Group facilitation, dynamics and collaboration
toddwallace@columinate.coop
503-307-8797
2025 Enrollment Now Open! Our Cooperative Board Leadership Development (CBLD) team is looking ahead to another great year of supporting your organization’s success through our award-winning CBLD program. Now in its 21st year, CBLD provides an annual program of board support that includes monthly consulting, facilitated board retreats, a wealth of online webinars and other board trainings, and a [...]
Many cooperatives, social justice organizations, and businesses have begun to directly confront their own role in the social systems that perpetuate racism and inequity. Boards of directors who use Policy Governance® should feel empowered to use their policy document to clarify their expectations around the work of dismantling systems of racism and oppression.
Presented by Art Sherwood & Todd Wallace CBLD Board Consultants Panelists Amy Holt - Board President Lexington Co-op Market Buffalo, NY Rose Marie Klee - Board President Wheatsville Food Co-op Austin, TX George Huntington - GM Bloomingfoods Bloomington, IN Lori Burge - Development Mgr. People's Food Co-op Portland, OR
Boards can use this survey tool to do a broad, self-assessment of their own work. It utilizes the 4 Pillars of Co-op Governance as an organizing lens with some broad, key characteristics to fit under each Pillar: Teaming, Accountable Empowerment, Strategic Leadership and Democracy. By asking team members to fill out the survey and then reviewing the data, a group can build a broader [...]
When something happens that breaks that trust, how do you move forward? How can you build, repair, and maintain trust? A new online workshop, Trust and Betrayal in the Board/Manager Relationship, delves into the ways boards and general managers can build and repair trust.
Hether Jonna Frayer interviewed Todd Wallace, Columinate's board president, about AI. Hether: Thanks for agreeing to do this interview on AI technology and how it could be used to support the work of governance! I'm getting the sense from the conversations that I've been having that it is a wide-ranging topic. Where would you like to start? Todd: Thanks for asking me to have the conversation. As you know, it is a topic that I've been interested in since last year, especially as applications like ChatGPT have garnered more attention and scrutiny in the mainstream media.
There is an entire genre of films and TV shows dedicated to pointing out the soullessness and drone of American workplaces, with 1999’s Office Space perhaps the most famous example. Columinate consultant Mark Mulcahy has the prescription for both the workers at Office Space’s fictional Initech, and for the real workers at co-ops and independent grocers across the country. “I’m working on bringing joy and balance back to the workplace. That’s gotten lost. That’s what makes people want to come to work: to find joy and purpose in their work. Everyone carries the same products and margin pressures will continue. Businesses who build a culture of doing real work through joy will thrive.”
Fall 2023 Thanks to all who attended our Fall Co-op Cafe Workshop! Creative Destruction: Making Space to Lead into Our Values What We’ve Been Learning About Creative Destruction By Jamila Medley Within our organizations, we spend much time trying to do more and add on to things, in an effort to feel like we’re making progress. [...]
Welcome to 2023! As your co-op board of directors reflects on the past year and refreshes for the upcoming one, don’t forget that Columinate’s Cooperative Board Leadership Development program (CBLD) is here to support your work. For nineteen years, this award-winning program has been a resource to co-op boards across the country, providing monthly consulting, facilitated board retreats, and a robust lineup of engaging, relevant webinars. In January, CBLD is kicking off its fresh slate of webinars with sessions focused on building trust and navigating conflict.
