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A Director's Chairby Lenore Gensburg and
Jim Monsonis We’ve been on the Board
of Directors
for the past three years, but will not continue for a second term. We
shall be
replaced at the April membership meeting. And as “departing” Board
members, we
wanted to use the opportunity of writing one last Director’s Chair
column to
reflect on the past three years — the good parts and the parts that
could be
better. To start with the good parts: It was truly terrific to work
with such
wonderful people as we encountered on the Board and the Collective
Management Team
(CMT). Our Board president Lynne Lekakis kept things moving, turned the
Board
into a working group and always interjected her wonderful sense of
humor into
the mix. There were other gifted people with terrific ideas that made
one
rethink a position — “Oh yeah, I didn’t think about that.” The Board,
and CMT
when we had meetings with them, were always respectful of differing
opinions
and worked toward consensus. Many good things have happened in these
years and
we are honored to have been part of the process. As we look back, we also
learned
some things about being on the Board and about the Coop. The most
surprising
part was how long it took to understand many of the issues facing the
Coop and
the history (how we got to where we are today). Lenore had been around
the Coop
for a long time and understood much about it, but Jim in particular
feels that
he was pretty much useless the first year of his term. We think,
therefore, that
experience with the Coop is a prime consideration when choosing new
Board
members, and also that the incoming Board needs to give serious
attention to how
to bring newcomers up to speed. We also did not anticipate how much
time being
a responsible Board member takes, and this is one of the bad parts. For
both of
us, the worst part of our experience was not being able to spend the
amount of time
needed to really do a good job, and feeling guilty about that. Some
members of the
Board set a high standard for energy and commitment that we were not
able to meet. This leads us, then, to
pinpoint
what in our experience is the biggest problem the Coop as an
organization has.
We have great staff, led by the CMT, and product selection. Our good
financial
condition has allowed us to do well by the staff in working conditions
and
benefits. And we have a really great member labor situation, which we
understand
may be the most participatory in the entire country, with more people
sharing
the labor at HWFC than at any other coop. But one of the reasons the
Board members
put such long hours in is that the committee system of running the
Coop, as it
presently is constituted, doesn’t work well. Few members really do much
on
committees (with some major exceptions: you know who you are!) and the
committees which do function become primarily staffed by Board members
and
employees. We say this not to let
ourselves off
the hook by pointing at someone else. We have been guilty of not doing
the
committee work we should have. But the objective fact is that the
present
system does have problems. What can be done? Fully functioning
committees with
lots of people sharing the load would ease the burden of the few that
do this
much needed work. Many hands really do make work lighter. And so we’d
like to
make a suggestion. Instead of “general purpose” committees such as
membership, communications
or personnel, maybe we could set up “ad hoc” committees to work on
specific,
time-defined projects. For example, a member might make a commitment to
work on
the product manual; or a project that would beef up the communications
between
members doing different work at the Coop. Or someone could help the
buyers by
tracing down a new source of supply. Does the warehouse need
reorganizing? How
about our archives? When the project is specific and time-limited,
volunteers may
be more forthcoming. What we would need is a small steering group — a
staff
member, the Board liaison, one or two experienced “old hands” — and
Nate’s marvelous
memory and database of what member has what kind of skill and/or
interest. And
we could go from there. |
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