— Mark G., Michael Healy, Bentley Lein, CDS Consulting Co-op
Understanding the board’s role as leaders/pioneers will naturally result in more effective leadership and member linkage. Not news to us board members who spent the recent board retreat exploring this very subject. So, maybe not all of this workshop was news to me per se, but the workshop itself was impeccably executed between 3 of CDS’s board consultants, and led to many great discussions and valuable lessons.
The workshop began with a rehash (for me) of Maslow’s Pyramid, adapted for co-op involvement by CDS president Marilyn Scholl. You know the one, the base consisting of “shoppers”, involved in the co-op insofar as they buy food from the co-op, and moving up to smaller and smaller sub-sections of the membership at higher and higher levels of involvement with the co-op. Shopping members, social members, up to active members such as board members and volunteers. They point of course being, that as board members we must learn to honor & connect with individual members (or groups of members) where they are. We must be grateful for member involvement, and mustn’t judge, or guilt-trip for not participating more.
They then moved into (another rehash, for me) Brett Fairbairn’s 3 strategic principles: economic linkage, transparency, and cognition. A transparent board/co-op is one where the members can see that the co-op is acting on their behalf, and in their interest. And that cognition becomes “the glue that keeps the co-op together when the co-op, the membership, and the world at large are changing.” ”Change is inevitable. Resistance is futile!”
Where things started to get interesting is when the presenters began synthesizing Maslow/Scholl’s hierarchy of member engagement with Fairbairns 3 strategies to LINK leaders & members. Here’s what i was able to capture of this:
- Work the systems we have: We already have a democracy within the co-op, we have information about what members do (buy), we have existing communication tools (newsletters, website, etc.), and we have—built right into our bylaws—interactive events (annual mtg.). All of these need to be leveraged by the board to increase transparency and allow for cognition with the membership.
They underscored the importance of owners choosing their leaders. Obviously this is a large part of the democracy that we tout as one of our major differences. But they point to the effect that a contested board election can have towrds allowing the membership to feel like they have a voice. One attendee mentioned that their co-ops recent board election all 3 incumbent seats were overturned. Which is a realy powerful message that the membership can send to the board about how the board is satisfying their needs.- Watching what members do can be as important as (or more) listening to what they say. From the perspective of sociologists and economists in the room, it becomes apparent that humans have a tendency to say one thing, but do something else. Watch trends. USE the data that is available through the POS, as this is a direct reflection of the actions that members are taking in the store. Surveys can be helpful, sure, but people lie.
- Transparency can be a valuable tool for recruitment of active members or potential board members. Simply letting the community know what kinds of rad, awesome, bitchin’ things the co-op is doing all the time can be a really effective way to recruit members who simply want to be more involved in that rad-ness.
- If i were to summarize the message that the presenters were trying to express i would say this: Linkage should be what we do. It shouldn’t be extra work. Never tacked on, never an afterthought. Integrate Fairbairns concepts into our daily board practices and the linkage will happen. Remember the hierarchy of member engagement and meet people where they are at.
Bonus ideas:
- Print membership statistics in the newsletter. How many new members? Equity totals. Refunded memberships, etc.
- Cool idea, maybe for the annual mtg?: Hand out a slip of paper to everyone present. Have them write a topic or value that they hold near & dear. Pass the cards around to others and have members pair up. The pairs must then rank the ideas on the slips they are holding, splitting up 7 (or 9 or 15 points, any odd number) between the two ideas. Repeat, maybe 5—10 times. Each time shuffling the cards and ranking the two in front of them. At the end, tally up the points and you’ve a ranked list that’s reflective of the values that are most important among those present. Along the way they’ve engaged in hopefully stirring dialogue and thought critically about many different topics. Cool, huh!?