Demo: Co-op 101 Pre-Work
All participants must complete this 15-minute crash course before the workshop begins.
Last updated
All participants must complete this 15-minute crash course before the workshop begins.
Last updated
We "flipped the classroom" and put the homework at the beginning because we think people should make the most of their time together.
If you're short on time, the FAQs at the end of this page are optional. We want you to trust your gut; focus on whatever feels important to you. There are no bonus points for reading all the extra content.
Oh, and don't worry - there are no quizzes or tests in this workshop.
We often reinforce capitalism by encouraging our clients to cope with it rather than change it. Coping, after all, feels more relevant to a person's immediate needs. And changing a complex system feels too big, too out of reach.
Whether you're a social worker, a civil servant, an attorney, or someone else in the world's vast social service ecosystem, you share a common end goal: get us closer to a world where marginalized groups can defend themselves from harm.
In today's fractured and alienating world, the key word there might be groups. Maybe the most powerful first step in tackling any complex problem - even capitalism - is to get people together and begin to create a high-trust environment?
As professionals, high-trust rarely describes our own workplaces. Our leaders are often out-of-touch with with what happens on the ground. We work unrelenting schedules. Our workplace culture suffers and it trickles down to our relationships with our clients.
Even when we "go private" with our licensed practices, we still exist in an oppressive system and struggle to serve the people who need our services most.
Alternatives exist. There are thousands of healthier, more democratic workplaces across the US.
In the social work profession, we often misuse the word empowerment. We often describe any kind of coaching or even self-care as empowerment. There are other elements that make up true empowerment. They include self-advocacy, cooperation, and bringing together people with common experiences. The end goal of empowerment is autonomy and self-determination.
With modern technology connecting us more completely than ever before, we have an opportunity to spread empowerment not only for individuals but for entire communities.
Why is it important to do something now - right now - for our own sake and for the sake of those we serve? Consider this example from the famous holiday film It's a Wonderful Life.
Many of the social and economic problems depicted in the film have only become worse today. This scene shows the fictional character George Bailey reminding his building and loan community that they can use solidarity to make it through an economic panic.
It shows a neighbor-to-neighbor lending model that is almost extinct today. It shows how a small amount of savings can go a long way. And it shows the pure joy experienced in a high-trust community.
We have to ask the alarming and urgent questions, such as: 100 years later, have the Potters of the world won? Can they create value without endlessly extracting something from people or the planet? Or does it feel like every sector of the economy and every social or environmental side effect is feeding a crisis?
What unites all co-ops is the tactic of anchoring power through ownership, rather than asking disproportionately powerful people to charitably share their power.
While boundaries of the cooperative movement can be fuzzy, you can always distinguish a co-op from something else by whether they advertise and practice a set of core principles. Ideals like equity, solidarity, and transparency.
Cooperative-style agreements are much older than modern business practices, but they can be adapted to fit any modern organization.
Common examples include: tenant-owned apartments, neighbor-owned grocery stores, or an existing business that preserves it's founder's legacy by selling to its workers when founder retires (a conversion or "ownership transition").
Cooperative agreements make it possible for farmers and distributors to provide most of the food you eat. If you live in a rural area in America, your electricity also comes from an electric cooperative and you have a vote in who runs the electric company. Every credit union in the US is a financial co-op, owned collectively by every user with an active account.
Member-owners enjoy enormous benefits. For example, worker-owners receive higher wages and retirement savings, tenant-owners pay lower rent, farmers in an agricultural co-op access a much bigger market for their products, credit union members have lower interest rates fewer barriers to lending.
Co-ops flip the modern economy upside down. They return us to our origins as communities that prioritize sharing abundant resources rather than inventing scarcity.
Participating in cooperatives also jolts us out of complacent mindsets and empowers us to participate in local civics. Democracy is a practice. Our democracy muscles are out of shape.
Economic democracy is a broad term that includes any shift in decision-making power away from conventional shareholders and bosses. Workplace democracy is the application of day-to-day tools within a workplace. Tools like voting, trust-building, or checks and balances.
Employee Ownership is a broad term for any business that is partially or entirely owned by its workers. A worker co-op is only one model. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) offer enormous tax incentives to encourage companies to sell to their employees. They have become very popular in the US since their creation by congress in 1974.
Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs) allow a company to protect it's social mission indefinitely. They are very flexible, but usually direct profits to employees and preserve their jobs.
Essentially, there are three ways to share ownership with employees in the United States:
Through a stock plan,
Through a legal trust,
Or through co-op bylaws.
Finally, worker self-directed non-profits prove that democracy works outside the for-profit and social enterprise sectors as well. Government agencies and NGOs can operate more equitably too!
When you Google "cooperative", you'll inevitably find some conflicting messages. Let's clarify a few of them.
Cooperative practices come from every corner of the globe. While the Rochdale (raach-dayl) Pioneers are often credited with the key principles of cooperativism, this is not a Eurocentric movement. The growth of worker co-ops in America has been largely driven by women, immigrants, and other marginalized groups over the past decade. People with a disadvantage value solidarity more than people who benefit from the status quo.
Co-ops operate , which is not the same as charity. Co-ops are more like than non-profits. They are self-sufficient, not dependent on donors.
Co-ops are not "flat" or boss-less or non-hierarchical. More often than not, members vote to delegate some authority to managers. However, they treat management as a delegated task and employees often have some oversight over their leaders.
Separatism is not the goal. Co-ops are not synonymous with communes. Co-ops cooperate. They co-exist with conventional businesses, governments, and community organizations. While is one key principle, it is balanced by the principles of and .
Co-ops are not a standalone solution to every systemic problem. They do not exist in a vacuum. Healthy co-ops require healthy government oversight and healthy markets. But they also help create the conditions for healthy governments and markets!
Employee ownership is not rare. There are over 11,000 American businesses using an employee ownership model. They fly under the radar, and for good reason. You should not be expected to look under the hood of every product or service you use.
We expect employee ownership to become even more popular - , most Americans value employee ownership.
Sociocracy is a governance practice that seeks to create highly productive and psychologically safe environments. Not all co-ops use sociocracy; they are free to use the tools that best fit their members. But sociocracy has a few great beginner-friendly tools to flesh out your vision of what is possible in a de-centralized workplace.
Important Note! These tools are especially important for your workshop experience.
We are accustomed to watching a boss run a meeting, but separating leadership from facilitation can be powerful. Not every leader is a skilled facilitator, and vice-versa.
The two main goals of facilitation are:
Keep the meeting moving towards its goals.
Ensure that everyone contributes their perspective.
That's it! A skillful facilitator tries to include all members involved and keeps the process moving forward.
A time-keeper role can keep the group aware of any specific time blocks on the agenda. They give a warning whenever time is running short.
A note-taker role is helps improve communication and transparency. For any team with distributed leadership, documentation is invaluable.
It is worth noting that the member role - anyone actively "bought in" to a group or process, like a Let's Play classroom - also comes with leadership responsibilities. Skillful followership can be as important as leadership. And "care labor" in any distributed team should be recognized as essential work.
In conventional meetings, a leader may ask something as innocent as, "Any questions?" and pause before moving on. This habit can be disingenuous or exclusionary at best.
Instead, using a round gives each member of a group time to speak in clockwise order. Predictable routines like this help balance introvert and extrovert power in group settings.
A round can be used for a quick vote, ensuring each member's decision is seen in turn. Or a round can be used to give each member several minutes to comment on a specific topic, ensuring a deeper discussion. While they may feel forced at first, rounds increase trust and improve the quality of group decisions.
A round is not always the best tool to use. In high-trust teams, open discussion - the unstructured chatter we are accustomed to in group settings - can allow ideas and decisions to emerge organically and productively.
Instead of a black and white up-or-down vote, a consent method re-frames the bar for success from "I love it" to "I can live with it." If a member has a strong objection, they are asked to explain the objection. If the group cannot accommodate the objection, the member effectively vetoes a proposal and it fails.
Hand signals for a quick consent vote often look like this.
Notice that the strong objection hand motion implies that you are offering the group a gift. From a strengths perspective, objections are an opportunity to create a more refined solution.
Majority rule often results in 49% of a group being unhappy with the decision. (Politicians prove this on a daily basis! 😮💨) Majority rule is not always a bad thing, but it can certainly cause harm.
The consent process tosses the tyranny of the majority out the window, and insists on a continued dialogue focused on addressing strong objections. The process looks like this:
Proposal: An idea is presented.
Clarifying Questions Round: Members try to better understand the proposal.
Quick Reactions Round: By sharing a few sentences, each group member gives their opinion. (Use hand signals when in a time crunch.)
Amendments (if necessary): Strong objections are folded into the original idea.
Voting Round: Strong objections stop the proposal. Objectors must make a one-sentence statement explaining their objection.
Without practice, it is difficult to appreciate how this pattern feels. Rest assured, many wildly different teams have valued this process - or a very similar one - since the 1850's when the term sociocracy was first coined.
With these tools (rounds, consent voting, and a rough idea of the consent process) you have the essential tools under your belt that will - hopefully! - improve your work with any group of people.
You now have a basic understanding of what a co-op is, why co-ops matter, and how democratic decision making tools help decentralized teams. Now we simply need to prepare you for the workshop itself.
Some tips to help you get the most out of the experience:
Cooperativism overlaps with a lot of other fascinating ideas, but we only want you to explore the concepts that stand out to you. You can browse the and external links to win a gold star . The information on this page is all you need to participate in the workshop.
That's all! Do you feel ready? We hope so.
