24 Best Practices For Business Poetics
Life is business. Business is personal. There are people on the ends and sides of every decision. Do not ever believe or tolerate advise contrary to this. Anything referred to as not personal is coming from a single perspective. Nothing exists from a single perspective.
Business needs poetry. Poetry is the silky happiness of a workplace. It’s the panache that connects and transitions one line (one step) to the next. Poetry exposes a system and provides access to it, allowing people to understand (insight), interpret, and contribute (insight), unafraid. Poetry is here for the User. The User is everyone in contact with what you are, do, and represent.
Below are general rules and guidelines for infusing your organization/business/life with poetry.
Be genuinely humble and sincere.
As a colleague or any form of manager in a workplace setting, there is nothing you have to offer that exceeds the value of your time. Give it to people as freely as is practical, and allow them to be expressive within it. Your time is a spotlight shining on the stage of life, you have the capacity to shine on anyone.
Respect time when it is offered to you.
Approach each conversation and meeting with two questions held in your mind: What do you need? What can I do for you? You do not need to ask them. Simply begin your conversation with these questions forming a foundation in your mind and your direction is true. Find them again in your mind if the conversation feels lost, or if you wander off.
Know that a need is sometimes an illusion. Someone might demand a fork, when what they want to know is that there are utensils safe in a drawer, in a cabinet, in a room, in a home where they are included.
Language happens in movement and expression just as much as in spoken words. Observing is part of listening.
You must listen. When you need to speak, you will know. Others have answers and if you are clear in your presence, they will bring them.
Words are the seeds of creation. They must be respected. Your words will cultivate peoples’ experience of you. Your actions will strengthen your words. This is essential for an organization.
Your mind is soil.
No matter what you are doing, no matter what you are engaged in, no matter how mundane or extravagant, you are always telling a story. Everything you do in life is a story. Your task is to continue to show up, sit down, and write. Trust in the process and trust in the characters and trust in the direction the story asks to go. The story knows best. Somedays you will write many pages, and other days you will simply correct and rework what is already there; both experiences are productive. If this feels confusing, return to point 1.
Auditors are editors. They are here to improve the story.
Shared understanding is the most powerful current available to a workforce. Foster this, and you will create spontaneous synergistic relationships within the soil of those around you. Soil is defined in point 9.
There is always a right person for something. There is always a right place for each person. You’ll know when they thrive.
Know your motivation and be able and willing to communicate it.
Be involved. Your ability to take action is a gift. The action you take is an example of you. Your examples create you in the minds of others. If you feel confused, return to point 9, read back through 15 and continue.
Money is important. It is not success. Respect it. Do not measure by it. Success is everything else that brings money. If you measure only with money, it will leave you, betray you, or break you.
You are progressing well when things are working out for those around you. This is the needle in your compass. Speak to people. Engage them.
Whether you love your work (strive to refer to this as ‘progress’ and eliminate - as much as possible - the word ‘work’ from your vocabulary) or not, it should not be a place you simply show up to. It is somewhere you have arrived. Your story continues.
You do not need to have the answer. You do need to get out of the way of the answer.
When you are able, speak to people in their office, whatever form it takes. It is their space. You are not above it.
Failure or an unwanted outcome should be embraced and released. It is a step opening a path.
Triumph is another step.
You can have reasons, but do not make excuses. Reasons and excuses are not the same. Study this until you understand it: there is no reason for excuses. Reasons have their place, but they must always follow effort. If there has been no effort, then there is nothing to explain. Apologize or forgive, and move on. If this confuses you, return to point 1.
Know love and gratitude. Seek these, even if only when you are alone, until you can feel them covering your being and emanating from within. Do this by gathering the love you have for another person, a family member, perhaps a spouse or child. Feel this love, deeply. Sit with it. Once it has filled you, practice bringing this love and gratitude forth. Shine it around you. Love the chair, love your device your read this on, love your hands for holding it, love your coffee or tea, love the sun or rain, love your clothes, your bike, your car, the plane flight, the train - scatter the love and gratitude you can access and feel around you like seed. Realize that in love and gratitude you are experiencing joy. Realize in shining you share it. This is your natural state. You grow stronger in it as you choose to experience it - like a superhero whose force is expanding. And as it returns it will seep into and grow into your experience of life. Shine in your next meeting and at your colleagues. From here you will venture back into acceptance. See point 21.