Flourishing: Well-being for people and...
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By Marilyn Scholl, Art Sherwood 170 January - February 2014 Great leaders demonstrate how to be a force for good in local communities and beyond. Our cooperative heroes—the Rochdale Pioneers—were striking weavers who opened a grocery co-op in 1844 in Rochdale, England, to help themselves and others get free from indebtedness to the company store. The Pioneers asked and answered some compelling questions: Shouldn’t [...]
The cooperative board room does not share all the same purposes as investor-owned corporation or nonprofit boards. Co-ops are organized to benefit their owners, and that is more important than a financial return on investment. We have been asking ourselves if there should be a model of cooperative governance and if so, what would it need to look like to support and drive forward [...]
As well as being a consultant with CDS Consulting Co-op, Art Sherwood is the board president at Bloomingfoods Market & Deli in Bloomington, IN and is heading into his third and last term as president. As he thought about how to prepare others to take on the role, he believes that alignment is as important to leadership as it is to perpetuation. “My approach [...]
By Joel Kopischke 167 July-August 2013 “SERVANT AND LEADER. Can these two roles be fused in one real person, in all levels of status or calling? If so, can that person live and be productive in the real world of the present? My sense of the present leads me to say yes to both questions.” – Robert Greenleaf, in his revised edition of “The [...]
Of all the important relationships in a cooperative, the one between the general manager and the board is arguably the most critical to the co-op’s long-term success. If the basic elements of trust and accountability are lacking for either party, chances of working together will be fraught with conflict or misunderstanding. It will be hard for the co-op to grow or move forward, and [...]
By Art Sherwood 163 November-December 2012 Expansion and growth are on the minds of many cooperative board and management leaders. And this makes sense, since growing our cooperatives’ abilities to deliver on their organizational Ends is of critical strategic importance. It certainly was on our minds at Bloomingfoods Co-op (Bloomington, Ind.) this last year as we addressed growing to include a fourth store and [...]
By Todd Wallace 161 July - August - 2012 Our co-op boards are groups elected and charged with a common purpose: fulfilling the legal and moral obligations of their co-op, on behalf of a diverse set of member-owners. Their fiduciary responsibilities demand high-quality deliberation and decision-making to ensure both the cooperative's fiscal prosperity (its health as an enterprise) and the continued relevance and achievement [...]
At this juncture in our series examining the empowerment and accountability stream in food co-ops, we understand that at all points along the way co-op stakeholders need systems that allow for the clear flow of delegation and responsibility. However, it can be argued that the dynamism of the empowerment stream often hinges on the handoff of power from the board to the general manager, [...]
By Art Sherwood 154 May - June - 2011 Most would agree that a healthy board-general manager relationship not only makes the co-op run more smoothly, it is a critical connection between member-owners and operations in our democratically controlled organizations. Yet the health of this working relationship often remains elusive or at least can come under stress. It can "turn on a dime [...]
