Co-operative Democratic Organization Model
By: Steve Smith
In our civilization we believe in democracy in government, yet our companies and organizations are run as dictatorships. This article describes a model of a new co-operative democratic form of organization.
It is fundamental for the efficiency and productivity of an organization that everyone should be asked and agree to co-operate. Refer to the article "Competition and Co-operation" in the Editorial section of this web site for a discussion of this subject. In this new democratic organization everyone is educated, understands and verbally commits to co-operating always with everyone else in the organization. The basic unit of a democratic organization is a team. All teams will also always co-operate with all other teams.
It is mandatory that there is profit sharing, because otherwise people won't co-operate. Why should they? It is their co-operation that is bringing in extra profit for the company, yet they are not benefitting if there is not profit-sharing. Out of the profit, 50% should be available for profit-sharing and should be distributed evenly as the same amount to every person in the company.
Open Book Management is mandatory. See references at end of this article.
Scientific Management is mandatory. This field was founded by Dr. Deming. See web sites at bottom of this page. Quality is fundamental in Scientific Management. Quality at a reasonable price is the most important thing that will generate profit. Co-operation is essential for quality. The second web-site below - Deming Electronic Network - has a number of excellent on-line articles on Scientific Management.
Employee ownership of a company can also be very powerful. In an existing company, employees could consider buying their company. Everyone in the company should pay an equal amount to buy the company. People who cannot afford it may have regular payments deducted from their salary.
The basic unit of this co-operative democratic organization model is a team. All teams in a company at level 1 will be a given selected size, and will be in a hierarchy of teams. In particular the top team in the hierarchy will be the same size as other teams. All teams at all levels in this democratic organization follow these rules:
1. Always co-operate within the team and with other teams.
2. All decision making in team is done by democratic vote. A half or more of a team must vote "yes" on any decision.
3. Any team member can open up or propose an issue or question for the team to decide on. This can be discussed.
4. Any team member can ask for a majority vote on any issue or action at any time including a real space action for the team to take. The team does not have to get the permission of any representative or higher level team to take action.
5. There will be regular team meetings for every team. The team can decide when and how often these meetings are.
6. There is no team leader.
7. The team selects a team member by majority vote as "representative" of the team. A selected representative can decline. This representative then joins a team at the next higher level of teams.
8. A representative for a team can be replaced at any time by majority vote.
9. Everyone in the company is at least in the first level of teams.
10. For teams on level 1, the following rules apply:
a) Anyone in the team can be asked to leave the team by majority vote.
b) Any new member of the team must be accepted into the team by majority vote of the team.
c) A person on one team, if there is a vacancy on another team can apply to that team to enter that team.
d) Any team can ask someone on another team to join their team if they have a vacancy.
11. All teams must be given a code and a name. For example the third team at level 2 could be coded as: L2T3.
12. This is optional, but a team may find it useful at the beginning of each meeting to write down a list of items that need to be discussed and prioritize them.
To structure an existing organization as a co-operative democratic organization the following steps are taken:
1. Everyone in the company is asked to read this article and the article "Competition and Co-operation". Any new hires are also asked to read both these articles.
2. A standard team size for the organization is selected. This should be what is most natural for the organization. Team sizes can be from 3 - 20.
3. Everyone in the company including former management, former CEO, cleaning staff and everyone who is employed by the company, organizes into level 1 teams, following the rules for teams listed above. If someone is not acceptable to any team, they are dismissed or asked to resign.
4. Each team on level 1 selects the team representative for the next higher level of teams.
5. The next higher level of representatives is organized into teams. The teams at these higher levels will also be in general the team size. Usually there will be a few representatives left over after all teams have been organized who together are not enough to form a full team. These can then each be allocated to the other teams. These teams will then be 1 bigger than the normal team size.
6. For this level of teams, each team once again selects a team representative to generate the next higher level of teams.
7. This process is repeated until there is a top level consisting of one team.
8. In some cases the level that generates the top level will not have enough teams to generate a full size team at the top level. In this case extra representatives are selected evenly by each team at the level below the top level, to generate a complete team at the top level.
9. An organization can grow by adding new teams at level 1.
10. Team size can be increased at any time, but an extra team member will have to be hired for every team at level 1.
11. The higher level managements teams decide how often they meet. Weekly team meetings should start with teams meetings at level 1, then the next set of team meetings for level 2 should be held, and so on up to a team meeting for the top level team. After this top team meeting, meetings will be held in reverse order for each level down the hierarchy of teams to the first level teams.
12. When the representatives for the higher level management teams are not in team meetings, they return to work on the level 1 team they came from.
13. Everyone on level 1 teams is paid the same.
14. The higher level management teams decide how much extra they are paid but this must be made public. Everyone on a particular level of management teams will be paid the same.
15. A team directory document must be prepared listing all teams. The top level team will find a level 1 team to prepare this document. Every team will submit the relevant information about their team to the team directory document team. In the team directory document the following will be done:
a) Every team listing will start on a new page.
b) All level 1 teams will be listed first, followed by level 2 teams and so on up to the top level team.
c) Every team will listed with the level, code if any and team name at the top of the listing.
d) All team members in a team will be listed alphabetically with telephone numbers.
e) The representative for the team will be indicated.
f) For level 2 teams and higher, for each team member it will be listed which lower level team they are the representative for.
g) There will be a description of what the team does, for each team.
h) A copy of this team directory is made available to everyone in the company.
Note that if the team size is 10, the second level will be one-tenth the size of the first level and the third level will be one-tenth the size of the second level.
If a person wants to start a new company as a co-operative democratic organization model, one approach is the following:
1. The person should read both the article "Competition and Co-operation" and this article carefully and make sure they understand them.
2. The person should decide on a preliminary team size (typically 8 - 12) and find friends, relatives, contacts or acquaintances who might also be interested in starting a new company, to form 1 team.
3. The person should insist that all these people he or she has selected for the preliminary team carefully read the two articles given in point 1. All new hires should also be asked to read both these articles.
4. The preliminary team should then meet together in real space - in a room somewhere and have a meeting, following the rules for teams listed above. In particular the team should follow rules 3 and 4. Discussions can then be had, decisions made and when ready new teams can be bought in and the company can be structured up as above. This preliminary team should NOT set itself up as the top team, because this will cause resentment. It violates this model. People must be elected to the higher levels starting with level 1. However this preliminary team can split up, or members can join other teams. Since a new company is being formed, one thing that can be considered is that the company be employee owned. Every employee should pay an equal amount for equal ownership of the company. I have mentioned this above as being powerful.
If someone wants the company they work for to convert to co-operative democratic organization model, one approach that could be tried is to simply pass the word around to everyone in the company, to read the article "Competition and Co-operation" and this article to promote discussion in the company.
There is an article in the Editorial of this web site called "Modular Organization System Design". This is useful to streamline a company and find bottlenecks and other problems.
I have an article called "SuperConsciousness" in the Editorial of this web site which contains a section called "Intent to Know". Business People may find this useful. Everyone in the company should read it.
Companies that use this Co-operative Democratic Organization Model, will find it productive to co-operative with other companies that use this model if relevant. This will improve productivity (refer equation in the article "Competition and Co-operation"). In some instances they may suggest to another company to convert to this model. When two companies want to co-operate, one approach is for half the top team of each company meet to discuss co-operation between the two companies. Typically a company will co-operate with more than one other company, so different people from the top team can meet with different companies. People can use "Intent to Know" to find other Co-operative Democratic Organization Model companies in their city or state.
I recommend that Co-operative Democratic Organization Model companies dispense with the Human Resources Department. People in the company can recommend other people for hiring.
It is very beneficial to a company if everyone in the company is healthy. One of the most important things for good health is a complete super-micronutrient program. Everyone is quite severely micro-nutrient deficient and as a result has a number of micro-nutrient deficiency illnesses like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, osteoporosis and a host of over 50 other deficiency diseases. A company should recommend that all their employees have a super-micronutrient program. This program may prevent cancer (see bottom of following article). The article "Optimum Nutrition" in the Editorial of this web site gives a complete super-micronutrient program and employees could be referred to this article.
Some Links to Deming Web sites.
Fordham University - Deming Scholar's M.B.A.
Deming Electronic Network
U.K. Deming Forum
References
All books available at www.amazon.com
Rafael Aguayo, Dr. Deming, The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality, Simon & Schuster, 1990
W. Edwards Deming, Out Of The Crisis, M.I.T. C.A.E.S., 1982.
W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics, M.I.T., C.A.E.S., 1995.
John Case, Open-Book Management: The Coming Business Revolution.