It’s 1:04pm CST on a Friday…
Finance and Compliance Node Members, in our weekly Node meeting. From top left: Liz Drame, Dominque Duval-Diop, Cindy Clough, Emery Petchauer, Decoteau Irby, and Jeff Roman.
Six Derute members in four cities are on a video conference for our weekly 2-hour meeting to talk finances and compliance. After our Habari Gani check in, we start working on the agenda for today’s meeting. Some of the items we discuss include purchasing requests like an upgrade on our Survey Monkey subscription, debriefing the recent business meeting we led, and starting our 2021 cooperative budgeting process. We call this group of members and the governance activities they work on together a leadership-learning node. Our cooperative leadership is organized into five nodes: Communications, Membership, Continuous Improvement, Imagining and Visioning (a.k.a Do Fly Shit) and Finance and Compliance (see graphic below).
This Black Paper breaks down the structure of our cooperative leadership learning node structure and how it works for us.
HOW WE GOT TO NODES
When we established Derute Consulting Cooperative in 2014, we began with a hierarchical leadership structure with an executive board. This board set agendas for meetings and made day-to-day decisions. We created a business manager position that handled all of our operations, so members didn’t have to worry about the logistical details that kept our cooperative afloat -- or not. Though we made decisions by consensus, this structure created an inequitable distribution of labor and compromised our values of being people-centered, equity-focused, and intentionally affirming and supportive for Black and all people of color. After four years in this executive model, we came to understand the ways it was holding us back from who we wanted to be as a cooperative. We were nervous about a change, but we jumped into a leadership-learning node structure.
The Derute Leadership Node visual model.
WHAT IS A NODE AND WHAT DOES IT DO?
A leadership-learning node is an interdependent group of 3 or more members who manage a collectively determined set of business operations on behalf of our full membership.
Rather than packing nodes with expertise, members with varying levels of experience in a particular area make up a node. This mix of expertise grows capacity for learning and creates continuity of knowledge across the cooperative. To ensure stewardship, openness, and transparency, any cooperative member can attend any node meeting whether they are a member of the node or not. They can review meeting notes, offer comments, and communicate in nodes’ digital channels.
All members participate in at least two nodes. On an annual basis, typically during our annual meeting/retreat, we consider the function of each node, individual member interests and goals, and cooperative-wide goals. We then make changes to node membership based upon these deliberations.
Nodes lead particular areas of governance work through structure, routines, and independent practices. In addition, nodes take responsibility for leading cooperative-wide monthly meetings. This is the work our executive committee used to do. By leading monthly meetings around their focus, nodes facilitate learning, decision making, and idea generation for the whole cooperative membership.
HOW DO NODES WORK AS A SYSTEM?
Derute leadership node network system.
Our five nodes interact and influence one another in different ways. Because members are on at least two nodes, ideas and information flow between nodes. For example, the Membership node has an inroad to Communications because they share members. The same goes for all nodes. When we make decisions, we try to bring in the concerns and priorities of other nodes. Relational ties among members are also in play. Some of us have been in community with one another long before Derute. For others, Derute initiated our relationship. Working together in nodes strengthens relational ties across the cooperative, and relational ties support cooperation on our consulting projects.
TENSIONS WITH NODE SYSTEM
Though our node routines aspire toward equity and cooperative values, we still exist within a broader capitalistic and hierarchical society. These intersecting systems of oppression challenge our node system and create tensions we find ourselves living through together.
One of these tensions is around how the non-hierarchical openness of nodes creates the possibility for uneven levels of knowledge among cooperative members. As we said above, the doors to nodes remain open. But systems of oppression rob women and people of color of their time. As a result, white and male-identified members of the cooperative (who are in the minority) may have more time to stay abreast of the inner workings of nodes they are not members of. Uneven knowledge means the potential for uneven decision-making power even while working in a consensus-based system.
Another tension within our node system is how essential some nodes are to Derute’s basic existence. This tension happens most often with our Finance & Compliance node. There are business certification, tax, and other legal requirements we must meet across multiple states in order to exist as a business. If the money doesn’t move, bills don’t get paid — and neither do we. This creates the potential perception that Finance and Compliance members have an oversized influence on the direction of the cooperative — or the potential that they actually might.
A final tension comes from the uneven levels of work across nodes, how this work happens, and the impact on member wellness. Some nodes meet weekly with all node members in a collaborative session to keep essential work moving forward. Other nodes check-in biweekly with node members working more independently between. These different ways that nodes look and operate are a response to the unequal distribution of responsibilities in a one-size-fits all model.
“As a whole, our node structure and routines force us to experience conflicts. These conflicts are a product of the ways we aspire for a cooperative, racially equitable system that opposes the systems of oppression we live through. ”
By integrating continuous improvement approaches in all we do, our governance approach is one that requires remix in order to live out our cooperative values and broader aspiration toward freedom.
