Building a Strong Top Leadership Team: Creating and maintaining a healthy board-GM relationship
By Michael Healy 177 March-April 2015 In many co-ops, the manager and board of directors function effectively as a leadership team. Along with having systems and structures in place that support and encourage healthy [...]
Strategic Pricing: Why and how
By Mel Braverman, Jeanie Wells 177 March-April 2015 Almost every cooperative retail grocery is feeling increased competition in its community. Twenty years ago, merely having featured products consistently available was enough for co-ops to be [...]
Policy Governance Quick Guide
Policy Governance is an operating system for boards of directors. As with operating systems for computers, the system itself is not the point of the board’s work; the system simply provides an underlying framework on [...]
Engaging your employees starts with asking good questions
Every employer should be thinking about strategies to stay connected to your workforce. By taking opportunities to engage your employees, you help to ensure they will stay with your business for the long-term. What if [...]
Grab and Go Governance
Ever had someone ask that simple question: What is the board's job anyway? and wondered where to start? The CDS Consulting Co-op model for cooperative governance, the Four Pillars of Cooperative Governance can help! We identify four [...]
Featured Co-op Cafe Video: The Language of Participation
The Language of Participation Emily Lippold-Cheney Cooperative Organizer, CooperationWorks! The Language of Participation Emily Lippold-Cheney Cooperative Organizer, CooperationWorks! What is the role of language in elevating the meaning of participation in cooperatives? Emily [...]
Telling the Co-op Story
By Patricia Cumbie 176 January-February 2015 Stories are as old as humankind. If we didn’t have stories, we wouldn’t have progress or evolution. It’s how people communicate, organize, and instruct. Nor could most of us [...]
The Coming Wave: We will need to fill more GM positions than ever before
By Carolee Colter 176 January-February 2015 As we all know, the baby boom generation is hitting retirement age. Roughly a quarter of the U.S. population was born between 1946 and 1964, and every month a [...]
GM Report Support: Financial Conditions Monitoring
Cooperative managers are charged with creating reports that demonstrate financial accountability to the board. Yet some managers struggle with having the right amount of information for their boards. When it comes to financial reporting what [...]