1 Co-operative Principles

So, what makes a mutual distinctive? Last time I showed mutuals are primarily about organised people, not organised money.  The members jointly own the wealth that accumulates within a mutual.

In 1844, the founders of the Rochdale Retail Co-operative adopted a set of principles. The International Co-operative Alliance adopted them with adaptations in 1937, last reviewed in 1995.

There are seven principles. Other types of organisations may embody some or all of them but the expectation is all seven apply to mutuals.

Voluntary and open membership

If you wish to join a co-operative they must permit you to do so without reference to your sex, sexuality, race, religion or anything else. Co-ops can impose certain conditions of membership such as residence in a geographical area or fees.

Democratic member control

The rule is one member, one vote, which should come as no surprise. This applies to the lowest level, eg your local branch. Representatives sent to higher levels also follow one member, one vote.

Perhaps we do not appreciate how radical this principle was, especially when combined with the first. Co-operatives were among the first organisations where women were able to take on leadership positions.

Member economic participation

Control of the co-operative’s assets are always in the hands of the members. They belong to the membership and not to a company or  individuals. So, co-operatives limit the assets that can be removed from ownership by the co-op.  De-mutualisation of co-operative assets must be difficult if not impossible.

However, it is possible to distribute surpluses among the members. This is known as a dividend (or divi) when applied in retail co-ops. In its best days the divi was a significant contribution to the income of many households.

Autonomy and independence

Co-ops and mutuals belong to their members. They can work in partnership with non-mutuals but cannot enter into agreements that compromise the members’ ownership of their mutual.

Converting co-operative assets to shares for example, may be attractive on the surface. In practice it means assets owned in common now belong to individuals. Those individuals who control the most shares effectively own the company. Within mutuals it is the common bond between the members that empowers the members.

Education, training, and information

So, it is crucial that members understand co-operative principles, to preserve co-operation and to empower the membership to new co-operative ventures. The first retail co-op in Rochdale had a library and meeting room above the shop, still preserved in the co-operative museum on the site today.

Cooperation among cooperatives

Co-ops collaborate with other co-ops. This ensures that mutual assets remain mutual.

Concern for community

We can understand this in various ways. There is a community among the members. If the co-op has a geographical common bond, its members support their neighbourhood. In the earliest days, one of the concerns was adulteration of food. Co-ops have always upheld the quality of their contribution to the economy.

I am somewhat sceptical about the ethical stance taken by the co-operative bank. Whilst co-ops are ethical, there is a danger that we confuse a generalised ethical stance with economic mutuality. Ethics do not substitute for mutuality.  Do you agree?

It does sound as if the UK co-operative movement is in severe trouble and it seems they have breached a number of these principles.  I think the key is education because it is too easy to forget principles or fail to understand them.  Commitment to education has fallen away as members no longer attend meetings.  Perhaps education could be promoted online but without people meeting and learning together, it is hard to see how understanding can be shared effectively.  What do you think?

1 On Taking a Break

There is a lot of pressure when you’re running any sort of on-line presence.  These days the key to success is dynamic websites, constantly updated with new material.  The best advice is to update your blog regularly.

I update mine every weekday but I take occasional breaks.  This next one is for the fortnight around Easter and so my next post will be on Monday 28 April.

This will allow me time to take a rest and make time to plan changes to my site and few more things that I have not so far found time to do.

Despite what the experts say, I’d recommend anyone to take a break from time to time.  So long as you flag up what you’re doing, there’s no problem.

0 Using Email with Your Website

By now (if you’re following this sequence starting here) you should have a very basic usable website, as the foundation for your online business or project.  The chances are you have had an email address for years and so won’t need to set one up.  However, if you don’t have an email address, now is the time to register.

Hang on though if you think this post is not for you!  There are a few things to consider even if you have an email address already.  How many addresses do you need?  It might be a good idea, especially if this is a new project, to consider an alternative address for your project or business.  This will mean you can separate personal from business emails.  For example, you can have specialised email signatures for each type of email.

Paid-For Email Addresses

Also you may find you need an additional address because paid-for addresses have more authority than free addresses.  If your email address is part of the package you receive from your Internet Service Provider, or web host, this has more authority than an address from a free site, such as Gmail or Outlook.  Free and premium addresses have different uses.

You may find, if you use an email service, they will query a free email address.  Their advice is likely to reduce the chances of your emails being treated as spam and increase recipients’ confidence in your emails, where they don’t know you personally.  So, it is worth considering a paid-for address.  Hunt around, you’re likely to be paying for several addresses you don’t use!

If you enter your email account and find settings or similar, you can set up an automatic signature for your email.  You can add a lot of information to your signature.

The free addresses are fine for personal emails, where your recipients know you and they can have other uses.  Many websites have email sign up services (and I’ll be writing about them soon).  Why not use a free address for these?  This means your main email account will be free of a lot of clutter.  Many of these services are helpful but they can get out of hand.  This is a simple way to manage them.

Have you other uses for additional email accounts?

4 A Taxonomy of Conversations

Today, I introduce a ‘taxonomy of listening’.  Perhaps it is more accurate to think of it as a taxonomy of conversations.   I’ve adapted it from two books: Adam Kahane’s Solving Tough Problems pages 91 -92 and beyond.  Peter M Senge et al in Presence, describe the same taxonomy on pages 74f.

Outline Taxonomy of Conversations

Here is a brief review of their four types of conversation; different ways of paying attention.

1. The first type is downloading.  This is where we listen from within our own story and so hear only what supports it.  This can be a bad habit of highly creative and motivated people where they listen for anything that supports their view.  It can be healthy but where the listener listens in this mode only, they can fail to hear other points of view as valid.
2. Debating is where we listen from outside, dispassionately weighing evidence.  It is a marked improvement on downloading, requiring debaters to think about what they are saying and what the other person is saying.  It is a gateway to types three and four because it requires listening to others and marshaling our arguments to meet theirs.  The problem is that like downloading it admits of nothing new.  This is why so many debates go on for years because neither side can hear what the other is saying.
3. Reflection is where we listen from inside and hear ourselves reflexively and others with empathy.  It invites the listener to try on the insights of the other person to see if they might work for them.  It invites a more subjective understanding of unfamiliar points of view.
4. Generative dialogue is where we hear not just ourselves and others but the whole system.  We see ourselves within the whole; the role we play for good or ill.  This can be highly motivating when people experience it together.  This type of conversation can generate something new; an insight that no one person brought with them to the conversation.  Everyone leaves with insights that are completely new.

In the next four posts I shall look at these four types of conversation in more detail and their practice online.

What is your experience of these modes of conversation in real life or online?

1 Using Keywords Effectively

Let’s say you’ve found 3 keywords (or phrases) that summarise your organisation’s offer.  The next step is to add them to your site.

You should not put them all on the same page.  One keyword or phrase per page is enough.  Many people think the only way to a website is through its home page.  This may be true for some sites but it is better to optimise several pages as landing pages, pages designed to attract people searching for a particular thing.  One landing page each for the 3 keywords.

Is This the Right Page?

Once they land visitors need to know they are on the right page.  You need good copy above the fold that clearly states what this landing page is about.  Your keyword should feature prominently; after all someone has followed the link because they’re interested in that keyword.  If it doesn’t feature, they might lose interest.

Don’t overdo it but make sure the keyword is prominent and not obscured by:

Places to Put Keywords

Good places to put the keyword are:

Do you have any suggestions?

2 Why Mutuals?

One current frustration in the UK is the sorry state of mutuals.  In the 80s most of the building societies demutualised, to the benefit of carpetbaggers, who joined mutuals to organise votes to turn them into conventional businesses.  Legislation to strengthen the common bond and so help mutuals resist such attempts is long overdue.   Now we’re seeing the car crash that is the retail co-operative movement.  The management believes their own rhetoric about inclusive membership, whilst in reality as few as  100 people have a say in running the co-op.  So, why mutuals?

Then a few days ago the Chancellor announced what amounts to demutualisation of pension funds.  Instead of purchasing an annuity, fund owners will now be able to withdraw their funds.  People don’t realise pensions are mutuals.  Those who die early effectively subsidise those who live long lives.  Is this fair?  Work it out.

The problem is people do not understand mutuality.  Mutuals emphasised education from the very start and equipped their members to take part fully and understand what it was they were participating in.  The first retail co-op on Toad Lane is now a museum, and the first floor preserves the original library and meeting room.

I’ve written about the origins of mutuals, through the worker and retail co-operative movements.  I described how they inspired many of the institutions we take for granted these days, even though big business exploits many of them.

The very wealthy, sometimes called the 1%, never create anything new.  Their main purpose is to own stuff and exploit it.  Their motive is ultimately personal power.

Community Activism

Community activism has always opposed the impact of the powerful on disadvantaged communities; without money organised people is the only approach available. (The co-operative movement was organised people; they organised to be financially successful.)

The pity is community development has itself become the playground of statutory sector in the UK.  Statutory and professional voluntary sector organisations fund community development to a greater or lesser extent (lesser at present).

Since the 1970s, the community sector has ignored the UK the private sector.  They ignore the contribution small businesses make to the local economy and demutualisation has spread because no-one understands or values the contributions made by mutuals.

Mutuals are the historical roots of community development.  To understand community activism pre-1970s, review the century to 1950 (roughly), when working people created institutions through mutuality.  Prior to that the principles of mutuality were laid down through the late eighteenth century evangelical revival.

As the new industrial poor learned to organise, via movements like Methodism, they discovered mutuality as an effective way to get things done through organised people; far more effective than organised money.

Why was this?  In my next Monday post I’ll write about the main features of mutual organisations.

1 Generosity of Spirit

Generosity is essential if you want to be successful online.

If you are promoting a cause, you are a teacher.  This applies as much online as it does in real life; whether you make a living from teaching or not.  It applies even if you are not qualified.

These days in the UK, we are told, schools are really businesses.  Most of my life they’ve been a part of the statutory sector.  I’m not sure I’m happy with this change but a lot depends on the teachers.  If a teacher is a business person, it is probably OK.  The prospect of business people running schools is far worse than the prospect of teachers becoming business people.

I was listening to a headteacher this week.  She was discussing how to attract and retain high quality staff.  This is a headache in most places; in my neck of woods, a disadvantaged area, schools have real problems.

Look, she said, (I paraphrase) the thing is you help teachers develop.  When teachers from your school become better qualified and move onto become deputies and head teachers, this attracts new teachers to your school.  Of course, if someone does well, they may move on but that’s OK.  Many will stay on if the school looks after them and the ones who leave enhance the school’s reputation and that will attract more high quality teachers.

Not only does this show good business sense but it is also good for the school.

And it’s also good for your online presence.  If you:

• care about people by offering good content, in time you will find people follow you.
• have something to sell, they are more likely to buy it.
• run a campaign, they’re more likely to join in.

The headteacher spoke a lot about values but never once mentioned generosity.  That’s the value I saw in her talk.

Do you have favourite websites that show similar generosity of spirit?

0 Using your Blog

A few Thursdays ago I posted about the site structure and the pages you need to start your website.  Today, I shall write about using your blog posts.

If you have a blog, you will find a page somewhere on the site that lists your blog posts.  Many themes default blog posts to the home page, but they don’t have to be there.

The blog adds posts to the list at the top, so the posts are older as you scroll down the post page.  If you click on the title of a post, you go to a new page with just that post and nothing else.  This page has a unique url, which means you can link directly to it.

Creating a post is similar to creating a page and if you are familiar with word processing, you should not have too much trouble.

However, you might object you do not want a blog.  You may have heard you should post every day and you really don’t want to take on all that work.

Do you need the blog for your business or project?  Your online presence is not what it would have been a few years ago.  Today, your site needs to be active and to be seen to be active.  A blog is one way of bringing activity to your site; I’ll write about others in future posts in this sequence.  If you choose to do something other than blogging, that’s fine but don’t use the work involved as a reason not to do it.  If you haven’t got the time, why be online at all?

So, how can you use your blog?  Blogs are personal records and there are some advantages to sharing  personal experience.  Equally, blogs can be for teaching and if you want to be taken seriously online, this is something you should consider.

Blog posts do not have to be learned in tone or terribly long.  A brief post that makes an informative point is all you need.  Posting regularly helps you become established online but it is not essential.

Some Ways to Use Your Blog

So, blogs are one way of organising the information you want to share on your site.  Your designer / consultant can help you work out the best way to use your blog.

Have you any examples of creative ways of using blogs?

1 Science as Conversation

Two Wednesdays ago I wrote about three different types of conversation.  Of these, I’ve written about conversations between people and conversations as prayer.  Today it is the turn of science.

Conversation is about paying attention and this is the heart of scientific method.  You study data and formulate a hypothesis.  (The data might be the results of an experiment, scientific papers or textbooks, or a real life problem.)  You design experiments to test the hypothesis and then pay attention to the results.  Bad science is failure to attend to the results;  a bad experiment does not necessarily lead to bad science.

This scientific method leads to theories; theory implies there is no such thing as absolute certainty in science.  This is sometimes hard to understand; after all it is not difficult to point to the many successes of science.  But all theories are to some degree tentative.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Newtonian physics answered all the questions about mechanics and gravity.  Einstein noticed anomalies in the available data and came up with his theories of relativity.  In doing so, he did not prove Newton wrong, Newtonian physics is still useful but is now a part of a wider theory, which itself someday may prove to be part of something even wider.

The Challenge to Fundamentalism

Fundamentalists deal in certainties.  For them theory proves science wrong because it is by definition tentative.  They believe their book (the book varies, depending on the type of fundamentalist), deals in eternal truths.   They do not dialogue with their book but impose their views upon it.

Fundamentalists and tyrants the world over close down conversations.  They live in fear of discovering something new.  For them truth has to be nailed down to be true.

The challenge, if you are marketing a message online, is to encourage conversation, not to impose views.  Conversation is a learning experience and if you commit to genuine sharing, your website and your real life business or project will become learning experiences.

In my next post, I shall show how conversation can become a learning experience and more!

What do you think?  Conversations with matter?  Do you find them more or less stimulating than conversations with people?

1 How to Find Good Keywords

Last Tuesday, I introduced keywords and suggested their main purpose is to tell first-time visitors what your site is about.

The chances are the name of your organisation won’t tell your visitor much about what your site offers.  Even if it does, people are unlikely to search for it because they might not have heard about it.

It may be gratifying to type your organisation’s name into a search engine and find your website ranking high on the results page.  But realistically, how many people are likely to do that?

You need to find alternative words or phrases, people might search for and through them find you.  This is a massive topic, called search engine optimisation (seo).

Let’s imagine a company, “Amphibiana Plus” wants to rank for “plague of frogs”.  First, they need to put good relevant content on their site.  In time people will find it (seo is about how to promote this) and they might add a link from their site to yours.  As more organisations recommend your site in this way, your site will climb in the search engines rankings.

Note good content is the key.  Google, the world’s main search engine, is changing the way its search engine works to encourage good content.  Only good content will rank high on the search engine results page.  So, it is really important to understand how keywords relate to good content.

So, how do you find keywords (or phrases!)?  Here are few pointers:

• Review your current website content and printed literature and note any recurring themes or issues.  They might be in your mission statement, for example.
• Brainstorm around these themes and get as many ideas as possible.  You will need to consider each idea and ask realistically whether it is something people might enter a search engine.
• Choose a good keyword and enter it into Google.  Type slowly and watch the suggestions Google supplies.  At some point they will become relevant and you’ll get some idea what other people are already entering.  Remember if there are lots of relevant options, it’s a good thing because it shows there is interest in that theme.
• If you want to explore more ideas, try using Google Adwords.  Google offers a number of useful tools under this heading.  They are free to use and you are under no obligation to purchase advertising.  (If you are just starting I would council against using paid ads until your organisation is well established online.)  Anyway, register if it is your first time and then click on the Tools menu and you’ll find the keywords tool in the menu.

So, that’s how to get started.  Next time I’ll show you what to do with them once you’ve found them.  Do you have any tips about finding keywords?