Foundations of Workplace Democracy Web Series: Co-op Structure and Decision Making

i'm going to be switching into spanish now so if you are an english speaker make sure that you've hit interpretation and that you're on the english channel if you have any issues you can send them in the chat to the general chat or to savannah and we'll help you figure it out welcome to everyone we are here today with us continuing our series of the co-op clinics from the federation of worker-owned cooperatives in the united states i'm kate i'm the manager of membership and today we are continuing with our series that address the fundamentals of workplace democracy and we're speaking specifically today about structures and decision making next slide please so just to review a little bit how we're going to spend the next hour in a little bit we will be talking a little bit about the governance structures then we'll talk about management structures i also uh will uh be talking about decision making process and what can be helpful for the process of making decisions then we'll talk a little bit from our colleagues from the movement bonfire media collective and also percolab co-op and there will be a space at the end of the program so that there can be questions and we can have a little bit of conversation amongst us and then there will be a closing where we are wrapping up where we make some announcements as the majority of you hopefully know by now the us federation of worker cooperatives in the united states our set our initials in english are usfwc and we are the only national grassroots membership organization for walker cooperatives in the united states next slide of the big parts of the federation's work is to create systems of technical support for our member cooperatives and the cooperatives in our movement and one of those spaces where we offer that space is called a co-op clinic the co-op clinic is a network of peer advisors and also a space where we give workshops and classes in order to offer education to ourselves and to others this session that we're doing today is a session among a series that we've been doing with the co-op clinic and when you become members of the federation you can take advantage of this consistent support through the co-op clinic based on the questions that you might have of how to support and expand your cooperative next slide please so let's talk a little bit about who our invited guests are today we have a super team of people who will be sharing their experiences as cooperative worker owners our colleague esther west is visiting us from madison wisconsin she has five years of firsthand experience as a worker owner and one of the largest cooperatives of worker owners in the united states which is called equal exchange and currently she is a worker owner of the ajani cooperative she's also worked as a cooperative development specialist at the university of wisconsin center for cooperatives where she was able to support provide technical assistance to cooperatives did an investigation of other cooperatives she's also part of the madwork co-op worker cooperative board which is a group at in madison wisconsin of worker cooperatives and we have the honor to count on to count her as the vice president of the board of usfwc next slide and i should say that esther is presenting and monitoring the conversation moderating the conversation we also have samantha slade with us she's from the co-op perko lab she is from the perko lab cooperative which is based in montreal canada she's an author and a collective entrepreneur she wrote a book called going horizontal or creating non-hierarchical organizations one practice at a time this book focuses on the work of starting with oneself making small tough practices that lead us to system change samantha has developed many has been a trainer and a professor and what is the desi the decision making for discernment and systemic change next slide please we also have the presence of alex wiles with us he is from the cooperative here in the city where i live in philadelphia which is called bonfire media alex is a filmmaker videographer and photographer from philadelphia he's been making media and organizing mobilizing project since 2010. alex has worked with the american friends service committee with neighborhood bike works and with the philadelphia zoo and he is also a worker owner of bonfire media collective next slide please and we also have ben felker quinn ben felker quinn is an educator media maker and poet he's a media literacy member at the same cooperative as alex he teaches media literacy the philadelphia school district with the organization called hawaii and he has participated actively in solitary movements with the coalition of immokalee workers in florida and also with the anti-prison organizations in philadelphia and i think we can start now so i would like to pass the mic now to esther thank you to all for who got here today and to share this space we invite you all to put your questions in the chat and we will gather them up so that we can have a conversation at the end amongst all of us so now i turned it over to esther hey everyone and thank you kate for the nice intros and it's an honor to get to be here with the federation and also with all of you as worker owners and people involved in this movement before we dive in to structures where we want to point out there's a mini guide on worker co-op structures and decision making process which is at this link here so you can delve into these if you want to read more about them later as well and as we look at governance structures i'm going to i'm just going briefly stop screen sharing um i'll get back in a second here um but you know as just to contextualize some of this work as a worker owner you have a sense of pride and ownership over your work and your business you also have a say and a voice so structures personalities management versus governance structure board versus worker underbody et cetera are all things to be aware of that impact the ability ability of worker owners to be both a strong worker and a strong owner so in thinking about some of you know and thinking about governance structures uh you want to think about how do structures reflect our values how do structures reflect power dynamics around topics that can impact us and our co-ops you know there might be some unlearning of power dynamics that we've learned since we were young in the society and some relearning of what it means to be a worker owner together in a co-worker co-op and how does struck governance structures also work for our business so that we can be dynamic and get things done and accomplished right um so today we're going to look at several governance structures and types of structures um and here are from some amazing co-ops like kate has introduced us so uh yeah so each co-op is different so worker owners need to tailor how you engage with each other through governance um so just keep some things to keep in mind while we're looking at these different options and let's go back to the slide can you all see that okay cool so to start one type of governance is a collective so collectives are where all members have equal governance power the structure is usually found in small co-ops smaller co-ops that aim for very little hierarchy so for example in the 80s when equal exchange started they acted more like a collective where everyone was in the room making decisions together but as they grew they realized it was harder and harder to have everyone in the room and not everyone had to be there for every single decision so they broke up their they changed their government structure a little bit and if you're a legal statute so each co-op is incorporated at the state level under these statutes right if it requires you to have a board most often all members are automatically members of the board in a collective and common decision making processes and collectives are modified consensus pure consensus or majority vote so pure consensus is where everyone decides modified is where it can vary a little bit but maybe not everyone has to decide everything uh like it might not have to be a hundred percent or maybe um it is in increments like the decision making process is increments or majority vote is you know what it sounds like so what's the majority another type of governance is sociocracy or holacracy and uh i might not be saying that right i'm sorry um um i like it though uh and so these are structures that focus on empowered circles or committees so they can include a representative governance circle that functions much like a board it's a form of modified consensus consensus decision making that is consent based and so you see in that graphic there it's very like circular and so you'll have like circles of decision making that are that can be responsible for different parts of the co-op and people can change a time like which circles sometimes too so that they are on and then those come back to the broader group okay and co-ops under this form that have an elected board empower this governing body to differing degrees you can make it work for your co-op some co-ops some co-op boards maintain significant share governance with members often including monthly quarterly or very active annual member meetings so you know what works for your co-op an elected board is another type of governance structure and co-ops that have an elected board empower this governing body to different degrees it depends i've seen a lot of different ways this can look and so some co-op boards maintain significant shared governance with members often including monthly quarterly or very active annual member meetings so you may have an elected board which can be all worker owners or you might have what's called outside board members who maybe you maybe your co-op could use a little expertise in an area or a partnership development so you get someone else outside of your co-op on the board that's called an outside board member usually this will be stated nearby laws too whether or not you can have outside board members and how many um and then there are also um so sometimes besides the board they're also member member um bodies right that can also make decisions for member from a member body perspective and so boards are often empowered to create policy lead strategic planning set an annual budget coordinate between teams and oversee a general manager if the co-op has one so the co-op manager or ceo or president on the which is on the operations side of the co-op may report back to the governance side the board um if that's if that's been requested co-ops with an elected board and shared governance often used modified consensus or majority vote decision making processes so with larger co-ops they often will retain less governance decision-making power for members beyond electing the board and ratifying major decisions at annual or special meetings these co-ops usually have ceos or managers that are hired fired and overseen by the elected board usually with majority vote decision-making processes and so you know with larger co-ops you can still have democratic areas broken up but it often it'll turn into a little bit more a little stronger delineation between the governance and the operation side so management structures so we talked a little bit about this but whereas boards or general circles like with social accuracy are in charge of governance management is in charge of day-to-day operations so so yeah so and sometimes i can't it's not always totally clear what that is but those are general principles right so you have governance of the co-op and and then day day-to-day operations and decision-making process these are it's really important to have uh clarity um some other best prac some best practices around decision making processes or having a clear written process so you got to write it down so people are all on the same age you're looking at the same thing you want to practice the decision making often even when people are in agreement so that when there's disagreement the process the process itself doesn't trip you up that's really important especially for co-ops that are getting started you know oftentimes you may be with a group of people and you are all on the same page or like why would we disagree like we're we're doing fine um so you may not go through these formal processes um or it may seem like it's not worth the time but it actually is because once you start to disagree you'll be thankful to have these like this practice set up and so train yourselves and refresh yourselves regularly on democratic decision making and the accompanying topic meeting facilitation meeting facilitation is absolutely absolutely crucial to have good practices and and clarity and make sure everyone's on the same page and you can map out who makes what type of decision using a decision-making chart and governance matrix and i know there are a lot of great resources at the federation and dowie as well um before so so yeah we'll we'll go over some upcoming events soon but i'd like to turn it over to i'm going to stop sharing and like to turn it over to our wonderful uh co-operators um yeah alex samantha and ben and i was wondering if you could each just share your insights on governance and what you do what your co-op does and anything else you'd like to share in relationship so let's start with samantha hi wow so thanks for sharing that i feel like the first thing i want to say is i want to um when i think about governance and the principle of horizontal leadership and share dictatorship and i think about decision making for me one of the things that's really important is that size doesn't matter so that functioning in these democratic ways with collective shared leadership processes for me i work in the world of the self-management organization movement and so percolab co-op we help even large international organizations bring this decision-making space into something that's very collective and functional and efficient and within purple lab co-op we function as a lab we have for 15 years and our decision making structure is really held by two practices i would say one is having a decision making log so any governance decisions that are made go into a really something very simple it's basically a google spreadsheet and in it it will have like the date we know who's on like around who was present and and the links to whatever appropriate documents are there but anybody can access that and when you join the co-op then you have instant access to the entire registry of all the history of decisions from the board and it's something very powerful to come in with that full transparency of decisions and know where you can go if you've been away or you're coming back or whatever so that log holds that in a way and the other part that we have on the other end is a a process like as you said you need a process to hold yourselves together so we have one it's called generative decision making i'm gonna put the link in the chat um it's a process when people come on board they actually kind of experience that practice for a while and it is disconcerting because it flips things around and it's based on three principles and so it has the principle on it of life so how do we be together and make a decision that doesn't have to be consensus where we're all on board it can be just good enough for now safe enough to try we all acknowledge that decisions are never perfect so we're trying to do is just get decisions that keep us in movement and flow and so this this is a is a it's a it's not a consensus-based decision where everybody needs to be on board but it needs to be validated by everybody to say that we don't see in this in this proposal anything that can cause harm or backward movement to the co-op and if we establish there isn't that then it's good enough to to go which really shifts the your decision-making culture so that's the first thing it has life the second thing has purpose because what it does as a process is it helps us really stay focused on the purpose behind the decision we often start with a question we go through and i won't get into the details of it unless anybody wants to but you could read up on it all there um in the link and you can find out more in all different places and the third thing that it does is it builds a sense of belonging so people's voices are heard in a really very structured way but without having conversations and spinning out into lengthy things that we're all kind of don't want to go into with lengthy consensus processes so we're in a process that's at the same time both collective and keeps us in movement and doesn't burn us in in long and lengthy decisions sometimes on occasion there are ones that can take quite some time but but when we develop this culture of um being able to no longer be trying to push my idea on the other people and being in that collective space it completely transforms everything so are those are the two i would call them the bookends that we have at perklab for our decision making system and the governance bills out from there excellent thank you and that's a great link in chat thank you samantha and yeah next up we'll hear from let's hear from bonfire so we can start with uh alex or ben do either of you want to go first uh sure um i can go first uh thanks for having us and um uh in general i would say that a really important part of what that was mentioned earlier was about um unlearning lots of things especially if it's your first time in a cooperative environment there's a lot of systems that we are raised inside of that we are uh that we trust you teach us that maybe don't teach us the best ways to cooperate with each other in the first place or even know what a co-op is before we um start a bonfire i actually didn't know what a co-op was and it was only through being able to trust new newer or at least different education systems and other tools and communities that we were able to build bonfire especially with the help of the philadelphia area cooperative alliance and in general it was just really helpful to be able to lean on other communities that i hadn't been connected with before which i guess is what's happening right now in this moment so i'm really thankful for that also uh ben do you have anything to add yeah just to say thanks to everyone for for having us here um we're um bonfire is like a relatively new co-op so a lot of this stuff is we're just like kind of figuring it out so i would echo what alex said about unlearning a lot of the context organizationally that we were bringing to our co-op was coming from the non-profit industrial complex so there's like you know there's a lot there to kind of unearth um but i think yeah there's there's we're pretty small as a collective there's only four of us right now um who are kind of part of the inner circle um so we're working by modified consensus as what esther just um presented um but we're also thinking about you know like how power dynamics function amongst us and also we just brought a new person in so thinking about kind of how yeah just how new people bring um kind of new questions to the table in terms of sharing what's already happened um as you also mentioned samantha um so yeah so glad to be here and glad to be thinking about this with you all but yeah thank you awesome thanks everybody uh yeah i i hear you alex when you mention the peer-to-peer learning i think that's one of the biggest things that helped me helps me um with with cooperative you know learning what it means to be a worker owner like i remember you know when i was at equal exchange we'd have guest speakers and or reach out to others at conferences like the federation conference you know always great and uh it was always just so good to hear what others are doing and then say you know i really like that i could use that in my co-op or you know this is good but i don't need to use that you know so i appreciate that point um let's see here i was wondering um what what do your boards like how many people i know this is like kind of a basic question but how many people are on your boards and for each co-op and do you have outside board members or not um we could start with uh maybe with ben do you want to kick it okay sure that's an easy question we don't have a board so oh okay sorry i i didn't mean to miss that my bad um so what does can you articulate a little more about what your governance structure looks like or decision making looks like sure and alex if you want to fill in too um but yeah we we have we just like we wrote some bylaws um we have some of that decision making structure kind of spelled out um in those bylaws there's some things that we need hey ben and you're cutting out a little bit um it might help if you turn off your voices okay intense but virgin amongst us is that is that any better if not i would defer to alex i think i can actually hear you pretty clearly now that you have your video off then okay sorry about that um what was i saying uh bylaws we have bylaws we have some points where we need um like a unanimous decision from everyone and some of our like for instance bringing on a new member or a new worker owner um but by and large our decision-making process usually happens by consensus during meetings um and we we use a standard agenda which kind of helps like we have standardized various like our agenda and our facilitation we exchanged amongst ourselves um but yeah i guess in terms of who's making decisions um the four of us always are during during our weekly meetings alex would you add anything to that yeah sure uh in general it's very simple uh it's it's just as ben said very consensus based and a lot of that is built around our bylaws which we spent a very very very long time putting together and through that are able to accelerate the consensus process somewhat and in our bylaws it says that we have to reach what's called quorum which is just the amount of people at which point it is okay to make a decision which in our case is just 75 um in general if there is a very important decision such as spending a large amount of money or inviting a new member then pretty much in that case everyone would have to agree or at least there should be more time to build further consensus just to make sure that everyone is on the same page in general we're pretty lucky because most of us are pretty aligned so there's not really huge uh disagreements about about things usually but in general it is voting and people get to have time to make a campaign for what they want to vote for if they want a new piece of equipment or a new member or something then we make space for the person to talk about it and try to be really deliberate about listening to it excellent thank you samantha do you have anything to add or share um so our board here in montreal is 10 people by law in quebec when you have a cooperative it has to have a board and we have to make an annual um collective decision that everybody is part of the board unless there's a good reason for them not to be either there's a breach and trust or there's something going on where they it's not appropriate so we have like a by default you're part of the board unless there's something specific going on and we have to agree to that every year we're we are multiple pro collabs in multiple jurisdictions and so each perk lab has its own board in its jurisdiction and then we have a more informal way of getting together that is not a formal board per se because there is no international legal system finding us in that place so that place we can be a little bit more experimental one thing that we have done in the board though because we have this principle of life that's really important for us and we know that the way boards are set up is usually you have like really strict times for board meetings and what not going on and that sometimes those opportunities for decisions are happening more organically and in either a team meeting or a team day or a retreat times that might not be considered an official board meeting well we we allow board decisions to be made in all those different spaces it's something that we experimented to see if that would work well and we've kept it going for years and so when we somebody feels like there's a decision we go oh i have a proposal and somebody goes oh can i host a generative decision making process and then we all know that what's going on as soon as somebody says can i host a generative decision-making process that means we're in a a board decision and then we we run it and then somebody documents it and so because we have that so strong even though there's an official board roles it's very very i don't know organic how it functions which also means that with our process we have we can have um auxiliary members or interns or even guests participate in the decisions that are happening at the board with us and so it it if we're looking at from the perspective of we're working with the collective intelligence to make sure that we're making decisions that aren't harmful for the organization and then having outsiders contributing to that is only interesting and good it's like we're bringing in external expertise and because the process is a protocol that's so tight it doesn't actually waste time to have externals with us in it and so that's also interesting so even though we have a board we're always having um flow of people moving through and from outside that are contributing to those board decisions nice thank you um let's see here and i see a few questions about getting started in the chat and also about youth co-ops and i just want to throw out there that one one option is also to start these prac like if you're not legally incorporated yet you can start building these practices and start practicing and kind of see what tests out what will make sense for your bylaws if you're not quite ready to incorporate or for youth co-ops maybe the staff is a part of the worker co-op and the youth do a lot of the practices of the co-op but they are formal numbers it could be though um different ways that can look um and i'm wondering uh we have a lot of really rich experience in this in this audience um and i was wondering if anyone else would like to share from another co-op would like to share your decision-making processes at your co-op and how that looks so yeah anyone want to share you can hop on you can just hop in if you like no pressure though hi um so we uh i am a part of collective boston cleaning collective and massachusetts um so um we're collective so we are uh we don't have a board uh but uh we take decisions collectively um so we are small now so it's still working um not like i equal has changed we haven't changed anything of the um artist structure but um as um when we make decisions we have to um find a consensus for from everybody excellent thanks thanks nice to see you um and do you what kind of decisions does your what the kind of what kinds of decisions go to that level like to the full co-op board do you kind of do you have like like i imagine like there are like things that are just kind of default like okay this is how we do things day to day but it but like what kind of things go to the phone call yes so we have the operations decisions right you know everybody's holding accountable for the position they play like i do the administration piece uh the coordinators uh do the operation day by day with the teams that they work but per se uh you know we have to buy a new car uh or we need to purchase a big equipment like our big equipment can be like you know a new industrial uh vacuum uh for them to use uh so that kind of decisions go to uh everybody's uh plate uh when we meet um in a in a month you know on a monthly basis for like what we call the governance so if we need to purchase a truck uh a car or we need to purchase a vacuum or we need to look into uh you know that our schedule is getting heavier we need to figure it out if we're gonna bring another crew on more uh to make sure that we need a truck we need uh we need a car we need uh you know uh one or two more vacuums and then we need to make sure that we get all the supplies that to set it up the car for the new crew thank you excellent thanks leo yeah i feel like some of that could speak to the question and or the comment question in chat um let's see here we're just learning how to be a worker co-op and have a good group but there's some clash between general manager and a basic collective philosophy and does anyone have any relevant past experience and how to navigate the space so i feel like some of that teasing out what goes under operations versus like like saying what what goes under operations versus what does the whole what does what does the whole co-op want to decide on can that having that discussion and writing it out could help and saying like here are values and we are all in the same team we want to meet these val we've agreed upon these goals and there are different ways to do it it's not like right or wrong necessarily it's more like how do we make work together to figure out the solution two but um kate yeah um i'm gonna switch to spanish again so if folks are english speakers make sure you're in the english channel of your interpretation um [Music] we all have our bylaws [Music] but we can't be looking at these 18 pages and when we're in a meeting so many times we forget that in a moment of conflict or decision making time we forget how we had agreed to things in the statutes or the bylaws so what we've done is create a guide that's one page that we always have present during our meetings and this guide is a summary of how we are making decisions so as eliot said if it's a larger purchase we have to have x number of people present and if it's a different type of decision this committee or that committee can make that decision and we did this in a document that's one page long and we always have it on hand during our meetings so at the moment of making a decision we're not stuck and we have the paper in front of us and so we have x number of people here so we can make this decision or we don't have enough people to have a vote so let's make pass that to the next meeting and so this page has made it much easier for us to and remember the rules that we had put into the stat the bylaws for the cooperative just like a mini guide is another way of describing it what a fabulous tool thank you that's really cool um let's see her oh yes uh let's see here let's see colin's hand as well you wanna uh share something sorry i was trying to meet myself can you hear me enter my video on hi hi everybody thanks this is very really really interesting um i wanted to uh maybe highlight something you would said esther in your earlier presentation and maybe it speaks to the question they come up in the chat as well which is the governance matrix so i've worked at two worker co-ops and it kind of speaks to what you said just moments ago esther about having knowing which bodies are made meant to make which decision i've worked with the government's matrix once at a co-op um that actually boarded from equal exchange to an assembler co-op in ottawa where i worked you might know i don't know the master and now i work for another another co-op that's about 25 people anyway so i find that a having a sort of clarity around what decisions need to go to the full membership what decisions need to be be lived within management and what actually could aborted directors if you have different bodies and probably most importantly is to principle six i've i've seen so many versions of different matrixes matrices that other co-ops have been willing to share and now equal exchanges generously shared it with last year we're running into some of the same challenges so i also think that um the sharing of these one of the benefits of having these documents these one pagers that kate mentioned is actually they're very easy to share and very easy to take inspiration from so i just wanted to highlight that i'm a very very big believer in the matrix for what it's worth thank you um thank you yeah and yeah and i'll just throw out there i also believe in the power of like updating things too so like if your co-op's starting to run into issues like say i don't know like say you have like founders syndrome or something like that you can start like say articulating that as a maybe it starts in the number body and then goes to the board or vice versa so there's some important things with governance around some topics and being able to be flexible um i think i saw someone wanting to jump in earlier um let's see here did did uh did anyone else before we keep moving did anyone else want to share what their co-op does for governance okay yeah awesome so just let me know just you know shoot me a message or anything um or in chat or put in chat can you guys hear me now or no yes how do i raise my hand just for future reference okay so oh you're just gonna mute yeah sorry my house is a bit loud right now i'll come back later oh cool yeah it happens yeah thanks okay so um great so we have a lot of great questions here and let's go to um there's a question about quorum um just a clear let's talk about quorum for decision making for just a minute um there's a question for alex about what the threshold for quorum was and smaller decision it sounds like smaller decisions have 75 percent quorum and 100 for bigger decisions is that right uh sorry if i was explaining that uh in a confusing way earlier um in general actually ben could you speak to this a little bit yeah just in our bylaws we lay out like specifically which kinds of decisions need like um [Music] unanimous a unanimous decision from our decision-making body which is just for the moment it's just the four of us so for instance those are like decisions to bring on somebody new to work with as a worker owner and then there are other decisions that are kind of like less important maybe to the whole co-op um and those require and then we have like a different you know percentage of of uh consensus that we need but because there's only four of us you know it's kind of there's there's only four of us to to split up so thank you um there's a question for those with a board how do you how do you balance the tension between expertise representation of stakeholders and member voice in governance that's i think that's a really important question like how do you balance all these interests on a word and i was wondering if anyone would like to speak to that um what's here no thoughts i'm sure someone has that um i'll share an eagle exchange we had like and we had a we had our board when it was there we had a board of um [Music] majority worker owners and i think it was i want to say like six worker owners and then three outside board members and then you have the two co-presidents on there too um who we oversaw and the board oversaw and so um [Music] yeah we so you we in that case the a tool like or you know a method that can be used is to have majority worker owners on the board so that is one one way to do it let's see uh there's a question um can anyone speak to the pros and cons of sociocracy has any co-op here use sociocracy or something sociocracy what's up can we define sociocracy you know like what does it mean right now because i i think i have an idea what it means but i'm not sure what it what we're using it you know what i mean yeah do you want to go i'm happy to yeah i'm happy to jump into that because i'm really in the world of self-managing organizations and collective shared leadership and sociocracy is just um more of a formalized system within that movement as is holacracy and i think when i think about it i think that there's a few elements that are kind of cornerstones to functioning in a shared leadership model so when we start looking at those those different elements that we were talking about in your in your decision-making matrix or chart or whatever and you have that management role when we start going into the the shared shared leadership structure then it's everybody well there's a that that management is shared so that's a bunch of roles so for example in our cooperative we have about 12 roles that um are stewarded so it's not like they belong to anybody so we'll have like a financial caretaker the legal protector impact grower and different roles like that that would usually associate with management but they're all kind of separated out and then individuals steward them so you don't belong to them and at one point you can put them back in the center and they can move on to somebody else and we doesn't mean that you do the only work around them but you are holding the accountabilities that are associated with them so you're really taking care of one of those aspects and so sociocracy is a is a formalized system for functioning in roles but you don't need to adopt the sociocracy way to be functioning in a in a shared management um setup and so i i think that there's like in this whole movement of um collective governance there's ways of doing things that focus on the practices in such an emerging field there's so many practices that are emerging in ways of doing things from those practices certain structural elements are kind of um uh landing me for example i sometimes find that so that there's elements of sociocracy that can be a little bit like slow down and clunky and so for us we've opted out of some of them and are kind of morphing them or tweaking them or coming up with our own things where we can come because we're in um in our work like i hope keep coming back to this like life and flow keeping things in movement and so how to do that in a collective space that's what's really important for us and sometimes sociocracy can be really interesting for like i have a friend for example who's in a co-housing structure and sociocracy processes are like brilliant forward because it's really slow and really everybody gets a voice and it's something that's so close to you that's really great so i think everybody's in you know you can you can come to it as you want but that moment where you shift your management role and break it out into like a co-management structure is really like the interesting element in there and it it's it's built on um good collective decision making processes thank you that's great um hey if i saw in chat that geo professor's economic organizing does some loose sociocracy would you want to share anything about how that looks sure i can i wouldn't say that we're the model of sociocracy we're you know a small you know we kind of operate like a an affinity group you know we're very close very small so it's pretty straightforward um so you know we have people with the consensus backgrounds and people with sociocracy background and it kind of has ended up being the wish of them together so i i wouldn't say we're the model of how to do it right but um yeah we use that thank you um well i have a question for folks um so like we talked about some before democratic decision making in our workplaces is not the norm in this country right in fact it's very much not the norm and it's often like i've seen some co-ops have trouble because either uh folks bring in this mindset of the individual owner and not collective owner versus a co-op or just kind of taking a back seat like passive back seat i'm like we're just in this for the job let me do my owner let me just put on my my worker had and not the owner had right so how do you how i was wondering if anyone could talk some about what that means for folks or what what your co-op has experienced with onboarding people to come into this governance role hey um my thoughts are like when it comes to co-ops i think of them you know how in america companies are like because they're separate from people and i like to think of that like a ship right like a boat so people the the sailors are the workers and the people who own the boat are like the uh shareholders but in but in like upon in a democratic business the sailors are the owners so to i guess that's how i think of it right like it's almost like how pirates were like pirates elected their captain and quartermaster so they had control over the ship but they also sailed on it so like that's how i would that's my thoughts and i've had i had uh i'm i'm trying to help start a club in my neighborhood but also i'm doing one online the neighborhood one is a grocery store but the one online is a more personal art based project and for the art one i'm much more progressed because i need fewer materials all i need are the people and i've had the issue with people having a bit of trouble understanding that it's a very consensus cooperative based thing but it helped to [Music] it helped to [Music] it the boat analogy really helped because it's like the boat there's only one boat and everybody has to go the same way as the boat is going but you if you're on a crew that the captain listens or like the helmsman listens everyone will have a say in which direction the boat goes so it helped and that also played into us forming a not only short-term goals but long-term goals as well like the mission statement when we wrote i wrote out i asked everybody what do you want this company where you want this company to go long-term like a mission statement everybody got their opinions in and luckily for we were all in a general similar area there were some that were a bit more business oriented others that were more like um politically oriented others that are a bit more passion oriented but it was a similar trajectory that i think will do well so i wrote a mission statement that fit in everybody's goals in a sentence and then i elaborated on it the reason i wrote in a sentence is so that it wouldn't seem too convoluted and jumbled and then i elaborated so we would have more to think about than just um the sentence you know what i mean yeah i love that chip metaphor that's really helpful thank you um any other thoughts on that anyone else want to jump in another another thing that comes to mind is to me is the importance of being able to disagree um so with governance you inherently like you have different opinions and you have to govern together right and i'm wondering like to me i think that there can be oh um healthy there can be healthy conflict and learning how to talk through things together that you disagree on or maybe want to figure out a better solution together on um through dialogue and figuring things out together um does but with another times conflict i think we aren't taught that a lot too and so we can come into a coop and there can be harmful conflict or you know where it's not feeling it doesn't feel good to people you know so i'm wondering if uh anyone wants to speak on that just gotta you know does anyone have thoughts on that like conflict the role of conflict and how to make it healthy and not unhealthy i think that in the worst case where the conflict is becoming potentially triggering for people or maybe may result in a a division that is so great that it may destroy the co-op altogether i would say that in that case you should start to reach out for a mediator um and i can't really speak on how like anyone else might do that exactly as far as our networks here in philadelphia because of our pre-existing relationships we're connected with people and services that do that sort of thing but in general i would say that finding someone who is trustworthy with a good track record of dealing with conflict would be a good way to make sure that it does not become much more serious but as far as having healthy conflict uh i'm really eager to hear more about that because that sounds like uh that's not the sort of sentence that i would hear normally healthy conflict but it sounds it sounds nice it sounds potentially very very fruitful and um and also sometimes necessary so i'll pass it on to you anyone else would like to speak on that thanks alex um uh elliot i see your hand up would you like to go yeah thank you i guess uh just building on that i may maybe kind of reinforcing that question but one of the reasons why i came is because i was curious about that kind of thing my background is i'm a professor at a business school and i'm always looking for ways to contribute to this community like i really want to get involved in order to help support and foster cooperatives and these this kind of business structure or organizational structure um but i'm really curious about the ways to do that and i i was wondering maybe that's one of the one of the things that people from who are not members of cooperatives could help cooperatives like acting as mediators or i really don't know actually and i also have a background in negotiation and conflict management and so i was wondering maybe that's there could be something there that could be useful um but i'm curious people who who are you know who are doing it living a life if if that exists are there and it seems like are there mediation co-ops like like sort of like terror co-ops people who were involved in facilitating other cooperatives in order to make that work i see samantha raise your hand but yeah i'm really curious i really want to let everybody speak but i just i just really want to say that you know when we talked about the two pieces that are the key elements for um our governance system i could have added the third which we call circus circle practice it's not us just call it circle practice is for me the key way of making peace with that conflict is part of life and being able to just embrace it with like this is normal and to normalize it and not run away from it and kind of flip it to when we're experiencing attention it's simply the gap between the current state and a potential and so to be go into that tension with again a protocol that can hold to release it and move to the next stage circle practice for me is the way to do that and um yeah i think it's to have a healthy governance system it's the key cultural element that's probably on most co-ops and organizations blind spot and i'm quite surprised how many organizations when i show it to them are adopting it like as as really like something that they're hungry for because it is there's such a huge need for this yeah and matt finds that feinstein you put a great list of facilitation co-ops in chat so there are several that do that um but it always helps to keep growing right um it is in chat and there also i want to highlight there are several awesome chats going on and resources including a pirate party i don't know we'll see sorry my lighting makes me look scary right now but um but anyway um so check out that chat for a lot of great resources um next uh let's call it let's go to atsushi sure so this is not sushi here i posted the long post earlier sorry i'm so verbose um i also threw my back out which is why i don't have my video on i'm lying in bed because i can't move too well but in any case you know um um you know i guess so on the question of conflict i guess our issue right now you know again we're sort of a new co-op so a lot of folks don't understand cooperatives and so it's actually that people are a fl conflict diverse and so they don't know how to bring issues up to you know conversation in you know a staff meeting right so you know um oh you know in other words you know we have these beautiful governance mechanisms in place but we're not at a place where we're using them to really sort of talk it through as a group of people working with a common you know cause and purpose you know so i you know i'm not sure conflict is productive but i think a willingness to you know bring issues to the table because there's something you know there's a disagreement or somebody's uncomfortable about something i think that's important and for me as um you know general manager and i love the comment i received from somebody in a private chat that you know we should consider changing my title right you know i don't see my role as general manager so much as a facilitator to enable the kind of conversations that need to happen across the group but i haven't found a way to bring that to life and so our meetings are not so productive um and i think that's keeping us from you know reaching you know attaining our potential um you know so i think i don't know uh just my thoughts on the conflict issue i guess thank you oh that's great thank you um i'm going to call on daniel next because he had his hand up um first i'll call you good yeah hi everyone this is daniel um i'm on staff with the u.s federation of worker cooperatives in our training and consulting team and i wanted to jump in in part because we do a lot of this work where we've done some conflict mediation for folks but we do a lot of work to help people work through conflict right and i wanted to bring together a couple different points that i'm i'm hearing and share some practices too one is just um sushi towards your previous comment right if democracy is at the base of sort of the concept of worker cooperatives if people don't feel comfortable saying no you don't have a real democracy right can't people can't actually give their consent to a process if they don't feel like they can give a full-throated yes or a full-throated no when they really mean those things right and so it's really important for us to if we want to have a functioning democracy which is always a living practice we need to make sure people feel comfortable doing that right and then taking into account things like power positionality as part of that across an organization with our racial identities with our gender identities class privilege and position all of those things right and then of course it gets more complicated when you start to ask well what information do people need what environment people need in order to be able to give that full-throated yes or full-throated no to bring it back to some of the governing stuff and part of what kate was talking about it's part of why the governance work and being really clear about your decision making model is so important and having it written down right so you can go back to it and say this is what we all agreed to we said that this is how we were going to make our decisions and if people if we're in conflict about that great we can revisit our governance we can revisit those decision-making processes right but this is what we agreed to so that's what we're going to use for now right so that there are standard if you want to think through how you might engage and get ready for conflict before having those materials ready a really simple way to do it is to just like take a meaningful amount of time with your fellow worker owners with your collaborators to just talk through like how did you experience conflict growing up what did you learn about conflict right how do you like being in conflict now what is conflict that feels responsible respectful and healthy so that we can disagree with one another and build upon one another's ideas in order to make a cooperative that's really going to work for everyone um i want to lift up again that resource that matt put into the chat there's some really amazing stuff linked there and i also believe aorta who are a worker cooperative who do a lot of work around conflict power all that good stuff i believe on their website they have a tool that essentially helps people articulate it's a nice little worksheet how do how do i like to be a pro how do i like to be approached when we're in conflict together right understanding some people like physical distance is really important or like don't wait way out wag your finger right or maybe it's just like don't curse because that kind of language starts to make it feel more aggressive when we're disagreeing with one another right so understanding those things having conversations about how power interplays with all of that before you have some of that stuff right you always just want to be you want to talk about it before conflict is actually there so that you can be grounded in the things thank you thank you daniel appreciate it and just a heads up we have 15 more minutes left and i have hazel and wazir and kate on stack so hazel great to see you go ahead great to see you esther and everyone thank you yeah i'm on staff at the canadian worker co-op federation and um just want to shout out to samantha for joining for montreal thanks um yeah really daniel's just gave a lot of great info and i don't want to repeat any of that kind of stuff we do similar sorts of work in our federation too uh but anyways um the thing i wanted to just call out is i feel that if you have a good conflict well if you have a good decision-making process in place and people trust it and grow to trust it whatever it is that works for you kind of the more consensus based the better i think people can just lean into that and grow to trust it over time and you know cutting your teeth on like conflicts that are maybe not that huge you know is really helpful and then you see oh this is a conflict and we recognize it's happening here and we just we like our process and it's not scary and we can just go through it together i mean it's not like it's going to be perfect you know i mean there's all the issues of dealing with other humans and everything can come up but um i know i just want to personally speak to my co-housing community which uses a consensus based decision making process and it's awesome and we're trying to implement more uh pieces of sociocracy but i think just the very fact of having consensus creates a lot of safety and to the degree you can and it's not too disruptive to do but anyway um that's my main point i guess and i do have a question that i might just share and chat so thanks thanks hazel i was here i was just gonna mention um the experience i've had with um the little experience like i'm not that sorry i'm not that experienced with this process but making sure that i've always been really good at helping my friends communicate by telling them they can while they should make sure what they say doesn't offend anyone they can say whatever comes to their mind and that and that having that like mentality with like the co-op i'm i'm trying to form with the art one has really helped because sometimes you got sometimes people are somebody mentioned it i forget who somebody mentioned people are you have the system it's just people are somewhat averse to mentioning it for whatever reason and having the atmosphere where you sometimes you gotta tell them that it's the atmosphere but having the atmosphere where people feel safe and comfortable speaking their mind really does help now i'm again i'm like super inexperienced but and most of us are in this most of us in my group i'm not talking about anybody else here most of us in my group are inexperienced um so but having that did very much help you know what i mean yeah i feel like that trust element is so key you know like building up that trust and i think even that's where like social hour could come in and just getting to know each other in comfortable spaces too you know okay i'll pass it to k and then we'll go through some other questions on chat on from the chat i just wanted to invite people speaking to speak in spanish because i know most of the people presented today were speaking in english so i know that sometimes when it's a conversation that's mostly in one language we don't raise our voices as much so i know that there is many veterans of the cooperative movement here in this call who speak spanish as well we have interpretation both ways so just inviting that if any colleague would like to share about their experience in the decision making process or if they have any questions go ahead okay i'm going to speak in spanish i'm in mexico i think it's going to be easier for me and i think that i think the productive conflict is very important but for it to be important we have to be prepared to be able to transform a conflict into something productive so it's not something that comes automatically we just don't create it just like that so you have to be prepared for that so number one so number two it depends on who the people who are part of the cooperative and why are they members of the cooperative many times in mexico at least and many other countries as well people belong to a cooperative without really knowing what they're getting themselves into many times due to other motivations that might be very legitimate like maybe obtaining a loan or to have economic or financial resources so people get into cooperatives without being ready without really knowing what they're getting themselves so to so in third place many cooperatives that there's a very intense process of technical professional training so training and education to be able to carry out in a better way what the cooperative has is its fundamental economic basis and what they're making their their living and many times they put much less attention to the cooperative training that continual training so we don't become cooperatives because we've been 20 years of experience and not that that's not important it is very important or because they were part of the course of cooperatives so i know what the cooperative is based on that class i took so it's not only a technical knowledge what the structure is what's the decision-making process etc it also has to do with a certain attitude in terms of society with life with work with the community and that's what we have to be working constantly and even more with the board of directors because sometimes the board of directors after they're continuing in their own functions for a long time the power you know does its own thing and so when i get used to governing or directing i like it and if i do it well that's the worst thing no i start to believe i'm indispensable you know so all of that all together you have to take it into consideration to be able to transform the conflict into something productive which is like the instance of how we make decisions in a cooperative society yeah thank you yeah i really agree on the importance of ongoing member education what you alluded to and appreciate your points um and the engagement like so many times i've seen like you know members who've been there a long time not see the need to really keep back like either keep active in decision making or like dynamic process and it's still dynamic co-op so we're always growing right um i'm going to call out for there's a question about youth co-ops and there have been some good good points in chat regarding youth co-ops and then there was a question about um it's uh how do you scale decision making how does it work with multi-stakeholder or many types of members and i was wondering if anyone wanted to briefly address that and then we'll turn it over to kate and then briefly just briefly address that um sorry it's a big topic um but yeah and then we'll turn it over to kate uh to close this up i'll wrap this up samantha would you want to take that no question the question about multiple stakeholders and yeah there's the kind of double two parts that i guess like scaling up maybe the scaling part yeah um you know my background is cultural anthropology so my default um response is always going to be have your cultural foundations anchored in and scaling up finds its way right um so you know that good decision-making practice whatever it is make sure everybody has the shared language of it you all understand it so you can just like do it in an easy way and when somebody comes in new and you scale up it's about this is the decision-making practice that's going to scale across and through an organization and if you have uh really simple ways of making sure you're having transparency of what's happening and that practice of transparency and documenting and putting it down in very simple way like like a simple log is really easy to scale it up and then if you have your your conflict practice like a circle practice or whatever your conflict practice is but internally it's not i mean i think it's it's good to have you know being able to reach outside for external when things when things really go go bad but to have it on a daily basis those three can take an organization from something that's small of four people to 14 to 40 to whatever and since we're talking about scaling up there's um there's a cooperative in latin america that i would love to share with you all because it really wows me of how they have scaled up from a way of looking at decisions and saying we can scale as long as we focus on the criteria of the decision and agreeing on the criteria versus agreeing on the actual thing because if you agree on the criteria then people can go off and and enact that criteria in a way that makes sense it's in the criteria of what's valid it makes the it it causes the friction and so this um this co-op that's in venezuela is i don't i'm not quite sure even how you pronounce it i would love for somebody um that has his hispanophone to share to to to pronounce it but what they do is they have a way they have hospitals um organizations of all different kinds and they have scaled in a way of um running things based on the simple principle of can we just focus on the criteria that underlines this decision rather than the specifics of the decision so um yeah that's what i'd like to talk to to leave with is like a latin american inspiration thank you awesome appreciate that um let's see here so i think we're at a time but i really appreciate this has been really i really appreciate everyone and your contributions and in both the dialogue and the chat there's so many great resources and so much experience here so thank you everybody and i'd like to pass it over to kate now to close this out thank you and to everybody who shared their experiences as we said now there's no way to manage a worker cooperative yes that specific way it depends a lot on the size the political perspective the type of industry the locality and then there are many others and you can also always count on the support of this network to be able to explore more the types of governance that you're trying to implement in your cooperative always send us your questions we're always available through email info head aruba that co-op you can send us your questions your comments your ideas your feedbacks your constructive criticisms and we're there to be able to answer questions and to be able to support you in this development of your cooperatives so just to share a little bit this is not the only space where we're going to be meeting in these months we have some events that are coming up for people who are arriving or who are just starting your project or your cooperative we have as space every month where people can get together about how to develop your cooperative it's a space likes more basic for people who are starting in the initial stages and this next month is going to be on friday april 1st and for people who are members we have a council for advocacy if you're interested in the work that's in terms of advocacy for worker cooperatives the next meeting is on thursday april 7th for members who are interested in the labor and union movement you can join that call of policy and advocacy oh i'm sorry it's on friday april 8th and our next stage like this is part of a series that we're sharing among membership around different issues and co-op development fundamentals of democracy at work and the next one the next session is focus on founder compensation so if you have a larger membership and so people created the cooperative we're going to be talking about how to have some kind of compensation for founders and so we're going to have that in about a month and wednesday april 20th and our last thing we'd like to invite you many of you have a membership with the federation through your cooperative but we also invite you for people who are interested in this work to join as monthly sustainers and if you would like to join as a monthly sustainer you can do that in our main webpage which is usworker.com or cop and that's where you can sign up to make that monthly donation so thank you to be here today and i hope you enjoyed the rest of your day