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I hear it all the time, no-one’s got a good word for committees. Committees are domineering, inflexible and take too long to make decisions.

A camel is a horse designed by a committee, they say. Jolly well designed some might say (me) given their usefulness and amazing capacity to withstand desert heat and they have three sets of eyelids and two rows of eyelashes to keep sand out of their eyes and can completely shut their nostrils during sandstorms!

But seriously maybe it’s because people don’t know how to make a committee work well, or they’re only thinking about how to get their own way?

Not all committees are like that though. I give you one of the greatest committees in UK history – the Rochdale Pioneers! From the most uncertain beginnings, this committee of 28 artisans (half of them weavers) managed to put together £28 with which they bought butter, sugar, flour, oatmeal and candles, and opened their now famous store in Toad Lane Rochdale in 1844. Three months later they added tea and tobacco and by the end of their first year, they had 80 members and £182 capital. Just 56 years later there were 1439 co-ops in every area of the UK.  There are now 3 million co-ops around the world, with 1.2 billion members*. Some committee!

Here’s 13 of them, in 1865, as the Rules of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society were adopted by the International Co-operative Alliance as International Co-operative Principles.

 

There’s more to this story here.

Wouldn’t you think that if we bring together a group of people with a range of different opinions, experience, skills and knowledge, they would be better at problem solving than one individual working on their own?

Sadly, this is often not the case as our aversion to the word ‘committee’ demonstrates. But does it have to be like this?

My experience working with co-operatives for over 30 years leads me to believe that it doesn’t, but that we need to learn how to work together. By that I mean building trust by having respect for each other; listening to others’ opinions, expressing ourselves clearly, establishing clear goals and agreeing working methods. We need to learn how to address conflict when it arises, not to fear it but to explore it, which we can do once we have built a foundation of trust and respect.

*not all of them inspired by our Rochdale Pioneers, but many of them with constitutions based on International Co-operative Principles, which in 1865 were themselves based on the Rules of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society, founded in 1844.

A blog mainly intended for participants on the Barefoot Co-op Development programme, but may be of interest more widely.

In the first of two sessions on ‘Co-operative Ways of Working’ we looked at the typical governance problems that can arise and discussed a range of collaborative tools useful for working with co-operative clients to resolve governance issues.

Here are some of them. I have suggested how they might be used, but of course it’s up to you! I’m sure you will find ways to adapt them for different co-op clients.

MODELLING AN EFFECTIVE MEETING

3 tools for effective meetings

Different decision-making methods – pros and cons

Sociocracy tools

Seeds for Change on consensus decision-making

Seeds for Change consensus video

A DAY IN THE LIFE

An exercise that can help a start up co-op decide what teams/departments it needs. However this exercise also be useful with an existing co-op where there is role confusion &/or conflict over who does what. There are five steps:

Step 1: In pairs or trios, ask them to think up a typical day (or week) in their co-op. Make a list of all the decisions that need to be taken. Share and make a list of all the decisions, there maybe duplication, discuss and reduce the list to 10 typical decisions. Number them 1 – 10.

Step 2: All together agree a list of the different locations in the co-op where decisions can be made (for example individual job description, ad hoc meeting with other member; monthly GM, AGM etc.) Identify them A, B, C etc.

Step 3: Again in pairs or trios (or larger groups, depending on the number of participants) the task is to decide WHERE each of those typical decisions currently gets taken (not where it should, but where it does).

Step 4: Share and be amazed at how different (or not) their responses are.

Step 5: Facilitate a debate about how effective their current structure and/or procedures are. What is working well? Where are the overlaps/gaps? What needs tweaking? Encourage them to delegate a person or a couple of people to make a note of the key points (perhaps under those headings)  and write up a proposal for the next GM.

AGILE RETROSPECTIVE TECHNIQUE

Most online references are for software development firms using Agile management techniques. I learnt this technique from a colleague who had learnt it in a software environment. (Thank you @simoncopsey) One of the things I like about this approach is that it’s a way of confronting conflict in the team without calling it conflict. Here’s a blog from Toptal, that provides more detail about the process.

SOCIOCRACY TOOLS

Rounds, consent decision making

INFLUENCE GAME

This one is a favourite, a good warm up but with a rich vein of learning for everyone.

• Get all the participants either in a large room or outdoors. As them to spread out and fill up the space. Then ask them to each pick two fellow members (they shouldn’t speak, or point, the people they pick should not know they’ve been chosen).
• Explain that their job is to locate themselves physically in space equidistant from both people. Expect lots of laughter and giggling as the room moves around. Might take some time, but eventually it will settle down and everyone will stop moving.
• This is your cue to ask them how they felt about doing that. Then ask what they thought was happening? What might we learn from this exercise? Hopefully someone will say that they didn’t know who was following them. (If no-one says that, ask if anyone suspected who was following them). This for me is the first learning point and one that we can relate to power and influence. We all have power to influence people, but we often have no idea who is being influenced by us. We influence others by our behaviour, as well as what we might say or write.
• Now ask one person to step out of the group. And repeat your instructions of earlier. This will cause everything to change, as people need to find others to follow. Again, lots of laughter and moving around but eventually it will quieten down and everyone will stop moving.
• Ask again, what happened when one person left the group? Everything changed. Remind them about the group dynamics model of forming, storming, norming, performing. These stages of group development (perhaps not all of them and not necessarily in that order) will happen every time people leave or new people join a group.
• What can we learn? For me, one important lesson references co-operative culture. That if you understand the importance of a strong co-operative culture and do your best to build and maintain it, others will follow your example. You will be walking the talk.

SWOT ANALYSIS

The Mindtools explanation linked above is intended for private enterprise, but a SWOT analysis works well in co-ops too. It’s helpful to clarify that strengths and weaknesses tend to be internal to the organisation, while opportunities and threats are external. Also you will find that a weakness can become a strength, but of course you have to recognise and acknowledge it first.

TIMELINE

Excellent warm up, especially in a big co-op where people in different teams don’t get to talk to each other much.

Get everyone in a line according to when they became a member of the co-op. Then divide them into ‘age’ groups – the old timers, maybe a couple of groups in the middle and the newbies. They can chat and reminisce or share confusion or whatever, but they need to record an overall impression, to be shared with the other groups, of what the co-op feels like for them. Then after 15 minutes (or longer if time) go round the groups getting them to share their stories. Expect revelations!

HERZBERG EXERCISE

A blog by Nathan Brown, adapted for use as a tool for exploring motivation in co-ops by Bob Cannell.

Worker co-ops are set up for the benefit of members, but how do we know what members want? Herzberg says that people have different motivations for going to work, which he divides into four:

two ‘hygiene’ factors:

• • pay & security
  • great place to work

& two ‘motivational’ factors:

• • ethics & respect
  • challenge & personal development

The exercise:

Draw up a flip chart with 4 quadrants:

1. 1. pay & security
   2. great place to work
   3. ethics & respect
   4. challenge & personal development

Give each person 6 sticky dots. They have to stick them on the quadrant that most closely describes what motivates them to come to work in their co-op every day. They can distribute the dots as they like.

Feedback and discussion might include:

• • different ways in which people are motivated
  • how can this information help us with strategic planning?

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY 

A positive, ‘glass half full’ approach, involving four stages:

1. 1. Discover:  Focus on what’s working, build on success. What are our strengths? What do we enjoy? What do we want to do more of?
   2. Dream:  Use our strengths and what we want to do to create a shared vision of the future – what might be?
   3. Design:  Co-create a design to make it happen, based on our values and principles
   4. Deliver:  What will be? Sustain the vision through empowering people, learning, adjusting and improvising

Meetings are the life blood of a co-operative. They are where information is shared and discussed and where decisions are taken. Where members can get updates on progress of the various jobs and tasks that have been delegated and where people are mandated to take action.

It seems it is going to be a while until we are able to meet together f2f (face to face), thanks to the coronavirus attacking our communities, so here are some techniques and tips to help you make your online meetings as effective as possible. Continue reading “Co-operantics guide to co-operative online meetings”

We were really pleased to see that the Co-ops Unleashed report from the New Economics Foundation, commissioned by the Co-op Party, referenced co-operatives undertaking a co-op principles audit every 5 years.  We have long advised co-ops to take a look at how they put the principles into practice, offering DIY guidance and an audit service (which provides external validity).  We also frequently deliver training sessions which include a section on the Co-operative Principles. As recently as last month, we delivered workshops with co-ops to discuss and understand what the coop principles mean in their co-op, and how they could be better put into practice.

Sat at the Open Coops 2018 conference the importance of culture for participation in co-ops keeps cropping up, so we thought it might be a good idea to draw your attention to this piece on developing co-operative culture.

Next week (12th October) Co-operatives South East is hosting a regional co-ops conference and AGM in Brighton entitled “Co-ops Collaborating for a Sustainable Future”.  It is focusing on how co-operatives can forge trading partnerships to reduce unnecessary waste and carbon emissions while boosting their trading activity.  Nathan from Co-operantics is going to be helping facilitate the day, as an outgoing Board member of Co-operatives South East.  He has served a 3 year term in a regional federal body for co-ops as part of our commitment to the 6th co-operative principle (Co-operation among co-operatives).  The full programme can be viewed here and if you are late to booking, use this form. Did we say it’s free?

So what’s it all about?

Sustainability has multiple meanings: Continue reading “Co-ops Collaborating for a Sustainable Future 12th October 2017”

The Away Day – love it or loathe it, it’s an essential element of collective working, but if it’s not properly planned and well facilitated it can undermine all your efforts to work together effectively as a team.

It can be a jolly, a social get together, a chance to stand back, review progress over the last year and plan for next year, or a look at the longer term. It can be an opportunity to review organisational structure, or a space for looking at the way you work together – at processes rather than tasks. But not all at once! It can be tempting to try to cram as much as possible in to the day, but that’s a mistake. When people are taking time out from day to day operations to look at issues in more depth, it’s a frustrating waste of time if important topics can only be touched on briefly. Continue reading “Away Days – love them or loathe them?”