked on their dreams every day, and often without compensation.  “CEOs make way too much money,” a woman observed, and I thought about the earnings threshold of $2 a day for many Nicaraguans.  “The wealthy are unfairly vilified today, and they do a lot of good works,” responded another, and I contemplated what a billion dollars might look like.  “Poor people are still happy, though, because they have learned to be content with what they have,” commented one.  “They lead happy lives,”  and I couldn’t help but wonder what my Nicaraguan acquaintances might have said in response to such a claim.

It was an interesting discussion, to be sure.  But for those of us in the group, the nature of the debate was largely academic; there were no poor people sitting around our table to talk about their happiness.  It’s easy to make sweeping statements about our relative happiness- and the presumed happiness of people living a planet away- when  we’ve just come from breakfast (really more than we should eat) in the latest Nike shoes.  The fact is that there were certain voices missing from the conversation and I felt great unease, unhappiness, in not being able to adequately represent those who were missing.

Measures of happiness, including statistics about health, education, longevity, social mobility and literacy, among others, are relatively easy to quantify.  We can get our arms around such statistics and critique their meaning as well well as their shortcomings, and whether they truly provide us with a clear representation of people’s happiness.  We can even soften the vaguely uneasy feeling that many in the world are not nearly as happy as we are.  We can rationalize the stats and make them suit our own biases and opinions.  But a voice for the poor would have brought a new dimension to our understanding.  Getting our arms around that person, that reality, would have proven far more difficult than merely speculating about happiness.  Staring truth in the face often has that impact on us.

A more complete understanding of happiness, in our own lives and the lives of others, derives from being able to know truths other than our own.  We are not required to become poor to know poverty, but we do have to confront it face-to-face.  We are not required to become despairing in order to know unhappiness, but we have to get close enough to feel the oppressive weight of need in order to assess our own posture.  If we are not personally possessed of this experiential understanding in ourselves, then we need the voice of one who has lived in such shadows to help us illuminate our own journey of understanding.  Or at least a voice to remind us that there is a wide range in this scale of happiness, and many are quite far distant from where we find ourselves.

In the roundtable, I spoke of Nicaragua.  I talked of the poor I have met.  I contrasted their realities with those experienced by the rest of us.  But it was a weak voice that spoke and I need to learn how to do better.  In their absence, the poor deserve it.  Those who have not experienced it personally deserve it, as a testimony to truth.  We owe it to ourselves if we seek to know reality and understand something like happiness.

Being a voice for the poor.  It’s the highest calling, the highest honor, I can imagine….

The Name of the Game

For several years now, Winds of Peace has considered the idea of attending a business conference here in the U.S. with one or more Nicaraguan colleagues.  We’ve come close to doing it, but the timing never seemed just right for what we were doing at the moment.  This year, the timing is right.  This is the year that Winds of Peace Foundation (represented by me), along with Nicaraguan researcher and social scientist Rene Mendoza, will attend the high-energy, capitalist-cultivating, profits-driven Gathering of the Games.

That’s right.  WPF, focused on women, Indigenous, rural poor and education initiatives in Nicaragua, will wade into the alluring waters of one this country’s premier conferences for building capitalist thinking and understanding.  But before you think that the Foundation has somehow lost its bearings or commitment to local solutions for local problems in Nicaragua, allow me to explain.

The Gathering of the Games features the art and practice of open-book management, the best and most effective means of engaging members of any organization.  It is the outgrowth of the management approach at SRC Holdings and which gave birth to the bestselling management book, The Great Game of Business, by Jack Stack.    In short, the strategy behind this concept is to help each member of the business organization learn how the enterprise makes money, and what every member needs to know in order to make his/her specific contribution to the success of the whole.  It’s a process that I embraced in my business life and one that I feel could have application in Nicaraguan organizations, especially cooperatives.

But transplanting open-book management to Nicaraguan culture is no slam-dunk.  It isn’t that easy in U.S. businesses, either, and for many of the same reasons:  there are the ubiquitous organization leaders who are in the game for themselves;  conventional wisdom and history dictate that only a privileged few can and will make good decisions; the rank-and-file members rarely receive the education or the opportunity to learn how their enterprise really works; leaders foster feelings of dependence in the minds of their followers to affirm their importance.  The full list of obstacles is a lengthy one, which only serves to highlight the incredible successes achieved by those organizations which persevere through the challenges.

The Great Game strategy is an innovative and successful one within the businesses where it has been deployed.  The question arises, though, as to whether it can be expected to generate the same results within a rural, grassroots cooperative in the remote countryside of the second-poorest nation of the western hemisphere.  That seems a good long distance from the corporatocracy, markets and economies of the capitalist west.  It is.

But there is something in the transparency and participation of the open-book strategy that reaches beyond simply good management technique.  What is successful about the notion is that it recognizes the significance and need for every contributor of an enterprise to contribute.  It acknowledges the strength of collective wisdom and the limitations of unilateral thinking.  It embraces the individual as a critical entity rather than a disposable commodity.  It rewards participants both emotionally and economically.  And it touches something fundamental in the human hearts of people in collective work by  affirming their importance and being a part of something larger than themselves.  It suggests the spiritual dimension of life’s work, and that’s why it resonates so elementally with most of its practitioners.

There may be a temptation to think that all of this methodology would be too complex or sophisticated for a population which is severely undereducated.  But the wisdom, the beauty, of the open-book approach is that virtually everyone can understand the notion of their own work.  Whether university-educated or functionally illiterate, people at work can recognize how one activity impacts another.  That’s all that’s required to elevate the game being played.

There may be a temptation, also, to believe that neither this nor any other western-born idea should be imported into Nicaragua, where solutions to long-simmering economic troubles ought to be solved internally, through local players and ideas.  That’s true.  But good ideas don’t care where they come from, and local adaptations of innovations that have worked elsewhere in the world are still local solutions.  It’s why we have introduced the Spanish edition of The Great Game of Business.  It’s why we have refrained from teaching and touting the concept as the salvation for cooperatives and other institutions.  And it’s also why we’re bringing one of Nicaragua’s most  credible and influential researchers to a conference where he will have the opportunity to hear for himself about innovation potential from many diverse sources.  This is how the concept can become localized.

Is it asking too much?  Can The Great Game be expected to deliver in this context?  I don’t know.  I’ll ask the Great Game people when it’s over.  I’ll ask Rene when he’s had a chance to reflect.  And I’ll share it with you in September….

 

 

 

Sick In Nicaragua

I traveled to Nicaragua during the last week of June, only my second journey there this year.  When the frequency of site visits is so limited, I become especially eager to travel there and interact with partners both new and old.  In the course of such meetings I anticipate adding to my knowledge and understanding of culture and realities there; in fact, my education at the feet of my Nicaraguan teachers has provided some of the most important lessons of my life.  So my Sunday flight to Managua was filled with even greater expectations than usual.  Unfortunately, that was among the last good feelings I experienced all week!

I got sick.  For the first time in my eight years of travel to and from Nicaragua.  I could feel the headache developing by the time I boarded my connecting flight in Houston, and by the time I landed in Managua, I knew what was coming.  I checked myself in to the hotel with the growing dread of one being assaulted by the familiar sore throat-cough-congestion combination that has power to make life miserable even in the best, most comfortable circumstances.  In my case, though, it was an “assault en route” amidst plans for driving great distances among our planned stops for the week.

Monday morning awakened me with confirmation of my own diagnosis.  By Tuesday, my voice was completely absent, just at the moment when we were to be participating (verbally, of course) in a special workshop of nearly 40 coffee producers.  Any comments I wanted to make had to be written down so that Mark could add voice to them.  Maybe more importantly, I’m sure that I was only half-present.  I really wanted to be in bed to nurse my misery.

If there was any sympathy among my classmates, it surely emerged during any of the mealtimes.  I could not even contemplate breakfast.  Lunch afforded little better appetite, and the few things that I might have eaten were far from accessible at our rural site.  Dinner was a celebration, of sorts, held at the home of one of the participants and I found myself rudely unable to eat, drink or converse in any meaningful way.  I’m certain that most of my time was spent fantasizing about getting into bed for a full surrender to the lack of energy that consumed me.  One of my worst days ever!

Wednesday dawned with slightly better voice but with little additional energy, even after a long night’s rest.  By now I had acquired some cough lozenges, though, so I had hopes of at least croaking out some thoughts in this final day of the workshop.  And in fact, Mark and I were both able to contribute independently to the forum and by the end of the session I felt as though I had given up whatever energy I had, as small a consolation as it was.  Although another unwanted meal awaited us at the conclusion, I had a new objective in mind to keep me going: cough medicine.

By three in the afternoon I possessed the cherished cherry potion.  I don’t know whether its efficacy was due to its medicinal properties or a psychological boost, but at least my cough calmed itself for a few hours.  I checked into my hotel by four o’clock and I was asleep by four-thirty.

Two weeks hence, I still nurse a slight summer cough and what remains of a sick sinus; sometimes these things just seem to feel permanently at home in your chest and head.  And I find myself reflecting on a week where I could offer very little of myself or whatever energy I might bring to WPF work; was there anything redeeming or instructive in the experience of being sick in Nicaragua?

The answer, of course, is yes.  First of all, no trip to Nicaragua is in vain.  If one is only breathing, there is ample experience to take in from the everyday people met.  Just sitting in a meeting space for two days and listening to people who are trying to strategically envision their plan for meeting basic life needs through their work is a humbling and yet strangely energizing feeling.  The human spirit is moved when face-to-face with needs of intensity; it’s no less true in the face of illness. I have little doubt that had I been home bed this week I would have felt worse and strengthened slower than I did surrounded by my Nicaraguan classmates.

Second, there is something redemptive in persevering in one’s work despite an illness.  There is the value of being able to tell stories about it or write blog posts to tout one’s determination and resolve, of course.  But there is also value in being required to push oneself, even if at half-speed, and to recognize that the world is full of people pushing themselves daily against circumstances that render them even less than half-speed.  A cold is one thing; hunger, want and despair are far greater illnesses being fought.

Third, I will not soon forget that during the final, verbal evaluation of the workshop, as participants were relating their most important “take-aways” from the workshop, at least four of them cited ideas or lessons that either Mark or I had shared.  For these people, at least, our presence was not a waste of time or exercise in futility, but rather an important component in their struggles to understand how their cooperatives, their lives, might be made to work better.

I’ve got to constantly remind myself that trips to Nicaragua are not about me or how I feel, but about  those who seek to learn….

 

Dear Coop

Dear Coop:

I was very happy to meet with you once more; I hope that far less time goes by before my next visit, because sometimes absences can be corrosive for healthy relationships.  It’s much easier to imagine things about one another- good or bad- when we’re not often together.

You have experienced a difficult year, to be sure. You have struggled with several internal governance issues that are pivotal for your future direction.  You have faced a brutal attack on the coffee plants by the coffee rust disease that has decimated your harvests.  Your cooperative has taken on significant debt, just at a time when economic resources have become very tight.  At times, you must wonder if there is any future for the cooperative and, if so, whether it will be worth your effort to participate.  I have some ideas about that which I thought I should share with you, even though I’m just a North American visitor to your part of Nicaragua.

First, about those governance issues.  There is no better time to repair them than now.  Organizations always seem to have management problems that need fixing.  Most often, they come about when an individual or small group of members assume more authority and power than they’re entitled to.  As a result,  they are inclined to become less open, less transparent, with the other members of the coop.  They begin to make decisions without a broad consensus.  And in time, the decisions that are made tend to favor that same group of decision-makers, even if the choices being made hurt others in the collective.  That seems to be at least part of what you have had to face lately, and I feel sad that you have experienced what becomes a lack of trust and confidence in your own organization.  After all, you “own” the cooperative and it should be working for the benefit of all members, not just a few.

When an organization is performing well economically enough so that everyone is benefitting, governance problems like those described above may be tolerated by the members; after all, why fix something that doesn’t seem to be broken too badly?  But when difficulties arise, the “rocks in the water” become visible and floating downstream is unsteady. The problems become more visible, more painful, less tolerable.  It seems like that’s where you are today.  So, there is no reason to delay facing the troubles and addressing their corrections.  The best time to bail out a boat is when it begins to leak!

The good news is that your repair kit is already in your hands.  Your leadership has changed. It is leadership that wants you to be part of the solution, wants you to know what is happening within the coop so that collectively the best possible decisions can be reached.  The solutions to your organizational problems are in your own hands; there is no greater wisdom about your needs, your obstacles and your future than in your own experiences.  You might not have all the answers, but if you are working together you can discover where to find them.  No one of us is as smart as all of us.  My question would be: what are you waiting for?  Your need is now.  Your new leadership is now.  The coop needs you and your commitment to make it succeed, for everyone this time.

Second, the coffee rust.  Wow, what an unexpected disaster!  I know that this fungus has been around before, but maybe never quite like this year.  You have said that partly it’s due to the weather pattern.  Or maybe from a depletion in the soil.  Others have blamed the high incidence of infestation on the lack of sufficient preventive practices of some producers.  Or even the type of coffee plant that is grown.  I’m not a biologist or coffee technician, but I suspect that the epidemic was created from a combination of all those causes.  There’s rarely a simple answer to something that has created such a massive loss.  But there is an answer, right?

It’s going to be the same thing with regard to its solution.  It’s unlikely that any one answer is going to prevent a reoccurrence of another disastrous harvest.  But there are answers, as proven by some of your colleague producers who suffered far less damage this year.  It may require a commitment to invest more than in the past.  In turn, that may require a deferral of certain purchases or expenses for personal goods.  But whatever the solutions may prove to be, they will be far more effective, far more consistent, if you decide to adopt them as a community of coop members.  That suggests learning from one another- coop to coop- more than in the past; it’s like having free answers to problems just by talking with one another.  I guess I’m back to the organization issue: you’re much stronger together than you can possibly be apart.  Winds of Peace commissioned a study on the causes of the rust problem earlier this year.  I think it’s important reading, if you haven’t already seen it.  Let me know if you need to have a copy of it.

Third, this debt of yours that seems way too big to ever conquer.  I know that it looks unsurmountable, and that the holders of the debt might even be threatening the coop with all kinds of legal actions and consequences.  But I think taking action from a posture of panic can lead to some pretty bad results.  So I’d suggest addressing the issue with great deliberation and care, not speed and reaction.

For starters, Winds of Peace has continued its commitment to you in one form or another, so that’s a positive.  We’re not in a position to remove all of your debt, for sure.  But having an initial partner, an initial sum from which to work, we at least have a chance of getting through the storm represented by debt.  You have some technical expertise available through consultants and organizations who really want to see you succeed.  You’ve even got resources for legal help to discover a solution that can work for everyone involved, IF the coop is willing to do what it takes to survive.  I’m not saying that’ll be easy or pleasant or a short-term answer.  But few things of lasting value ever are.  I happen to believe that your coop is worth keeping.  I have the confidence and faith in your collective abilities, otherwise Winds of Peace wouldn’t be partnering with you in the ways that we are.  But the work is yours, and it will be difficult.

Well, I guess I’ve said more than I ought to in this letter.  After all, it’s easy for an outsider to give lots of opinions.  After having my say, I get to walk away and can forget the tasks that you have.  But I won’t.  I think about you every day, with the hope and the belief that the opportunity you still have in front of you is worth fighting for.  And I’ll keep paying attention until you either decide to give up or reach success.  Let me know how things are going!

Sincerely,

Steve