Trouble in Egalitarian Paradise – San Francisco Strippers Go Co-Op
By Michelle Malay Carter on March 31, 2008
Egalitarianism sounds good in theory but falls apart in practice. Everyone takes credit when times are good. When things go badly, it was someone else’s fault.
Egalitarianism often includes the dismantling of structure, processes, and policies. The mindset being – we’re all good, hard-working people. If everyone does the right thing, we’ll be OK.
This feel-good structure begins to erode as people discover that even with the best of intentions, you can’t get much done without structure and leaders.
Strippers Go Co-Op
According to a Reuters article, when a San Francisco strip club was bought by its workers and became a co-op, they came upon trouble in paradise.
The article states that, “The club’s mission statement, which seeks to break down hierarchy, made the creation and enforcement of managerial policies difficult.”
One of the club’s owners quipped, “On a good day, it’s like Peter Pan,” said Lili Marlene. “On a bad day, it was like Lord of the Flies. We can do whatever we want, and there’s nobody to tell us what to do.”
Most co-ops?I’m familiar with?live on the edge of bankruptcy.? About every six months, valiant pleas for help turn up an angel who saves them from closing their doors.?
What do you think? Can egalitarianism be a sustainable business model?
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Employee Engagement, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Strategy
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3 Responses to “Trouble in Egalitarian Paradise – San Francisco Strippers Go Co-Op”
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In 1996, a company in the UK, GasForce Ltd, was formed by a buy-out from its parent. In six years, and against industry trends, it turned ?1.4m shareholder capital into ?21.7m. Employment grew from 215 to 400. It won its first quality award in its first year. It won gold safety awards in year three and every year thereafter.
Nothing unusual in this story, except that GasForce was OWNED by the workers. Effectively, the workers could sack any director at 21 days notice.
Individual and group accountability was widespread via the ownership and group bonus structure (no individual bonuses or any of that managerial hocus-pocus was tolerated). However, critical to its success was that it had a clear managerial leadership hierarchy. People knew where they stood.
Was it egalitarian? No. People had their own jobs and relied on one another to deliver in an accountable fashion.
Was the behaviour systems driven? Well yes, because, apart from the ownership structure, we eliminated many of the lie-inducing incentives of the old employer – overtime payments, call out payments, individual bonus structures, quick rewards for recent efforts etc.
Of course, the company didn’t do well in keeping up with the fads and fashions of modern management. They just wanted honesty, clarity and dignity rather than profit…and guess what….the profits flooded in.
Hi Jack,
So co-op and egalitarianism don’t always go hand in hand. In this instance, when they didn’t, you had success.
I’d love to work in an organization that had the core values of honesty, clarity and dignity embeddeding within their processes which sounds like what you did at GasForce.
Thanks for the comment. When are you publishing your book on the case?
Michelle
Years ago I stumbled on a meta study of employee involvement methodologies. For each approach they looked at two factors: the impact on morale and the impact on productivity. While my recollection of list may be fuzzy (it includes such things as elected representatives, surveys, town hall meetings, employee ownership, self-managed teams etc.) the finding was vividly burned in my mind. There was only one employee involvement methodology that resulted in both improved morale and improved productivity — it was employee ownership.
So, Jack, sounds like the foundation was right and you built on that.