Co-operative Business Consultants

Trial and Error 
Many new businesses fail while trying to learn how to manage their business, by inefficient and wasteful trial and error.
Most businesses struggle for years to make the breakthrough from crisis management to leadership.

Social enterprises, employee owned businesses and co-operatives are no different. We have learned these lessons, and now we want to pass on our experience.

We Can Help 
CBC can help you avoid years of wasted effort and wasted people.
We can help your enterprise achieve early, popular and sustainable success.

• Do you have a problem finding or replacing managers?
• Are your employees & members alienated and non-participating?
• Do you have to overuse management authority?
• Are you dangerously reliant on key individuals?
• Are you a crisis manager, not a leader? 

The Forgotten Skills
Social enterprises and employee owned businesses have specific management requirements. 80% of management advice - marketing, product development, accounts etc. is common to all businesses.
The less well known 20% are the special management skills needed to manage and coordinate people in a social enterprise or employee owned setting.
This is the key to employee ownership and social enterprise success.

 What About the People?
People coordination is often overlooked in new starts, until too late.
In a social enterprise, lacking the authority invested in private ownership, effective people management is crucial.
Whether a normal management structure or a democratic or collective culture, it becomes impossible to action plans or even to efficiently manage operations, without excessive supervision.

Employee owned and social enterprises which fail to learn this lesson degrade into command and control cultures or suffer business failure due to chronic conflict.

What Mainstream Advisers Don't Tell You
There is plenty of support for business planning and financial start up but very little to help you actually run, manage and develop these people centered businesses using people centered techniques.
Most social enterprises learn people management by messy and expensive trial and error.

Sustainable social enterprises and employee ownerships need to know how to achieve:-

• Participative teamworking and empowerment of employees.
• Inclusive decision making and management.
• Peer review and minimum supervision.
• A self-learning organisation. 

Democracy is the Answer
We believe the democratic management and governance techniques developed by successful worker cooperatives and employee owned businesses are the solution. They are similar to methods being increasingly adopted in flat hierarchy private sector businesses.
Our many years of experience enable us to identify and apply cooperative management techniques, and normal best practice management processes, to achieve success in social enterprises.

CBC are the People
Cooperative Business Consultants are one of very few consultancies operating in this applied field in the UK.
If you are setting up, or encountering people, operational or organisational obstacles in an employee owned business or social enterprise, talk to us. Save yourself a lot of wasted effort, contact CBC.