Also By This Author

The Company We Keep

Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place

by John Abrams

Foreword by William Greider

Reviews

THE COMPANY WE KEEP: A REVIEW

The Company We Keep tells the story of a worker cooperative construction company, South Mountain Company, located on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. The founder of the company, John Abrams, takes us on the journey beginning in1975, when he and a few friends, all young, eager and inexperienced woodworkers started building houses for friends and family. Today the Company is a six million dollar enterprise providing employment for thirty. Obviously, as a worker cooperative, South Mountain has not taken a typical business path. The cooperative they formed addressed John’s wish to create an enterprise where peer relationships and respect for craft thrive and trump simple economic priorities, when necessary.

The book is built on the structure of eight cornerstones, or principles, which developed over time and define how the company functions internally and in the community. Slowly, as John describes how these cornerstones relate to “multiple bottomlines,” we grasp that they may be applicable to any enterprise, no matter whether a marginal inner-city venture or a large corporation. To his credit, John avoids preaching to us; his easy, conversational style effectively conveys his and his co-workers’ commitment to their community.

Communities trying to maintain “Main Street” while malls metastasize across the landscape would do well becoming familiar with the “community-building” practices of this remarkable construction company.

Builders have an advantage, in a way for example bakers don’t, in the sense that they can directly impact the appearance of a locality. This is usually a dire effect most people feel helpless to change. The folks at South Mountain, however, live in the communities they build in (they have purposely limited their growth by not taking jobs off the island) and they transfer their values beyond the immediate project. What they build they live “next” to and so they fit the homes they construct into the environment.

As local residents supporting diversity, they recognize affordable housing needs to be addressed, or as they say, they practice “people conservation,” and respond as good neighbors. Good neighbors with the tools to make change. And by this I don’t simply mean those tools they carry in their tool belts, but those organizational skills that they practice at work and transfer to their townships. Here we have evidence that where egalitarianism is practiced on a daily basis at work, citizenship is created.

At South Mountain Company, the coffee break has been institutionalized as a means of keeping folks in touch on a human level. There is nothing forced about it, as is the case in some firms where these little “breaks” are orchestrated as the whim of a boss trying to “humanize” the workplace. No, at South Mountain the coffee break is a venue to solidify friendships and explore citizenship.

In The Company We Keep we get a glimpse of a workplace of friends. And this prompts the question: What would a society of friends look like? Maybe we could start with a bumper sticker: Visualize Friendship."

Our thanks to Bernard Marszalek for submitting this review and the article on Inkworks Press (above). The Company We Keep is available for review and/or purchase from Amazon.com by clicking the link in the sidebar.

Seventh Generation

It’s interesting that in this day and age, so many companies continue to balk at the idea of adopting a genuine model of true social and environmental responsibility. Aside from the fact that the need for this kind of positive change has long since been past the point of obvious, it’s just the right thing to do from both a moral and an economic perspective. Socially responsible business simply makes all kinds of common sense. A new book shows us how people can make it happen but why they should.

Like virtually all titles in its category, The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place, by John Abrams, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2005 makes a case for strong workplace values and shows how we can ultimately profit from such a strategy. But unlike most of its fellow volumes, this book is also a personal tale, one liberally sprinkled with wisdom about ideas small and large that the author has accumulated during his 30+ year journey as founder of the South Mountain Company, a Martha's Vineyard design and building firm. Through a commitment to community entrepreneurship, Abrams has seen the company grow and prosper. At the same time, he’s experimented with a revolutionary employee ownership model that challenges the traditional business model of unchecked growth. While The Company We Keep tells the personal success story of this revolutionary company, that’s just the beginning of all the places it goes. Written in a down-to-earth conversational voice and laced with insightful side trips that offer additional lessons, Abrams examines the role business can and should play in creating and sustaining healthy communities. He sets down a framework for a model of employee ownership and community involvement that works. In the words of the author, "This is a book about a different way of doing business in today's world, a way based on workplace democracy, shared ownership, staying small, building community, making a commitment to place, and long term thinking." Rejecting the myth that short-term profits are the only indicator of business health and wealth, Abrams offers eight cornerstone principles. He shows how building a company upon these principals to serve the needs of employees inside, the community outside, and the environment both depend upon can create a business that’s successful by traditional and nontraditional measures alike. To that end his book is part entrepreneurial business plan, part guide to democratizing the workplace, and part prescription for strong local economies. A series of detailed appendices explain how his company set up its employee ownership program, how meeting facilitation and consensus decisions work, and how Abrams performed a community visioning for Martha's Vineyard. This places much of the how-to nuts and bolts in the back of the book, preventing this technically oriented material from bogging down the breezy main text with nitty-gritty. The result is a thoroughly readable and eminently enjoyable book, and an important new addition to the library of anyone concerned with finding better ways to create a better world.

E Magazine

John Abrams’ advice on building is straightforward. It comes down to the belief that a company serving the needs of people, the community and the environment is guaranteed long-lasting success. In The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place (Chelsea Green Publishing, $27.50), Abrams walks his readers through his experiences in forging South Mountain Company, a small residential building and design firm on Martha’s Vineyard. The book is full of personal anecdotes, and it includes guides to the eight established cornerstone principles that helped nurture the company over the years. These include the need to cultivate workplace democracy, stress on “people conservation” and the practice of community entrepreneurism. This memoir can be useful to organizations everywhere that appreciate that bigger isn’t always better, money isn’t always the endgame and true success comes from the meaningful work of dedicated people. –DA

Environmental Building News

South Mountain Company, cofounded by EBN advisory board member John Abrams, has been a pioneer in democratizing the workplace. The Martha’s Vineyard design-build firm, founded in 1975, became an employee-owned company in 1987. Not only is the company prospering, but it is serving as a model for other entrepreneurs seeking not only a bottom line of profit but also a bottom line that values the well-being of employees, community, and the environment.

In The Company We Keep, Abrams tells the story of his company from its almost coincidental beginnings out of the back of a pickup truck to its highly respected position today. The 30-person company is known not only for the craftsmanship, energy efficiency, and environmental performance of its buildings but also for the role it has played on Martha’s Vineyard in addressing affordable housing needs and building community. In addition to focusing on South Mountain, Abrams also describes a half-dozen other progressive companies around the country that are leading a movement toward employee ownership.

The Company We Keep is a great read with a great message that should have relevance to virtually any company that cares about more than making money. Read it yourself, but also buy copies for friends and associates—as I have done.

–Alex Wilson

John Abrams's Upcoming Events

• John Abrams at Living Local Harvest Fest
  
  Location(s) to be announced, West Tisbury MA 02575
  September 26, 2008, 7:00 pm
• John Abrams at River Run Bookstore
  
  20 Congress Street, Portsmouth NH 03801
  October 2, 2008, 7:00 pm
• John Abrams keynote at Bioneers by the Bay
  October 24, 2008, 9:00 am