Much of my life has been a continued exploration of how to bring people together around a purpose and have the people not fall into a messy human heap of conflict, polarisation, blame, finger-pointing.
In the background to this I have been a baker all my life. Bread, cakes, loaves..even in my earlier years having a business built on baking extraordinary cakes. “Sweet Temptations – Decadent Desserts”
Baking is a form of alchemy and synergy.
Who would ever dream that flour, eggs, butter, sugar and various flavourings would combine in the right conditions and amounts to produce heaven for our taste buds, each raw ingredient on its own tasting awful?
The Alchemy of Extraordinary Enterprises
Ingredients
- A clear and transcendent purpose
- An idea to manifest that purpose into form
- The unique features, values and particularities of that idea that are integral to it becoming whole
- A steward leader able to hold the integrity of the purpose, the idea and the unique features against all odds and oppositions
- A threshold crossing agreement for all active participants within that enterprise – ‘people like us do things like this; this is how we behave when things go pear-shaped.’
- Ever-present attunement to the interior of the enterprise as well as the exterior ecology – with ‘temperature’ and ecology adjustment as a constant
- Enough diversity to maintain polarity, not too much to have the polarity either blow apart or collapse
- Constant practice of all the principles incorporated in the threshold crossing agreement
- An autopoietic iterative process: Action, learning, adjustment, action, learning, adjustment..spirals of emergence
Process
Put the Evolutionary Purpose into the ecological field using story, message, illustration. This is where we are heading.
Be clear about how you are going to do this. Explain your Source Idea and its unique Pattern Integrity – its DNA. Be mindful that it is an idea and does not have any form in the beginning. If we get too attached to its end form on day one we will not allow its natural form, intrinsic to its Pattern Integrity, to emerge. Chances are we have little idea what its natural form will take when it is fully expressed.
Create a clear and transparent agreement about how the humans who are convening around this idea will act and behave with each other. We call that the Trust Manifesto. You can download a copy of the Trust Manifesto of Syntropic World here. Give people sovereign choice: say yes and become an active participant; say no and choose not to gain entrance.
Build diversity into the community by design. Communities need polarity to hold the shape of the enterprise. Too much ‘nice’ and there is no opportunity for growth that comes with friction, debate, different worldviews, alternate perspectives. Too much ‘nasty’ and community explodes.
As the steward leader manage and adjust the interior and exterior ecology, the temperature. Know that some heat, some cold, changes, stormy seas, calm seas are needed for our best to be refined. Perturbation is how things transform.
Continue to support people in their own evolution. Provide tools for learning to be better communicators, more able to engage wholeheartedly with the community and purpose. Provide coaching support. Provide clear guidelines around conflict resolution.
Stay in deep communion with the Source Idea and its trajectory towards the Evolutionary Purpose each and every day.
Consider the next step. Not the second, third or tenth step, just the next step.
Take that step. Pause. Attune to how this step changes things. Repeat.
In all of this live the principles. Be the exemplar.
A skilled baker knows to adjust the quantity of flour and water depending on the environmental conditions. They know the texture of the bread in the kneading. There is a deep communion between the raw loaf and the baker. When they are distracted from this communion, when their attention is held elsewhere, or they have stopped caring deeply about the quality of the loaf, the alchemy disappears.
When we eat artisanal bread baked with love, if we pause to sense deeply, we know the difference.
You might have experienced love imbued in food. Love imbued in the care of the grain by the farmer. Love imbued into the response from the service person to your enquiry.
This is alchemy. It transforms ordinary into extraordinary.
When we experience alchemy in business we know the difference between true nourishment and empty calories, be that in food, service, leadership or product design.
If the Source Idea that you are stewarding is something that moves you to act and keeps you moving to act even when the path looks impossible, be sure your enterprise is imbued with love.
Have it be a Syntropic Enterprise, leaving everything and everyone better. Let alchemy touch all who step into the field of your enterprise.
This is how we make a world with a future for earth and all her creatures.
**If you would like to access the ebook, How to Start a Syntropic Enterprise, do so here.
