December 2011
Branching Out in Unity
by Keven J. Groenewold
Keven J. Groenewold
Close to 42 million people get their electricity from co-ops. The people who receive this service —members of electric cooperatives just like yourself—are as varied as America itself.
They live in the countryside, towns and cities, and work in offices, farms and ranches, or telecommute. They use computers and tractors and send their kids to public, private and charter schools. The holidays these folks observe are just as varied too.
No two cooperatives represented by that audience face identical challenges. Their communities and states have widely differing pressures and business risks. Their trustees have their own opinions about the best strategy for their organizations. The members have differing opinions of the co-op, as well.
Some remember when the co-op brought electricity to their ranch and how much of a difference that made in their lives. Others take electricity for granted and never think about the early days of the cooperative effort.
Many members believe that you never fix what's not broke. You just need a tweak from time to time. Others will tell you that if your business isn't under constant evolution, it is destined to wither and die.
Co-ops work hard to provide reliable and affordable power to rural consumers across America. Other electric utilities may make the same claim to commitment, as they provide service to the cities and more densely populated areas. However, many times their measuring stick is their shareholders' profits.
With a co-op you also get standards that go beyond power lines and electric meters. These standards—the cooperative principles—define the values that guide our work, our relationship with our members and our relationship with our communities.
Our values are simple enough. We are member-owned businesses and any customer can be a member no matter their lot in life. Members have an economic stake in their cooperative and we operate independently on their behalf.
We owe them honest information about our operations and we cooperate with other cooperatives to better serve the communities in which we live. The voice of the member needs to resonate.
It is like a tree spreading out from a single trunk into hundreds of branches with thousands of leaves at the ends and along the way. In our case, the trunk is our commitment to serve our members and our communities above all else.
The trunk carries the enormous weight of the entire tree. Its endurance will be tested as we watch the constant changes in our industry. If we stay true to our commitment, we will survive and the members will prosper.
Regardless of how different our individual points-of-view may appear, we are all still member-owners. These views can be shared in a collaborative and educational manner. That is how we truly learn from one another. The melding of many ideas may just give us the strong outcome that we all desire.
As co-op owners, we are in this together—striving for the same goals. We will need unity to achieve these results. But as we know, the branches and leaves of any two trees are not identical. Yet, they all stand together to create a forest. Unity, without conformity, is what will keep our co-op forest healthy.
