we're looking at moving from a top-down management model (one co-ordinator, three paid staff) to a more collective-based model.
that's exciting to hear, chloé!
our shop is run collectively, though our situation is quite different,
since we have always been collectively run and we have no paid staff.
we have about 30 active volunteers, about a dozen of which have decided
they'd like to be more actively involved and are on the collective.
being a collective member for us basically means going to a monthly
meeting, where any significant decisions about the shop are made.
decisions are made by consensus, and we rotate the meeting chair and
minute-taker. collective members are also usually on one or two
subcommittees, which carry out the day-to-day shop business. the
permanent committees are:
- volunteer coordination (scheduling, volunteer orientations,
appreciation, food for meetings)
- finance (paying rent, replacing parts & tools, keeping records)
- workshops (finding people to teach a free monthly workshop, announcing it)
- space (improving our slummy digs, lighting, parts storage, plumbing,
painting, murals, etc.)
- outreach (networking with other community groups, soliciting donations)
- triage (sorting through bikes no one's worked on for a while, sorting
through parts bins)
we rotate the subcommittee positions every 6 months to year, though a couple people prefer to stick to one thing.
my general advice would be:
- learn from other groups in your city with experience in holding
meetings and making decisions non-hierarchically. see if there is someone reputable to give a workshop on consensus, if that's how you've decided you'd like to make decisions.
- don't be afraid to assign people specific tasks for a given period of
time, even if they bestow a certain degree of power (scheduling, etc.).
don't switch them every week lest people get disoriented and frustrated,
but try to rotate them at least every year, so that power doesn't get
entrenched, and people get a chance to learn different skills, and have
an equal share in whatever are considered the more rewarding jobs and in
the less rewarding jobs of running the shop.
- make a commitment to work toward mutual empowerment. things work so
much better if people keep this in mind, though it's not something you can force on people.
- make a commitment to pro-active respectful conflict resolution. of
course this is easier said than done... it actually makes things easier when there is a boss around to decisively resolve conflicts between people, though it certainly doesn't make things more just. it's good, though, if people make a conscious effort to address problems constructively between each other when they can. if they can't, they should be able to approach any other collective member they trust about whatever is making them uncomfortable, to get support in working through it, and all collective members should be aware they can go to each other for that. it also really doesn't hurt to have plans in place so that a skilled mediator can come in when things get even more ugly. we've only had to do this once, when several people had really significant frustrations about things that were happening in the space, but it really held together the shop's social fabric.
i hope that helps. good luck! macho