In terms of time invested and ease of creation, this has been the most difficult entry I’ve written to date. I’ve wracked my brains to figure out why and concluded early this morning that it’s because a number of ideas in John Abrams’ book Companies We Keep simply scare the pants off me.
I find that certain books and ideas show up when, whether I consciously realize it or not, I am ready to hear and process them. Not long after my fortieth birthday I had the sense that the curtains had been pulled back and I had unbridled access to the Tree of Knowledge, with a microscopic view of life and death and the nature of good and evil. To my surprise, I am, once again, experiencing substantial cognitive dissonance, which is never a comfortable state of being. Don’t worry, I’m not going woo-woo on you. There’s absolutely no chance I will want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya anytime soon. Let me explain.
I originally bought Abrams’ book because I’m turning a social enterprise idea over in my brain and wanted to gain an elementary understanding of employee ownership options. But employee ownership is really only the tip of the iceberg. While he does a great job explaining the mechanics of ESOPs vs. co-ops, it wasn’t until about page 100 that my highlighter got busy. A few hundred pages later the book was awash in a sea of pink. It’s not that I couldn’t discern his key messages, it was the volume of timely information, particularly around community engagement, long-term thinking and alternative business models, that I wanted to note. But if the three volumes of Lord of the Rings can be distilled down to “Small chap goes to a lot of trouble to get rid of some stolen jewelry” (thanks Kenny Mac for this), then surely I can distill the essence of Abrams’ book. Surely.
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John Abrams, a self-described “pathological optimist,” is a dangerous man. It’s not because his company, South Mountain, crafts gorgeous custom homes on Martha’s Vineyard (it does). He’s dangerous because he thoroughly grasps the inner workings of community and the journey required to find integrated, meaningful community-based solutions. He possesses the commitment required to deepen relationship with the place where he lives and a clear, personal picture of what it means to have ‘enough.’ In my estimation, this translates into real, beneficial, enduring power (not to mention the possibility of deep-seated happiness) and is profoundly amazing to me. It reminds me just how far away I am yet from where I need, and want, to be.
– PART 1 –
All of us are able to make good livelihoods because none of us are getting rich.
– J. Abrams
The concepts of “enough” and “cathedral building” – taking a long view in building, enterprise and communities that are worthy of an extended existence – echo throughout the book in varying forms and examples.
Being Canadian I am naturally a little ‘pink’ on the inside, willing to trade off some personal rights for the greater good which, I thought, made me a social liberal. But when I first read this quote, and felt strangely resentful about it, I realized that I am not (yet) comfortable with the idea of trading off theoretical personal financial upside for the good of my fellow workers. I say I “support” strengthening the social safety net, alleviating homelessness, the payment of a living wage, and anti-poverty strategies but, aside from the government redistribution of my taxes and some targeted donations, how do I actively combat these problems? And what, I wonder, are the best strategies and most effective efforts to do so? As the middle class gets squeezed, the unions beat up, and a greater polarization of rich and poor occurs cooperatives and other forms of employee-owned enterprises offer a substantive (and radical) framework of economic and social redistribution to offset some of these ills.
I am familiar with unions – my father was a Teamster and an Operating Engineer and we reaped the benefits of good wages – but I had never heard of the Mondragon Corporation, a leapfrog over unions, until I reached page 50.
The MONDRAGON Corporation is a federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. Founded in the town of Mondragón in 1956, its origin is linked to the activity of a modest technical college and a small workshop producing paraffin heaters. Currently it is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2009 it was providing employment for 85,066 people working in 256 companies in four areas of activity: Finance, Industry, Retail and Knowledge. The MONDRAGON Co-operatives operate in accordance with a business model based on People and the Sovereignty of Labour, which has made it possible to develop highly participative companies rooted in solidarity, with a strong social dimension but without neglecting business excellence. The Co-operatives are owned by their worker-members and power is based on the principle of one person, one vote.[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
Phew! At first blush I felt overwhelmingly liberated by the power of the idea and claustrophobic at the same time. I’ve worked as a contractor/consultant most of my adult life because I believed it provided me with the most freedom and control and was rooted in a fair trade of my resources for a negotiated hourly compensation that moved the client’s agenda forward. If I don’t work or don’t deliver I don’t get paid. I like the absoluteness and the slight detachment of that arrangement and that I own myself as a resource. It spares me the petty competition of “Why is she being promoted?” or “How come he makes more money than me?” and provides a great deal of flexibility to hang with my kids, work on unassociated artistic side projects that feed my soul or work like a madwoman at 3am if I need and want to. I recognize I have the luxury, for a variety of reasons, to choose this route. But while I run around chanting freedom, flexibility and independence around the topic of work, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, many others see things differently.
Job security (63%), for the third consecutive year, remained at the top of employees’ list of most important determinants of job satisfac- tion. This was in contrast to HR professionals, who indicated that relationship with immediate supervisor was the most important determinant of employee job satisfaction. Benefits (60%), opportunities to use skills and abilities (56%), the work itself (54%) and compensation/pay (53%) rounded off employees’ top five very important factors contributing to job satisfaction. The organization’s financial stability (54%), a new contributor to job satisfaction for employees, also made the top five list, tying with the work itself.
(SHRM 2010 Employee Job Satisfaction Survey, pg. 4)
Is it wrong for the masses to want job security and a certain level of predictable comfort? Is it laziness that is contrary to our cultural fantasy of a pioneer nation of bootstrappers? Or will a more human-centred business model, like the cooperative, alleviate the fundamental stress underlying the struggle to earn a decent living and encourage people to engage in their communities in more productive and fulfilling ways? Having a secure place to rest your head at night and knowing where your next dollar is coming from buys some breathing room, for sure.
With the Mondragon and employee-owned cooperatives there is no longer a combative dichotomy of management vs. workers as is customarily seen with the union approach. The workers are the management, and vice-versa, sharing in the fruits of their labours including steady, predictable work and a decent wage. The best thing is that all cooperative members share control. The worst thing is that cooperative control means group decision-making which, in my experience, can be exhausting work if it is not well-managed. Decision-making with a small group of like-minded, like-energied, and like-talented folks in a flat-structured group is one thing. Is it really possible to group-govern on a larger scale, enjoy the process, and achieve a high-level of personal satisfaction with the group outcomes?
My chest constricts at the idea of sitting around talking endlessly, praying for eventual consensus or death, whichever comes first. More than anything I worry that “they” are going to make me hold hands and sing Kumbaya and use phrases that begin with “I feel….” at company meetings, and subjugate my individuality and creative spirit to the great cooperative melting pot. I worry that there will be too much talk and not enough action and a start, too much middle and no end in sight. I worry about mediocrity as the great equalizer and the gilded cage of predictability.
But Abrams’ description of South Mountain Company and other cooperative/employee ownership models hardly sound like spirit-killing gulags. They sound like wonderfully creative, interesting, interconnected, meaningful and engaging places to work. So why is there a counterintuitive element at play for me? It would appear that staying put and swapping out some perceived independence for increased rootedness and interdependence offers a suite of benefits not possible on one’s own. The proverbial sum of the whole (interdependence and rootedness) seems to be greater than the sum of the parts (independence and unbridled relocation).
I know that there is some illusion to freedom and independence. When everything’s going right it’s easy to believe that we are so magnificently, personally responsible for our success. When something goes really wrong – mental or physical illness of an earner or family member, loss of a job, overextended credit, death of a spouse, financial and physical support of elders, divorce, natural disasters, alcohol or drug addiction, forced early retirement or unexpected behavioural difficulties with children – the charade collapses. There but for the grace of God go any of us and we need everyone that we can get, in our family, at work and in our communities. Interdependence is our human insurance policy.
Perhaps my very desire to hang onto that slight detachment I mentioned a few paragraphs up hinders my interconnectedness on a larger and deeper scale? Has Abrams reached his zen so that he can be deeply involved without being sucked in by our pervasive human limitations and foibles on a micro- and macro-scale? Or is it not a question of zen but of just being in the trenches everyday, keeping both eyes on the longterm view, choosing a loving approach, committing to staying put in our highly mobile society, and deciding to be a contributor rather than a taker?
– PART 2 –
[Some] change happened by chance. Others happen by choice. Making new landscapes and shaping new communities takes twenty-five, fifty, even a hundred years. Here on the Vineyard we can begin the process of restoration at the same time that we create a New Vineyard….perhaps made up of villages, farms and wilderness like the old one, but certainly incorporating what we determine is best about technology and the modern economy. We can’t do this by turning back the clock; instead, we must turn it forward. (pg. 208)
In choosing Martha’s Vineyard, John Abrams chose a beautiful, desirable place to live and work that, like other magnetic places, does not exist in a bubble in time. Many, many others, beyond the islanders themselves, found the island equally attractive, threatening the very lifestyle and communities that they valued. He describes the inflow of big money as a boon and a curse. Gorgeous old homes were torn down for the sin of being too small. Housing prices went crazy and so did the cost of living for the year-round residents, people critical to the functioning and life of the communities. It became unaffordable for any new middle class people to move to the island and many were leaving for less expensive shores. There was increased pressure for land development and more people using the existing land and services. On the positive side, new money brought possibilities for moving forward that didn’t exist before. South Mountain was busier than ever, employing more people and generating money that would stay in the local economy. Expansion occurred, and community tensions increased, and then the housing bubble burst nationwide, bringing its own set of challenges.
Abrams describes a community as consisting of “….a place and those who have a relationship with that place: the land and the people.” He sees affordable housing as a key link in keeping people who “belong in a place” where they belong. He calls this “people conservation” and relates the loss of long-standing families as a loss of culture and history. And so South Mountain became quintessential to the development of affordable housing developments that were, essentially, funded through the company’s other well-paying work.
South Mountain continuously expanded their expertise beyond fine homebuilding as circumstances demanded. This included: becoming masters of employee ownership, reclamation and “undevelopment”; becoming champions of community preservation; developing a co-housing community; helping to form the Island Housing Trust (a community land trust that develops housing and owns land in perpetuity); learning the art of development and the ins and outs of zoning, bylaws and planning boards; and becoming masters of community energy, private and public financing and the art of public consultation.
Above all else, they became problem solvers and a bridge between the past and the future of their island home, which is a breathtaking achievement.