I did see that many of my past posts were quite long and this is the type of thing that can get that way. Even though forty years of history is fairly short in the big picture, these last forty years of my membership in Saturday Market have formed my life and how I work, so this is actually a big and critical piece of it.Membership organizations are rare and particular in that the pressure to "think like a business" is always there as we measure ourselves against the increasingly competitive business world and think that perhaps we should be more corporate and less personal. I would say that most of the time this pressure comes to our table, it has not been thoughtful about who we are and how our community works together to meet our mutual goals. Sure, when it comes to promotions we need a social-media presence and our image is important, and we do have a primary goal of staying solvent, with as many vendors as possible making money so they will remain members and keep the organization on its feet. However, we are about much more than making money and I would say it is not even our primary goal.
Our primary goal is living and working in community to meet our mutual goals. Those involve our safety and health, our willingness to belong and work together, our development both personally and as an organization, and the protection of our artisan careers and ability to thrive as craftspeople and artists, as well as the health, safety and personal development of those we hire as staff and to provide services. Making money is an activity that serves those goals. So it would be rare and short-sighted to allow money to be the deciding factor in our process. Vendors who do well don't matter more than those who struggle to sell. People who pay reserve fees aren't more important because they do. "Loving the market" isn't about what you can take home from it, but what you give to it and how you apply your skills to benefit the common good.
The process of seeking consensus is based upon the premise that each person holds a piece of the truth. Nobody's truth is better than someone else's, though one can be more logical, one can be more self-serving, and so on. When all of the pieces are combined a momentary version of the truth is formed that can be useful in that moment or possibly in a longer term. Truths that are more thoughtfully formed and inclusive are generally the most useful and last the longest, but there is no absolute truth when it comes to human relations. It's all conditional. So our truth, embodied in our policies, needs to speak to our context of being members of an organization working for our common good.
This means that when we make policy, we need to make sure we have asked for and listened to all possible stakeholders and considered the effects of our policy on those who didn't have a voice in the room. In the case of Saturday Market, when we make policy we ought to consider our neighbors, the farmers, our downtown businesses, our park-dwellers, our city and county agencies, our customers, and the general public who connects to us whether or not they attend or spend money. Me making money is not the primary goal of any policy. Me making money in the context of the common good surrounding my 8x8 in the park in the downtown in the city in the county in the state and in the world is not even the primary goal, because we also need to include the fourth dimension of time. Saturday Market needs to make policies that ensure that it will thrive for the next forty-five years or until whenever it does not serve the common good and decides to stop operating. As members we commit to be loyal to that survival and that longterm goal, so we set aside the self-interest of "me making money" and tend all of the other interests as well.
With good process all of those interests will align and the common goals will emerge so good policy can be written. We have years of good policy that has been put together by many individuals working together for the common good, which has mostly been consistent and relatively easy to grasp. Most of us know most of us and when we gather usually things run fairly smoothly because people's needs are being met. Mostly.
Of course new needs surface and new policy issues have to be discussed. We didn't used to have people living in our park during the week when we are not renting it. Now we do. When Occupy moved in a few years ago we were spun into a tizzy because we didn't have a method for dealing with forces who didn't use contracts or people in authority positions to make promises, and we weren't sure our contract to set up on Saturday would be honored. It was, and we learned a lot at the time about even more radical consensus processes than we were using. I credit the Occupy movement with bringing me much sharper understanding of real group process and making me open my mind to a much more inclusive form of decision-making. There is still a lot of useful technique coming from people's movements that can help us make good decisions and it is our responsibility to pay attention to it and bring it into our meeting room and marketplace.
When we make decisions about our space that we rent and the surrounding spaces, we have to struggle with the concept that just because we have a financial contract to use the space one day a week, it isn't our space and we are simply park users, without automatic rights that supercede those of other city residents. If we ignore the needs of those various people, from the people with the shopping carts to the ones who hope to fill their baskets and drive home, we won't be making workable or fair policy. Those who come to spend money and those who don't have any are all our stakeholders, whether we like that or not.
That's a digression though, as talking about the business model of the Farmers would be, so I'll limit this to the more general. LCFM used to be a membership organization like ours, but it has morphed into something else now, a more corporate type of organization. OCF has arguably morphed as well, into more of a festival perhaps and less of an organization set up to serve its members. Long philosophical discussions could be held about both of them and how we intersect or don't, but the point is that we, the members, can change our organization with our policy and our self-interest, so we want to be careful and go slowly so that that fourth dimension doesn't teach us things we should have known and make us lose things we can't get back.
Craftspeople are a throwback to ancient times in how we view our work, using our hearts and hands to create beautiful and useful objects out of raw materials. There is a holiness in that, that we feel and convey and that is one reason we have customers. People recognize the value of that ancient link and want to glimpse or touch or own a piece of it, and many want to participate in it as much as they can. They bring their souls to us and sometimes skills and useful resources but some come to take and don't give back. We want to protect ourselves from the takers while at the same time being wide open to those who want to participate. Members have different definitions of the takers and we joke about particular types of customers and others who don't really see what we're about and blunder through our midst making waves. Sometimes it is not funny. We have our own selfish members who don't see or don't care about the common good and it is part of our job to illustrate that and point out how it can be better served. Thus we make rules about dogs and smoking and health issues and we are often invited to make more rules to further restrict participation in various ways. We are always treading a fine line to balance restrictions with openness.
Often those who are not feeling their needs being addressed get fearful and demanding that their views be validated and actions be taken. It is not easy to strike that balance and feelings can be hurt with any policy. This is where it is critical that the policies be thoughtful and thus defensible. Justice and fairness are powerful concepts that drive a lot of emotion forward. Good policy protects the Board from attacks of prejudicial actions and protects the managers and workers from abuses that they might suffer in the course of doing their jobs. We will always have members who understand rules differently, are defiant and dismissive of certain ones, and we will always have people who don't see or understand the bigger picture. Board members and staff have to stand tall and remind people in crisis that the job is to serve the common good and not just one piece of it.
Everyone in a membership organization operates with self-interest, but knowing that this is built-in can be used as a strength instead of a compromising aspect. We can all learn to set aside our personal needs to think about the needs of everyone. It's a useful life skill and lifts us up out of our base concerns to feel the larger spiritual or emotional issues that are sometimes at play in the most difficult crises and situations. That's one of the challenges in policy-making and the consensus-seeking process serves that very well.
Fortunately, in the organizations I am a member of, the grand majority of members bring a lot of heart and soul to the meeting rooms and events, and we are generally well-tended. None of them suffer much from neglect or members who are purely about self-interest, but probably the opposite it true. Most of us care a lot and that great love is why we feel the problems so deeply. It's our responsibility to not fall into despair and go away mad when things get messy. Seeking consensus is way messier than what is called "up or down voting" in the code of people who care little about the common good. In good consensus-seeking process, most of the votes are formalities and are "all in favor." The work has been done to find the truths available and set a course that is logical and practical for the longterm. Right before the vote is when you can do the gut-check to see if it feels right. If it doesn't feel right, it is usually worth it to speak up and see if you can identify that feeling. Ask some questions. Will this decision stand for the longterm? Is this the right direction for the organization? Did we consider all of the people who weren't in the room? Are we serving the common good here?
Take the time to do it right and using those hands and hearts just like you would in your kitchen or workshop. You know when you are compromising to serve your short term comforts rather than your bigger goals. Bring your best self to the meetings and try to set aside or articulate your fears so that they won't get in the way. Allow the possibility that you only have a tiny piece of the larger truth, and don't come with your mind made up. You are participating in a process and you are only doing a part. You are not as important as you think, yet you are essential.
Well said, Diane.
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