The Beauty Of Knowledge

“Consciousness“ seems to have become the domain of the new age. We all have friends, or friends of friends, in the sandal wearing hippy category. They practice yoga, burn incense, ding bells and do all of those ”weird“ things that are meant to somehow raise their vibrational field and level of consciousness. In the business world we pooh pooh these alternative ungrounded folks, suspicious of the drugs they’re smoking. However I don’t think the concept of consciousness need be ungrounded and irrelevant to our daily work and personal lives.

Nathaniel Branden, a pioneer of the psychology of self-esteem, in his book ”The Art Of Living Consciously“ defines living consciously as a state of being mentally active rather than passive. It is the ability to look at the world through fresh eyes. It is intelligence taking joy in its own function. Living consciously is seeking to be aware of everything that bears on our interests, actions, values, purposes, and goals. It is the willingness to confront facts, pleasant or unpleasant. It is the desire to discover our mistakes and correct them … it is the quest to keep expanding our awareness and understanding, both of the world external to self and of the world within. This to me is an extremely practical definition of consciousness. It is our ability be aware of our actions and their results - learning and adapting to the feedback reality provides us. I assert that continuous improvement always follows from consciousness of ourselves, our actions and our environment. This assertion may seem a bit of a jump. I plan on addressing this further in future blog articles.

Some of the popular business philosophies of the current day include lean manufacturing and thinking, the theory of constraints, systems thinking, business process management etc. A common observation of these theories is the seeming common sense reasoning they apply. This reasoning starts simple but somehow leads to uncommon conclusions and results. Being conscious is a lot like this common sense. Simple observation applied consistently and with perseverance can lead to the uncommon.

Business theories such as those mentioned above bring new language and perspective but a lot of the fundamental ideas are recycled. It is in the interest of the purveyors of these theories to propagate jargon and hype around their theories. Such sugar motivates us to apply truths which are ages old and common sense. Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself a student of the theories mentioned above and appreciate sugar as much as the next person - new perspectives are very important. And sugary treats stimulating us into action is very important too The main point I’m making is that we forget awareness, applied thought and fundamental common sense in the marketing noise made by selling of business theories. A business philosophy may give us new frameworks and tools to use but if the theory is any good these tools should ultimately be pointing to us increasing our consciousness and awareness. For us to be proactively observing, asking questions and actively thinking. For us to be taking responsibility for our circumstances and challenges rather than playing victim. And for us to be propagating this culture throughout our organisations. I agree with Fred Kofman in his book Conscious Business when he says ”consciousness is the main source of organisational greatness“.