jen briggs

Employee ownership (EO) is a business ownership model, but the best EO companies take this structure and build a participative management structure with it. Employee-owned companies have a unique opportunity to have participative management at two levels – the work level and the corporate citizenship level.

Participative management at the work-team level relies on managers who are great at using the talent of their people to improve the work unit’s performance. They listen and include the voice of the worker in day-to-day management. Team huddles and agile project approaches are typically a key aspect of this type of work along with a humble, trusting, participative manager’s mindset.

Participative management at the corporate citizenship level relies on leaders who see employees not just as workers but as shareholders of the company. They teach the business of running the business and help employees connect to the voice of the marketplace. They then include their people in generating ideas for the future. They believe that the power of the collective mind is better than a limited group or individual contribution. But, harnessing this power in an effective way takes some forethought and coordination.

Some starters:

• Ask your employees to contribute to a SWOT assessment. Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This can be done with a focus on the general business or through a balanced scorecard method. For the balanced scorecard method: complete four separate SWOTs based on the marketplace/customer, financial perspective, internal business processes, and learning/growth perspectives. This is best done as a group so people can hear and learn from each other. Make thinking visible. This SWOT provides leadership with a lot of information to consider as they make their strategic choices and decisions.
• Ask the big questions. What questions or issues does leadership wrestle with? What keeps leadership up at night? Involve people in answering these questions or solving these issues. For example, what will our business look like in 2025? What new products will we need to sell to be competitive in a competitive marketplace? What new approaches are we not considering? In a group setting ask the questions, generate discussion, learn from people, and let them learn from each other. There are several different facilitation techniques, but try a world café style event.
• Generate inquiry and debate about choices. Perhaps leadership has some strategic choices to make and there are some that need to be vetted a bit more. Involve people in the debate. Consider using a fishbowl discussion technique where people both participate and observe the many sides of choices considered.
• Build the future. Ask people what they want to change about the business – start, stop, and preserve. Create a column for each and ask people to contribute their ideas and opinions. Create a master list and give people three votes for each column (marks, sticky dots, etc.). At the end, leaders and managers will have a prioritized opinion list to help inform their future decisions and communication. This can be framed in more narrow ways – for example, what do you think needs to change about the culture – start, stop, and preserve?
• Build norms and re-norm. Build your corporate citizenship model. Let’s assume your company has a list of values, but what do these values-lived look like? Norms are how the values are expressed on a daily basis – in other words, normal behavior. For example, if you have a value of trust, how does this manifest itself in daily work-life? Or, a value of ownership thinking. What does ownership thinking look like? What are the best ownership thinkers doing on a daily basis? This activity involves groups of people mapping out what each value-lived looks like and then takes it a step further and asks people to (re)commit to living these norms. Always leave a door open for re-norming because it is highly likely that how you live the values when you have 100 employee owners will look different when you have 200 employee owners or have a high ratio of remote staff.

You can use this method to build your corporate citizenship model. Perhaps people are great at living the values as a team member, but what does it mean to live as a corporate citizen now that they are stockholders? Do great corporate citizens engage in more reading and learning at the business level yet before they focused on their department or team? What does it mean to be engaged at the business level? What are the rights and responsibilities of employee ownership? How do they participate in decisions and influence leaders?

Regardless of how you involve people, always make clear who decision makers are in the beginning. Is this a voting session on decisions? Is leadership generating discussions to get new ideas to also consider as they make decisions? Is it an in-person poll event to take the temperature of the collective? It’s important for people to understand if they are making a decision, participating in decision making, or providing information to influence decision makers. People will expect some outcome, so explaining how this intelligence will likely be used will be important. If it is the first time, admit it, be vulnerable and explain that leadership and management is learning this better way of leading too.

These activities, when done collectively, fulfill a few important aspects of a great ownership culture. They provide an opportunity for shareholders to influence leadership, they allow for participation and engagement, they allow for learning and building business literacy, and they help build community. Trust and the absence of fear is at the core of all healthy corporate cultures and talking about big issues where leadership can demonstrate their desire to listen and be vulnerable is visibly powerful. Creating shared experiences helps build vulnerability based trust where people can have a deeper understanding of each other, their business, and their collective future.

Originally published with The Beyster Institute, UCSD