Six findings from co-operative enterprises

As business more widely wakes up to the value of engaging staff, customers and stakeholders, these six findings from a number of co-operative enterprises can be valuable for all.

1. Behaviour-based competences
   People often come to co-operation without much day-to-day experience of it. The ways of working, knowledge and skills have to be learned. If co-operation is to be a meeting of hearts and not just minds, then co-operative behaviour and competence becomes part of the performance and development systems you operate.
2. A culture of equality
   Co-operation is a social culture, so it should feel different for those involved. This means being alert to signs of excluding or domineering behaviour, because they take away peoples’ ability and desire to contribute. It means not excluding people who don’t readily ‘fit in’, because co-operating with people who have different qualities and attributes can be more creative than working with people who are the same. It means being alert to even subtle kinds of institutional and cultural inequality.
3. Distributed leadership
   When it comes to leadership, the dominant model in the business press is still of John Wayne style loners. In a co-operative, leadership means something different because it’s a function of the intelligence and conscious direction of the all the people involved. Co-operators understand that no one can be a leader all of the time – and everyone has to be a leader some of the time.
4. A mandate for management
   Co-operatives have learned the value of management, sometimes the hard way. What is different is that co-operatives look for ways to base it on consent rather than control, for example through representative models of governance. It requires a different style. As Bob Cannell of Suma Wholefoods puts it: “management is a function, not a status.” But the benefit is clear. With a mandate, managers are equipped to act in the long-term interest of the business.
5. Ownership as stewardship
   Co-operatives tend to have a different time horizon for ownership. In many co-operatives, those involved have control of assets that have been built up by past members. Their job is then to use it to make their co-operative more successful; to ensure that everyone who contributes to that success gets what they need in return; and keep some in trust for benefit of the co-operators of the future.
6. Open dialogue
   The membership model for co-operatives makes it easier to build dialogue with customers or staff around complex and emerging issues of social responsibility. It also helps to make co-operatives a source of social innovation, as the encouragement of members has helped to develop new co-operative enterprise, for example around the needs of people with disabilities or in relation to a low-carbon economy.