See Deepak Chopra’s address to Google on the power of personal consciousness and team consciousness in creating business value. This is a must see and a hopeful and empowering message about conscious business. Deepak teaches The Soul of Leadership at the Kellogg School of Management. ( Yes, yes and yes to Deepak’s world view )
Over the last few months I have been reflecting on where to spend my time to build the business value in Hearts and Minds and optimise the personal value in myself. In that process I identified three pillars of value that need to be simultaneously developed to build sustainable value, to miss one of these pillars will mean your foundations will crumble.
The three pillars to create value are: personal development, professional development and business development. I would argue you need a plan for each of these pillars if you are to continue to grow and be prosperous. Lynda Gratton, a London School of Economics Professor says that we need to actively build 3 communities if we are to be successful. I have taken the time to reflect how her three communities correlate to my 3 pillars of success.
Lynda’s 3 communities are ( Thanks Lynda!)
1 The community for Personal Development -The Regenerative Community, where we go to recharge and nurture ourselves
2. The community for Professional Development – The Posse, a professional community with shared values and vision that will keep us current, challenge our thinking and exchange knowledge
3. The Community for Business Development – Big Ideas Crowd – This is the exposure to people outside our known world, people from other disciplines, other walks of life, that can show us a different way. Allowing ideas to spark from the creativity of others, creating a fresh value proposition to give your business a compelling point of difference and competitive advantage.
The pillar of Personal development
This means actively working on your character to become a conscious human being. A conscious human is one that is capable of love, respect and intimacy. Chopra claims a conscious person can self regulate (emotions), be in the moment and are a source of warmth for others.
Deepak Chopra writes of the power of consciousness and its pervasive power to change absolutely everything in our lives:
“Since consciousness is the basis of all reality, any shift in consciousness changes every aspect of our reality. Reality is created by consciousness differentiating into cognition, moods, emotions, perceptions, behaviour, speech, social interactions, environment, interaction with the forces of nature, and biology. As consciousness evolves, these different aspects of consciousness also change.”
He says that the average leader is an emotionally retarded 8 year old in a man’s body. He goes on to say that 25% of people come to work miserable, with the direct intention of staying miserable and making others miserable and another 45% of employees are disengaged, with the cost of this disengagement costing the US economy $380 billion a year.
The pillar of Professional Development
A lot of people who are at work, are doing what they have always done, and are missing out. We need to professionally resource by keeping current. We not only need a business plan, but we need a professional development plan, this means we know what value we will bring to a business and have the underlying capacity to deliver on this. In order to do this we need to keep current with the marketplace, and learn from others.
The pillar of Business Development
Ideas grow business when they create a compelling and competitive point of difference. If we take the time to listen to creative people, not just in the arts, but creative in business, the thought leaders and trend setters, we will spark ideas to grow our business. Businesses need to look outside their category for inspiration. This means categories like retail need to learn from tourism, and also the arts, the environment and politics. We need part of our brain to take a panoramic view of the world around us, not just a tunnel vision focus on our business, in order to grow our business through ideas.
And finally, I will leave you with an uplifting thought from Deepak Chopra, just before I make for my water colours. Chopra says through his work at Gallup, people who play and socialise at work are high performers. What’s more, he believes we need 6 hours socialising a day to be a high performer, and that he says includes play at work. Hurrah!
Louise Kelly
Managing Director
Hearts and Minds
http://www.heartsandminds.com.au
Founder Thought Leaders Circle
http://www.thoughtleaderscircle.com
Resources
Links to Deepak Chopra
http://www.anhglobal.org/en/node/591
Leading@Google: Deepak Chopra ( Youtube)
http://www.gallup.com/corporate/19324/deepak-chopra-md.aspx
Thought Leaders Circle 