The layoffs are piling up. I speculate that more will follow. If you have been recently fired, you’re not alone. I understand how you feel — at minimum, it can be emotionally and financially derailing. But after every concluded chapter, there’s a new one, and I will help you make an informed decision about why you should consider a cooperative for your next thing. Another alternative is the startup treadmill which can be stressful, but what if you can have the same founder-level control without the usual baggage of the startup world with some benefits from the corporate world?

For ten years, I’ve been lurking in the cooperative sector meanwhile tipping my toes in corporate and startup adventures, so my philosophy is that all organizations are flawed to some degree. They are human constructs, and we know how unenlightened we are. If we want to be grateful, we should choose the flaws in our tolerance zone. So let’s address the elephant in the room first, so my writing doesn’t sound overly advertising — why might cooperatives be the wrong choice for you? We can contemplate this with a series of cultural questions.

Are you feeling lost in a company without titles?

Cooperatives usually have dynamic roles. One day you can be a backend engineer, the other day, you can facilitate the design initiative for a new logo you’re passionate about. If you want that respectable CEO/CFO/CTO/CMO/C-whatever or “Manager” in front of your name, you’ll have to let down those aspirations. There’s no one above or below, and if you want to be featured as part of the “management team” in an organizational chart, you’ll feel disappointed. Most probably, you will participate in numerous different spheres of activities interlinked with other initiative circles. That will contribute to your sense of belonging in an organism-like company compared to a top-down one. And this has its pros and cons. We all like following one courageous and caring leader (or we want to be one) that will fix everything for us and make our lives easier. In a cooperative, leaders are everywhere, which can be very liberating or suffocating, depending on your preferences. You’ll lead, and you’ll follow. You’ll learn, and you’ll teach.

Do you prefer to make decisions alone or in groups?

Decision-making in cooperatives can be very daunting for beginners. Consent and consensus are not the same, and majority voting should be used in specific scenarios. The advice process can make somebody uncomfortable if he’s not getting used to asking people for coaching and mentorship. If you practice an authoritative or delegative style of decision-making, you will most probably feel some pushback and pain. The relationships in a cooperative are adult-adult oriented, and while there may be some delegation of work, it’s based on merit and self-management practices. Suppose you’re content with group participatory decision-making. In that case, you’ll realize your teammates’ various gradients of agreement and how rewarding such heterogenous climate can be for the overarching strategy.

Are you having trouble communicating with people?

In a cooperative environment, you’ll need to do this a lot. Maybe more than other settings. Writing or speaking clearly and concisely, without excessive fluff, will be highly beneficial. You will use this skill in different phases, making a point and inspiring people from the collective to diverge or converge on an initiative. In a feedback session, you should elaborate on your unmet needs or explain your moods during a check-in meeting. All of those might be very painful if you’re not used to vocalizing your inner thoughts in non-violent ways. If you’re on the receiving part, you need to develop empathy and coaching abilities to understand your team better. Human-to-human interactions in cooperatives can become quite messy if nobody does the communication work required to clear the fog. The beauty is that when people get invested in such things, daily activities become like a poem unfolding with time, with its various ups and downs.

What happens to your anxiety levels if you don’t feed your ego and do more altruistic things instead?

Most of the activities found in a cooperative are for the common good. Team victories are more celebrated than individual contributions. Management roles can be undefined and mostly will follow a steward/servant/host leadership concept. There’s no career ladder. You are just being in the moment and doing the best for the cooperative community so “a rising tide can lift all boats”. Of course, there is growth — just not what you might be used to. The collective can thrive from better business outcomes or value-aligned solidarity. All of this can sometimes punish your ego, and you might feel like drowning or losing your direction — “why am I here if nobody is doing anything for me and I constantly try to do everything for everybody?” Usually, this is just a symptom of overworking or not having your needs in check. Cooperatives can be inefficient at this because you’re the first to do the heavy lifting to identify your suffering. But once you can regulate yourself, you will feel uplifted because people will tend to you since you orient them on how to do it properly.

Do you shy away from being an agent of change?

The cooperative as an institution will not do anything to change. Evolution is driven by its members. You must communicate if you dislike something or have some unmet need. You will not have a parent or some grand organizational architect, usually the CEO and his direct reports, that will take care of your needs. Instead, the focus is being collaborative with the rest of your team so you form a neighborhood or village that can autonomously take care of itself. A lot of volunteering is involved for creating a hospitable, playful, and inviting environment for you and your friends. And it’s up to the members to build it the right way. But once it happens, you know this is your place with all imperfections and loving kindness that is instilled.

Is taking control of your work life too much of a hassle?

If you dislike being bothered or consulted by your current upper management on how to go forward, you might regret joining a cooperative. Cooperatives rely on strong cohesion and alignment, and there will be various signals toward you asking for your opinion. If you want to focus on your craft and not be interrupted by such things, you’ll feel cooperatives as noisy environments where no great work can happen. You will not be treated as a cog in a wheel; if some decision depends on your roles, teammates will chase you to participate. People might get genuinely irritated if you continue to avoid such contributions. When this happens, it’s because your voice matters to somebody, and this is not an HR employee engagement gimmick.

But how are cooperatives formed?

A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is “an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-controlled enterprise”. There are many kinds:

• businesses owned and facilitated by the people who consume their goods and/or services (a consumer cooperative)
• businesses where producers pool their output for their common benefit (a producer cooperative)
• organizations owned by the people who work there (a worker cooperative)
• businesses where members pool their purchasing power (a purchasing cooperative)
• multi-stakeholder or hybrid cooperatives that share ownership between different stakeholder groups. For example, care cooperatives are where ownership is shared between both caregivers and receivers. Stakeholders might also include non-profits or investors.
• second- and third-tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives
• platform cooperatives that use a cooperatively owned and governed website, mobile app, or protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services.

Ok, what are cooperatives achieving?

Cooperatives are a movement, and just like any movement, measuring its exact impacts is tough. However, at least 12% of people on earth is a cooperator of any of the 3 million cooperatives on earth. Cooperatives provide jobs or work opportunities to 10% of the employed population. The 300 largest cooperatives or mutuals generate 2,146 billion USD in turnover while delivering the services and infrastructure society needs to thrive (source). Here is some other quick food for thought:

• Employee-owned businesses average 2–3% higher yearly sales growth than non-employee-owned businesses. (source)
• The 5-year survival rate for employee-owned co-ops is 69% higher than for non-cooperatively owned businesses. (source)
• Coops are 2x better than publicly listed companies at growing market share. (source)
• Coops create and maintain employment. During a crisis, they often invest in “intercooperation” as workforce transition efforts instead of layoffs. (source) In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Fagor Electrodomésticos, the largest of Mondragons’ industrial cooperatives, failed, eliminating the jobs of 1,800 worker-owners in 2013. What happened next is what was unusual. Because of the principle of “intercooperation” among the Mondragon cooperative enterprises — that is, the idea of connectedness and reciprocity among all the participants in the system — most employees were relocated to other cooperatives. Only 3% remained unemployed and laid off.

Are you fired with a severance payment package? Why not start/join a local or remote cooperative to test out something new in the following month? I volunteer to have a coaching session with you if you consider it. I’m part of a worker-owned venture-building platform cooperative called Camplight, and I participate in a community of 45+ like-minded technical cooperatives from 17 countries called Patio. Let’s discuss what excites you. ;)