The VSM Guide for co-operatives and federations
A Manual for Managers of Co-Operations
The VSM Guide is a manual for managers of co-operations, written by Jon Walker. It is based on Jon’s practical experience with organizing and structuring co-ops and federation.
Its strong points include
- it is very practical, gets directly to the point and helps managers to start immediately with making sense of an existing organization. While the examples are located in Jon’s main line of work – co-ops – the descriptions are universal and can easily be adapted to the generic company.
- it includes a step-by-step approach to a preliminary – meaning: quick – diagnosis of what is going on in an organization.
All of these accounts and subsequent meetings with other consultants who use the VSM led me to believe that the VSM had the necessary credibility to warrant a thorough study.
Jon Walker
Five years later, I am in no doubt about the usefulness of the model. The theory is difficult in places and the overall conception seems strange when you begin, but the emerging understanding of the mechanics of viability in an enterprise seems to give the VSM an unprecedented power to find out how things actually function and to pin-point areas which need attention.