Conscious-Business.org.uk

A home for the Conscious Business community in the UK

Category Archives: Behaviour


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Sensing Passion

As a rule of thumb I won’t eat in a restaurant where the people running it are not passionate about what they are doing.

Instinctively I don’t go back to places where it feels like the people just don’t care.

My grandmother was a formidable Hotelier and Restaurateur, and she often said: ‘If you want to know how clean the kitchens are, look at the toilets’.

This is going back a long time, and maybe things have changed since the advent of food hygiene laws. But her point is still valid: people often betray their principles in areas where they think you are not looking.

And many assume that if they say, for example, that they are a ‘caring business’, that you’ll accept this statement over your own direct experience.

But if the people making the product and guiding it to my table do not seem to care about it, or indeed about their very own role, this attitude gets projected on to and infects the product, and I guess it has been produced without care. It “feels” substandard to me.

I may be wrong, but perception is everything.

I will also intuit something about a business that hires and keeps people in roles they don’t enjoy. Or a business that fails to create an environment where its people can thrive and are enjoying their work. I will generally assume their priority is not a quality product or an excellent service.

I will then make a further assumption: that they are more focussed on making money than pleasing me. This might clash with my principles, and I stop wanting to give them my money.

Quite a big leap perhaps? But it’s all lurking there on the edge of my subconscious, affecting whether I eat there again – or not.

Now for an old counselling trick: If I get this negative feeling with the above business, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that I might get the reverse feeling from turning that experience on its head.

So what am I likely to intuit from a conscious business? Well, first of all if the people are genuinely interested in the product or service, and in me, their feeling and enthusiasm is projected onto and thus infects the product and I feel good about it.

I feel good about them because I detect their genuineness, or “congruence”. I also feel good about an organisation that values its staff and culture. One that picks people with passion and creates an environment for them to thrive in. If they are applying care to their environment then the product must be fabulous, surely?

This instinctive feeling is usually borne out by my experience. Another place might be cheaper or have a better location but I still prefer to be at the place where the staff care. To quote a line from the Cheers’ theme tune: ‘You want to go where everybody knows your name’.

Or to borrow the basic principle from the famous book “How to win friends and influence people”, we like to do business with people that we like, and who appear to like us.

This has to be authentic liking, but if it is, it wins every time.


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Becoming a Conscious Business

Fairly regularly I find myself trying to explain what a Conscious Business is.

I have answered this in terms of strategy before; and also in terms of what CB is not.

But this time I thought I’d try to answer a variant of the question: “What does a Conscious Business look like from the inside?”

At the core of a Conscious Business are people, of course. In my view, every business is simply a bunch of people, when you boil it down.

And in a Conscious Business these people are – well – conscious.

By that I mean self-aware. They reflect regularly. They assess themselves. With compassion for themselves – and with respect, empathy and congruence for others.

They’re also as open as they can be to change. They learn all the time, and a lot of that learning is about themselves.

And they work together in certain ways: for example, they challenge each other’s ideas, decisions, and behaviour. They’re open and honest – about strengths and failings.

They believe in possibility, not certainties. They’re humble. They have fun. They take responsibility – and are able to hold each other to account.

And they take joy in working with others – trying to create something valuable for themselves and others.

Having all this at the core means the business has a clear identity and is suffused with meaning and purpose. It is transparent and open to the outside world.

It is resilient and flexible, profitable, does less harm, offers truly valuable products and services, is highly attractive to customers, and is better able to attract and give a great home to key employees.

Of course, there are many businesses that are already like this. I’ve worked in some, and you may have too. (We’re not “inventing” anything new here. We’re just trying to help businesses as they grow and become more conscious.)

And a conscious business isn’t really a thing at all; it isn’t any of these things in a static sense. It’s a process – of growth and development – something that is always changing, always becoming.


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Manage yourself

Quora sent me a link to an interesting topic the other day: As first time entrepreneurs, what part of the process are people often completely blind to?

There are many good answers, but mine would be: Manage Yourself.

What I mean is look after yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.

I have seen entrepreneurs and other business people make themselves ill. And clearly if they are physically unfit, developing and growing a business becomes hard if not impossible.

I have seen entrepreneurs suffer much mental distress. They have made poor decisions, blamed other people, and failed to take the right action at the right time.

I have seen entrepreneurs stay unaware of their emotional selves. And in doing so they have often inadvertently pushed away those who would help them under other circumstances.

What’s more I have done all these things myself. And therefore I know that I was completely blind to these things at the time.

Hey ho. Onward and upward.


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Choose a ritual

There’s a great little summary here of a range of practices or rituals – things you can do every day, week, month or year – things that will help you become more positive, more aligned and more motivated.

Pretty much every religion in history includes ‘practice’ of some kind. I believe it is because, if your goal is happiness or something like it, rituals like these help. Therefore bringing them back into modern use is a great idea.

But the key ones for me are those that raise consciousness. These include journal writing, and various other kinds of reflection and self-assessment.

In my view, following rituals without consciousness or awareness is not enough. Without this awareness rituals can become empty repetitions of behaviour.

But simply ask yourself a question, or watch yourself as you do something, and things can change. Awareness or consciousness transforms our experience of ourselves and our relationships, leads to behaviour change, and ultimately to different results.


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Great leaders, great groups

A recent contact pointed me to a great little book on leadership by Steve Radcliffe.

It’s short, very clear, and very aligned with the way I understand leadership. I have written before about the need for us all to lead, but I only wish I could put it across so succinctly.

Of course, it’s only a book, and can’t really give a full sense of what it is like to live in a real life, or in a real group situation. But the central tenet – that we benefit by becoming more conscious of how we behave, what we think, and what we assume – is very dear to my heart.

The book also suggests this idea can be carried into teams, and again I completely agree. But borrowing from the great Ed Schein, I think there are even more fundamental things we need to build into our groups and teams, namely an understanding of:

  • Who am I? What is my role to be?
  • How much control/influence will I have?
  • Will my needs/goals be met?
  • What will the levels of intimacy be?

These are really great ways to access the dynamic of a group. If you are in a group and answers to these questions aren’t clear, then I’d suggest asking again, and again, until they are.

But why doesn’t every group automatically provide good, believable answers to these questions?

I believe it does indeed relate to leadership. Personal leadership. The responsibility of each of us to manage ourselves, our own emotions, our own impact.

To my way of thinking group culture is no more than the sum of how all the people in a group lead. That aggregate is what creates a situation, or maintains one, where we do – or don’t – get answers to those questions.

It is, ultimately, how we all lead that makes the difference.