For two weeks I am participating in the Emilia-Romagna Co-operative Study Tour, which is a Vancity program designed to enhance knowledge about the co-operative movement and inspire connections between each other, our work and co-operative leadership. The Italian home-base for this learning journey is Bologna, the capital of the Emilia-Romagna region and the community with the most advanced co-operative networks on Earth. I’m immersed in this experience with colleagues and community partners and today we’re spending an afternoon engaged in dialogue about how we might take what we’ve learned and apply it to meet community needs back home in British Columbia. Here are seven co-operative reflections from Bologna, Italy.
This article in 81 words
Co-operatives emerge when markets fail people and, in response, people aggregate efforts to meet the needs brought on by the failure. Co-operative leadership means valuing creativity over money, freedom over safety, and making the complexity of new economic models easier for folks to understand and apply. We need new models of work that address the spectacular challenges of The Great Transformation and networks of flourishing co-operatives that complement the capitalist system will make work and life more caring, fair and human.
Re-blogging William Azaroff
My colleague, William, has been sharing lessons learned from our experience on his blog – check them out, too:
The great transformation
Our first lecture of the program was from Stefano Zamagni, indisputably the world leader on the subject of co-operative economics. Over a few hours he outlined the ways in which the economy is changing and also predicted what he expects to come next. Workers wanting (and needing) higher wages while consumers demand lower prices for goods and services isn’t sustainable. Because in a globalized world workers and consumers are the same. As clients and customers become more strategic players in the global economy than labour, which is compounded by automation and migration, there will be less work for degree-holding, white collar workers, especially ones in financial, retail and other transactional services. Around the world markets and workplaces are being disrupted and few of us know where it’s all going to take us.
Failures, needs and locality
When the market fails then needs for the community emerge and this creates conditions for co-operatives to deliver value. When people aggregate their effort to address the need co-operatives are created. For example, in 1946 the market was failing newcomers and working class people in East Vancouver, so a few of them got together around a common need and formed a financial co-operative (Vancity Credit Union). Where I sit today, in a café in Bologna, I’m struck by hundreds of stories like ours at Vancity behind these co-operatives that have been working together for generations to build one of the healthiest and wealthiest economies on Earth.
Alternatives to capitalism
Recent research shows that Millennials are really over capitalism. Just because the capitalist model of extraction and unequal growth isn’t jiving with the needs of the generation taking over the economy doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t engage in a free market that inspires all kinds of opportunities to do business. We need new platforms and new models for creating wealth and welfare. Co-operatives offer a business model that fosters social cohesion and is more resilient to disruption. And there are several kinds of business models that emphasize value, impact and community welfare over revenue. For example, Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning), Udemy and Acumen are changing how we learn and Maximum Fun blends podcasting with in-person community building.
Cultivate neo-generalism
As we strive to humanize the economy with alternative business models there is also an opportunity to prepare for the future of work by deepening our human skills, as opposed to doubling-down on technical abilities. In order to inoculate ourselves against disruption we need to unlearn specialization and learn generalism because things are changing so quickly that, in order to be lifelong-relevant, we need to have mindsets and skillsets that allow us to add value by adapting to community needs as they arise. According to authors of The Neo-Generalist, Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin, being a neo-generalist simply means that:
“We all carry with us the potential to specialize and generalize. Many of us are unwittingly eclectic, innately curious. There is a continuum between the extremes of specialism and generalism, a spectrum of possibilities. Where we stand on that continuum at a given point in time is governed by context.”
Lifelong learning is a guiding principle of co-operatives and my experience in Emilia-Romagna inspiring ideas for how we might develop shared talent pools that rival the gig economy and serve communities, not just shareholders.
Build family culture
Last week we visited Arbizzi, a packaging and logistics worker co-operative that mostly serves the agribusiness community. A few years ago the company’s founder, Mr. Arbizzi, decided to retire and, instead of selling the company to investors, he worked with co-operative partners to sell the company to the employees and transform the organization into a worker co-operative. What I noticed from the visit was the unique, family-style culture of Arbizzi, which many of the employees told me had always been there. So, did this make them more prepared for a Worker Buyout? Or did the transformation into a worker-owned co-operative reveal these characteristics and behaviours among the employees?
Always think entrepreneurially
In my opinion, building entrepreneurial skillsets is difficult because being entrepreneurial requires a mindset that’s difficult to teach. To adults, anyway. During his lectures to our cohort, Stefano Zamagni, one of the leaders of the co-operative movement, has shared the importance of entrepreneurialism as a catalyst for enhancing freedom, thinking and reciprocity in the world of work. According to Mashable’s Nellie Akalp, cultivating entrepreneurially-savvy in kids will help businesses of the future (and even today):
“Children are amazing, creative and passionate creatures. And that’s exactly who we need to take over the next generation of entrepreneurship. Encourage them to share their wildest ideas with you, and most importantly, take those ideas seriously.”
Communities drive innovation when more people share their passions, think for themselves and express creativity.
Embrace the commons
In the commons, we receive what we need and give in proportion of our capabilities. So, people with more wealth should pay a bit more and people with less should still have access to all the things they need. Learning about the commons was probably the most fascinating and inspiring part of the lectures from the professors from the University of Bologna’s Economics Department. I see the private sector as too greedy, too extracting and the public sector doesn’t hold people accountable enough. By embracing the commons we can retain the competitiveness of the free market with the dignity that people deserve. Co-operatives are uniquely designed to thrive in the commons and, as a complement to capitalist companies, they will help to humanize the economy.
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This article was originally published on June 12, 2018.