Conscious Business Practices : Acting With Intention

The Conscious Business takes a broader perspective and with deeper perception, allowing it to act more intentionally. In this post, we look at the remaining conscious business practices – those that reflect how the organization acts. Shifting its focus from external behaviors to inner resources, the Conscious Business operates from its core where actions arise deliberately, authentically and often with greater purpose.

Relating Consciously
The Conscious Business relates authentically – with employees, customers, suppliers and even competitors. In fact, it operates in co-operation, not competition, recognizing it has a unique role to play in both the economy at large and the greater, evolving world. From this perspective, the organization realizes there are sufficient resources and customers to support its business.

Communicating consciously is about integrity – saying what we mean and meaning what we say. It is also an exchange where often it is more important to listen and seek to understand another’s point of view than attempt to communicate one’s own message. The next time you are communicating with someone, challenge yourself to hear them fully – listening intently to what they are saying without any effort to begin crafting your own response. Let what you say simply come up and out once the other person is finished speaking. Don’t be afraid to take a moment and pause after they speak, breathe and then deliberately choose your response from awareness. In that moment you might ask yourself, “what is most important here … and what is needed at this time?” or “what is the most helpful message I can share?”.

Sense and Respond
This may be the biggest departure from expected business behavior, yet in many cases, closer to how we naturally act in our own personal lives. The Conscious Business moves from an exclusive model of predict and control (thinking) to one that includes sense and respond through feeling. It utilizes analysis to understand the past, not attempt to predict the future, and actually engages intuition as a tool to inform the present. It’s a shift in perspective that looks to the future to inform the present instead of the past to simply predict it.

Consciousness, like nature, has an organizing power that moves naturally towards growth so that every situation has the capacity to actually indicate the appropriate path. When operating from awareness and the core of inner resources, you ask yourself “how does it feel?” rather than “what does the data tell us to do?”. In so doing, you momentarily suspend the thinking mind and adopt an attitude of not knowing that allows you to sense in your body before responding. This becomes an ongoing practice of sensing, responding and then sensing again. By creating room for purposeful mistakes rather than tightly controlled actions with expected results, sense and responds allows the opportunity for deviation that provides the possibility for break-through innovations.

Consciously (Co)Creating
Conscious (Co)Creating is a 5 step process, in partnership and dialogue with the intelligence of the unfolding creative process utilizing both heart and head – each in due time. You begin by creating space, setting intentions, exploring the possibilities and then making a plan before taking action as you listen for feedback (click here for more details on the process).

The Conscious Business is much more than a series of conscious tools and methods. By actually shifting the place from where it operates, conscious practices naturally rise from the core of energy intelligence present in every organization. Mindful and present in the moment, the organization broadens its perspective – both within and beyond itself – deepens it perception to access rich insights, all the while acting with intention.