“I think it’s the most democratic (little d) form of energy because you can place it almost anywhere. Wind is great. Being in Texas, wind was super great. But wind is also a large-scale technology that you can’t make accessible to most people so I fell in love with it and it got into my blood. So as I like to say I may have studied liberal arts in college but I got in touch with my inner engineer afterward.” ~ Amanda Bybee, Namasté Solar

Energy and Business Democracy

My guest today is Amanda Bybee, director of strategic planning and initiatives for Namasté Solar, which is an employee-owned solar installation company. She started there in 2006 as employee / co-owner number 5. Amanda’s going to tell us about the benefits and challenges of running an employee-owned company and also how cool her job is. I’m a little jealous actually. But first I want to share something with you.

You’ve Got the Power!

I’m trying something new with the podcast this episode. Each show will feature a couple of energy saving tips. I’m hoping to use this as a way to inspire myself to start tackling some of the problems with my leaky old house. Maybe you can join in and work on your leaky old house too. I’m not going to give you a big mind numbing list of ways to save energy. Just a couple of ideas each episode that you can try out before the next show. You’ll feel good knowing that you’re doing something real about climate change, or air pollution or mountaintop removal or whatever it is that bugs you about fossil fuel. And we might actually save some money in the process.

This episode features energy saving tips related to dishwashing (click here).

Our Featured Guest, Amanda Bybee

AB: I’m Amanda Bybee, director of strategic planning and initiatives for Namasté Solar and Namasté Solar is a member of the Amicus Solar Cooperative.

DB: Okay, Namasté is not your average installation company right? Tell me how it’s different from other solar companies.

AB: That’s true. Namasté Solar is an employee-owned cooperative. So we currently have 43 owners and another 40 folks on track to become owners in the course of the next year.

DB: That sounds really exciting to me, since I do not work for an employee-owned company, but I’m sure there are challenges too. Forty three owners!

AB: To be sure. Forty three owners means you have forty three opinions on any given topic. But, we adopted that model in 2011 as a way to align our operational practices with our governance practices. And under a cooperative you have a fundamental commitment to the idea, one person, one vote. That was really important to us. We’ve always been an employee-owned company. And we’ve always had this sort of egalitarian ideal about the value of a person’s voice and about the value of a person sharing the risk, responsibility and reward of small business ownership. So for us to make that meaningful we engage people on decision making at a lot of levels. It’s not just when you vote for the board of directors but it’s also down to the little things on your team. We employ democratic decision making in a lot of different ways and fundamentally we also think that the cooperative model is a way to address that big wealth inequality that so often exists in our traditional business models. You don’t have much reward for the sweat equity of your workers. Workers generally get their salaries and that’s good, and if they’re lucky some profit sharing but by being an owner in a company you’re fundamentally building in a mechanism to share the wealth when that company does well.

DB: How many founders were there?

AB: There were three founders in our company, Blake Jones, Wes Kennedy and Ray Tuomey.

DB: So that’s the simple part.