"Business Abortion"
Why People Really Hate Monday and what to do about it!
Executive Summary: Some say economics is the study of how people get what they want. In the post-modern world, driven by profit, we’ve been sold on the notion that “wants” equal “needs” equal “rights.” Right? The dividing lines have become very porous. And the bottom-line cost will surprise you.
The Power of Purpose
In all things that we endeavor to do, we must seek and gain an answer to the question of purpose. Without an understanding of purpose, abuse is inevitable.
In business, therefore, we must ask, “What is the purpose of my business?” Some argue that the purpose of business is to make money through the buying and selling of goods and services in an environment of economic scarcity. In plain language, “buy something for a dollar, sell it for three because this offer won’t last long.”
If you subscribe to this thinking beware: it causes abuse in ways we don’t readily see. I submit that the true purpose of business is actually quite different. The highest purpose of business is to train people to think and act strategically. It doesn’t sound very economic or logical, but it is both.
Some say economics is the
study of how people get what they want.
Some say economics or business is really about how people get what they want. So it follows that "getting what I want” is the purpose of business...isn't the customer always right?? And if we've so craftily convinced our customers that what they want is in fact what they need, nay what is their right to have...and by that produced record profit...how can that be bad? But a want is not a right and blurring the line has had massive consequences. If you visit what has come to be known as the “third world” your definitions might be challenged a bit.
But back in "our world", by using fear, greed, envy, and lust to blur the line from "want" to "right" in the name of generating sales, the marketplace has become a new seminary of national thought and those thoughts have consequences.
Here’s one of the more gruesome examples of the want/need/right amalgamation. In 1973 it became legal in the United States to end the life of a developing child prior to birth. Apparently even our top court had learned the "new think". The Supreme Court stated, “We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision.” But they forgot the purpose factor. Right in the Constitution our nation purposed to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Posterity means future generations which by logical conclusion must mean those coming, but not yet born. A right was being used as the justification for a want to the detriment of purpose.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Preamble US Constitution
Since that time, according to the CDC and the AGI, 47,282,923 of our posterity have been denied every right we enjoy. Purpose has power; but if forgotten leads to all kinds of abuse.
Key Connection
Let me draw a stark parallel. In my work with business owners I have discovered something that I believe is a helpful phrase in understanding behavior like this. "The way you do anything is the way you do everything." By that I mean that a decision we make in one instance and a seemingly unrelated decision made in another are both equally and precisely reflective of the values-system to which we anchor our identity. While we may rail otherwise, in actuality all our decisions have in common a consistent decision-making process that usually remains unquestioned and unconscious. Discovering this hidden process is the key to change, growth, and true profitability in people and business alike.
So decisions about personal privacy, for instance, are not limited to that area alone and are made manifest in a multitude of other areas and vice versa. Why? Because the way we do anything is the way we do everything.
"The one regret I have about my own abortions is that they cost money that might otherwise have been spent on something more pleasurable, like taking the kids to movies and theme parks." Barbara Ehrenreich b 1941
Leader or Vision Centered?
You see in reality I believe that a business owner (man or woman or board) at the beginning of an enterprise becomes pregnant. Not physically with a living child, but in much the same way pregnant with a living vision. To help us with this concept allow me to take a moment to make a key assertion or distinction. All companies are neatly divided into two categories. In fact, organizations of all kinds are divided in this same way. They are either leader-centered or vision-centered. That’s it. One or the other.
A leader-centered organization is so typical and common it is almost cliché. Its presence so ubiquitous as to be practically invisible. Here are the markers of this all-to-common scenario: All decisions come top down, the gravitas of the leader’s personality is an ever-present, ever-needed consuming fire, disagreement equals disloyalty, no one has any real authority except the leader, the term ‘yes men’ comes to mind when looking at management, and the list goes on. Now, we may have been led to think that this monarchal model is great, if for no one else, the leader. But in fact it’s not. It’s actually self-destructive and what’s most stunning: all leaders intuitively know this.
Simply put, a leader-centered organization puts an undue burden on one person. If that person dies, leaves, or fails - the entire mission is at risk. They are the company. This is akin to making a submarine with no compartments. If one area leaks, the sub is doomed, the mission is over. So a question immerges (no pun intended): Which is more important, the personality or the mission? A leader-centered model sides with personality. It can be starkly overt in governments as seen in a dictatorship or is can be subtly camouflaged in sentiments like “he’s our leader because he is the strongest, most experienced, best salesman etc..” This is a very risky and often fatal way to run a business. It’s why successions rarely work out and why most business owners burnout and burn through staff.
So why are almost all businesses (and other organizations) run this way? Let's all say together: "Because the way you do anything is the way you do everything."
That Glow
When you get pregnant with a vision, let’s say…to own a shoe store. You are up at all hours with excitement. Remember? You may even feel sick to your stomach. You’re dreaming of the carpet, the signage, the customers, the shoes, the marketing, the location, etc! You have “that glow.” There truly is life inside of you, separate from you but dependent on you. It is undeniable. But make no mistake the clock is ticking. A delivery must happen for that tiny life to be preserved and grow.
This is the time where the most critical mistake is often made. The owner begins to believe that the purpose of this new life is profit! Why would they think so? My question is why wouldn't they? The higher purpose for business was lost generations ago. TV and modern marketing has taught us all so thoroughly that everything including and especially business exists for our pleasure. In fact pleasure is not just a want or even a need, but a near divine right. If I want it, I must be allowed to have it - and business is my way to get it!
If the true purpose of this “child” is not understood then abuse is inevitable. And millions of times this "pregnancy" is used to satisfy our “want-need-right.” In doing so we fail to empower our child to do what all children are designed to do; what they are purposed: grow, mature, and be fruitful. Who doesn't want their business to do that?
If you think the analogy is too far fetched…well forgive me for trying to provoke you. But have you ever felt like your business was a perpetual toddler? Always needing a diaper change or a snotty nose to be wiped? Always crying and asking, no, demanding more!?! Maybe it's not so far off?
Many business owners who don’t ask the purpose question stay pregnant too long. When they should have been delivering the baby, they instead were REFUSING TO PUSH. And you know the consequences don’t you? A dead baby and possibly a dead or dying owner. No I don’t mean physically dead, in most cases, but dead on the inside: burned out, stressed out, mad all the time, anxious all the time, worried all the time - robbed of life.
If owners make the sucker’s choice to abort their babies (visions) in pursuit of profit, prestige, comfort or convenience…those children never see the light of day. The business never matures and is rarely profitable in terms that matter. The business has no momentum, no ability to live on its own, no longevity, no place for other leaders to collaborate… Everything hangs on the owner and her ability to make those painfully unconvincing speeches about how "it won't be long till the due date now.”
Those businesses stay leader centered and never become vision centered, because the owner refuses to do the strategic work of delivering the baby! The vision never becomes separated, the umbilical cord is never cut. While I can’t claim to know that there is any “fixed” or standard gestation period for a business, my guess is that there is a limit to pregnancy and that once that limit is reached death is inevitable. Once death has occurred, hard choices follow: Do we all just fake it? Do we shine the boss on because no one wants to get fired? Do we tell the truth? Do we say it doesn’t matter cause I’m here for the money anyhow? Do we pretend it didn’t happen or that it happens to everyone so it’s not important? Have we just given up hoping that it could ever be different?
Why do you think people HATE Mondays?
Typically when a business pregnancy has dragged on far too long the leader comes to the grim conclusion that it’s “either me or the baby” - guess who loses? The leader, out of selfishness makes an ugly decision and carries out that private deed of death. While they enjoyed the ego rush of being pregnant and garnering all that attention, too many owners somehow missed out on the purpose of pregnancy: birth. And when purpose is unknown, well you know the phrase by now: abuse is inevitable.
The leader who’s committed her hidden abortion is now forced to act pregnant again and again - because people need a vision to follow. The lifeless vision plastered on the walls and on business cards is worse than hypocrisy. It's shameful. This is not leadership - this is adult children who need more than a p.c. time out.
We need leadership, not cults of personality. There is no collaboration, co-ownership or sense of belonging in a monarchal organization. There is only financial coercion. As many of you know, I call it wage slavery.
wage (noun) - stipulated payment for service performed
slave (noun) - someone entirely dominated by some influence
wage slave (noun) - a person who habitually suppresses and demeans their calling in return for short term financial pittance.
Owners fake that glow even while there’s guilt and bitterness inside. Surely you've seen it. After every new leadership conference or motivational seminar they attend, the charade continues on. They have to act pregnant at each company picnic or year end meeting. It reminds me of the movie Office Space...but not the funny version...the real version.
If someone realizes "we’re not pregnant"… if the company realizes that there is no vision, then the authentic enterprise is over. And all that is left is a lifeless corpse that we nervously cover in make-up and perfume trying to appeal to some prospect's greed or fear...cause this sale won't last forever. In unison those employees’ visions will likely just follow the same dark fate too. And woe to the new person, recently hired that is under the delusion that life still exists. They’re just green. It won’t take long. It's no use in telling them anyhow.
Slave Revolt?
So where does this leave us in our self-made post-modern economy? Millions of groups of people pretending to believe in something that everyone knows has been aborted but hoping that an industrial age devotion to “the leader” will somehow turn out OK…or least get us that gold watch retirement party or, heck, just make sure I’ve got a few dollars to buy groceries on Friday. Why don’t the slaves just revolt? Because the slave master convinces them that they are slaves and cannot be anything else. His attack is an attack on their purpose. And it's working.
But our visions need us to take a stand on their behalf! Those babies are gifts, not accidents, not inconveniences. They are sacred trusts given not for our pleasure or profit, but for a greater good.
Those who have ears to hear and eyes to see - please wake up. Wake up to the real world. Most of us are wage slaves in this present world order and Pharaoh’s having his way with us. Many think slavery in the US is behind us. I don’t. Slavery has not gone anywhere; it has just changed its look and has welcomed a whole host of new colors to the plantation.
Just look around at all those millions of abortions. The slave master ethos patterned in Pharaoh's infanticide of old is giving the same command today but this time directly to his economic slaves, to those who are pregnant with living visions…and stunningly they are obeying by the millions in the false name of convenience or privacy our sacred "rights."
Without an understanding of purpose, abuse is inevitable. All that is needed is to understand the purpose of that tiny life and to bring it full term. To then empower its aunts and uncles, cousins, brothers and sisters help raise that blessed gift to maturity. In decoded parse: entrepreneurs who have become pregnant with a vision need to leave the leader-centered model because it is a self-centered model and it actually kills vision. As the saying goes, “If you do not conquer self, you’ll be conquered by self.” The proper role of the business owner is to build a team who can carry the vision further than he or she ever could.
I’m not saying leadership is unimportant. It is critical. But leadership must be shared. Proprietorship must be distributed. In the biological parallel, a father and mother are critical, but bringing the child to maturity is the goal, not perpetuating the parents’ dominance. The teacher, friend, peer, coach, etc. have to be empowered and positioned to contribute. They should not usurp the role of the parents, but if little Johnny is going to be an Olympic champion, mom and dad are going to need help.
If you are a "mom" or "dad" in business (read: owner or entrepreneur) consider getting help to make sure that your vision can fulfill its true purpose. Make sure that you take the time to strategically steward that life so that it becomes mature, strong, and fruitful.
Here's to your success!
Eric J. Beck - Founder
Total Integration Executive Program & Productivity Suite
P.S. If you are interested in hearing me speak on this topic in person, I will be doing so at the Business Leadership School on Feb 24th. Details at www.scsbusiness.org
"Total Integration's vision based strategy has supercharged our business. Not only is it performing better, but each day is getting easier. It's also given me an attitude adjustment, I now have a higher purpose for being in business".
Mark Forster President, The Pool Doctor
Executive Summary: Some say economics is the study of how people get what they want. In the post-modern world, driven by profit, we’ve been sold on the notion that “wants” equal “needs” equal “rights.” Right? The dividing lines have become very porous. And the bottom-line cost will surprise you.
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