Recently I visited an old friend. Prior to our lunch I stopped in one of his retail stores. I was impressed. The staff were beyond competent, the climate of the store was warm and welcoming, laughter abounded and customers lingered just to be nourished by the spirit that permeated the store. Staff unhesitatingly helped one another and did so with great cheer. It reminded me of Starbucks in 2001.
One of the managers shared some of their story – two people many years ago seeing a need used their gifts and talents to respond to the need. Their venture grew. Two years ago the founders decided to ‘take the company public.’ The manager said that the plan is to add 15-17 stores a year for the next number of years. This also reminded me of Starbucks in 2001, only on a smaller scale.
My heart shrunk. Like Starbucks in 2001 they are able to hire the very best and they have the time to develop people and help them integrate into this wonderful culture. It seems that so far they have not thought about how difficult, if not impossible, it will now become to continue to ‘hire the best’ and to have the time to develop people and integrate them into the culture. In my view, Starbucks paid a huge price for losing their way [think: the ‘big dream’ that the founder held] and I am fearful that this wonderful organization that truly serves both the customer and the staff in so many powerful ways might also lose their way.
I admit I have a bias. I think it unbalanced and unjust when one group of people, those outside of the organization, the fiscal owners – the shareholders – have so much power while being so disconnected from the enterprise while those who are intimately connected are so powerless. Why should people care for something that other people own? Well, consider that there are two types of ownership, fiscal and emotional. The staff in the store I visited ‘emotionally own’ their ‘Big Dream.’ Emotional ownership, I believe, trumps fiscal ownership.
The early Christians had another model. They called it Koinonia, a community with a purpose. The individual in such a community is a member, not an asset or a commodity or a resource. Those who provided the investment needed to obtain their fair return, but they did not own it. No one ‘fiscally owns’ a community; all members, however, ‘emotionally own’ the community. The language of ‘fiscal ownership’ does not fit. I do know some businesses that are run like this; they have integrated a community metaphor in to their very being; they are, by the way also highly ‘successful.’
Communities must grow or they will die; this is a reality. But the type of growth that truly nurtures involves not getting bigger but getting better. It involves developing and using the current and potential gifts, talents, abilities of its members; it involves caring for its members and it involves using current resources more fully and wisely; it also involves high achievement and serving with distinction.
Perhaps we should have thought more about those early Christians when we made property not community the basis of our law for companies so many years ago. I still find it ironic that legally, organizations are seen as people, yet we treat them as property.
I do believe that a community with a purpose, better not bigger, Koinonia, is the kind of business that many employees would not only be proud of but be one in which they would flourish and would commit to via ‘emotional ownership.’
Searcher-Seeker 