Amidst the tragedy and acute crisis reflected in headline after headline in this time, which weigh heavy on our hearts, we also hold an awareness of deeper currents that relate to our ability to live into a world of shared thriving and reverence for life.
Through Beloved Economies, we focus on transforming the way people work together—how we structure, run, resource, and design the businesses we form together—as a powerful current that shapes our society.
As we highlighted this past month through our three-part series on Pro Democracy Businesses in Minneapolis, business leaders and teams can make incredibly brave and creative choices in service of community care, justice, and wellbeing.
In this monthly letter, we want to highlight that businesses can also make creative and brave choices to address the root causes of one of the most pervasive currents shaping so many of our lives—in the United States, and beyond: how unaffordable life has become.
As the cost of housing, groceries, and health insurance continues to rise, wages are not keeping up. One in two families in the United States now falls below the True Cost of Economic Security threshold, rendering them unable to fully participate in the economy, save money for emergencies, or plan for the future in a meaningful way.
It is no surprise, then, that the cost of living has become a main talking point not only for many politicians—but also around the dinner table and at work. In perhaps the most notable recent example, New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, ran on a campaign of affordability—freezing rent, making busing free, and providing free childcare. His resounding win demonstrates that Americans need relief from ever-increasing expenses.
A politics of affordability is rooted in principles of economic justice. But is it enough to focus only on making life more affordable?
To build a beloved economy, a politics of affordability alone is insufficient. Alongside freezing rent and reducing the cost of childcare, we must also restructure the economy to build wealth for our communities by sharing power. Policies to ensure affordability are key, but more is needed to address drivers of the inequality of business as usual.
Business leaders don’t need to wait around for policy change on affordability; they can get to work now by taking brave steps to strengthen democracy by helping communities retain their wealth. Businesses have the tools and capacity to share power in ways that directly contribute to building community wealth. If the company you run, work for, or patron is structured in a way that results in the consolidation of a large amount of money into the hands of a small group of individuals who call most of the shots, then this company is contributing to wealth extraction from our communities versus helping everyday Americans build wealth.
As we’ve seen, when the economy is not working for most people it’s hard to trust our elected officials, and some even start to question democracy itself. But, we have the power to stop this.
We found inspiration earlier this year from Canadian PM Mark Carney’s Davos speech in which he noted, “...because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.” Although Carney was speaking about geopolitical shifts, we feel this is also applicable to the issues of the economy. Many of us have felt for a long time that business as usual isn’t working, with the affordability crisis being the latest symptom, yet we carry on with its rituals of wealth extraction.
Carney continued, “The system's power comes not from its truth but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing …the illusion begins to crack.”
We can stop performing business as usual in our workplaces. Thankfully, we see it happening! Businesses are rolling out participatory decision-making processes. They’re shifting ownership and governance structures to ESOPs and other employee-owned models (where employees are majority stakeholders). They’re investing in community wealth-building efforts in their communities. They’re creating platforms where power is shared and expanded, not consolidated. And there is a growing trend toward community ownership across businesses in an array of sectors, as shown by a new report on the business case for community ownership.
If we are brave enough to stop following a business-as-usual logic that we know to be deeply flawed, we can re-make the economy from the ground up so that profits benefit far more of us, and serve the thriving of our communities and ecosystems, too. This is a current of change that will strengthen the promise of democracy.
In solidarity,
Jess Rimington & Joanna Levitt Cea
We’ve all experienced the business-as-usual mediocrity of top-down decision-making. Valuable insights are missed. Voices are suppressed. The same mistakes get repeated. And the same small group of people makes decision after decision on behalf of everyone else.
And yet, particularly in the United States and other places where traditional practices of collective governance have been largely erased or pushed to the margins, we tend to assume there is no alternative to this top-down modus operandi. We assume that the only other pathway is one defined by endless consensus processes and a total absence of structure and role clarity.
But Beloved Economies’ research and conversations with breakout actors over the years have shown the complete opposite. Teams that skillfully share decision-making power often do so with increased efficiency and clarity—of both roles and processes—and the results can be game-changing:
When exercised skillfully, sharing power with rather than wielding power over can dissolve unnecessary silos, strengthen shared buy-in and responsibility, unlock new creativity and solutions, and—in its fullest expression—underpin shared ownership and financial returns.
Here are three tips to consider in exploring shared decision-making with your team.
1. Customized decision-making protocols
Too often, organizations fall into a one-size-fits-all approach to decision-making. But different situations call for different combinations of people discussing ideas and figuring out how to put those ideas to use.
Existing frameworks, such as the RACI matrix for roles and responsibilities, can help teams designate who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for any given decision. This prevents the same few people from making every decision, while avoiding hair-pulling bureaucracy that can stifle progress.
Our research highlighted that often the best decisions included people whose lives would be most impacted by the decision; those who would be implementing it; and/or those with the critical experience, expertise, and perspective required to make a wise decision.
2. Full and accessible information-sharing
Good decisions stem from everyone having a clear understanding of the context. Without a shared understanding of the context—including the full set of constraints at play, decision-makers will make poor decisions, and often not know why.
The advice is simple but easy to overlook, especially when teams are moving too fast: Be up-front with the facts, contextualize the information, remove jargon, send materials ahead of a meeting to give participants a chance to review, translate into multiple languages if necessary, and present it in a format that stakeholders can access easily. This is the pre-work before every decision.
3. Shared decision-making means shared ownership in the outcomes
Sharing power in decision-making extends to sharing responsibility for the outcomes of those decisions—both the challenges and the rewards of whatever comes next. This means distributing the burden of devising and implementing solutions—as well as sharing in the successes and benefits that result from decisions. Ultimately, it’s about cultivating leader-ful teams that step up to guide our shared endeavor through opportunity and challenge. When decision-making power changes from something we shoulder alone or fight to access into something we approach creatively together, each of us becomes more powerful.
What We're Reading
When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse by Norma Kaweloku Wong is a guide for navigating current crises by blending Zen Buddhist and Indigenous Hawaiian wisdom with political and spiritual activism. The book offers a framework for co-creating a sustainable future through practices of interdependence, mindfulness, and strategic action, moving beyond mere resistance to build new ways of being in a time of collapse. It combines storytelling, poetry, and practical advice to help readers find hope and agency in uncertain times.
The best ideas come from employee-led cultures, not HR. When employees create their own ideas, traditions, and connections, their workplace becomes more authentic, more engaged, and far more effective. INC Magazine (4 minutes).
ESOPs and employee co-ops: the future of employee wealth. With rising wealth inequality and growing skepticism about the traditional capitalism machine, there’s never been a better time to start building worker ownership. Stanford Social Innovation Review (10 minutes).
In the face of fascism, we need an expanded moral imagination. The seeds of fascism and authoritarianism have always been present in America, and they are sprouting. But we can’t fall victim to a mindset of throwing in the towel or anticipating future defeat. Mother Jones (5 minutes).
In 2026, corporate purpose will come to a fork in the road. Companies that can connect purpose to the bottom line will gain a competitive advantage. For the rest, the idea will fade into the background. Fast Company (14 minutes).
The business case for community ownership. A new report from the Nonprofit Finance Fund, Justice Capital, and others offers a framework for shared prosperity. Ownership for Shared Prosperity. (44 minutes).
Quick Bite
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Inspired by the powerful lessons shared by the three Minneapolis-based businesses we featured this past month, we are compiling a mini Toolkit for Pro-Democracy Businesses. This brief resource sums up key takeaways, in an actionable form—with the hope that it can support many other community-rooted businesses in the future, to step up as hubs of care and democracy in practice for their communities.
Stand by for that resource coming your way soon—and help us share it with the growing community of pro-democracy business leaders!
Narratives shape what’s possible. We are honored to be in community with Asian American Futures as they step into their next chapter—and to celebrate the new website they launched this week! Check it out here.
