Book 307 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: It’s Not Personal, It’s Business!

Book – Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values by Fred Kofman (Part 1 of 2)

Book Description:

Consciousness is the main source of organizational greatness. Conscious business, explains Fred Kofman, means finding your passion and expressing your essential values through your work. A conscious business seeks to promote the intelligent pursuit of happiness in all its stakeholders. It produces sustainable, exceptional performance through the solidarity of its community and the dignity of each member. A conscious business fosters personal fulfillment in the individuals, mutual respect in the community, and success in the organization, teaches Fred Kofman.

Reflection:

Fun note, I’m currently writing this current reflection (307) from a hotel room in Atlanta, GA in December 2022. I had a weird déjà vu moment when I sat down at the keyboard this morning and was transported back to a similar hotel and again in Atlanta, GA exactly 1 year ago in December of 2021. Then I was writing reflection 75 about beating back “The Resistance” to keep pushing forward with this YOML journey that Steven Pressfield laid out in his book The War of Art. I vividly remember typing that reflection in the hotel room as I battled a hangover in the morning after a long team dinner and was in a hurry to get it completed and off to the airport to head home. My reflection was about how beating the resistance is easy when you have a real why.

I’ll never forget that reflection and moment in which it was written because it is the foundation for everything I do in life. My why is the reason I’m still writing one year later and getting closer and closer to finishing this journey and still having a blast. None of this is possible with Emilia guiding this journey and helping me along the way to bring my values out in our shared work together each morning. Thank you sweetheart.

On with the reflection…

Have you ever heard the saying, it’s not personal…it’s just business?

In the world I live in, you often hear saying all too often. You might hear it from a customer after they inform you that they went behind your back to work with another firm and never let you know about it. Or, God forbid that you hear it from your manager and HR representative as they sit behind a desk and inform you that your role has been terminated and you no longer have a job at this company.

I think we fall back on this phrase so often to help us draw a mental divide in our mind that business isn’t about emotions, it is a outcomes. We tell ourselves, if we all agree to only focus on the outcomes, profits, and losses than we can sit together and have a negative conversation and we should all be able to rationally understand why it is happening and adjust accordingly.

That sounds great in theory, but we all know that isn’t the truth.

Business is not and has never been out outcomes, it has and will always be about humans! And guess what, humans have emotions…a lot of them as a matter of fact.

So, maybe we should stop saying It’s not personal, it’s just business and reframe our mindset to think, “BUSINESS IS PERSONAL”.

If business is personal, then maybe instead of running away from our emotions we should run right at them together? Instead of Business = No Emotions, maybe we should shift that to Business = KNOW Emotions and act in accordance.

Conscious business is business with a heart. It is business with humanity at its core.

So how do we do that? If you’ve gotten this far with me on this journey than you should already know the answer by now. As a reminder (for both of us), I’ll drop it here again…

FOCUS ON YOUR VALUES!

Embrace those emotions! Use your thoughts and reflection to dissect those emotions to discover the underlying values that live deep within them. Then bring those values to life with purpose through your actions.

You can do this as a person, and you can do this as a business. Everything in this world has thoughts, feelings, emotions, and values. It is up to us to discover them and connect the dots back with purpose to discover meaningful work and create meaningful relationships.

Question: Is the work you are doing personal, or is it just business?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Conscious Business by Fred Kofman