[Bonus] The Cooperative Way of Operating During a Pandemic with Adam Schwartz

Hey there. I'm Molly McPherson, and this is a special episode of the podcast. I have recorded a series of interviews that are now included in my COVID 19 communication response kit. This is an interview with Adam Schwartz. He is a cooperative expert and he is the founder and principal of the Cooperative Way. It's a consulting firm with the mission of helping cooperatives succeed. I spoke with Adam in the week after the COVID 19 crisis took hold. We spoke about the things that cooperatives can be doing right now to respond to this crisis, to help their employees and their members. Take a listen. Hi, Adam, thank you for joining me today to speak about the pandemic and the impact to cooperatives. So you work with the Cooperative Way, you're the founder, which is a strategic alliance with Caluminate Consulting Co Op. First, can you just tell us about what kind of work you do with cooperatives right now and the passion you have for them?

Thanks, Molly. It's nice to join you. The work I do can be summarized and I try and help co ops succeed in a variety of different ways. Working with employees on the culture of the organization, working with boards on cooperative governance. I'm a huge believer that the cooperatives are the best business model. And as said and tragic as this pandemic is, and as much angst it is providing so many of us, I do think it gives another opportunity for the cooperative business model to really shine and that we will meet this challenge.

Now, you just said cooperatives is the best business model on earth, operates the best business model on earth. How are they going to respond? Or should they respond to one of the biggest challenges happening on earth?

Well, cooperatives are all about community and about people coming together, most often at a local level and showcasing what the power of what people can do and the power of connections. A term that has entered our lexicon in this past week that was not in mine is social distancing. And I believe that we should follow the CDC and other government guidelines for what social distancing means. But I'm an equally fervent believer that social distancing should not mean social isolation. We need to reach out and connect to people, albeit we may not be doing it in person, but using mediums like this as a way of making sure that we stay connected from the employees at an individual co op and with our members as much as possible and as much as needed.

You're discussing the importance of community with cooperatives, and that's what makes them, I assume you call them the best business model because of that community It's a very community centric organization. Many of them are. How can you be a community focused cooperative in a time of pandemic?

Well, I think we need to be extremely honest with our members and transparent, which I would recommend in non pandemic times as well. But people need trustworthy information and cooperatives operate in every sector of our economy and I'm privileged to work with co ops in all of those sectors. So depending on what your industry is, making sure that you're reassuring people that they can continue to do the business that needs to be done. So whether you're an electric co op and what you're doing to make sure that the lights stay on, or if you're a credit union, making sure that people have access to funds that they need food. Co ops I know are having runs very similar to Thanksgiving week. This is which was unexpected of course. So whatever type of cooperative that you're in, making sure that you're serving those members as best you can and giving accurate information.

Now cooperatives are no different than a business, an organization, a town, a municipality. Everyone for the most part responded the same in the first week. At some point last week, almost every person received an email from someone from some business they do business with or somehow their name ended up on an email list giving the customers, giving the members a status update on what is happening in their initial response to the Coronavirus this COVID 19 what Next in particular, what next for a cooperative and some of them, many of them that rely on people. What do you think, Adam? I know you're not sitting in the middle of a cooperative but you have so much experience working with them. If you were in one right now, what would you be doing this next week to be able to communicate with your members, your constituents?

Well, I think it really has to have good leadership from the top and throughout the organization in remaining a calm voice. As bad as this pandemic may be, I'm totally convinced there is going to be post pandemic time. So let us not lose focus of that panic is not going to help us, that's for sure. But practicing the good hygiene, that's recommended. And I would say that over the past 15 years, given the rise in technology about making things convenient, we most cooperatives are able to do things electronically, whether it's bill payments or different approvals and things like that. So making sure that people formally who may have come in to do their transaction, making sure that they understand that they don't have to do that, sending out ways that we can stay connected to people either via smartphone or via, through online services as much as possible so that people know that those options. And then as far as from an employee standpoint, I know that, you know, many companies, I live, you know, just outside Washington D.C. and many businesses are in, you know, mandatory closures starting Monday and having people telework at home. And I know that some organizations have been resistant to telework, saying that, you know, how do we monitor whether people are working or not? My first advice to any business is that is make sure you're hiring people that you trust to do a really good job, right? So that they're going to rise to the challenge and whatever can be done in a telework manner should be done. So that's, I think some of the ways that we can begin to look at this.

So you right now are speaking from an operational point of view. I know you don't work as a CEO or a GM of a cooperative and you don't have experience with that, but you have experience working with them. Put yourself in the shoes of a CEO or a GM right now and you touched on some of the operational elements that you would be doing. But how would you be communicating to your members? So it's Monday morning. What next for a CEO or a gm?

So think about what people, what your members are going to be concerned about, about your business, right? So if you're an electric co op, number one thing I'm thinking is are people going to be concerned that the pandemic is going to affect reliability of the service? You know, we see no evidence of that. If you're a credit union, if people are going to be concerned, can I get to an ATM to get cash or come into a branch and do a transaction? So think about what, what the people are going to be concerned about. And then broadcast messages, put videos on your website. You know, hopefully, you know, every business has either an email or, you know, cell phone that they can do mass text, letting people know that, you know, as much as things are not normal, we're going to do everything we can to keep our business operations as normal as possible. So that's, I think, outward for the member standpoint, being that reassuring force. And also I think we need to be good community stewards, look at what's happening in the rest of our, in our community and don't do things that show that we might be brain dead on certain activities. So like if we've got our annual meeting coming up in a week or two, well, it's time to figure out how we're either going to move that to an electronic form or postpone it, you know, a few weeks or months. Right. That's make those decisions that show that you're in touch with what is going on.

Okay, so now we're going to get into the decisions. A lot of boardrooms are the directors, trustees are going to start looking at policies. In some cases there will be dusting off policies for the first time in a long time. Now let's put yourself in the shoes of a board chair or someone, a member of a board. What are you thinking about now? Are you meeting next week? This, this week, two, you know, pandemic, national emergency, plus seven days. What are, what do you do if you're a board chair? How are you leading now?

All right, so I want to be really clear that I'm not giving any sort of medical or any kind of advice about that. But you know, based on what I have read about social distancing, it's saying that you need to be between five and six feet apart. Right. All right. Could you have a board meeting where board members sit five and six feet apart? Yes, I think you can. All right. Another alternative that eliminates even measuring feet apart is doing the meeting. The way we're conducting this session right now, we're using the technology Zoom, There's Skype, GoToMeeting, WebEx. There's a whole bunch of, of platforms that we, that we could be using in, in some cases. I know co ops have resisted doing that, feeling that the in person meeting is what we have to do and have attendance policies that require in person attendance that I understand where they come from. I also know that there are other co ops that have experience doing this and this might be the time that we're going to, you know, look to do that. Will it mean that our board meetings might need to change a little bit? I think the capacity to be in a productive meeting electronically is probably about two, two and a half hours. So we might need to be making shorter board meetings. But the way the board meeting can run is I serve as board chair of Columninate Co Op and we meet electronically via online on a monthly basis. It's the in person meeting is more the rarity for us. So agendas, shared screens, you know, the technology's out there, the packets can still go out electronically. Most folks are on iPads now for that. So that shouldn't be any difference. So I think that the technology allows us to do that in a safe environment and I think it also helps Keep us connected. So in addition to doing this at the board level and what we can do in board meetings, I'm recommending that folks have it for their, for their staff as well. Have what we call water cooler time. You know, 8:30 in the morning, you know, when we would normally be coming into the office and having coffee, guess what? You can log in and as many people that want to have be in conversation for 10, 15 minutes, you know, create some normalcy in our lives. And then maybe there's another check in around lunchtime, another water cooler time, and then maybe towards the end of the day so that we can, we can stay connected to one another.

I don't know if you're like me on this and I haven't talked to you about this offline as we were prepping for this interview, but now that we are, everyone is forcing people to get comfortable with the idea of remote work, streaming meetings, communicating online. I think it naturally brings us to a point where there's been resistance for some boards and cooperatives to want to live stream or just record their meetings. I don't want you to predict what's going to happen. But tell me, have you thought at all about the impact of if we're now forcing. If boards are now really almost backed into a corner in a way where they probably have to do some type of streaming to maintain the operations of the cooperative? The members might say, well, can't we see that meeting as well and participate? What do you think? What is going to be the impact? Any thoughts?

I think that there's going to be new normals, right, that come out of this, you know, just as post 9 11. You know, certain things just change and they're baked in now and they will continue to do so. None of us were around in the last major pandemic of this size and scope in 1918. I did read that book a number of years ago and have gone back to look at it. So there are protocols that are going to be different going forward. There's no doubt. And to the extent that I have to be optimistic and look at what good is going to come from this. In my own town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, we're in the midst of starting a new food co op and we're having a member loan campaign where we're going out and asking folks to participate financially. And we had a discussion whether we should cancel that effort or postpone it. And we decided not to because we want to stay connected to our members and we want to. This gives us an opportunity to have one on one conversations with people in a time when they might be kind of shut in and forced not to go elsewhere. I'm very hopeful that we will come out of this with a renewed sense of what it means to be a good cooperative using technology and if it leads to some greater transparency and openness, that I think would be one of the benefits on the other side.

Yeah. And anyone who knows you knows that that would be something that you, that a benefit to it that you would absolutely appreciate. But I do, as you know, with this resource kit that we're providing, it does include consulting for boards, for cooperatives to help them through this time. But that is another element to it as I think post pandemic. The pandemic is creating, as you said, a new normal, but it's also creating a new expectation that members are going to see what can be done by the board, what meetings can be put online, what they can do remotely. I feel that this new normal is going to not force, but, you know, encourage cooperatives now to be a little more transparent, a little more open and but doing it in a softer environment where they, you know, the ones that. There was some trepidation there about trepidation about being more transparent, they may find that it's a welcoming environment if they have their meetings online.

Yeah, well, you know, I, from a, from a board meeting standpoint, of course you could have the board meeting where it's just the board. Right. It doesn't, that doesn't necessarily open up to everybody. There are some co ops that do do that right now that are streaming their board meeting and that's an individual co op decision. I'm not going to take a firm position on that. I think though, from the standpoint of us thinking about annual meetings and streaming annual meetings, you know, let's face it, you know, there's people right now today, you know, with mobility issues that, you know, can't get to an annual meeting. Right. So we want to reach out to all parts of our community and you know, thinking about things like voting in our. Right. I've long been an advocate of being able to vote by mail or vote electronically so that people can participate in the process even if they can't physically be at an annual meeting. I think, you know, events like this are likely to accelerate that even further to make sure that people have the systems in place. And I would also urge all co ops in all the communities and co ops exist in every state and every county in this country. You know, what we can do to be good Community citizens to the vulnerable populations in our community in accordance with minding good safety rules and things like that. But doing that extra step whenever it's possible. And I know so many are.

So just. So to wrap it up, I just want to ask two final questions. I don't want to leave before I ask you about the annual meeting again. We're one week post national declaration, emergency declaration, annual meetings that are coming up. I know many April, May, June, July. If you are running a co op or if you were on a board, I know you are on a board. Would you be thinking about postponing it or modifying it?

That's so I think it really matters how much time you have to do this, right. If your annual meeting is next week or in the next two weeks, probably postponing is going to be the easier and more prudent thing to do. But if my annual meetings in May, I'm taking steps right now to do what I can to make that an online annual meeting experience. Because having four weeks to prepare for it should be enough. Because who knows where we'll be. Hopefully we'll get the all clear sign in a couple weeks and life is gonna come back to some sense of normalcy, but we don't know. And that's the anxiety that I feel personally and that what I see in my community is that's the great unknown is when is it going to spike and how long is it going to last. So let's do everything we can while we can.

Yeah, there's a lot of unknowns out there. If you did have a meeting four to six weeks from now, does that allow for enough time to ramp up on online voting?

That's a good question. I think you would need to be in contact with real providers who do that. I'll say this, the technology exists. It's, you know, it's not rocket surgery. Okay. You know, the idea, all right. To mix my metaphors. Yes, it's okay. That was done purposefully, I hope, is that, you know, if you've got the lists, if we've got, you know, most co ops should, you know, whatever your business is, you should have your accurate contact information for your people so you should be able to communicate with them. And this, once again, you know, this is certainly your space, Molly, that of social media. Making sure that, you know, we are as up to date as we possibly can and making sure we have everyone's cell phone numbers and, and they we have very up to date, you know, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, you know, messaging, so that whatever Wherever medium people are getting information, we're putting it out there and being, you know, reliable and consistent in the message.

Well, if they're watching this video, then they'll be using the resource kit that we provided for them, how they can communicate with all their members. Okay, last question, and I'm gonna throw this one out of left field at you.

Okay. Left field. Because we won't be watching any left fields.

There won't be left field. Exactly. This is the only baseball game happening right now. If you had to pick one of the seven cooperative principles that illustrates a value that we need, a cooperative needs in the next few weeks, which one would it be?

Concern for community. Number seven. Okay. This is, you know, unlike anything any of us have ever experienced. It impacts us locally, it impacts us at a state level, a national level and a global level. I mean, we're all in this together. This shows the connection. And one of the great things about cooperatives is that they operate in just about every country in the world. I've seen those seven co op principals at work in Madagascar, in Peru, in Europe, in Asia. And it allows us, because we realize at times like this, that while the economics is important and will continue to be, our social connection is important. And every co op operates in both an economic arena and in a social arena. And at times we have to emphasize one over the other. And this is a real time that we need to be building that community connection or in many cases, maintaining it and being a real stable force.

Well said, Adam. That was a good choice. Very good. And you weren't even prepared. I like that. Adam, thanks for taking the time to speak with me. And as many people know, if you read the material and the content that we have in this resource kit, that you are available for additional consultation through these times that you and I are going to work together and people can tap into your industry knowledge to help them either operationally with the communications to get them through this, this time, as we're working through the pandemic, post pandemic, hopefully soon enough. But I want to thank you for, for taking the time to speak with me today. And it was valuable information, but there'll be more information there if anyone needs to reach out and get additional work with some of the suggestions you recommended.

I thank you for the opportunity and I would just continue to, you know, urge folks to continue doing what has made us the best business model on earth and keep doing that, and we're going to get through this. I, I'm very firm believer in that and hopefully we're going to get through it better and stronger.

I agree. I agree. All right. Thank you so much, Adam.

Thank you.

I want to thank Adam for joining me on this special edition, this bonus edition of the podcast. If you want more information about how cooperatives can communicate in the time of COVID 19, head over to my COVID 19 communication response kit. It's on my website, mollymcpherson.com responsekit.