All Is Forgiven
I managed to get through the Martha’s Vineyard summer attending only one fundraiser. That’s a record. And, for the first time in at least a decade, I did no fundraising for the causes I care about. I must admit it felt good. Fundraising is hard.
The single event I went to – for our Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick – was a good one,. It happened to be scheduled for the day after we found out Ted Kennedy died. Deval spoke about Kennedy. He said, “ I knew him before I ever met him because my mother used to say, to no one in particular” (and here he slipped into a drawl), “I just love me some Kennedy.”
An extraordinary number of people “loved some Kennedy.” His passion for life was unique, complete, and inclusive, but his commitment and dogged perseverance did not seem to overwhelm his humility or make him take himself too seriously. I liked what his son Teddy said, “He used to say that it didn’t bother him that he wasn’t president; it just bothered him that someone else was.”
I’ve always been a big admirer, but Kennedy disappointed me the last few years by opposing Cape Wind. The stories, these past few days, about his deep and enduring connection to Nantucket Sound, have brought me greater understanding. I no longer feel that his opposition was hypocritical; rather, I think it came from his fear that something inside him would be injured and his inability to overcome that fear. His capacity to overcome fear and adversity was mighty, but we all have our limits. Even Ted Kennedy.
All is forgiven.
Early Morning Meeting
My wife and daughter and I recently had the great good fortune to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. The occasion was the one-year sobriety celebration of a close friend. We were invited to witness her achievement. This wasn’t just a celebration; it was a regular AA meeting. There were 35 people there, many of whom we knew (this is a very small place) and all of them no longer anonymous to us (as a friend says, in a small community like this there is no AA, just A). How brave, and generous, for them to welcome us and allow us to share their meeting.
I’ve always wanted to witness first hand the workings and organizational structure of this remarkably effective and superbly networked (without – even – the need of the internet!) institution. The amazing part – it has no leaders!
In the early 1930’s, when a Vermonter named Rowland visited the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung for help with his alcoholism, a sequence of events began which led to the beginnings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Today, millions of people attend AA meetings at over 100,000 locations in communities across America and around the world. It cuts across all lines: age, class, race, and gender. Everyone is welcome.
AA encourages each participant to heal themselves by staying sober one day at a time and by receiving the support of others who are engaged in the same difficult effort. Rather than leaders, it relies on the inner resources and strengths of a cooperative group. The only requirement for admission is a desire to stop drinking.
But who organizes? Who manages disruptive personalities? Who’s in charge?
Nobody.
There are administrative roles, but they come with no power. The group holds the power. Individual attendance implies acceptance of the “12 traditions” which comprise the strong but flexible underlying organizational structure. And that’s it. There are no rules, just this set of shared understandings that create and support an atmosphere of extraordinary healing.
It’s astonishing that it works and I know there must be important organizational lessons embedded in the AA success story. I would be curious to hear from those who have had longtime association with the process. How has it changed the way you work and do business? What has it taught you about the importance of community? How has it helped you to manage relationships in your life?
Not all organizations can be leaderless, and it is not necessarily an achievable goal (there is an important place for leadership), but perhaps there is value in thinking about how to be“leader-LESS” – that is, to bring greater democratization to all those organizations – work, home, social – that are part of the fabric of our lives.
Sharing cake and stories at 7 AM, I felt swept into a powerful community of shared interest, support, and caring. For a few moments at that early-morning before-work Vineyard meeting, we were permitted to join forces with the others and participate in their remarkable healing journey. Their pain, laughter, honesty, and ability to share remain with me. I can’t remember many names or faces, but I remember, viscerally, the experience of intense humanity embodied in that room.
When the meeting was over we walked out carrying whatever troubles we brought when we entered. But we were wiser. The others in that meeting walked out to face a day of struggle to stay sober. As one person said, “Have a nice day, unless, of course, you’ve made other plans.” And another: “The world’s record for sobriety is 24 hours.”
One day at a time. Under the guidance of the serenity prayer, which begins by asking a higher power – whatever yours might be – to “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” Could there be a better lesson for everyday life, for all aspects of life, than that?
I’m grateful to our friend for exposing us to the heart and soul of such a remarkable healing organization.
Sharing Ownership of the Future
One more post (which might become two) about employee ownership and workplace democracy before I veer off toward some related topics. . . .
Despite the Obama administration’s recent shift in emphasis from homeownership to rental housing (which I will discuss in detail in a future post), homeownership is at the very heart of the American dream. Owning our work, and finding meaning there, seems as essential to a good life as owning our homes. But although many of us own homes, far fewer own our work.
But the idea that the people who use our productive assets should own them is as old as America. As John Logue of the Ohio Employee Ownership Center says in The Real World of Employee Ownership, “Thomas Jefferson argued passionately that what set this country apart from the Old World and made it so suitable for democracy was the fact that the ownership of productive property was widely dispersed: farmers owned their land in the countryside; artisans owned their tools and shopkeepers their shops in the towns.”
Employee ownership is emerging from beneath the radar. There is an awakening interest in the potential of broadly shared ownership of enterprise. The idea is beginning to surface all over the world in companies small and large. Today over 11,000 companies nationally, with over 13 million employees, have some form of employee ownership. In fact, today more Americans work in firms partly or wholly owned by employees than are members of unions in the private sector. Most of these do not share the SMC co-op model, and many can hardly be characterized as democratic, but all indicate that we may be learning something as we try to assemble the components of a restorative future.
The context is important. My fellow baby boomers own several million businesses, and during the next two decades, most of these founders will exit. The businesses will either be shut down, or sold to outsiders, or passed on. Selling to employees is an option that deserves to be more widely understood, for it offers powerful benefits to all parties. There is a need for more information as employee ownership becomes an important entity of choice, not only for aging boomers but for the millions of young people intent on finding real meaning in their work. Employee ownership is one way to open that door. There is new knowledge and there are new practices that make employee ownership more widely applicable, and growing interest among these business owners.
Tom Greer is one of them.
Many people pass through Martha’s Vineyard (how’s that for understatement?). Some of them want to visit our facility, or see some of our work, or talk business. 
Each of these visits takes time, so we have to be careful. It’s a delicate balance because, mostly, these are well-meaning people with good stories and legitimate interest. How can you possibly turn them away, how can you possibly not generously accept? Maybe someday we’ll have designated visiting days, but for now we field the e-mails and calls and decide whether time will allow and the inquiry is serious enough to warrant the time.
Tom Greer, a builder from Charlottesville, Virginia, was on the island. He asked to visit, and and wanted to ask a few questions. Turns out his successful, stable business 31 years old, has 25 employees and annual revenues of $8 million (about our size). A decade ago he took two longtime colleagues in a partners; each owns 20% and Tom owns 60%.
He is interested in examining the possibility of becoming a co-op. I asked him why, given the success story, he is interested in rocking this stable boat by considering a shift to co-operative ownership. He responded, “As I have grown up with my people, I have wondered what it is like for them to give their working life to a company, and then upon retirement walk away from their life’s work with only Social Security. I have benefited greatly from their sweat, loved every minute of my ownership, and think that with the co-op concept I can help paint a better picture.” As he digs deeper he’s beginning to understand the challenges. Whether they ultimately make the shift or not, Tom Greer is the kind of person who will change the way we do business.
He knows that it’s about sharing ownership of the future.
Are We Different Enough??
At the recent conference of the Vermont Employee Ownership Center (VEOC) in Burlington, VEOC board president Paul Millman asked an important question to the attendees, who represented some of the many remarkably progressive companies in the Green Mountain State. “Are we different enough?” he wondered.
Good question. I wonder about that often when I think about South Mountain. Are we promoting a system that would, if widespread, create fundamental change in our broken economic system? Or are we just avoiding one avalanche chute by traversing to another with a slightly more gradual incline?
Hard to say.
In 1987 I re-structured my company from a sole proprietorship under my ownership to an employee owned co-operative corporation. It was a dramatic hinge point in the history of the company. Ownership became available to all employees, enabling people to own and guide their workplace. The responsibility, the power, and the profits all belong to the group of owners. There are no outside investors and no non-employee owners.
That’s different.
Profits are essential , but our cooperative ownership structure assigns the wealth we make to those who make it. Our democratic system of decision making offers everyone a voice. Our employees, who live in the community, and are raising their children here, and are part of the civic landscape, are making the decisions; therefore, community accountability is woven into the fabric of our system.
That’s different too.
Low environmental impact and principled corporate behavior share the same status as profits.
That’s different too.
But principles aren’t really principles until they cost something. And this year some of our principles began to cost something. Last fall, as we considered the re-building of our decimated work backlog, we re-considered some of those principles. Many of them. Here’s just one.
We have had a long-standing policy of only doing work on the Vineyard, the place that we know. That one flew the coop when we had the opportunity to do an extraordinary project across the water, for the Woods Hole Research Center, at a time when our future workload was less secure than usual. It wasn’t the first time we had such an opportunity, but this was the first time we forced ourselves – due to circumstances – to confront the logistical hurdles and internal complications we are faced with. I’ll talk more about this project – and its implications – in future posts.
As a company, we express many ideals. One that we express less often might be the most important of all – to assure that at all times the 30 families (and other associated individuals and companies) that rely on us for their incomes are secure in the knowledge that the work – and the income – will be there. Not so lofty. But this is the real deal, the rubber on the road, and other principles must work in service to that one.
That may be less different, but our democratic structure ensures that we will struggle, at least, to uphold our principles while we keep our business healthy. And struggle to be different enough, even when there is genuine conflict between our principles and the practical matters of doing business successfully.
The beginning of the Obama era is frustratingly slow; it’s not different enough. Each of us can have only a minor impact on the political process. Meanwhile, however, our democracy offers other choices. We have the liberty to invent the corporation of the future right now. We can make whatever kinds of companies we want.
Nothing stands in our way, except us. But we are a significant obstacle. It’s easy to say that we knew all the things the economic crisis, climate change, and the approach of peak oil are teaching us. We did, in a way, but it’s not different enough just to know these things. We have to act, to make fundamental change in the way we work, to learn these things in our hearts and in our guts.
The patterns that we had established over three decades no longer work, and the challenge is to do the work that we must – better service, tighter finances, deeper energy makeovers, higher performance buildings, new forms of old crafts – in this new economic climate. Maybe, eventually, we can be different enough to actually make a difference. Different enough to uphold our principles, even when it costs something.
It shouldn’t be so hard, I sometimes say. But it is. And we have only begun to scratch the surface of change. That’s scary.
But there’s an old Chinese saying that “Man stands for long time with mouth open before roast duck flies in.” We have to roast the duck.
Rosenbaum on Deep Energy
This is a post about a local event, so it may not mean much to those of you far away.
When it comes to houses, there’s plenty of talk these days about Zero Energy, Passive Houses, and even strange new terms like Deep Energy Retrofit.
It’s not just talk. For old friend Marc Rosenbaum, of Energysmiths, it’s practice. And it’s passion, too. Marc has been working closely with us for the past 20 years.
Marc’s projects include three of the American Institute of Architects Top Ten Green Projects.. An experienced and enthusiastic teacher and speaker, he has trained thousands of professionals., including several trainings of Vineyard architects and builders.
Come to the Chilmark Community Center and hear where we’re headed with housing and how we might get there. It’s free.
Moving A Mountain
Blogging is new to me. In fact, this is my first entry. The question is: why am I doing this? Why am I doing it to me and why am I doing it to you? I hope for good reason. There are two I can think of, so far.
The first is this. Over time, as South Mountain Company has matured (sort of), and in the course of my professional relationships, book adventures, speaking opportunities, and teaching experiences, I have found a small group of people who seem to be interested in what’s going on at SMC – what we are doing and thinking about. I’m curious to communicate with you, and others – in some organized way – to see what might come of this far-flung web of relationships.
The second is selfish. There are many obligations in my life – external demands which require attention and discipline. Writing is not one of these; it derives only from internal desire. I have little discipline, but I do have an over-developed sense of responsibility. I’m hoping I will respond to the duty of maintaining this blog (I’ll try to write once every week or 10 days, and try to respond quickly to any responses I receive) by writing more steadily. It’s something I love to do, something I need to do to feel whole. But, like exercise, sometimes it’s hard to get to. Perhaps this endeavor will help.
I expect, in this space, to expand on the topics and issues tackled in my book, Companies We Keep (recently released by Chelsea Green), particularly the promise of employee ownership and the importance – and challenges – of conducting business with community, people, and planet as our top priorities. I will relate what is happening in our design/build and renewable energy business and how that may connect with larger events. I will pass on currents of relevant thinking we uncover in our interactions with others. And I will talk about new influences on my own thinking as they emerge.
Hard Times, Hard Work
At the moment we all seem to be holding our breath, waiting for economic recovery. We may be waiting for the wrong thing. Instead, I hope, the economy will shift, and I welcome the prospect, although I am frightened by it too.
As the warm glow of a thrilling election has faded into the stark grey tones of the hard work ahead, I still believe that Obama’s election said something encouraging, even exhilarating, about the current state of mind of the American people.
For us, at South Mountain, it has been a tumultuous year of change. We had to think about uncomfortable issues that had not previously been necessary to address. We had to think differently. We had to re-assess our own state of mind. Last September, while one of my co-owners was preparing the plans for a large project for construction – and nearly ready to begin – we received a call from our client, who said the crashing economy made it imperative that he and his wife put their project on hold.
That was the defining moment of our year – it was, in fact, the beginning of an avalanche of backlog-diminishing postponements. It jolted us from the petrified status quo that prosperity had layered into our collective company consciousness for many years. It became a catalyst that drove us to take a sobering look at who we are, what we do, and how we might insist on the future we’re after. It became, oddly, a very good thing.
For 33 years, every SMC employee has come to work each day of each week of each month of each year and had productive work to do. Now, perhaps for the first time, that legacy might come to be in jeopardy. For us, 2008 began like a carnival; we were in the midst of some of the best times we’ve ever had. But when the effects of the US economic collapse came, they came quickly. It became the year of trials and tribulations, stormy weather, scrambling to stay ahead of big waves, and trying to move mountains. Hard work in difficult times.
Tackling the Unthinkable
But difficulty and opportunity mingle; at times it is hard to distinguish one from the other.
The author Andre Gide relates the experience of a trip he took into the Belgian Congo: “My party had been pushing ahead at a fast pace for a number of days, and one morning when we were ready to set out, my native bearers, who carried the food and equipment, were found sitting about without any preparations made for starting the day. Upon being questioned, they said, quite simply, that they had been traveling so fast in these last days that they had gotten ahead of their souls and were going to stay quietly in camp for the day in order for their souls to catch up with them. So they came to a complete stop.”
We can’t come to a complete stop, but it may be that we need to find time, especially in these slower economic times, for our souls to catch up with us. This is what we had to do this year at South Mountain. It was our year of reckoning. I hope our souls are, at least to some modest degree, catching up.
Along with considering innovative ways to re-build our shrinking backlog, it was our moment to tackle the unthinkable: what happens when the day comes that there is not enough work for all? Countless businesses have had to do this in these times. For us, the examination of the unthinkable had surprising results. Our cooperative structure proved to be robust. After several meetings a policy emerged:
In the event of not enough work to provide full-time employment for all individuals in the company, we will take the following six steps, in this order:
- Voluntary temporary rolling furloughs;
- Employ our capital to do speculative work (income postponed) for a limited period of time;
- Employ our capital to do non-income-producing community work for a limited period of time;
- Strategically reduce hours worked;
- Reduce wages across the board, graduated from highest paid to lowest;
- Involuntary temporary rolling furloughs.
The thrilling part of this was that never, during these difficult discussions, did the word “layoffs” come up. Never did anyone suggest that those who had been with us for the shortest time should be at greater risk. Never did anyone suggest that we should use this time to rid ourselves of those who may be less productive or in other ways perhaps less worthy – to separate the wheat from the chaff. This was a time of coming together, as a workplace community, rather than a time of fragmentation and protection of individual self-interests.
Fortunately we have not yet had to take any of the steps outlined above, partially because my colleagues’ vigorous defense of community and democracy inspired me, as an individual, and us, as a company, to double our efforts to re-build backlog and creatively manage workload.
Each year we conduct company-wide individual evaluations. Part of the process is a written self-evaluation. One of the questions asks us to rate the company’s year on a scale of one to ten. Most years, the average hovers around 8. Last year, our most profitable and upbeat year ever, it was 8.4. This year, our most trying ever, it was 8.7. Hmmm. . . what does that mean? I think it means that collaborative discussion and constant internal communication enhanced our sense of community. People felt cared for, by each other. That’s what a culture of shared ownership can do. Self-interest was indistinguishable from the welfare of the whole group.
America the Possible
But we cannot just tend our own small garden; there are far larger forces in play. We are in the midst of a cascade of spectacular events. Several years ago, Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth. About the same time, NYT columnist and best-selling foreign affairs author Tom Friedman saw the green light and began to write about climate change and energy (which will be, he says, “the greatest innovation project in history”). Venture capital shifted its focus from software and internet to clean technology. Oil prices shot up. Climate change and energy suddenly became a high level presidential campaign issue. Never before.
After a childish financial elite ran the global economy unsupervised, and ran amuck, Wall Street was finally unmasked, revealed, and crumbled. With that, the impossible global economy – predicated on perpetual growth in a finite world – became wobbly. None of this came without warning or predictions. A few intrepid economists, and others, have insistently pounded the warning drum but nobody, as far as I know, expected it to happen so soon or so fully. Those entrusted with guiding us hadn’t a clue. That’s not unusual – as economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said “. . the reason for the existence of economists is to give credibility to astrologers.”
Our country is experiencing more mood swings than a teenager. But it may be a prelude to the good things we hope will come next. There are no guarantees, only possibilities. As my friend William Greider so eloquently tells us in his remarkable new book Come Home America, we cannot re-build the same economy we had before and the new one must be based on new knowledge and new circumstances. He calls it America the Possible.
It’s also America the Different. John Fullerton, former Managing director of JP Morgan, says, “At the beginning of the 20th century scale did not matter. At the start of the 21st century, scale redefines our economic challenge. The world may be flat, but far more critical in terms of its implications, the world is full, and that changes everything.”
Our future will require us to transform our economy. We will have to manage the sky as a commons, auction emission permits, and use the income to serve the public good – to re-distribute wealth and wean ourselves from fossil fuel. The current Waxman- Markey Energy Bill is only a crude and tentative first step by government. There must be far more to come.
Owning the Endeavor
I can’t help but think that this long-term global transformation we need – the “new operating system for the planet” as author Paul Hawken calls it – will require more than political will and appropriate investment; it will also require collaboration of a type and scale heretofore unknown. We will need new tools, new abilities, and new ways of working together. Businesses will need to “share information and support each other rather than engaging in competitive exclusion” says Tom Wessel in The Myth of Progess. All of us will need to own the endeavor. A central requirement may be the ability to own our workplaces and share responsibility for the outcomes, both good and bad.
Employee ownership may be an important part of this. It’s about the recognition that when the people who are making the decisions bear the responsibility for the consequences of those decisions, and also share in the rewards that accrue, better decisions will result. It’s about building community within the workplace and connections to the communities where we work and live.
The task at hand is to unwrap the complex bundle of convergences that suggests that the next twenty years will be dramatically different from the last twenty, to try to understand what the differences will be, and to change our businesses and our selves so we are ready, able, and above all willing to do what it takes. The challenges are immense, but I think it can be a rousing journey if we take the time to prepare – if we make room for our souls to catch up. It’s a time to breathe deeply the opportunity that this new era brings. 
There it is, my first blog entry. Longer than I meant it to be, but hey – it’s the first one. I will hang my hat here, and I hope it will stimulate an exchange that helps us learn to work together in healthier, more beneficially productive ways. If so, I’ll be glad. My colleagues and I look forward to communicating with others who are thinking about employee ownership, social enterprise, and cooperative, community based business that keeps our planet front and center. “Markets,” as Marjorie Kelly, the former editor of Business Ethics Magazine says, “are a subset of the earth and subject to its requirements.”
So are we.
Wherever you are out there, I hope you’ll join in and let us know what’s up with you!
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JOHN ABRAMS is co-founder and CEO
of South Mountain Company and the author
of COMPANIES WE KEEP read more
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COMPANIES WE KEEP is published by Chelsea Green Publishing
read more -
