What’s All This About Parsley Covered Ants?

If you’ve been paying super close attention to the Skagit Valley Food Co-op Board meetings and statements (and, who hasn’t?), you would have heard a lot about Policy Governance—but maybe not enough explanation about what it is and why we’re adopting it. So here goes.

The Board’s role is to set the overall direction of the Co-op; to set expectations for how the Co-op is run; and to ensure that we are meeting those expectations and staying true to our mission and values. We have one employee, the General Manager, and we are not involved in the day-to-day management and decision-making, but we are responsible for monitoring the context, intent, and effect of those decisions.

We were lucky to have had a single GM for many years and a lot of the details of the Board’s governance were assumed, but rarely explicitly stated or regularly reviewed.

When we found out we were going to have a new GM without this long history, we knew we needed to develop a more specific mechanism for communicating expectations and monitoring results.

That mechanism is a widely used set of processes generally called Policy Governance.

Basically, we created a set of policies that define our expectations for how the Co-op is run—everything from our approach to debt (don’t want any!); how often our committees meet; how we want employees and owner-members treated; our expectations about environmental sustainability; and a whole lot more. (The policy document is a living document, managed by the Board Development Committee, and is constantly being adjusted as situations change. It currently runs 19 pages.)

We actively monitor these policies through monitoring reports from the GM and from Board members on a schedule that ensures that every policy is monitored no less than once a year. Some, like financial metrics, are monitored quarterly.

For the GM reports, the GM defines their interpretation of the policy; presents supporting data, and makes a statement of Compliance or Non-Compliance. The Board can accept the interpretation and data or can request changes. If the report is Non-Compliance, the Board can require a plan to bring about compliance, or change the policy.

For policies regarding the Board’s performance, we do a monthly poll of a scheduled subset of the policies to determine if we are in compliance or not.

We’ve been adopting this model over the last two years—refining policies as we go. This is a major, positive change in how the Board has operated for the last, almost 50 years. It has allowed us to clearly express our expectations for our organization and has provided us with an efficient and comprehensive mechanism for maintaining visibility into the management of the Co-op.

Skagit Valley Food Co-op continues to grow in size, complexity, and impact. Policy Governance allows us to ensure our lasting success through clear, explicit, consistent but flexible means.