In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

THIRTY YEARS IN COMMUNITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP

In Business, September-October, 2005, Vol. 27, No. 5, p. 28

In his new book, The Company We Keep, the author describes his start-up and growth experiences since cofounding the South Mountain Company.

John Abrams

SOUTH MOUNTAIN COMPANY, the business I cofounded in 1975 with my friend Mitchell Posin on the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, makes houses - big houses, small houses, and neighborhoods - some affordable, some distinctly unaffordable. The company now has 34 full time employees - 11 in the office and design studio, four in the woodworking shop, the remainder in the field. Of these, 16 are owners. We do approximately $6 million of work each year including renovations and new construction.
Mitchell and I did not originally intend to go into business; we stumbled into it by accident while we meant to be learning to practice a craft and explore our passion for building. In 1984, Mitchell went on to other things - farming especially - but the company endured. My colleagues and I have now been making houses on this small island for my entire adult life. From the doing, I've learned something about buildings, business and life in a small community. Mostly, I've learned that small enterprises, if driven by principled practice as much as profit, can produce workplace satisfaction, support good lives, and help shape strong communities. Our business is a tool which helps us create these good things. Over time, both the community we work in (the island) and the community we have made (the company) have come to matter to us as much as the work we do.
My book, The Company We Keep, is an account of finding and setting cornerstones which have become the underpinnings of our business. These are: Cultivating workplace democracy; Challenging the gospel of growth; Balancing multiple bottom lines; Celebrating the spirit of craft; Committing to the business of place; Advancing “people conservation”; Practicing community entrepreneurism; and Thinking like cathedral builders. In 1987, we restructured South Mountain from a sole proprietorship to an employee owned cooperative corporation. Ownership became available to all employees, enabling people to own and guide their workplace.

CONTROLLING GROWTH AND SOCIAL MISSION
There is intense debate within the movement for socially responsible business about a parallel growth-related issue: how to keep control of socially responsible businesses as they grow, and how to keep their original values intact. Scale is a critical issue. Many companies that start off with a mission and find early success feel that they must go public to finance expansion. Once they do, they are vulnerable to buyouts by larger companies and need to prioritize profits for shareholders.
There are no outside investors and no nonemployee board members at South Mountain. Each owner is an employee. We decide what kind of business ours will be. Decisions are partly economic and partly philosophical. In our case, we believe that excessive growth may narrow our horizons and limit good things like invention, personal fulfillment, and overall quality of our workplace and products. I am not suggesting that every workplace should be modest in scale. An unquestioning attachment to smallness seems as careless as an equivalent affinity for unconsidered expansion.
For the past decade, we have mostly agreed that growth at a snail's pace is appropriate. We have aimed to be steady but deliberate. Several years ago, however, when the company met, a new consensus emerged. We agreed that, until further notice, we had reached an optimal size.
Nearly 30 years after our seat-of-the- pants beginnings, we are still small enough to stay closely connected to our roots, to do business on a handshake, to all gather in one small room, to know each other as people and not only as coworkers, to recognize one another as collaborators in pursuit of multiple goals. Living the language of our mission, goals and purposes, and learning to collaborate together has shaped a dedicated, skillful, compassionate body of decision-makers. This is not about somebody; it's about everybody. What's good for one is good for another. Nobody's getting rich, but we are living comfortably doing the work we enjoy in the location of our choice.
When the people who work for a company own it, there is powerful incentive for the company to invest in improving the place where its owners live. Owning a business is like owning a home or a farm; it inspires a strong sense of responsibility and can, in my experience, also inspire a strong connection to the place where the business is located. When a community of people own the business, there is a collective self-interest that drives us to give back to the region that sustains us, to share our wealth and expertise to help build a stronger place.
This is community entrepreneurism - the commitment of business to bringing new ideas, investment, and problem solving to a local community. Small businesses committed to a locale have a natural interest in creating a better business climate. Along with good commercial terrain, employees want a better place to live and raise their families. Businesses can act quickly and decisively, and they are able, if so motivated, to share the profits they earn.
In small communities, people often wear many hats and work on several sides of the table simultaneously. This can lead to conflicts of interest, long standing feuds, and small-mindedness, but it also can lead to wonderful synergies. Small towns where people know one another in different contexts have built-in safeguards - family connections, business associations, and the ever-active rumor mill - that help maintain balance. When you can't hide, there's more incentive to behave. People learn whom they trust, whom they can work with. Wearing many hats creates a more informed citizenry and greater possibilities for collaboration among business, government, and nonprofits.
In our company, one year our 30 employees included the chair of the regional planning commission, the vice chair of the regional housing authority, two board members (including the chair) of the Island Affordable Housing Fund, one town conservation commission member, two members of town zoning boards of appeal, and many other civic and local government participants. These individuals bring the community into the company and the company into the community.

CRAFTSMANSHIP, COMMUNITY AND CELEBRATION
Our craftsmanship, in all things, is the central thread that makes visible and tangible the underlying principles that guide us. Surrounded by the things we make, we are constantly reminded of the expressions and collaborations from which they resulted. We belong here on Martha's Vineyard. Not because it's special. Not because it's different. We belong here simply because we are here, because we've been here, because we know that we will stay here. There is virtue, poet Gary Snyder says, in “staying put.” That may be enough to know about that.
Our efforts to preserve community through affordable housing are bearing fruit. We may not solve the problem, and we may not win the battle - and it is a battle - but we will make a difference. Bringing stability and security to a single family makes a difference, and that much we have surely done, and far more. Commerce and community are united in this effort. Pessimism and lack of will have been, in large measure, overcome. This is not to say that there is no longer any not-in-my-backyard sentiment. Sometimes the expressions are vigorous. Mostly, though, there is a solid new consensus building around a core of community support. Progress on these efforts cannot come fast enough. The community loses people every year due to the lack of housing solutions. As important as each individual project is the larger unfolding of a new direction for the community.
In this process of long-term reorientation and the nurturing of an emerging consensus, community entrepreneurism has become a vital, restorative force.
Finally, I think I know, because the tenor is so pervasive, that there is a developing notion of legacy, at least among some in the company, that hints at a bright future. After 30 years, it seems clear that the work community we have created will endure for generations; it will outlast us all. I also recognize, however, that things won't necessarily go the way I imagine. Our business fortunes could go sour - the fact that everyone has received a paycheck without fail for thirty years, and that the company has earned a profit every year since we began to keep records, could change in a heartbeat. People could lose hope if things became too hard or took too long or became too divisive along the way. It could turn out that the line I think doesn't exist - the one beyond which all hope is lost - does, in fact, exist for our island community, and that we will cross it. It could turn out that competition prevails over cooperation to such a degree that cooperation becomes a soft and sorry road to failure. Any and all of those could happen. Or other unfortunate things I haven't thought of yet.
But let's say none of that happens. These first few decades have been a beginning. Let's say that we can do another few decades, and another few after that, and maybe more. Given all that has happened in just the first few, I have to guess that things can get a lot better than they already are. If we look at the alternatives to going where we're going, it seems particularly sensible - not visionary, not risky, not wacky, and not trivial, but just sensible - to try to continue down this path. And, perhaps, to take it farther.
This is the company we nourish, the company we test and challenge, the company we hope will endure and continue to enjoy the opportunities conferred upon us by this place. This is the company whose care is entrusted to us and whose success requires our relentless dedication. This is the company we will keep.

John Abrams tells the story of South Mountain company (and himself) in his wonderful book, The Company We Keep. Published by Chelsea Green earlier this year, the hardcover price is $27.50. Based in White River Junction, Vermont, the publisher can be contacted at (802) 295 6300; or visit www.chelseagreen.com.