Customer Reviews

The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business for People, Community, and Place

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John Abram's book is one of those books you do not lend out--you'll want to keep it because you'll treasure it. I received it on a Saturday, could not put it down, and by early Sunday morning had finished it. Simply put, this is the best book about what it is really like to run a small business I've ever read. It is also about making a difference, about changing people's lives for the better, and unlike other authors, John actually tells you specifically (i.e. how much it cost for each employee to purchase a share of ownership) how his company did it--and does it today. Finally, I loved the way this story is told. This book is a gem.

John Abrams has written a book that chronicles his journey from 60s hippie fascinated with old buildings and craft to leading edge thinker about the role of small businesses in building and sustaining healthy and vibrant communities. His insights on the often mindlessly accepted growth imperative are alone worth the price of the book. Abrams' persistence, hard-earned wisdom, sense of humor, and courage to see his values realized in the world come through in his friendly and authentic voice. His commitment is total, and as such is inspiring to any and all who seek the hidden potential of business to nurture workers and collaborators, the communities in which they are embedded, and the planet we live on.

This is a really cool book!

What I appreciate the most is how Abrams describes a pathway for changing our national and global economy, a pathway that preserves the best features of private enterprise, personal responsibility, and market mechanisms while moving us away from the increasingly horrible excesses of globalized capitalism. It is a call to reclaim entrepreneurship and apply it toward the things that really matter in life: a liveable income, but also family, friends, community, and place (to name a few).

I also really enjoyed the cadance of Abrams' writing. While he doesn't mince words, this is not a direct, prescriptive, academic tome. It unfolds like a conversation, with appropriate background and digressions (e.g. a description of his grandfather's business, what was right and wrong about it). Much of the technical details of how South Mountain Company works are appropriately reserved for an appendix. I really enjoyed reading this book, and really appreciate the message. There is a way out of the morass!

Mr. Abrams and his friends at South Mountain Company have build a well-considered small business. This book is an excellent review of what they have learned in 30 years and provides a great framework for thinking about how to structure or restructure one's own company.

Though South Mountain Company is about creating and maintaining buildings, their approach to business and the "multiple bottom lines" that a responsible company should consider are applicable to most any business. If you want to have a company that respects people, community, and place, South Mountain's model is a fabulous starting point. To help out, the book includes some very pragmatic appendices: a detailed description of how they have set up their employee ownership, a short introduction to meeting facillitation and consensus decision-making, and an example of a community visioning process they did for Martha's Vineyard.

I hope many others like myself will read this book and be insprired to (re)structure their company as an employee-owned operation built on community values and a commitment to a sustainable environmental and economic future.

This book is nominally the story of the formation of a small company building houses on Martha Vinyard. The sub-title says this is about reinventing small business. That's only part of the story. Another part is that the entire corporate structure of the world is changing.

The days of going to work for a big company, probably joining a union and remaining there until retirement, are found less and less. Those kinds of jobs are moving to anywhere in the world where they can be performed. And with the growth of education and infastructrure in the world, the global economy is a reality.

During the last election a big point was made of returning jobs to places like Ohio. Hey, fellows, those rust belt jobs are gone, and they are not coming back. The future lies in the big transglobal companies, and even more important in small business. Virtually all the growth in our employment comes from small companies, not the giants.

This book presents one way, not the only way, but one good way. It is not an automatic formula for success, but a way that small business can compete, compete very well against the giants. It is a window into the future, worth study.

What a fantastic book!

John Abram's easy-going personality and thoughtful insights are seamlessly articulated in his writing about his company and his life. It's a pleasure to read and full of keen insights about a life of satisfying, compassionate, hard work that has resulted in making other people's lives better.

The cornerstones that Abrams explains, on which South Mountain is built, are both fascinating and simple. For anyone starting a business or looking for more within their business, this book is an absolute-must-read. To try to describe how Abrams has grown and cultivated a successful design-build company through employee ownership, celebration of craft, selective growth, corporate and community responsibility, in one paragraph, would be a disservice.

I am trained as an architect and work for a family construction company. I was searching for an example of a business that I had in my mind, but couldn't quite fully express or articulate. I feel as though the book has irreversibly changed my attitude towards business and life altogether. I have already bought three copies for friends and family. Read it. Debate it. Make notes in it. Share it. Read it again. It's powerful.

Short-term profits needn't be the sole indication of business health, as the co-founder of a thirty-year-old, employee-owned design company on Martha's Vineyard demonstrates in The Company We Keep: Reinventing Small Business For People, Community, And Place. Abrams here explores how business can be used as a force for cultural and social change in a community, setting forth eight foundation principles of change which define his South Mountain Company's work and vision and how they were achieved. Chapters survey a range of issues, from encouraging workplace democracy and balancing multiple bottom lines to practicing community-supportive business techniques and redefining measures of success. An exceptional, insightful guide for socially conscious businesses.

In an age of every type of self-help tale imaginable, this is the best business book I have read period; it makes perfect sense. The Openness the author is willing to share and the research behind it is tremendously thought provoking. I have purchased numerous copies to share with my friends.

Like any avid reader I picked this book in the summer and put it in the pile of about 200 "to read immediately." To be candid, I very likely would not have picked it up as soon as I did, but with my business in transition I felt I would give it a try.

The substantive issues summarized on p. 238 really cause the book to stand out; the author takes the building of South Mountain and allow its principles to transcend the story itself. At my bedside I keep a copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "The Gift from the Sea" and often read passages. In it she writes: "Island living has been a lens through which to examine my own life in the North. I must keep my lens when I go back. Little by little one's holiday vision tends to fade. I must remember to see with island eyes. The shells will remind me; they must be my island eyes."

Later she queries, "Can one solve world problems when one is unable to solve one's own? Where have we arrived in this process? Have we been successful, working at the periphery of the circle and not at the center?" Her question is similar to a familiar passage of Tolstoy's a deceased client of mine, a hero himself, often quoted: "Everybody wants to change the world, but they don't want to change themselves."

The leap of faith John Abrams took in changing the culture of South Mountain is a great example of starting from the center. He has worked hard and with creative aforethought in solving one's own corporate problems with a view to the outside world. This is not an idyllic story of a community business developed on the the Island of Martha's Vineyard. It is a practical guide, but how fortunate the author has been that view is with "island eyes."

Back to p. 238, you wonder: "I don't know yet, nor do I know whether I will ever know, to what degree we can build on the foundations we have created and to what degree we can improve our skills. Neither do I know to what extent our experience can help others go down the path toward economic democracy and community entrepreneurship. I don't know whether, in time, many more people will share ownership and control of the companies they work in."

I think John Abrams has the model right here to make great changes in our corporate world. One can only imagine if many small and large businesses utilized this modus operandi. One only needs to pick up the business page of any major newspaper to think the world(`s problems) would be better off.

I have been a part of the company for 21 years and took sole ownership a little over 4 years ago. Similarly to South Mountain, we are an established enterprise which, for a variety of reasons, are at crossroads in our growth and development. I would like to consider tailoring the South Mountain model to my company and go down the same path. Nonetheless, this read is for any business manager/owner with a company big or small as its applications ring true.

In an era in which corporations are measured on quarterly, single bottom-line returns, John Abrams presents a compelling case that a multiple bottom-line, values oriented, long term focus can be a successful business strategy in The Company We Keep.

In this well-written and compelling book, Abrams artfully examines the long-accepted American business concept of growth;and determines that growth for growth's sake is a short-term strategy leading to failure. He weaves over twenty years of experience in construction, design and sustainable building practices into a philosophical look at the meaning of work and success; the result provides the reader with fabric from which to examine his/her own company, work life, natural environment and style of doing business. Perhaps most importantly, the book is written in a warm, reflective style which makes it hard to put down and leaves the reader yearning for more insights and information from this writer, who provides substantial research and details to support his work and ideas. Just as a good movie creates long-lasting recollections of scenes, The Company We Keep brings daily reminders of wonderful stories and the confidence that strong personal and company values can indeed be the means to a successful and growing business.

Can a company built and grown on Abrams's hippie values of kindness, love, respect, honesty, and freedom of the individual actually be successful in this era rife with competition?

A friend recommended this book, as am a business owner, MBA, Gen X/ Y, who embraces these values to the extent that I'll never compromise, and have built a small, successful business with similar emphasis on treating people involved extraordinarily well. Profit, like in Abrams's story, was simply a bi-product. And the joy of knowing I'm doing good for so many interested parties is priceless.

So many lessons to be learned in this wonderful book! I couldn't put it down once I started reading. Abrams's completely open, honest approach is heart-warming and inspiring.

One can hold true to one's values, and still build a fabulously successful company, one in which the coworkers are also owners with a vested interest. And customers, too, are treated like partners. Emphasis on quality of work, versus growth simply for the sake of growth, is often illustrated.

This is one of those rare books one remembers long after reading. Each day since reading the book, I hear ordinary words like 'cooperation', which bring me back to the wonderful stories in this book and to the many studies well-noted in the book suggesting further evidence of people's natural urge to cooperate (and success in doing so).

A beautiful story and a must-read for anyone in business who wants to keep his/ her soul! Thank you for sharing your heartfelt, model example of developing a very successful business with values, Mr. Abrams!! The book is a classic. Will revisit it often, and already sent several copies to friends.