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Somehow, I've gotten into my mind, as someone that's looking into being an ~entrepreneur~, that a cooperative is what I would like to start in a few years if the opportunity presents itself. The concept of a coop, as a democratic enterprise where you have one vote per worker on the matters of administration, seems like quite the utopia when you've been working as a wage slave for most of your life for middle and upper management. Have any of you worked in one? If so, what was your experience? I've heard of some cases where cooperatives have been successful, and right now I'm just trying to demystify the theory from the facts. The good and bad sides of it. Are coops always money losers but for a few exceptions? Will workers really vote in their own interest, or will work now become a quagmire of non decisions like most democracies find themselves, inevitably slowing the defense of the enterprise against quicker minded, top down enterprises? What are your experiences in them? How good/bad are you having it compared to how you've had it in a top down company? As you can see, I really don't know poo poo. I only really know the perspective of top down, strong armed management. I'm currently in the process of moving countries (to the EU), so add to this that eventually I'll have to see if that even impact the concept. I assume it should be mostly the same, with the culture of the country maybe just then changing the mentality of your pool of workers.
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May 18, 2020 03:04
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 11:35 |
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You will need money. Do you have money?
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Jun 5, 2020 21:19
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I don't have experience working in one, but I wanted to share what I've thought in terms of starting a coop as you describe, and some of what I've read before. In the context of creating a business dedicated to direct democracy, I think any founding governance document needs to be broad and modular. Then it can be updated later when there are more worker-owners involved. Of course, finding a viable product or service in the first place and creating a business plan has to be done first. *Ownership model. E.g. majority control by worker-owners, individual rights to IP contributions. *Compensation model. E.g. profit sharing once there's cash flow. *Decision scaling. E.g. which motions are presented to and voted by the entire organization vs. each department. This 2017 article recently featured on Pocket argues that at least in the USA, the number of worker coops is growing and that normalization of the model can only increase. https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-end-of-capitalism-is-already-starting-if-you-know-where-to-look?utm_source=pocket-newtab Mondragon is a major model to study. However, they scale wages in precise ratios based on job type and skill. I question if unequal base compensation for any reason makes sense if one goal of this type of model is to prevent treating labor like a commodity. The farming industry has a lot of examples to review. E.g. in college for one of my papers, I studied the milk coops in Gujarat during India's Green Revolution which were formed by small-holders, as well as micro-lending in that period. However, a counter-example would be a 'marketing coop' like Dairigold, centered on owners banding together without including the field labor. https://www.thestranger.com/slog/20...ple-need-change I'd say that various corporations have aspects worth studying to use in a worker coop model as well. Toyota pioneered allowing line workers to stop production on their own to catch defects or other issues, among other organizational ideas. Huawei includes worker-owned company shares in its ownership structure, but in that context there are no dividends for that share class, and the units are unevenly distributed.
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Jun 7, 2020 11:13
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Thanks for the info! There are a lot of factors to consider for sure, when you're looking at making any sort of community centered around the modern means of power (money), I feel you need to balance out the possible power vacuums. So I'm trying to see how many of the usual trappings I can prevent in advance with a proper founding document (an internal constitution? I don't see why not). I had read of Mondragon before, in fact they were the first I heard way back that picked my interest considering their success. So I'm really looking for as many cases as possible to just have a better pool of data. It doesn't help that the term "coop" is massively different from one organization to the other (as you say: the models of the internal workings can differ widely). So I basically have to go through the models in my head VS digging what each case is about etc. My local enterprise help desk basically recommends starting a cooperative right now for the lower risks ensured by the founders. Of all the models they proposed though, only one was truly democratic, the rest being the usual top-down enterprise with coop flavouring. So yeah, still digging around when I have time. Again, if anyone reading this has actual experiences to share, please say so. I'm incredibly curious.
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Jun 7, 2020 17:56
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I choose to share pretty clear financial goals/results including the results of experiments, idea, etc. with my employees. I do the best I can to document those results. We have 2x monthly brainstorming sessions where they propose ideas focused on business goals that I set. What I learned from doing this is that although they will want to help, your employees aren't business people and as much as you may share financial goals and results, they will not think like business owners. You should not give them equal say into the their tasks and the business administration because of this fact. You should give them freedom to experiment but NOT freedom to continue doing things that don't work, which they definitely will, especially if you do not define and measure success in terms of finances. In my experience there IS a benefit to sharing this info and the IS a benefit to listening to their ideas and providing feedback on them, but the final decision should be from someone who has a broader understanding. Here's an example of that in practice: We hired someone who was running essentially a competing business, and they redirected their incoming clients to a special phone number so we'd know they're there. They get a special commission for sales from their legacy business. This person ranked in the Google map box results for [business type] [our city]. This ranking generates tons of calls from low value clients and clients that are not the right type (0 value clients). Our current marking channels generate clients that are very targeted and worth roughly 8x-12x these low value calls and results in near 0 clients we reject. The sales development person that reports to them would continuously propose ideas that'd align with this new hires unsuccessful business practices that generate low value or no value calls because "they get tons of calls and we barely get any! That method works!" Despite setting very VERY clear $ amounts as definitions of success, he still measured success as "number of calls coming in". When I then did the envelope math showing that for the last 2 months 8 of our calls generated $X and 100 calls from them generated $0.1*X they finally got it, but this was only after some rather heated debate. People need a leader that listens to them, but not one that delegates the responsibility of making decisions to make a claim of being "democratic". True democracies do not make good small companies. Kind, smart, engaged, available leadership is more likely to.
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Jun 8, 2020 02:54
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| # ? Apr 18, 2024 11:35 |
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I always wonder if democratically electing company leaders would work.
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Jun 8, 2020 14:46
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