When a man with experience meets a man with money, the man with the experience will end up with the money, and the man with money will end up with “experience.” - Anonymous

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business. - Henry Ford

Dog eat Dog, Take no Prisoners, the Almighty Dollar…

We often think of business is a heartless endeavor, where the cunning and powerful exploit the naive and relatively powerless. It’s just business, the saying goes, and winner takes all.

But when we look at the day to day operations of the market, this type of win-lose activity is actually the minority of the business interactions.

In fact, it is the cooperation and coordination of talent and resources by people partnering towards a common cause that forms the heart of each industry and company. Certainly there is competition between companies vying to sell similar products to the same customer, or between people vying for the same promotion in a company, and in rare cases it can even get ruthless. However, it is the mutually beneficial, win-win relationships between suppliers, maufacturers, distributors, and retailers on the one hand, and investors, management, workers, and consumers on the other, that constitute the vast majority of business transactions.

“Business as usual” is in fact, a well-oiled machine of interdependence and partnership.

This is nowhere more clear than when the cooperation of business as usual ceases, and antagonism and conflict set in. When the oil of interpersonal generosity is replaced by the sand of anger and resentment, the gears grind to a halt, and everyone suffers. Companies drain their resources in lawsuits, departments lose productivity for infighting, the consumer gets poor service and higher prices, and the emotional environment becomes toxic.

To succeed in business and bring mission and meaning to our work, we must be able to resolve these conflicts when they happen, and more importantly, avoid them in the first place. Individually, we do this through better communcation and mutual understanding. As managers and enterpenuers, we do this through the skills of mediation.

Mediation is the art of assisting parties in conflict to find mutually agreeable solutions. It is creating a conversation in which the people involved feel heard and respected, and know that their values are included in the decision making process. Rather than person A sacrificing themselves to person B, or insisting that person B sacrifice themselves to person A, the mediator faciliates an agreement that addresses both persons’ values.

I had the great fortune to interveiw Johnnie Scott, a mediator and corporate trainer specializing in work related issues, especially discrimination on the basis of age, sex, and race. Join us in a 2-part episode, as we explore, not only how you can apply the practical skills of mediation and peace-making to your own situation, but be inspired by the personal and spiritual context that makes mediation an expression of purpose for this extraordinary man.

http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/money-mission-meaning/episode004-johnnie-scott-mediation.html

Politics, n: [Poly “many” + tics “blood-sucking parasites”] - Larry Hardiman

Politicians say they’re beefing up our economy. Most don’t know beef from pork. - Harold Lowman

In the lastest episode of Money, Mission, and Meaning, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ed Morler, PhD, MBA, and the author of The Leadership Integrity Challenge. We discussed the provocative model of emotional maturity he uses to increase the integrity and effectiveness of organizations. It cuts to the heart of the central challenge that businesses face and offers practical methods to deal with it - a great show. In this blog, I want to expand on the ideas we discussed and clarify how integrity can be understood in terms of the fundamental paradigm of our day: politics.

Politics. The very word can incite people to both passionately take a position and shake their heads in resigned frustration. It is the social reality and tension between people working together to acheive both common and personal goals. Politics, good or bad, can make or break your community, your nation, and your organization. How can we learn to work with the political realities we face while building projects that further our organizational goals? What would bringing integrity to business politics look like?

Politics can be an expression of personal and organizational integrity or dis-integration; it can be “positive” or “negative.” In governmental affairs, we see leaders who powerfully address pressing issues with honest creativity and politicians who “spin” the truth or out and out lie to increase their power base. In business, we find leaders who generate and execute creative projects that further the companies ability to serve their customer and office politicians who spin the numbers, take credit for other people’s work, and blame others for their mistakes.

Positive politics comes from leaders who integrate their personal goals with the organizations mission without sacrificing one to the other. They maintain and deepen their integrity in the context of the collective. In the process, they bring their passion to their position, and contribute their creativity and genius to the group. They add real value to the whole.

Negative politics, on the other hand, stems from people who cannot integrate their personal goals into the organizational mission. They either sacrifice their own goals to the common goals, or sacrifice the common goals to their own. While the former seems noble, it undermines their integrity, leaving less of their energy, creativity, and essential Self to give to the organization, eventually leading them to sacrfice the organization to themselves - becoming parasites that detract from the real value of the whole.

Ed Morler’s work addresses both how a leader can best integrate his or her own values with the values of the organization and how to facilitate others to do the same. The more we take on The Leadership Integrity Challenge he describes, the more joy and fulfilment we can experience in our work and in our lives. Join us as we explore the relationship of Money, Mission, and Meaning, bringing profit and pleasure to the business of life.

Conscious business. At first, the words seem like oxymorons. What could be less conscious than market forces? What could be less interested in business than the heart and soul that gives meaning to our lives.

What is more common than the denunciation of large corporations for tax with reprehensible social repercussions all in the name of the almighty dollar? In the same vein, who isn’t familiar with the moans of the “starving artists” whose visions of beauty and harmony don’t find purchase in the capitalist/consumer marketplace?

However, when you look past the standard politically correct dialog about the evils of business, the situation is far more complex, and far more interesting. On the one hand, a business must provide a service that people value enough to pay for in order to succeed. On the other, we each work at business is in order to both earn money to provide for our values and needs, but also to use express our talents and gifts.

This blog will explore how we can each bring more caring, heart, adventure, and soul to our fiscal and financial realities, while bringing more practical, brass tax, bottom-line mentality to our personal and private lives. By integrating passion and purpose, professional and personal, money and meaning, we can revitalize every part of our lives and helped to create a world which we all want will. Welcome to Money, Mission, and Meaning: the blog.