Leading Companies Online Magazine Archives
National Employee Ownership Month 2007: A Time to Reflect on Outreach
By Anthony I. Mathews, Beyster Institute Staff
Every October when we pass through National Employee Ownership Month, I take stock of where we are and what we have achieved in spreading awareness of employee ownership.
Well, by all measures this year's National Employee Ownership Month has been a monster for our employee ownership practice. In fact, in terms of promoting employee ownership, the last few weeks have been almost overwhelming.
During October we mounted a very successful offering of our Managing an Employee Ownership Company program for 26 attendees from all over the country. Our first-ever graduate-level offering in employee ownership (MGT 219: Issues in Corporate Governance – Techniques in Equity Compensation) got up and running with about 15 students from our 2008 MBA class signed up and ready to learn. We’ve developed (and would have executed but for the wildfires) an executive development seminar for the CEO clients of an angel investment group called Pacific Community Ventures to encourage employee ownership among their clients. We will also be presenting a program on using employee ownership as a business succession strategy for the private clients of Wells Fargo Bank in early November in Beverly Hills. We’ve made considerable progress in vetting and settling on a case writer to write the first of what we hope will be a series of educational case studies on companies that practice employee ownership - I’m sure I will be sharing much more about that in future issues as the case develops. And all the while, regular activity with our 50-plus employee ownership consulting clients continued in the normal course of events. We are looking to assist in closing at least 5 (maybe 7) new ESOP installations yet this year and are working on numerous employee ownership projects for those who have already taken the plunge. We also have a full pipeline of projects for the future.
The very best thing about this October is that it was not unique. The march to a wider understanding of the importance of shared capitalism and entrepreneurial employee ownership is well along. Building on the vision and efforts of those who have gone before, we have every opportunity to shine a newer, brighter light on the values of widened access to capital ownership and the building of successful businesses that benefit the entire stakeholder community, not just a select few investors. And I think these sorts of activities are the key to doing so.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the real concept of impacts. You might remember that I wrote a bit about it a couple of months ago. I know from a long history of experience that what we do every day has direct impacts, and, often much more important, sometimes hundreds of indirect or unintentional ones. This phenomenon runs through every facet of our lives, personal and professional.
Sometimes, the result of this phenomenon is tragic, as we have recently seen. A small construction company working in a hilly area of the north valley was adding a comfortable addition to a young family’s first home. Accidentally, one of the workers allowed some sparks to emit from a piece of power equipment. Before they knew it 100,000 people were being evacuated and hundreds of them (including the young family) had their homes destroyed.
At least as often, though, the result of this phenomenon is wondrous.
In looking back over Employee Ownership Month 2007, what I see are at least a dozen or so points where a light went on - moments where someone who was not necessarily looking to do so caught the bug to spread the word about employee ownership. I get to see those moments pretty often these days, and every time I do, I think of it as the beginning of a string of reactions that will eventually touch hundreds of people and, thereby, bring the concept of equitable capitalism to hundreds of places it would not exist otherwise. That is our collective power.
It has been said (mostly by me) that half (or more) of the productive capital in this country will change hands in the next decade as the baby-boomer entrepreneurs retire and look for ways to extract their equity. The more strings of employee ownership value we can start today, the more likely it is that some of that capital will end up in the hands of employees changing many lives for the better. That is our collective mission.
But what do I know…
©2007 The Beyster Institute and its authors and their entities. All rights reserved.
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