The Field Manual

Abstract

This chapter is written to be used. It sets out, week by week across one year, a sequence a leader can run to bring shared ownership into a firm in the order the evidence and the house's reading both suggest: information first, voice second, the share third, permanence last. It names the roles, the decisions and the documents at each stage, and it says where the work must stop and wait for advisers. It is not a legal or tax plan, and it does not choose a structure for any firm. A firm that intends to sell to its employees through an ESOP, an employee ownership trust or a cooperative conversion will need lawyers, valuers and, in most cases, lenders, and their timetables will govern the last quarter of this year. What this manual governs is everything a leader can do before and around them, which is most of what decides whether the structure, once it exists, will work.