I’m at the early stages of working on an idea to see many more cooperative businesses in Brighton. I’m at the International Summit of Coops in Quebec to learn more and make some new connections in this area.
Coming from the traditional private ownership business world – even though I have long been a fan of democratic business – I’ve realised how I naturally gravitate towards top-down thinking. People smarter than me keep correcting me and getting me to think bottom-up. Here are two examples:
1) Thinking about how to go about building a network of cooperatives (like the enormously successful Mondragón in Spain) I thought I needed to put together a group of people to work on a constitution, then recruit or set up coops to join the group. Classic top-downness. I did have a nagging doubt about the approach – it felt like I was creating a bureaucracy. Actually, the best way to do it is to start with people: The needs of the people in the local community and with people in existing and potential new coops. Once you are fully engaged with the people involved you can start setting up a network from the bottom, with one coop, linking to the next one and so on, and eventually build whatever group structure might be needed.
2) Ownership & Finance. I’ve mused about innovating business ownership models before – how you can structure ownership of a business in a combination of employee, customer, community and private ownership. In top-down fashion, I’ve been trying to figure out the most optimal model which could then be applied to coops in Brighton. Again, the far better approach is to accept that there’s a lot of flexibility and many possibilities and to work with the people involved to find the best route as needed. For example, more capital intensive businesses like manufacturers may require more private investment; those in service sectors could be more employee-owned; and those selling to consumers may benefit from greater customer and community membership.
I’m sure there are many more examples of where bottom-up thinking will provide a better approach, and although cooperatives may formally delegate power for some centralised decision-making which at times may be more effective, I’m going to make it a rule to make bottom-up my default approach.
