I stumbled across this great article on H2H (Human to Human) by Bryan Kramer – you can read the article here.
He also refers to Mark Schaefer’s book “The Tao of Twitter” where he describes P2P (People to People).
I love the way he sums this up:
So, this is how I see it:
Businesses do not have emotion. People do.
People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
People want to feel something.
People want to be included.
People want to understand.
I totally agree. To put this in slightly different words with the same meaning; what we are really talking about is Conscious Leaders driving Conscious Business = Conscious Capitalism, arguably the most profitable business model today. Ryan comes at things from a marketing perspective, which is truly valid. When we connect this to our personal, leadership, team and organisational leadership brands, it all makes sense. This is part of the bigger picture of what is going on in the connected human economy we find ourselves in today.
(Watch Dan Pink’s animate on the RSA on what truly motivates us – Purpose, Autonomy and Challenge).
We are so well-informed in comparison to 5/10 years ago. We vote with our feet. Not long ago if we decided to buy a new car we would go to all of the dealers, test drive a car, work out the finance, touch, feel, and smell the leather and look at the nuances of the colours of the car before deciding. We knew when we entered a dealership, we were going to be sold to.
Now, we research what we want online. All the major banks have calculators on their landing pages allowing us to work out what we can afford over a selected period of time and at the interest rate we choose. We know what we want. Children and dogs, probably a big 4×4 – no children, no dogs, a two door. We know the mileage we do every year, what kind of car we want and we finally go to the few selected dealers just to place the order. To check out the colour of the car and the leather as we don’t trust the colours we see online. The salesperson has now become an order taker.
And broaden this view and we get orgs that truly love their customers – and on the flip-side, those who are old-fashioned, patriarchal and stuck. If we have done our research online and we only want to deal with ethical, conscious, caring, loving businesses – this plays a major part in our choices. After all, if you know that the org is fuelling slave labour, would you buy anything from them? Easy Q. Easy A.
In this truly connected human economy what we now want is good old-fashioned relationships. We care, and we want to know those we deal with care too. And as always, we have to start with ourselves. Out BEing drives our DOing. Shift the BEing by one degree and the DOing (our actions and behaviours) shift effortlessly in the direction we want and need.
This inspires developing the art of being curious without judgement; enticing people to buy rather than selling; having integrity, values based business; knowing thyself and getting thyself the hell out-of-the-way. i.e. Inside-Out vs Outside-In thinking.
All of this is just common sense. Being conscious in the moment is the tough bit. The nanosecond between your buttons being pushed – and reacting. And once we get aware, we are able to a make a choice. “What do I choose?” is a great trigger /mantra.
So how to go from ruminating, navel gazing into action? Be determined to move forward. Get yourself a coach, mentor, advisor. Check out their credentials. Have a “chemistry meeting” with a few and go with the person you trust. Trust is an interesting topic on its own. Go with your gut feeling, tap into your intuition – with what you know to be right and true.
Above all, make sure you are passionate about what you do. For when you are passionate, it doesn’t feel like work.