High Performance Conscious Business Training

Steve Farrell here on how we (Conscious Business INterprise or CBI) position ourselves in the conscious business marketplace. A number of organizations focus on different aspects. Conscious business continues to receive more visibility as evidenced by the recently released documentary, Prosperity, created by Well.org. It features first and second wave conscious business. We take a fundamentally different approach to conscious business. Let me address these approaches. 

In the Conscious Business Alliance, we refer to our conscious business model as “Wave Three.” As many of you know our alliance includes Humanity’s Team, The Club of Budapest, The Goi Peace Foundation and The Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of Public Benefit at Case Western Reserve University. We describe Wave One as B Corp/B Lab. It focuses on exterior activity only (people, planet, profit). We describe Wave Two as conscious capitalism. It talks about consciousness but does not define it. For example, there is no reference to everything is interrelated interconnected and interdependent, that everything connects to a single reality. The organization requires a conscious sponsor participate high up in the organization and that the organization creates a conscious culture, but it does not define these aspects. Any individual or organization can potentially call themselves “conscious.” Wave Two focuses on spiral dynamics and stages of development. The interior focus needs more weight to consider itself a conscious business. In Wave Three, CBI defines conscious business starting with the reality that everything is interrelated, interconnected and interdependent, part of a single reality. The Conscious Business Declaration [hyperlink] presents our profile of a conscious business. 

The approach we’ve taken rests on the Integral Framework, AQAL. The Integral Framework shares there is an interior and external reality. This makes sense when you consider that everything is connected, part of a single reality. Speaking in general terms, in today’s world there is much more focus on our exterior reality but focusing on our interior reality first creates health and wellbeing. This involves a simple process where we collectively commune with Source. We feel into this individually when we meditate, pray or walk in nature. When we anchor our organizational work in our interior reality, we create exterior health and wellbeing.

Our approach is systemic in that it creates a path to conscious business with an interior and exterior focus that is linked. This does not create incremental improvement in the business. It creates an entirely different organization. It is a quantum leap. It creates a high-performance conscious business. 

We refer to “high performance” because a business that is anchored in an interior, sacred practice achieves a very high level of performance. In this case, performance relates to passion, cohesion, visioning, execution, stillness, peace, blessing, connection and financial performance. In a business context, people often think of material gain when they think about high performance. In this case, performance has a far broader context. I’m going to share more because this goes to the very heart of what conscious business is. 

The mission leads the way in our construction of conscious business. It is a mission with a business not a business with a mission. There is a calling that the organization is responding to. The organization pursues that calling with great passion. In each case, the calling nurtures the organization and all stakeholders including the community, country and the earth.

A high-performance conscious business passionately pursues a mission. The mission can involve any product or service that creates nurturing for the organization, community, humanity and the planet. There is an interior process that guides the organization. In this culture, Spirit/the Sacred guide collaboration and decision making. Individuals and the organization collectively feel into their interior space to embrace the Sacred and the purpose to which they are called. This creates vision alignment, cohesion, passion, strong execution, agility, freedom, love, peace, balance, grace, contentment and more. If we only use one word, it would be love. The business becomes more loving. In the Sacred, everything, wisdom and more, are in reach, more than the small list of things mentioned here.

The organization achieves superior performance and prosperity. Words like magic and levitation are sometimes used to describe results from the team process I am describing (mainstream business leaders might call this competitive advantage, but we don’t think in competitive terms, so we don’t use this terminology). Indeed, Spirit/the Sacred is guiding and supporting the work of the organization. Prosperity comes in many forms and includes cultivation of individual and collective financial abundance. Conscious products and services are attractive because of growing consumer interest so this leads to burgeoning revenue streams, growing profits, expanded employee compensation and increased stock price or valuation of the business.

A loving business creates a more successful business and a loving, successful business, is a magnet for employees, customers, vendor partners, and communities.

Like any organization, there are missteps and illnesses that the conscious business will confront, but in each case, it will heal itself and move on so it may prevail in its mission, reach and impact.

Leaders in the conscious business arena including Unilever and Tesla richly reward their stakeholder groups with growing revenue streams, strong consumer demand for their products, above average salaries, growing equity valuations and unsolicited praise from the media. Employees want to work for these companies, consumers love to purchase their products and investors bid up their stock prices.

A word of caution, a high-performance conscious business can achieve exceptional financial results but only if the commitment of the organization is there to engage in real conscious practices. If the organization pursues conscious business only for monetary gain, it will fail. The mission must be deeply felt and must lead. In Oneness, the organization and all the stakeholders can feel true intention.

Let me take this opportunity to thank all of you who are contributing to our work. Our community is growing, and many are devoted to creating a conscious business with a strong interior component that creates virtuous activity through “inside out” business behavior. Together, we are changing the face of business, and we’re creating the flourishing world we’ve always known was ours. This is a sacred mission.

Thanks again for being part of the team! 

In the spirit of conscious business,

Steve Farrell,

World Wide Director

Humanity’s Team