Monitoring Report Decision Tree
This flowchart describes the steps and questions to use during the process of accepting or rejecting a monitoring report. Use during a meeting or beforehand to prepare yourself.
The Board Role in the Accountability Stream
By Marilyn Scholl 130 May - June - 2007 Boards of directors are the critical link between owners and management in the accountability chain for a cooperative. If boards don’t have a good understanding of how accountability works or don’t have good systems for accomplishing it, the job can be frustrating. Accountability mirrors empowerment To begin, we must recognize that accountability and empowerment go [...]
Monitoring the Manager
By Mark Goehring 123 March - April - 2006 There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is commonly known to directors and managers. It is a dimension open to interpretation—potentially as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between too much and too little, between knowing and doing, and it lies between the pit of a director’s [...]
Empowerment + Accountability = Success (and Fun)
In mission-based organizations like co-ops, the empowerment of individuals and groups is highly valued. For groups carrying out projects in such associations, organizational process is often as important as the outcome. Ideally, the co-op’s development and empowerment of its constituents flows from doing business in a way that makes the most of the organization’s resources and creativity. The “empowerment stream” in co-ops starts with [...]
The Co-op Empowerment Stream
By Bill Gessner 063 March - April - 1996 Our cooperatives are truly empowering organizations, in origin and in practice, in vision and in mission, in theory and in action. Empowerment can be a simple and clarifying concept. Yet often we find ourselves misguided and muddled in the empowerment process within cooperatives. I believe this confusion serves as a primary obstacle to the healthy [...]
The Perils of Co-Management
By Carolee Colter 051 March - April - 1994 Is it inevitable that all "new wave" co-ops founded in the 1970s will end up with general managers? While only a few have had a general manager from the beginning, many co-ops have followed a path from management by volunteers, to management by collectives of paid staff, to some form of co-management or management team, [...]