Employee Ownership Blog

Corey Rosen

Why Strong Leaders Can Make Very Bad—and Even Deadly—Decisions

One of the great paradoxes of leadership is that the very qualities that might make someone likely to become a leader of a company—or a nation—can be the very same qualities that can lead to some very bad decisions. Rising to the top usually takes a lot of self-confidence and the ability to make good decisions about a lot of things quickly. But that same self-confidence can turn to arrogance, an arrogance that may discourage those working with you to challenge your assumptions, ideas, and even what you perceive as facts. 

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Loren Rodgers

COVID Safety at the 2022 Annual Conference

When we started planning this year's conference, we knew we needed a health protocol system that would give people enough foresight to plan a trip many months in advance. Since people have widely different views on COVID safety, we decided that the best approach is to serve people who are more cautious, recognizing that we’d be asking some people to be more cautious than they felt necessary. We have many attendees in high-risk groups, and we also didn’t know what the COVID situation would be by the time April arrived. All of that seemed to argue for a conservative approach.

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Chris Cooper

The Employee Ownership Future

The last two years have been a challenge for all of us, and many challenges still remain. For those of us in the employee ownership community, there are numerous bright spots lighting our way to the employee ownership future, some of which include:

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Timothy Garbinsky

New Rutgers Program Focuses on Retiring Business Owners of Color

The Rutgers School of Labor and Management has just introduced a free online program that guides business owners through the process of selling their businesses to their employees through an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) or worker cooperative. The program, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, is run through the New Jersey/New York Center for Employee Ownership, which created the program in conjunction with our friends at the Democracy At Work Institute, itself one of the foremost authorities on worker cooperatives.

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Timothy Garbinsky

New Beyster Course for ESOP Professionals

Our friends at the Beyster Institute in the Rady School of Management at the University of California at San Diego have just opened registration for their new training program for ESOP service providers. The course, titled Understanding ESOPs: Training to be an ESOP Professional, is offered in partnership with the UC San Diego Extension program and will cover all the basics for service providers who seek to gain more expertise in the field.

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Corey Rosen

The Conference Turns 40!

This year’s NCEO Annual Employee Ownership Conference (April 26–28, with a preconference on April 25) is sure to be a special one. It's not only because it marks the first time the conference will be live and in-person in three years or because it marks our return to the West Coast, taking place in the Seattle convention center after nearly a decade in other time zones. And it's not only because we’ll have boatloads of fun new additions like the puppy lounge.

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Dallan Guzinski

Join the NCEO's Crash Course and Get a Head Start on Networking for Our 2022 Conference!

The NCEO's Annual 2022 Employee Ownership Conference is finally back and in-person this year, taking place in Seattle, WA, on April 25-28, and we have all been eager to connect with the employee ownership community once again in a shared space. We have learned quite a bit about networking over the past two years, and many have managed to adjust and evolve their outreach and communications with colleagues in new and exciting ways despite the limitations of a virtual world. This year, we're excited to bring everything we've learned and build on all the great work employee-owners have done to stay connected and engaged. If you and your colleagues would like to get a head start on networking and ESOP education before the conference, join the NCEO's Communications Committee Crash Course this March, where you will join other employee-owners in a series of sessions focused on ESOP education, employee engagement, and networking with fellow employee ownership across the country!

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