Tag Archives: Open Book Management

On Seeing Solutions

If you have read many of the offerings at this site, you will know that my background includes a long and in-depth relationship with employee ownership.  I served both The ESOP Association and The National Center for Employee Ownership, the national associations which promote employee ownership, was President of the Minnesota Chapter of the ESOP Association for two terms and in 1998, our employee owned company, Foldcraft, was recognized as the Outstanding Employee Owned Company in the Country.  Yes, I was immersed in ESOP.

As a result, I continue to receive newsletters and employee ownership-related materials, usually nodding in affirmation of the great performances that are featured therein.  Shared ownership worked then as it does now.  So I was not at all surprised to read the latest results of the annual Economic Performance Survey (EPS), summarized in the November 2018 issue of The ESOP Report.  Once again, employee owned companies performed exceedingly well and, in many cases, significantly outperformed their non-employee-owned peer companies.  Since the EPS was launched in 2000, the majority of responding companies have recorded increases in profits for every year but two (2002 and 2010) and increases in revenues for every year but one (2010).  The exceptions noted above reflect the nationwide economic downturns of the prior years (2001 and 2009).  Even in those challenging economic times, 29% or more of ESOP companies responding to the survey reported that profits and/or revenue increased.  And there’s the lesson for our cooperative partners in Nicaragua.

We have chosen to work within the cooperative sector by design.  For the essence of cooperativism- shared ownership- is the same motivator as in employee owned endeavors.  We have always believed in the power of collective wisdom and work; the employee ownership model simply brought some new tools and direction to the coops with whom we work.  Notions of shared benefits, transparency, broad participation, financial literacy and the importance of a cohesive cooperative culture are not natural outcomes with ownership: they each need understanding and practice.  And maybe especially that last item, culture.

As is true in the most successful employee-owned companies, the participants of a coop have an essential need to fully understand the collaborative nature of their organization.  It’s not enough to join a coop in hopes of benefitting from market presence or volume buyers.  Every coop member must understand the machinery of the coop, and the cog that each represents to keep that machinery running.  Without that individualized participation, it’s like trying to win a baseball game with a first baseman who won’t field the position, when every position is vital.  It’s what makes up a team.

But an individual’s impact on organizational culture is more than just fielding a position.  It’s the absolute knowledge that one is part of something bigger than self, that there is strength and security and a sense of “we can do anything together” that inspires and drives the group to thrive.  The strength of collaborative work fashions a safety net that is nearly impossible to replicate individually.  For organizational success, cooperative members must embrace the idea that “we are in this together.”

For Winds of Peace Foundation, that message has remained unchanged over the past dozen years of our focus on coops.  It has been the mantra of the most successful employee-owned companies in the U.S. since ESOPs came into being in the 1970’s.   If the collective efforts of a cooperative are truly in synch, and the rewards of the collective work are truly shared, stability ensues.  Members begin to recognize the rhythm of success.  Momentum builds.  The mindset of the organization transforms to one of expected progress, rather than hoped-for survival.

Cooperatives are not the mirror image of employee-owned companies.  Nicaragua is not the U.S.  But the reality of ownership is universal.  It engenders a characteristic that transcends most of the lines which separate us.  That’s why the truth of shared ownership is as real in Nica as in Nebraska.

And that, in turn, is what makes cooperatives so exceedingly important in Nicaragua today.  Challenging economic times?  With threads in the fabric of the country literally unwinding every day, the nation is in desperate need of institutions that are grounded.  Cooperatives have the ability to be just that.  They can create economic hope.  They can provide a shield of security against dangerous moments.  They can maintain a strong sense of structure when other  forms become distressed.  The coops can represent deep roots against tides that threaten to wash away the groundwork of community.  (For a deeper look into this truth, take a look at Rene Mendoza’s posting in his Articles and Research portion of our website.)

I loved the concept of employee-ownership from the first moment I heard of it.  I was amazed at the power of its best tools, broad participation, open books and financial teaching.  Thirteen years ago I became astonished to learn that the coops of Nicaragua were so similar to U.S. ESOPs in both their difficulties and their needs.

The universal nature of the power in ownership continues to this day.  I never imagined, however, that its importance and potential might figure into stabilizing an entire nation.  But a dream and a reality sometimes are one in the same….

 

 

 

Of Vision and Purpose

While we’re busy preparing for the second Certificate Program for rural cooperative members and managers, technicians, second-tier coop representatives and others, the focus is on methodologies.  After all, we’ve spent portions of the past ten years describing organizational strengthening techniques used successfully in the U.S. in hopes that it might spark interest in the Nica countrysides.  Now that rural producers have asked for greater detail about initiatives like open book management, Lean continuous improvement and organizational transparency, the workshop facilitators are eager to deliver such particulars.

As mentioned here previously, Winds of Peace will have the great good fortune to present Brian Kopas and Alex Moss,  gentlemen whose organizational experiences in the fields of organizational Lean and open book management are extraordinary, and therefore of great potential application to this Nica workshop.  They  possess enormous knowledge and practical experiences, they have already provided materials for the introduction of their topics, they are counseling us in our respective workshop presentations and they will be huge resources for the inevitable questions and challenges that are encountered during the workshop.  (Where people are intent upon learning, their questions and challenges are essential.)

But as I consider the wealth of knowledge that will be available to our audience in September, I am cognizant of another critical piece to the process of teaching and growing an audience: the vision.

Underlying all the operational processes and applications, there must be a vision, a mission, a purpose, a theme for the hard work that the attendees will encounter if they seek to bring an entirely new basket of ideas to their farms and coops.  There must be a core principle that can re-direct and drive the improvements consistently, even when the newly-acquired skills might occasionally seem to become stale or seemingly inapplicable for some  reason.  In moments of frustration or temporary setback, that motivator can keep an organization together, to persevere and regain solid footing for the next advance in their collaborative strength-building.

Some organizations employ a vision, a stated “picture” of what the future might be like.  Others prefer the idea of a mission, an intrinsically important undertaking whose outcome has the capability of delivering fundamental, positive changes.  Still other groups elect to use the language of values, citing social or moral tenets that shape their beliefs and actions.   But whatever words are used, the reality is the same: in order for human beings to change, to adapt, to move from their comfort zones, they universally crave a “cause,” a fundamental, personal reason to do that which is difficult to do.

In the case of the very successful Panamanian cooperative La Esperanza de los Campesinos (the Hope of the Peasants), that bedrock upon which their success has been built is in the historical presence of Fr.  Hector Gallegos, whose spiritual and liberation theological teachings centered the coop members.  (See “A Cooperative That Regulates Markets” by Rene Mendoza.)  For a company like SRC Holdings in Springfield, Missouri, the birthplace of open book management, the bedrock was the liberation of employee thinking and intelligence through information sharing and involvement.  For Winds of Peace Foundation, the bedrock has been the  liberation of financial assets to address the dangerous gulf between the poor and the wealthy.  Initiatives come and go, but the calling for the each of these organizations survives because of the depth of its existence.  These organizations must do what they do.  It is in their organizational DNA.

The coops represented in the Certificate Program will need to identify and embrace their own “calls to being. ”  For some, the cause is already deeply engrained and sustaining the direction of the members.  But for others, the identification might be less certain and less steadying.  Maybe it has never been articulated in terms of a vision.  Perhaps there are several purposes that have been embraced by the members, with no single mission emerging as the great unifier.  In some cases, maybe the issue has never even come up; coop membership was simply a way to access funds for the next planting cycle.  Whatever the case, every coop will require  something to hold onto when the vagaries of weather and middlemen and coyotes of the marketplace interject their disruptions into plans for prosperity.  What will the coops bedrock prove to be?

When Brian and Alex bring their skills to the Certificate Program, it will not be due to monetary gain (they receive none) or for notoriety (the program will take place in the deep countryside, away from media notice).  They will present no political cause, no self-service nor personal advantage.  They will spend more than an entire week out of their professional and personal lives because of deep-seated values that inform their senses of servant leadership and responsible stewardship.  The lessons and know-how they teach may change between September and the next time they are invited to work with such an audience, but the reasons for accepting such an invitation will not.  It is, after all, who they are.

Sometime during that first week of September, we’ll be interacting with some very eager Nicaraguans who know precisely who they are….

 

Deja vu All Over Again

I traveled to Nicaragua last weekend to spend some time with colleagues there in planning for the second Certificate Program, to be underwritten by Winds of Peace Foundation.  It’s an opportunity to gather some 50 rural producers, technicians, coffee buyers, lenders and others and talk about the coffee process and how to make it work better for the small farmer.  There’s a great deal of planning and preparation put into these programs by Dr. Rene Mendoza and his team, and the chance to sit together and envision outcomes and opportunities is rich with possibilities.  The two days were time well-spent.

One of the results from those sessions was my own assignment: a series of presentations on the topic of open book management and organizational transparency.  I’ve presented the stories of my own experiences with the topic at Foldcraft Co., where we explored the boundaries of shared information in ways that most companies do not.  But this September will require preparation and teaching in a depth that I haven’t encountered since those corporate days more than ten years ago.

In one sense, there’s a bit of anxiety as I organize my thoughts and endeavor to pick out the most salient messages in a topic that is brimming with leadership, organizational and individual motivations.  I hope that I can convey the rewards to be found and the potholes to be avoided.  At the same time, I find myself energized as I prepare to “teach” an audience that has shown an eagerness to embrace a methodology that is both perplexing and enticing.  I only get into a small number of classrooms during the course of a year, and this will be a large and important one.  I can feel the adrenaline already.  I wonder what I’m going to feel like  on September 5.

I’ve drawn upon many of the old materials that we used at Foldcraft, re-discovered many of the best lessons from the case of Springfield Remanufacturing Company (SRC) where the whole notion began.  I’ve gone back to re-read the books and the article and the papers that served as  our own lesson materials, and I recall now why this was such a big deal back in the 90’s when we first began opening our books, our operations and ourselves organizationally.  And once again, I’m pumped up because I know what these practices can mean to any organization, but especially one that is struggling with survival, as many of the small coops in northern Nicaragua do.

And slowly, as I paste together lessons and bits of wisdom and truths about the application of open books in a small U.S. company, I recognize once again the universality of its message.  This is just like preparing for a Foldcraft audience all those years ago.  It’s not a ploy or a trick or sleight of hand program to get people to work harder.  Transparency is not a magic elixir or medicine to cure whatever might ail an organization.  Information-sharing is not an altruistic activity designed to win the hearts of co-workers or to win accolades from management periodicals.

The process is simply an appeal to people’s better instincts, their innate feeling that they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and successful for their lives.  They want to invest themselves in something they can believe in, that they can identify with, that gives them pride and accomplishment for the daily demand of work.  We all seek the same ends, and to ultimately be recognized and rewarded fairly for the investment of our time and our skills.  In a world where there are always those who seek to strip that away from others, to elevate themselves at the expense of others, there is strength in collaborative and informed work.

As they say at SRC and throughout the open book world, “It’s easy to stop one guy, but it’s pretty hard to stop 100.”  No matter that we spend so much of our time trying to distinguish ourselves from each other.  We are all pretty much alike, and looking for the same affirmations….

 

Ten Years After, Part 2

There’s no question but that the modest beginning undertaken by Harold and Louise Nielsen has evolved into something broader and deeper than a funding mechanism for poor Nicaraguan peasants.  Yes, the grants and loans have been exceedingly important to those rural recipients who received them.  But the lessons embedded in those transactions and the fruits which have blossomed from them may hold a much greater value than the strictly financial one.  The impacts can be transformational, and that has the potential to change not only lives, but ways of life.

Looking forward to the next ten years has both precedence and importance.  Years ago, Harold and Louise envisioned a foundation that would somehow help to alleviate poverty and marginalization of rural Nicaraguans.  WPF has likely evolved in ways far different from that initial vision, but the shape of that initial dream has been the base upon which any good results stand.  Nonetheless, it can be dangerous to attempt prognostications.  (I cannot even make a fair prediction about my day tomorrow, let alone a look into the future of a people and their country.)  No one can ever say for certain what the future will hold, whether in terms of natural evolution or human interventions.  But not to dream is a missed opportunity, a failure to imagine better circumstances for the rural poor in Nicaragua and perhaps elsewhere.

What lies ahead?  Our dreams and discussions continue  around the idea of a Synergy Center in Nicaragua, a site in Managua which is the intersection among WPF, Nicaraguan development and an education entity from the U.S.  The Synergy Center concept presents a progressive opportunity for a U.S.-based education institution to become the owner and administrator of a facility that can utilize data and experiences for the real-life learning of its students, as well as for other international visitors seeking to understand and bridge the immense gaps between the Global North and South, for mutual global benefit.  It’s a notion that is bold in light of the frequent tendency of education entities to “pull back” in times of global and economic unrest, the very times when this very sort of personal education presents perhaps the only realistic means of addressing such gaps.  It’s a big initiative for a little foundation, but that is not likely to have stopped Harold and Louise.

The creation of the Synergy Center would represent  a significant boost to education development within Nicaragua, as well.  While the Foundation has funded scholarships for elementary to university-aged students, we will continue to seek additional bridges between opportunity and learning.  The path for rural Nicaraguans to move from poverty is located squarely within education.  The Foundation’s commitment to growing such opportunities was born of Louise Nielsen’s determination that young women, in particular, could become key resources to Nicaraguan society through their education; our continuation will be based on objective data that confirms the essential nature of improved education opportunities at all levels of society.  The Synergy Center can serve as one education “pivot” between Global North and South, an intersection of research and education between the regions.

Concurrent with the establishment of the Synergy Center, the Foundation dreams of collaborations which could bridge the gaps that exist among the various funding agencies which still operate in Nicaragua.  We are all still victims of our own thinking in terms of what Nicaraguans can accomplish and how they will accomplish it.  As a result, there are many development resources which operate in total independence from one another, and sometimes even at cross-purposes.  As is true for any organization, there is greater strength in numbers and collaboration, a truth which still represents a major hurdle for those of us who operate in Nicaragua.  In a curious conundrum, it’s another potential value of a Synergy Center, but only if WPF and other organizations would be willing to abandon a “not invented here” mindset and choose to collaborate and learn with one another.

My own background includes experiences with some of the most important tools for transforming organizations into higher-performing enterprises.  Cultivation of organizational transparency (Open Book Management) in the cooperative’s function and adoption of methodologies which cultivate continuing improvement (Lean Methodologies) are two concepts that will generate transcendent, positive change in both the businesses and the lives of their practitioners.  It’s a movement whose seeds have been planted, and whose harvest needn’t wait for ten more years.  And I can readily imagine rural Nicaraguan cooperatives embracing and applying the tools for themselves as a means to retain the ownership and value of the lands they tend.

Finally, the future must hold one additional achievement, this one perhaps more essential, more transformative, more vital to development of the rural poor (and therefore to the success of WPF) than any of the others.  It’s the awakening of the global conscience to the circumstances of the poor and the terrible costs that we all pay for their plight.  Even if we collectively have no empathy for those who struggle (a terrible supposition by itself), we are inextricably tied to their outcomes.  It’s a sobering prospect to consider.  Those who know and feel it have an exclusive obligation to educate, to touch, to move others who have had no personal connection to draw upon.  That work, too, will continue to be mission and vision of WPF.

The next ten years will pass by like the flash of lightning in a summer storm.  We know this, given the passage of the past ten years.  It is a short term in which to create truly transformative movement in any environment, even shorter when working abroad.  Our aim will continue to be improvement in Nicaraguan and North American lives, by helping people in both lands become more globally literate.

These are visions for WPF, not roadmaps.  Our fuel for change continues to be made up of capital and accompaniment.  But  we will also continue to remind ourselves that better circumstances do not imply greater monetary wealth only.   Indeed, as the adage goes, some people are so poor that all they have is money, and we know that we can aim higher than that….

 

Dear Jack

 

Jack Stack, Author of The Great Game of Business
Jack Stack, Author of The Great Game of Business

Dear Jack:

It’s been a long time now since you authored the book, The Great Game of Business, back in 1992.  I remember reading it entirely in one afternoon, I was so excited about what it described!  You folks at SRC were actively doing what we at my company had only dreamed about: creating a business of owners.  Your impact on our company made a tremendous difference in the worklives and outside lives of lots of people.  And I’m writing now to tell you that I’m seeing the possibilities once again.  This time, it’s in the rural communities of the second-poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Nicaragua.

If I was excited to come across your book in ’92, then I felt positively ecstatic a few years ago to discover that it had been translated into Spanish.  We immediately acquired copies and began the advocacy for open books as a means to cultivate long-term, sustainable development.  We shared the idea with established coops, with development agencies, a national association of cooperatives and anyone else who would listen.

But the reaction tended to be the same as that which you originally experienced when first sharing the notion with companies here in the U.S.: leaders saw it as a threat, managers could not accept the possibility of broad-thinking peasants, and in our case, there may have even been some nationalism at work as Nicaraguans may have doubted the applicability of a North American business invention.  So we simply continued to reference the concept with groups as we interacted with them, we continued to tell the story of the transformational potential of open books, and hoped that the seeds which were planted might take root.

Then, last month, I think we may have achieved a breakthrough of sorts.  Winds of Peace Foundation provided the major underwriting of a “certificate program” for cooperatives.  The participants were mostly rural producers and members of cooperatives, with some development people, as well.  Some of them had heard us talk about open books previously, but only in a generic way.  This time, they were exposed to more detail and actually performed some exercises to illustrate the process.  By going slowly and with care, many of them seemed to warm to the belief that they could and should “know their numbers” and the processes behind them.  (Their excursion into open books has even been written up by researcher and certificate program developer Rene Mendoza, in the magazine, “Confidencial.”)

I wonder if you knew back in 1992 that the idea of open books contained as much transformational power as it has proven to hold.  You wrote about empowering people and changing their lives at work through open books, you wrote about companies harnessing resources that were previously dormant, you even wrote about the intrinsic impacts that this kind of participation engenders.  But could you have foreseen entire cultural shifts that could result?  Did you contemplate what it might mean in changing the dynamics between the “gatekeepers” of knowledge and the producers who often naively relied upon them?  Having the book translated into other languages constituted a step of faith in that direction, but did you actually anticipate that rural cooperative members- often uneducated and inexperienced- could take control of their organizations that had long been under the influence of other voices?

In Nicaragua, some of our partners are beginning to rethink the cultural norm of autonomous leadership that has existed for generations.  They have begun to experience a confidence in both their need and ability to know the critical equations of their businesses.  I know that you might identify with the feelings I had when visiting one cooperative, exploring with them the reasons for their success when so many of their neighbors were struggling.  The reasons were many, but when they reported having read your book (which we had earlier placed with them) and having implemented some of its lessons, I knew that the magic of the game was as real in Nicaragua as it has been in the U.S.  More importantly, they did, too. If you really did anticipate the universality of open books, then you are, indeed, prescient.

As with any methodology that shakes up the status quo of authority, knowledge and position, this process will take time, repetition and success in order for it to take hold as a new way of life.  You have preached that reality continually from your own experiences.  Winds of Peace will need to stand with the early adopters of open books and provide the necessary resources for continued training and access to experienced voices.  But if the commitment is there, we will be, too.

I can only hope that the cooperatives who show interest in embracing open book management can create the kind of network among themselves that you were able to create with open book organizations in the U.S.  That opportunity for organizations to come together and share their experiences, their difficulties and their solutions have really helped to expand the open book reality.  Those networks have made it easier to deal with problems and false starts before they become too big to handle.  Being available to one another is not only a help to those who are struggling, but also to those who are succeeding, still wanting to achieve more.

So thanks again.  Your idea worked for my former company over the years and now stands the chance to work transformations once again, this time in a more difficult context.  But great ideas have a way of surviving even the most challenging circumstances, and my belief is that one of your many future site visits just might include a stop in Central America, to see the Nicaraguan version of Le Gran Juego de los Negocios…. 

Best Regards,

Steve

Steve Sheppard
Steve Sheppard

 

 

 

 

 

Against the Current

The salmon are one of our best teachers.  We watch the salmon as smolts going to the ocean and observe them returning home. We see the many obstacles that they have to overcome. We see them fulfill the circle of life, just as we must do. And if the salmon aren’t here, the circle becomes broken and we all suffer.
-Leroy Seth, Nez Perce Tribe

It’s a truth for many creatures of this earth that progress and success must be forged in the face of great currents.  As with the salmon of the Pacific Northwest, and the Native American peoples who relied upon them, their histories define the very idea of struggling against the tides.  And like their distant North American cousins, rural Nicaraguans have found themselves fighting against undercurrents from both within and outside of the country for generations.  Like the salmon, Nicaraguans have experienced swimming upstream as a way of life.  But unlike the salmon, Nicaraguans clearly see the possibilities in navigating a different way.

So when the plan was created late last year to have Winds of Peace Foundation underwrite a cooperative certificate program in Nicaragua, we readily endorsed the idea.  The notion of developing an holistic, best practices curriculum for rural producers engendered immediate enthusiasm because -maybe for the first time- a peasant cooperative population was being offered a menu of topics befitting any progressive North American business enterprise.  In addition, this program would consume an entire week of the participants’ lives, a block of time that by definition signaled a serious commitment to learning.  That willingness, along with the logistical reality of dormitory-style living quarters, suggested that the attendees felt the urgency and importance in making an offering such as this a seminal event.

Not least of importance, the developers of the program were proven leaders in their knowledge of both the materials and the

Rene Mendoza
Rene Mendoza

participants.  Dr. Rene Mendoza is a Nicaraguan researcher, teacher and writer, a co-founder and former director of the University of Central America’s well-known NITLAPAN research and development institute.  For the past  several years he has visited and counseled with scores of rural cooperatives in exploring their viability and sustainability in the face of global and national economic change.   He continues to present much of his research in the form of articles posted to this website.

Edgar Fernandez is a broadly-experienced rural development practitioner, a frequent collaborator with Mendoza and also a co-founder of NITLAPAN.

Edgar Fernandez (with Abemelet Rodriguez)
Edgar Fernandez (with Abemelet Rodriguez)

An exceptional analyst of organizational strength and weakness, Fernandez readily connects  with and engenders confidence in rural Nicaraguan producers.

Ligia Guitierrez is a psychologist and “firebrand” for helping rural populations-

Ligia Guitierrez (At right)
Ligia Guitierrez (At right)

especially Indigenous communities- to recognize their cultural heritage and powers of influence and self-destiny. In the face of growing economic disparity and marginalization of large sectors of the population, her lessons of personal integrity and self-esteem resonate with those who fear losing hope.

But participant readiness and facilitator expertise are only parts of a successful learning equation.  The other essential ingredient is a content that is both worthy of the interest and useful in its application.  Here, the magic of a week’s investment was evident from the earliest iterations of the agenda.

The modules of the week’s activities might have been copied from an advanced leadership training  prospectus:  Day 1- An important historical context for the current state of cooperatives;  Day 2- Organizational innovations (including open book management and Lean process improvement) from a North American employee-owned company; Day 3- Gender and the loss of relationships and resources; Day 4- Climate change impacts, current and future; Day 5- Spirituality in work; Day 6- Individual and organizational health.  (I may have more to say about any or each of these in future essays, but for now it is sufficient to recognize the scope of the program.)

In between the content-rich plenary dialogues, breakout discussions and creation of action plans, the days offered important opportunities for relaxing the difficult work of introspection and self-analysis.  There were songs sung, dance and music IMG_2535performances by participants and visitors, and an awe-inspiring hike to the topmost reaches of Peñas Blancas.  We tossed a ball to introduce ourselves to each other, threw wadded up paper at speakers and each other to stay positive in the face of the enormous challenges and laughed endlessly at one participant’s

Uriselda Lopez (Kept us laughing!)
Uriselda Lopez (Kept us laughing!)

uncanny ability to sound exactly like a crying child!  Indeed, all of the intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual, occupational and physical aspects of our collective and individual wellness were fully in play during the entire week.  This was an exceptional educational event.

By addressing all of the components of the Nicaraguan cooperative circumstance, this program and its presenters managed to identify and contextualize Nicaraguan realities and prospects in an important and unique way.  For perhaps their first time, cooperative members were able to behold their organizations, their mutual responsibilities to one another, the economic elements which are truly beyond their control and those which are within their influence, the nature of transparent and collaborative work and the research that underscores all of that. The lessons were difficult.  The truths were uncomfortable.  The currents undoubtedly prompted some to consider turning around and swimming away.  But the integrated view of their cooperative lives and an inherent drive to surmount obstacles like “it’s the way we’ve always done it,” or “we can never understand” allowed transformations to take place over the week.

Time will reveal which of these possible innovators will succeed in fighting the stream of status quo and in what ways.  Maybe like the salmon, there exists sufficient and innate will to complete the journey to which their lives are called, to fulfill the most basic needs for work and sustenance and dignity.  In a very real sense, without that chance the circle of their lives becomes broken, and we all suffer….

The "Others"
The “Others”

An Ownership Advantage

I attended a party last week.

The gathering was in recognition of  The Minnesota Chapter of the ESOP Association.  The chapter is one of 22 chapters nationally, in the association which represents the 15,000 employee-owned companies across the country.    Minnesota has been a particularly strong chapter in the network and over its 25 years has been a strong contributor to the employee ownership movement.

Parties are normally fun and friendly occasions, I suppose, but this event contained a special air of zealotry.  The 75-80 folks who attended are among the most enthusiastic supporters of the shared capitalism idea, and they are never bashful about displaying such passion.  These were the people who have either led the chapter or been especially active in its work; they are champions of the cause and the effects of employee-ownership.  I had not seen many of these people for nearly ten years, since I retired from the employee-owned Foldcraft Co. in 2005, so the gathering had the feel of a grand reunion.

All of that context provided more than enough reason for a stellar evening, and indeed, the laughter and the hugs were genuine all through our time together.  But there was something else in the air.  There was a tangible feeling that this group of ownership advocates exuded an intensity of knowledge, some sort of awareness that other organizations don’t necessarily experience among their members.   That perception, merely felt by some but outwardly acknowledged by others, recognized the immense power of their shared sense of ownership .

Let me be clear on one major point: not every member of every employee-owned entity demonstrates a deeply-felt sense of commitment, empowerment and liberation.  But those who are able to envision their own development within an ownership mindset have often defied the odds in creating opportunities and experiences for themselves and their enterprises.

In fact, organizationally it’s true whether there is an actual ESOP component in place or not.  Entities that are managed under the terms of transparency, broad participation, engagement and a sense of shared outcomes perform better, feel better, last longer and ultimately have a more positive impact upon the societies in which they serve.   That requires the right people, the ones who share in a vision and who possess the energy to want to go there.  In the words of author Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great:

But I know this much: if we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”

On Thursday evening, the ballroom was filled with the right people.  They have been and continue to be consistent champions of encouragement and commitment for everyday workers to access equity ownership.  They know that such an opportunity is actually a component of our holistic health.

It’s a universal need.  We want to claim a deep and rich ownership of our lives, and the places where we work constitute a major portion of our time.  We long to be integral parts of our labors rather than simply renting out our time and skills.  We need to know what is happening in our vocational lives, what is impacting us, what we can do about it, how we can do better.  Where we have come together in our work organizations, we sense that it could be possible to truly belong to an endeavor bigger than ourselves, in some cases maybe even more important than ourselves.

Some of the best-managed companies around the world have recognized this truth.  The most stable and productive governments have operated under principles of democratization, which are still the envy of people in non-democratic societies.   Employee-owned enterprises often “get it,” as reflected in annual workplace survey data.  And in addition to data, I suspect that we recognize intuitively that fully collaborative efforts will almost always outperform individual ones; “none of us is as smart as all of us.”

It’s a truth that Winds of Peace is working very hard to teach this reality to rural cooperatives in Nicaragua, as well.  It may run counter to the model the government uses.  It may fly in the face of the big company executives there who have copied the traditional corporate models from the U.S.  It even challenges the cultural and historical patterns that shape societal behaviors.  But it’s a lesson worth teaching, and one definitely worth learning.

It’s an advantage that we celebrated last week.  It doesn’t represent the easiest manner in which to organize and operate.  But it’s certainly the best….

 

 

Teaching and Learning

The workshops that I have mentioned here from time to time continue to reveal no end of lessons learned.  The participants- many of whom have attended every one of the sessions for the past several years- seem eager to consider and report on the “take-aways” at the conclusion of each gathering, and the insights are as diverse as the people themselves.  In some cases, they might have learned about a production technique or marketing access.  In others, they may have gained an insight into organizational strengthening or even personal interactions.  The presentations and resulting discussions are rich with the reflections of rural Nicaraguans who, like all of us, possess experiences both illuminating and mundane.  And I wonder at the end of every session whether that isn’t the real lesson to be both taught and learned. Continue reading Teaching and Learning