Thinking Cooperative and Collaborative

Jose Leal (00:00):

Welcome again to Radical World of podcast. I'm Jose, Jose Leal, along with my co-host. Well, I don't know. We call you a host. Matt, you, you're my partner. Are you hosting?

Matt Perez (00:23):

I'm a hostess.

Jose Leal (00:24):

You're a hostess. Our co-hostess, Matt Perez. Welcome Matt. And welcome to the folks listening to us. So Matt, we, we thought we would talk a little bit about co-ops collaboration collaboratives, radical companies. And, and I'd like to start by doing a little bit of an intro. What, what is it that we're talking about? So we all know the typical company, the vast majority of people work in what we would call a fiat company, which is an organization where the employees have very little power. They are told what to do, they are told how to do it. They don't own any of the company, and they certainly don't manage the company. That's the definition of that we've created, which is actually that you've created, that is a fiat company. Fiat meaning that somebody's in control.

Matt Perez (01:33):

And the only impact is money.

Jose Leal (01:39):

And that's the goal.

Matt Perez (01:40):

How, how rich can I get? And by using these people. And that's the main thing. But you know, the things you said about not having control, not having ownership, not having anything other than your salary, you should be grateful for your salary.

Jose Leal (01:58):

And so that's how most people myself included in the past have operated working for an organization that is a fiat company that hires people uses them, gets rid of them when they don't need them anymore. And so on. And then there is what we've written about in our book that we co-wrote radical companies. And that book we, we talked about what would it be if we made a radical change in the way we organize to a radical company? And a radical company to us is an organization where people are both co-owners and co-managers. So they're not just workers. They in fact are part of the ownership class, if you want to call it a class. And they're also part of the management class. So they play a role in how the organization is run. And that work has led us to exploring how do we create these companies? And we've had some experimentation with, with working with folks on that. And as of late, we've been working with the idea that there is a classic company that actually has a leg up on the traditional fiat company. And that is the collaborative, a collaborative a, pardon me, a co-op, misspoke there a co-op is an organization that already exists. There are a few of them, not very many, but there are a few of these types of organizations. And they have a leg up on the fiat companies in that they are already co-owned. Now we have some concerns about how they're co-owned, and we can talk a little bit about that. That's what we'll be talking about today because last month in San Diego we presented in at the California Co-op conference. We had a couple of workshops there where we presented where radical companies in the form of local cooperative collaboratives. And that's a new type of, of model that we are proposing for the organizations that are co-ops. And, and we got a good reception, a very good reception. And so wanted to explore that with Matt and have a conversation here with you folks around that topic. So, Matt, when it comes to a co-op co-ownership we've done some research into that. We understand, we've spoken to a lot of the co-ops here in the Bay Area. What would you say is kind of the difference between co-op ownership and a radical company ownership?

Matt Perez (05:21):

Well, the, the main thing is co-ops make more of a, of an issue of equality. You want everybody to be equal and, and, and stuff like that. And with radical, it's more of equitability. In other words, if you contribute, you get more. If you don't contribute, you get less. And that's the one, the one complaint that I get from I've gotten from people who are co-ops, that, well, I do all the work with my, these two guys who are here, didn't do any of the work, and they get the same thing. And and that, that's the main difference is the equality versus equitability. And we're more, more and more into equitability.

Jose Leal (06:22):

Right? And so, so that means that it's about us having what's owed to us based on the effort we put in.

Matt Perez (06:32):

Yeah.

Jose Leal (06:33):

Right. That, that we get what's, for lack of a better way of saying it, what's fair. And, and we as human beings have a very good finely tuned sense of what's fair if I put in more effort than you do, and I start to feel like something's not right.

Matt Perez (06:52):

Well, it turns out that monkeys and dogs and cats, I don't know about cats. Oh, yeah. Other, other mammals at least have a sense of, Hey, I the same with you. How come you're getting grape, but I'm getting a you know, a nut or something. And They've done the, these experiments, and lo and behold, if you, if you take two monkeys in a cage, you know, each in some cage, they, you make 'em do something and then you give one a grape and want a nut, the one that gets the nuts get off. It's like, Hey, he's getting grape. How come I'm not getting grape? Because grapes, I guess are more valuable, valuable than nuts. They have sugar, I guess a lecturer.

Jose Leal (07:49):

Basically, you're just a neighbor.

Matt Perez (07:51):

Yeah. And so it, it is very basic that if you do more, you should get more. If you do less, you should get less. The the problem with capitalism is to redefine all that thing, I mean, they're using that formula, if you will, but they base that money. If you have more money, you are worth more. If you have less money, you're worth less. And when the, when the, when the whole, before there was market, when the whole thing of, of share companies started in Netherlands they they were more fair about the whole thing, but it was a committee. It was based on something. And the only thing they commission at the time was money. So if you have $2 and a half, $1, then you know, you, you have more than me. But you, you risk more than me. Right? And today we have, you know, a, a, a supercomputer in our pocket. I'm trying to get out my pocket, and this is supercomputer that will carry in our pocket. And I call a supercomputer because the computer that I saw I set out with many years ago was not even, I think it's 0.1 of the speed. And we, you know, we still managed something, but this computer, so there's an app for a supercomputer that calculates your, well, calculates your contributions and turns into something canto grad. And I mean, we're in different age that we can do those things. We should be moving forward. The thing I object to with co-ops, it's still taking the paradigm of, of you know, we're all equal because we don't know how to, how to count any other way. And I think there are better ways now, I think

Jose Leal (10:29):

Before we get, before we go down the, the how do we do it better? Yeah, yeah. I was going to bring up that at the conference. The, the keynote brought up mangan and all the good things that Mangan did from a community perspective. And it did do a lot of good from the community perspective.

Matt Perez (10:52):

We both agree, and they're very they're very generous

Jose Leal (10:58):

You know, well, not only that, they've created banking facilities, health facilities so they've created a community of COism, which is different than what we have here in the states of co-ops. So we've got a co-op here and a co-op there. Yeah. And they do work well together for the most part, but it's not a community and it's not a multi-sector group of things where you see banking and and, and healthcare and a number of other services also cooperative in nature, also helping each other out. But one of the things that I mentioned to that, to that keynote speaker was the <inaudible>. As, as you've having been there pointed out, Monon does. And for, for those folks who don't know what Mangan is, Mangan is the largest co-op in the world. It is in northern Spain. And has been around I'm not sure how long, Matt, that's 56 years.

Matt Perez (12:08):

Since Esther, the Spanish war, which was before World War 2.

Jose Leal (12:16):

Yeah. So even longer. So 67 years. And one of the things I'd like you to describe, because you brought it to my attention the idea of, of these owners every couple of years, these, so-called co-owners of the business going on strike.

Matt Perez (12:41):

Not every couple of years, but the, the example. But they had a huge strike when, when Fargo or something, the, the very first co-op that came out that formed event, eventually formed <inaudible>. And they, they, they weren't in the, in the appliance business, big, big white appliances, washing machines and that kind of stuff. And, and all the people around them were one by one closing down, closing down, closing down. And they thought, ah, this is a temporary thing. And if we have more money to invest to, to keep us alive for a couple of years, then we would get past it. And, you know, people has to buy this thing. Well, it turns out that the money didn't do the track, and the money had come from their, I guess the community fund or something. But that's where retirement came from. That's where I mean, they're very generous. They, they didn't have a fund for taking trips around the world and stuff like that. All of that was used to pay for this for this bat they we're doing. And when it didn't work out, when the, I mean, the good news is that most people got jobs elsewhere. So not like here where we say, oh, we have a hundred, you know, 10,000 people more than we need to, so let's, let's fire 'em. They, they're very good that way, but they didn't have any of their accumulated wealth to, to count on, and they went out and strike. And you think about it, you, you were owners, right? You voted for this thing to be okay, why are you striking? You're taking a risk. And my guess is that they didn't see this risk. If the managers said it was a good thing, it was a good thing, you know, go for it. And they wanted, yeah, go for it. And there's been other strikes since, but I, I'm not familiar with them, but this one I, i was familiar with because before I went there, I read about this thing. And Wikipedia has very good articles on what went on. And when I asked the question, what about this thing, they said, yeah, that was a mistake. So but I think it's a, it is a built-in mistake.

Jose Leal (16:08):

And that built-in mistake comes from the fact that you have a leadership class that is voted into power, and that even though everybody has a vote within the, so-called shared ownership, they, they can only exercise their vote to vote leadership in. They don't actually get to be, for the most part involved in the decision making, right? Once that leadership is in, they operate as CEOs and VPs and directors and everything else as, as a traditional organization would.

Matt Perez (16:57):

And, and like I said, they, they have things like the salaries are going to be one to six. Instead of, instead of one to 354. And which is.

Jose Leal (17:12):

Let me, let me just say what that means because I know what that means, but maybe not everybody understands that the average employee, their salary is only six times that to the CEO of the company that is getting paid, right? A six x of, of the average employee. And so that would mean that the, those folks one, they, they may be getting paid a little bit better as as cooperative employees, but they their bosses are not getting paid exorbitant amounts like 300, 400 times right. What the average frontline folks are getting paid,

Matt Perez (17:54):

Which is what we pay here, right? To CEOs.

Jose Leal (17:58):

And if not, thousands of times more.

Matt Perez (18:01):

Well, the, the, the biggest number I've, I've read is 354, but there's got to be more. So anyways so that was the situation there. It's still the situation that, and there's another thing. They also have mon enterprise here in, well, Mexico. I'm in California, so I'm not allowed to say here in Mexico, and in, in other, in other places, I think Peru or something, and Honduras and Spanish speaking places, but they're not co-ops, right? They're, they're, I mean, it's more.

Jose Leal (18:53):

They're run as fiat companies.

Matt Perez (18:55):

They're, they're more of a imperialist model of I'm your boss, I'm invested money in this, and therefore, like, we're going to be generous and, and stuff like that. And they are, but but they don't vote on things like, we're going to move all the funds to investment funds instead of social class. So that, that's one of <inaudible>, sorry about that.

Jose Leal (19:33):

So, so thinking through the idea of, of a co-op and starting with Mango, the largest in the world makes sense. But we have lots of examples here in the Bay area, for example, of of American born, American living co-ops that are you know, struggling in some cases, but in most cases doing well and successfully growing and, and operating well. And we've known some of those folks where our experience has been that there's a lot more comradery in, in those groups, and that there's a lot more flexibility in those groups.

Matt Perez (20:20):

And the mindset is, is they want the same things. They, they're stuck with systems that are old you know, 1800 old.

Jose Leal (20:31):

Right. So, and so one of the things that I know you and I both feel could, could change and co-ops is this idea of one person, one vote. Because voting essentially creates winners and losers.

Matt Perez (20:54):

Yes.

Jose Leal (20:56):

Even though you're being democratic in nature, which is a term that's very much a, I think a thing of pride within the cooperative movement that it is democratic. But in reality, what we're doing is we're voting for leadership in many cases, and we're voting for some major decisions in some cases, but that means that some of our colleagues are losing and some are colleagues that backed, another leader will lose some that chose a different option will lose. So what's wrong with that? Like, it, that's the way the world works, right?

Matt Perez (21:44):

So when I went to Verona, which is another vir that, that they call it the middle, but it's not the middle. It's, it is above the, the coast. And it's there's a, there's a a co-op for everything, you know, toilet paper, there's a co-op for that, the, whatever. I, I'm making this up. But then I talked to some of the people that worked at, at these co-ops and, and this guy told me in <inaudible> way, he said, what chance do I have to end up at the leadership team at the, in the leadership class, right? These are people who started the co-op have done very well by co-op are very generous. Well, us. And, and what's missing there is, is the, not, not just there is the world over is the thought of, well, maybe money is not older to maybe that effort of owning everything is not what older to and he said, what, what chance do I have for getting to a class? I'm doing my work. I'm doing my, you know, my, my chores and I don't have time to, or, or I don't even think, right? It's possible. Right? And and I thought, well, that's interesting is there's a voting but always for the same ticket.

Jose Leal (23:43):

Right. Because you, you're not going to displace the leader. 'cause The leader is the one that has all of the secrets, knows all the information, has all the experience. But our issue isn't that there are people who are leaders. Our issue is that leadership isn't well distributed in organizations. And that when organizations only have a leader with another, you know, somebody underneath, a bunch of people underneath that are the leadership class, that means that everybody else are followers. And so when we have co-ops of followers and we think that, that, that can be improved, how do we improve the, the idea of not voting for leadership, but having what we call co-management where everyone is involved in the leading process to whatever level they need to be involved in. It doesn't mean that everybody's making all the decisions all the time, right? But if you are in the team that's doing this kind of work, and there are decisions to be made, it is your team that makes those decisions. Now, if your decision need is going to impact other teams, then those teams along with you make that decision. And if a decision involves the whole organization, well then maybe everybody needs to be involved in some way. But it is not, these aren't, we're not talking about making everybody a leader of the organization per se. We're talking about making everybody a leader of the area of work that they're responsible for, the area of, of influence, so that their team deals with.

Matt Perez (25:43):

And, and the, the principal being a leader in that. I mean, for a long time we lived with FTEs before the Kings and, and stuff like that. But for, so, so it's going to last a lot longer. And and some people won't feel comfortable for a while, although I've seen the change happen and it could happen very quickly, quickly with some people. Not everybody is, is playful. And that what with some people is, is very very quick. It happens, you know, automatically. And the thing is things that you want to get involved in and that, that would, it'll be, it'll reduce the class of people that want to involve because they're, they're still involving fiat. You know, you said something about the way we used to be, I'm, I'm still fiat, you know, but I have 72 72 or three. I don't, I don't know years of being trained in the fiat environment. Right. And you don't check that in day.

Jose Leal (27:08):

No, no. And the future of, of non fiat organizations is not in the hands of 73 year olds. It's in the hands of 23 year olds.

Matt Perez (27:20):

It's in the hands of everybody. But 23 year olds are more likely to.

Jose Leal (27:24):

Exactly.

Matt Perez (27:25):

Blur it out.

Jose Leal (27:27):

Right. Because they're, they're closer to those desires for, you know, meaning and belonging and everything else that comes along with what the fiat company restraints and constraints. Yes. And that's why people feel so disengaged at work. 'cause They're just being asked to play a limited role, not be engaged, not be participating, have very little meaning in their work and, and a sense of belonging. It's never really considered.

Matt Perez (27:59):

No, it's never.

Jose Leal (28:01):

And for, for most organizations it's not. And so, so what I came out of that conference was this huge sense that the co-op movement is really you know, a step closer.

Matt Perez (28:19):

Yes.

Jose Leal (28:19):

To becoming what we call a radical company in that they've already got the mindset of cooperation.

Matt Perez (28:28):

Yes.

Jose Leal (28:29):

What I think it's missing is this mindset of collaboration. So they cooperate, but they don't do the management together. They don't organize in a co-managing way. Right. And that's what I talk call collaboration, literally working together and, and that process of thinking about a cooperative in a collaborative way, both inside the organization and outside the organization, building collaborative communities of businesses, not just of, of companies, not just thinking of it as a isolated entity, right? But an entity that is, is working with a, a community. That to me, what the, the response that we got out of the, the co-op conference here in California led me to believe that, that we have we're not starting at ground zero, right? But we actually have a, a preexisting community of folks that are already eager to participate in this new model. And that our work is to really join them in bringing these ideas to the table and these opportunities to the table. So you talked about, we should wrap it up, but you talked about the idea of contribution. So one of the things that we've done over the last year plus is we've developed a, a, an application called rads. The latest version just got released this week. It's on both Play store and the Apple store. And both of them operate in the same way, which is the ability to build a community, to define a community that represents your business, represents a group of people that work together, represents a, a, a, a group of people that are in communion in some way, and be able to share with each other, recognitions of each other's work as a way to move away from transactional work, right. To relational work, right. To start to track these things. And so that's a tool that, that we're bringing to the community. And we'd like to offer to the co-op community as well as part of the tool sets that are available to help move them in the direction of collaboration within the context of, of the co-op space. 'cause It is a space that already pre-exists. So I think that's enough for this week. We'll keep it short and sweet because I think that was an intro to this conversation, but I think we'll have more in the future. Did you want to introduce our guest for next week?

Matt Perez (31:49):

Yeah. The guest for next week is Josh Allan Dykstra. Oh, there he is. And he's chief officer and co-founder of Love Work. And he's a training company that he says a training company that turns information to have information in five minutes a day. So it sounds interesting seeking to create a world where everyone can love work. And yeah, that, that, so that's for next week.

Jose Leal (32:31):

I've had a couple of conversations with Josh and, and the work that they're doing is, is very much in alignment with what we're talking about, which is how do we change work for the better? How do we improve the way we work? So I look forward to that conversation.

Matt Perez (32:44):

And I, I was in a, in a kind of a conference thing years ago with Josh and and yeah, I believe that we're, we're aligned the same way. Although, you know, I I would use different words, but word is that a world where everyone can love work, whatever would change there is that is not work. So idea of work and life and work and life and work, it's the same thing. Yeah. Notice for one thing that you are in both, in both those places and it has to do with you. Here you do the, the more I don't know what to call it work of, of keeping your family alive and da da da. And, and here you do the, the other work of keeping your, your bigger family alive, the community that's doing the work, but it is all, it's all coming out you. It's still coming out you being offered to the committee and then the committee rehashing. So yeah, just a great guy.

Jose Leal (34:03):

Yeah. looking forward to that. So thank you Matt, for this conversation. It was enjoyable. Hopefully we can start having some conversations with the cooperative community as a whole, as we reach out to them to start to do some of this work together in how we can collaborate. That's it for today. Thank you for joining us for the Radical World of the podcast, and we'll see you next week.