By Marilyn Scholl, Joel Dahlgren, Bruce Mayer 148 May - June - 2010 Creating solutions begins with building the foundation for the future you want. One of the remarkable things about cooperation is that mutualism encourages solution-oriented growth, built on a vision of the common good. How profitability and capitalization are handled in cooperatives is an indicator of how much the co-op is actively [...]
When a board receives an Ends monitoring report from their manager, a thoughtful process can transform the report from just another document to file away into a valuable resource that helps the board, the manager and the co-op’s member-owners better understand the “story” of their co-op. The board wants to know: Does the report demonstrate reasonable accomplishment? Are we on track for multi-year goals/targets [...]
CBLD - Board Annual Calendar Template 2016 Updated: August, 2016
By Michael Healy 146 January - February - 2010 Here it comes again: the monthly board meeting. You’ve figured out child care for the fourth Monday of every month, that version of parental Olympics where Mom runs out the door as Dad runs in. A fellow director has given up the bowling league because it conflicts with the board meeting schedule. Each director has [...]
By Thane Joyal 145 November - December - 2009 “A vital question, a creative question, rivets our attention. All the creative power of our minds is focused on the question. Knowledge emerges in response to these compelling questions. They open us to new worlds.” —Verna Allee, “The Knowledge Evolution.” (Quoted by Vogt, Brown and Issacs, The Art of Powerful Questions, 2003. www.worldcafe.com.) Questions: the [...]
By Marshall Kovitz 144 September - October - 2009 When we look at the future for the co-op, what do we see and how do we express it? These are vital questions for board members to ask because it’s the board’s job to articulate outcomes that guide and inspire the co-op. And the results must be a thriving business that meets owners’ needs and [...]
A director should be equally as concerned with the future of the governance of their co-op as they are with the issues of the present day. Recruitment and orientation of new directors is the role of all board members, all year long. This Online Recorded Workshop gives thorough walk-through of the processes, and high-level thinking required for healthy board recruitment. [...]
By Mark Goehring, Carolee Colter 143 July - August - 2009 A board evaluating the general manager (GM) of a food co-op…now there’s a process that directors should be able to describe, defend, celebrate and appreciate with little or no ambiguity or hesitation. In a recent online recorded workshop on GM evaluation, Thane Joyal and Carolee Colter laid out these four learning objectives [...]
