Play Big

A few numbers: My company, Monaco Lange, is comprised of 6 talented people. We work on anywhere from 50-100 assignments every year. We have approximately 40 companies we work with, and 60 or 70 people we report to on a yearly basis. The work we do (branding, marketing and advertising) ripples out to their constituents, which is an unknown number, but could be thousands.

So, what we do has very little statistical significance on the world. We touch and inspire a finite number of people doing what we do very well.

My question is what can Monaco Lange be doing that will have a larger impact? What can we be doing that will help transform the world?

I am currently looking at Monaco Lange in this way. We are experts at what we do. Now, how can we shape that core competency into something that can and will do global good? I’m not interested in touching and inspiring thousands, I’m interested in touching and inspiring millions.

That is the bigger game I want to play.

Living Biblically

Moments of real clarity on the transformative power of The Good Book. In essence: Ignore the bad bits.

Giving Back to your Worst Business Enemy

Tonight I was at a lesson taught by Peter Oppermann, a fellow Busser, on the tenets of “karmic management” held at the very zen and posh Pure Yoga center, conveniently located across the street from my apartment. I thought I was going to this meeting to support Peter in his first lesson at this location. But what I got from attending was profound. Included in that was a nugget that I’ll share here that has me considering my karmic investment opportunities.

One of the lessons taught was that there are 4 key ways to ensure and exponentially increase good karma coming your way. 1. Give to your parents or teachers. 2. Give to someone who gives to humanity and the planet in a profoundly impactful way, like the Dalai Lama or whoever you believe is doing the BIG job of Transformation on this planet. 3. Give to someone who has nothing and seems to be getting help from no one. 4. Give to your worst enemy — someone who has hurt you the most.

I give on a regular basis to the top 3 categories, but the one where I haven’t thought to give to is the last. When I think of everyone in my life who has hurt me, the honest truth is for the most part, of my friends and family, anything I experienced as hurtful at one time has been long forgiven, and the love is back. Giving is restored. But where the love is not back is in the area of business. Not that I hold any grudges (well, perhaps in the far reaches of my subconscious where they’ve been relegated to), but I don’t give much thought to the people or incidences that occurred where I experienced being disrespected, betrayed, dismissed, ignored, not paid or thrown under the bus.

There are only a few individuals who fall into these categories, thankfully. And they were all people associated with my career in some way. Whether they were co-workers, bosses, colleagues or clients. So that leads me to the next level of conversation. So if I am to choose from this handful of individuals, what form will the giving take?

Will it be helping someone get a new job who spent a great deal of energy attempting to bring me down in my old job? Will it be a genuine hand written snail mail note to someone who threw me under the bus with a lame excuse? Will it be to pass along a job opportunity to another writer who has been aggressively competitive and spiteful for no apparent good reason?

For me to give in any of these ways would be a radical collaboration with the universe of Karma.

Radical Collaboration: Karmic Management in Action

January 9, 2011

The Small Miracle Campaign – launched after three consecutive sleepless nights – borne from carbon’s stardust drenching my pillow as I tossed into the darkness, reaching beneath rational thought to tug me towards unknown terrain and mid-wifed into existence while I drooped, red-eyed over my morning-tea.

I had to help Jeremy and Camilla Sherr. I have never been to Africa, and never dreamed of going. With one exception, I had never treated anyone with AIDS. Work in the Sherr’s 9 rural clinics in Tanzania and all the logistical and financial problems they entail, had not been the remotest blip on my radar. Although I had known of their project – Homeopathy for Health in Africa – for some time, I had  not given it a great deal of thought. Most days in my homeopathic practice end with a sense of never being caught up – too many cases to work on, calls and emails to respond to. If I am making enough money to comfortably cover the bills then there is too much work to fit into anything less then consecutive 12 hour days. I long for time to write and paint and start some serious music lessons. My new year’s resolution was going to be to make more time for creative play.

Maybe there is something like “a wrinkle in time”, a phrase I love from the title of one of my favorite childhood books. Or maybe it is a space between the breaths – space between thoughts — where a universe opens up. Physicists and mathematicians are claiming the validity of up to 11 parallel universes after all. So why shouldn’t I be able to find the extra time, when there was never enough anyway – to launch a campaign to fund Jeremy and Camilla for a year in support of their pioneering work? It was something in the curve of Jeremy’s shoulders as if there truly was a weight there that no one could see, when I had seen him in NY in late November. More, it was the way he had talked about the people he was helping. The women and men, ostracized from communities with the stigma of AIDS, too ill to work despite their conditions being “stabilized” by medications — these people, in large numbers, after homeopathic treatment, finding their appetites returning and their energy rejuvenate, smiles returning to their careworn faces as they reported feeling well enough to return to work, to return to activity that would avert starvation for themselves and their families.

The figure is shockingly small for what it funds in Tanzania, but daunting for a neophyte to fund-raising: $65,000.  I knew I had to tackle it and at the same time I felt it would take a small miracle to succeed. And that is what has started to take place.

 Next time: how the Small Miracle Campaign raised more than 20% of the goal by word of mouth in 4 weeks.

Celebrate Your Competition

As much as my ego would like to think it, I can’t go it alone.

I’ve had visions of receiving the shiny goblet on the stage in front of adoring fans as I unfold my acceptance speech. Or hitting the winning shot just before the buzzer as cameras capture the moment. But in those egoic fantasies, I fail to see the support cast around me that put me in that position to begin with.

I am not alone, nor have I ever been. Neither are you.

Everything around you is built to support you. Family, your life partner, your kindergarten teacher, the air you breathe, the leafy greens you’re about to crunch into. Without any of this supporting structure, the shiny goblet wouldn’t be possible.

What if you were to look at your competition as our co-creators in the world—as our friends in collaboration who are ultimately putting your best interests into play—supporting you where you need the support.

To think you need to call a truce, throw in the white towel, and dismiss clawing it out for business is missing the point. What is called for here is a re-framing of what competition really is. Competition is part of a vast universal support system for you, and for them.

Do you believe the universe is evolving in a positive way? Do you believe that lives are gradually improving? Do you believe there is generally a greater “goodness” being developed with each passing minute?

If you do, then it makes sense for us to think that perhaps for us to develop means that we may have  to get our asses kicked by our competition. That ass kicking is playing a vital supportive role in our development—and that is where the learning is happening.

There isn’t a more straight-forward way to see strengths and weaknesses in you and your business. Competition is designed to expose these points. Open up to the idea of competition. Competitors will help show you the way, they will help provide breakthroughs in thinking, they will help you see what needs to be improved. In 2011, let’s learn to celebrate our competition for what they are, collaborators in evolution.

Vulnerability has a place in business.

Being vulnerable personally and professionally can be a frightening thought. We want to make the uncertain certain. We want to perfect ourselves, our children, our businesses. Brene Brown says that it just doesn’t work that way. We use blame and pretending to numb ourselves from our imperfections. We are unwilling to be vulnerable. How would vulnerability recast business in the future? This video is worth 20 minutes, friends.

Radical Collaboration

Competition. We live and breathe it everyday. “We’re fighting for the business.” “We’re up against those guys again.” “We’re out to win this one.” “It’s do or die time.”

What if the notion of win/lose, were constantly win/win? For all of us? At all times? What if you actually wished the “competition” well? Or encouraged the “competition” to help your client? Or perhaps maybe even send the “competition” a bottle of champagne after being awarded a project you were excited about.

If you deeply consider it, the concept of competition is at right angles to the universe. Remember, “uni” meaning “one.” With whom are we competing? There’s nobody out there but ourselves.

Competition is rooted from a position of scarcity. “I don’t have this, and I want it.” That’s a dangerous place to come from. A petri dish for envy, jealousy, and greed.

Let’s flip that and talk about abundance. What if we truly believed that there was plenty to go around? What if you had plenty of work, plenty of money, plenty of food, plenty of love. What if you had it all? How would you behave differently? Would you be so inclined to crush the competition? Dance on their failures?

Sure this may sound idealistic, but give it a second thought. If you believe that there is plenty. And if we are all responsible with our personal needs and wants. Not wanting too much, only taking what we need, not wasting a bit—then it’s very possible for all of us to come from this position of abundance.

And that’s when we’ll all be able to collaborate with each other. Or, better said, collaborate with ourselves.