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 [...]
Chapters: Overview Ends to Interpretation Interpretations to Strategic Planning Planning to Action Ends Reporting Communicating Ends Accomplishment Note: Click to view all chapters
Where we are headed matters. If we don’t know where we are going any road will do. A primary responsibility of a board is to define the reason for the organization’s existence. What are we here for? What should be different because we exist? For whom? For a board that uses Policy Governance®, Ends are written policies which define a) results, outcomes or benefits [...]
By Michael Healy and Nina Johnson Accountability is a key ingredient in a healthy democratically controlled cooperative, and clearly crafted policy is a first step in a robust accountability system. This is especially true with the policy that articulates the co-op’s purpose, the Ends policy. What role do Ends policies play within the Policy Governance model? How can a board write Ends policies that [...]
Table of Contents (links to youtube) Chapter 1: Governance = Accountability and Empowerment Chapter 2: Understanding Ends and their Role in PG Chapter 3: How to Write Effective Compelling Ends Policy Chapter 4: Effective Ends Policies: "Before & After" Chapter 5: Summary & Resources
By Michael Healy 159 March - April - 2012 Why does the work of measuring the co-op's accomplishments and telling the co-op's story matter? Cooperative enterprises build a better world. This tagline for the 2012 International Year of Cooperatives says so much with so few words. These few words can lead us to ask many compelling questions, among them: What does that better world [...]
Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op, Middlebury, Vt. Jay Leshinsky, president of the board of Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op, thinks it is critical that the information the board receives from the general manager’s Ends report doesn’t stop there, but gets passed on to the members in a meaningful way. Two years ago, the board decided that they would use the co-op’s Annual Report as a format [...]
Panelists: Clem Nilan, Onion River/City Market, Burlington VT
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 [...]
By Mark Goehring 117 March - April - 2005 We can no longer (verb)_____ in isolation. Try these verbs: Learn. Vision. Plan. Invest. Be. Then try your own! Nearly three years ago, the board of directors of the Brattleboro Food Co-op adopted new Ends Policies, statements defining our fundamental aims. A minor celebration followed this conclusion of a decade-long process of developing the board’s [...]
