Customer Reviews

Companies We Keep (Revised & Expanded): Employee Ownership and the Business of Community and Place

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I've now read both editions of this book and can strongly recommend either for every current or future entrepreneur or small business leader who is trying to look beyond the bottom line.

There are at least 5 stand-out qualities that separate this from other business books, including those on socially responsible business:

- It's actually written by the man who led the remarkable accomplishments of this impressive company. It's not ghost-written nor the product of an outside observer who is one or two steps removed from the real work & struggles.

- John Abrams is a really good writer. You won't just benefit from reading this. You'll enjoy it.

- Unlike many successful business leaders who want to write a book, John is notably humble. This is not a vanity project. It's about the company and what they did differently, why, and how it turned out. It also offers useful concrete examples of other companies that have modeled unusual and encouraging humane business practices.

- It's full of meaningful, helpful details of real decisions or practices that will help the business leader. It's not just a new theory stretched out over 150 pages and filled out with vague anecdotes and other fluff.

- The South Mt Company has made - and successfully executed - many unorthodox decisions, like consciously choosing NOT to grow, and to turn the ownership and control of the company over to the employees. And when you read why and how they did it, and how it turned out, you might reconsider what a business can be for and what is possible.

I just finished reading John Abram's "the Company We Keep" and found it truly inspriational. As the founder of two building companies that have struggled to bring many of the ideas discussed in this book, I truly appreciate the challenges faced and opportunities seized John describes so eloquently. He has figured out the right balance of fun and utility. The book is full of practical examples and real world applications. It is a must read for anyone considering creating or converting to an employee owned business. I highly recommend it and hope he continues to document his ever evolving story.

I highly recommend this book. It is a revision of Abrams' 2005 book, The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community and Place, which I read when it came out. He takes you through the history of South Mountain, a 32 year old design/build company he founded and examines the eight cornerstone philosophies and practices that underpin South Mountain and any green business that wants to harness the power of employee ownership, workplace democracy and community commitment. I met Abrams at the Green Business Conference in San Francisco in 2005. He is a wonderful, warm, down to earth human being and highly experienced business person. I love small business and how it can positively impact individuals and communities, and I could not book his book down.

When we are aware of all the mess we are in, it is important to be able to see some light shining at the end of the tunnel. This book shows a path, told in a passionate way by the author, in which a company has gradually been transformed into an employee-owned company, with a revolutionary new Mission : "To enrich our community through our work" ! The good news is that this experience can easily be reproduced in nearly every company in the world.

South Mountain was founded by John Abrams in 1975. As years went by, the founder thought about the fate of his company in the long run. A phenomenon that we see over and over again with small and medium sized companies is that after one or maybe two generations, those companies fail and disappear. To enable his company to sustain itself beyond his tenure, Abrams thought of selling his company to his own employees. Giving responsibility to his own workforce, the company became "as much a community as a company", in his words. "We build not only houses, but also connections and bonds between people, between people and land, and between commerce and place. We are organized around the idea of maintaining and perpetuating an ongoing business community, and sharing ownership democratically with the people we work with. We think we are crafting a company to keep."

Democratizing a company enables work to become "an expression of who we are and one of our most important anchors of meaning".

Social responsibility and ecological sustainability go hand in hand. This led in the last years to the implementation of renewable energy, and the objective is to become a carbon-neutral company in a few years time.

South Mountain is an example of how our current economy of employees can be transformed into an economy of owners. The best news is that this transformation can quite easily be achieved. John Abrams thinks the following : "My fellow baby boomers own several million businesses, and during the next two decades most of these founders will exit. The businesses will either shut down or be passed on. Selling to employees is an option that deserves to be more widely understood, for it offers powerful benefits to all parties." On top of that, it would be beneficial to democracy at large and improve the sustainability of our world.

COMPANIES WE KEEP: EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP AND THE BUSINESS OF COMMUNITY AND PLACE offers a blend of memoir and new business model, revising a 2005 classic to include a broader focus on employee ownership and workplace democracy. It's a philosophical and practical guide to the basic foundations of employee ownership, from challenging growth goals to practicing community entrepreneurism, and continues to be a classic pick for any business or social issues library.