Finding a New Way
By Liz Richardson, Co-Founder of Indigo Ink Digital Printing, Inc.
Several years ago, I came to the realization that I and my business partners did not collectively have the experience or business knowledge to take our company to the next level…nor were we, quite frankly, able to adequately deal with the level of complexity our company was facing at that point in time. In addition, I was feeling very unsettled and experiencing a great deal of anxiety. I might have been the canary in the coal mine (I was the only one who noticed at the time), but I could sense something was off. Something was missing…I just didn’t know what.
I made a decision at that point to dedicate at least ½ hour a day to learning as much as I could about how to run a business, best practices, leadership…anything that might help us do things better and make our jobs and our lives easier. Never mind we had been running the business “successfully” by many standards for over 10 years (and academic business school classes to go with that experience) …I just knew there had to be a better way, a more enjoyable way.
The next few years would bring lots of confusion, competing and conflicting ideas, and frustration. Everyone else seemed to “have it together” – they had it all figured out… So many experts giving what seemed like very impractical advice. I’ve always been very skeptical of consultants and professional advice givers who “once owned or ran a company”. My first question is always “why aren’t you doing that now.” There is a lot of BS out there.
What I didn’t realize until later is that I had already taken the first and perhaps most important step towards improvement and becoming a better leader…I had taken an honest look at myself and admitted that I did not know what to do…I did not have the answers (humility).
“From the lying mirror to the movement of stars, everybody’s looking for who they are. Those who know don’t have the words to tell and the ones with the words don’t know too well.”
—Bruce Cockburn’s Burden of the Angle Beast
I had also taken an important second step…taking time out of my busy day to learn (more specifically and significantly, I took time out of my WORK day- I decided that it was more important to learn than to get whatever tasks accomplished that could have happened in that 30 minutes). It was the act of learning (even learning about the BS) that exercised muscles in my brain that had been sitting dormant for quite some time- previously making it much harder for me to see reality and make better decisions. Learning broadened my worldview (and is continuing to do so).
Through all the information overload, I began to see two overarching and diverging philosophical approaches to life and business. It seems that things vaguely fall into two camps. There is “business as usual” (until very recently, this is what most business schools teach) and a more recently emerging approach that I’ll refer to as “conscious business” (it is called many things and comes in many forms and has actually been around a long time, just not in the business mainstream).
What is “Conscious Business”? More than I can explain in this brief article. John Mackey and Raj Sisodia in their book titled “Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business” sum it up in four basic principles/qualities…
1. They are driven by a purpose beyond profit
2. They consider all stakeholders (rather than primarily the financial bottom line)
3. They have a culture that supports growth and fulfillment for all their people
4. They are led by leaders who know that their own personal and professional development can make or break the ability of their organization to succeed.
For a great summary on this topic, I recommend reading this article from Conscious Company Media “What is conscious business? Meet the new bottom lines” by Nathan Havey.
Through this journey, one thing has become crystal clear to me: I want our business to be a conscious business. This approach to business is the “how” to what I had been searching for…a better, more enjoyable way of doing business. It had never occurred to me that I was responsible for creating the kind of working environment I wanted to spend my days in. It is up to me to make that happen for myself, and for others.
It also became clear to me that there is a need for a paradigm shift in the business community… nothing less than an age of enlightenment for business in the 21 st century. “Business as usual” is no longer sufficient. I have decided that I want to play my part in making this happen and being a part of this movement in my local business community.
Liz Richardson is one of the co-founders of Indigo Ink Digital Printing, Inc. along with her husband and business partner Matt Richardson.
“Homegrown” is a series of articles written by professionals right here in the Central Maryland area.