| Leading Companies Online Magazine
Opportunity and the Owner Future
By Anthony I. Mathews, Beyster Institute Staff
 
As you who read this column regularly know, we have spent the last several issues thinking about the features that make successful employee-ownership companies stand out.
So far, we've discussed the ideas of free-flowing information and the autonomy to act on that information to achieve common goals – concepts that clearly resonate with much of the employee ownership community. But, both of these features are organizational traits. They describe ways in which the structure and operating rules of employee-ownership companies may differ (we think positively) from those of other companies. It is clear, though, that the employee ownership culture is much more than simply a group of operational differences. An employee-ownership company ought to include features that make a real difference in lives at a more personal level.
The old maxim "be careful what you wish for, lest you get it" is as true in the employee ownership world as anywhere. Creating an atmosphere of free and complete information and giving people the autonomy to use it nurtures both a satisfying environment and one in which people wind up wanting even more. And this is generally most true of the most valuable people to the future success of the company. The chance to get more is the third feature of successful employee ownership – opportunity.
Opportunity is a concept an employee-owner might distill as follows:
"If I'm an owner I ought to be paid fairly for what I am. I ought to be encouraged to grow and develop into whatever I might become. I ought to be given a clear path to do so, and not only ought I be allowed to grow – I ought to be expected to grow to whatever extent I am able."
One of the most wonderful outgrowths of this approach is that it brings out the best in our best people. Charge the environment with information – and the ability and expectation to act on it – and creative, entrepreneurial energies that might not otherwise have ever surfaced suddenly bloom in unexpected places.
This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that this energy is exactly the "employee-owner" attitude we want to inspire. The curse is, its existence means that we must think in even broader terms not only about how to take advantage of that energy, but, more importantly, about how to avoid frustrating the ambition and aspirations it brings in those who develop it. If we are to create employee-owners, we must also provide a means to achieve an "owner future."
Certainly, an "owner future" includes material comfort. The wealth ESOPs create in all those unlikely places is clearly a core goal. An opportunity for a secure future is the basic opportunity our ownership structure provides, but in the end, it probably isn't enough by itself. We must also bring opportunities for our employee-owners to succeed in a whole tapestry of other ways – "owner opportunities" to go along with their "owner future."
I have both philosophical and practical reasons to expect these opportunities to develop. Philosophically, those who build employee-ownership cultures are most often also committed to the growth of everyone involved, so creating a wealth of opportunities for that growth to occur is a natural result. As a practical matter, employees who best adapt to employee ownership seem to also show a great potential for growth, within their jobs as well as without.
Experience suggests that growth, more often than not, takes you in exactly that direction – out.
If we do not provide real "owner opportunities" for our people, we may very well lose them to more challenging pursuits. And we are more likely to lose the best of them the soonest. So, without access to some of the usual entrepreneurial incentives, how do we hang on to our best resources and continue to fill our best people with a common vision of a future with us?
It may very well be that in order to do that we will have to look outside of ourselves. Certainly, we must continue to provide the basic opportunities for advancement and growth (such as educational opportunities, personal development opportunities within our corporate family, and opportunities to take on new challenges within our companies). But we may also have to look beyond our walls to create growth opportunities that go outside our usual corporate box.
This is not well-explored terrain, but it has been tested to some extent by a few long-established employee-ownership companies. One group, for example, responds to employee-owners' expressed desires to move on to more entrepreneurial ventures by investing with them to create new ventures that the company both participates in and profits from.
Another is in the process of developing a franchising operation to give its most ambitious employee-owners an opportunity to take their skills and their equity and use them to establish their own entrepreneurial businesses. Sponsored by the original company, these ventures will not only grow the employees' own future but also the future of the company (now sometimes referred to as the “Mother Ship”).
Over the years to come, I expect this to be among the most exciting areas to witness – employee ownership companies responding to the pressures to create ever-expanding opportunity for those who want it, while at the same time retaining the values of broad employee ownership and the culture that it implies. In much the same way the ESOP S-Corporation incentives are well on the way to creating a compelling financial motivation for permanent employee ownership, I believe that the ways our community develops to deal with channeling and nourishing the interest and energy of our most ambitious, entrepreneurial employee-owners have the potential to create an equally compelling personal individual motivation for employee owners to continue going in the same direction.
Since this is a common pressure among established employee ownership companies, I’m sure others are facing it. And I am sure they are dealing with it with equally creative approaches. I would like very much to hear about them, so if you have developed a creative way to facilitate your employee-owners’ entrepreneurial ambitions (that’s a mouthful…), please send me an email and let me know about it.
©2007 The Beyster Institute and its authors and their entities. All rights reserved.
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