Prove It! How Do You Measure Your Business Success?

SCHUMACHER COLLEGE
An International Centre for Ecological Studies

Prove It! How Do You Measure Your Business Success?

Andrew Donovan

In the dying days of 2000 a friend and business mentor pushed me to the edge of a decision about the size and nature of my business. After four years I was at a crossroads. Do I continue to operate a micro business whose essential purpose is to provide me with a job or do I build a small to medium business providing many jobs, with me in the driving seat.

On one hand I was attracted to the notion of being a leader and manager. That would eventually mean no longer working in the business but working on the business itself. This has its own peculiar rewards and challenges. But the interesting things that my friend was pushing me on was my motivation. What was driving my decision?

In November of last year I came face to face with my motivators at a one week residential course in the lush rolling hills of Devon in the UK. The course at the Schumacer College on chaos and complexity in organisations brought together twenty five highly experienced people from around the globe, mainly organisational consultants and senior managers.

In an inspiring and emotional exercise that charted our life story I realised how my relationship with my father (both a loving and challenging one) defines my business aspirations. It was clear I needed to ‘prove’ to myself that I was a success and my measuring stick was the approval of my father.

Interestingly I saw how my relationships with other powerful men in business acted as surrogate opportunities to prove myself in this way, as if they were my father. This was a somewhat disturbing realisation at its heart, if somewhat simplistic in its appearance.

Telling this story to the group, of which half were men in positions of personal and organisational power, I touched a nerve. I told them that in telling this story I was making myself vulnerable in a way I would never have allowed myself in the past. Previously I would have been fishing for their respect and this to me would have seemed like the worst way of trying to reel them in. I was surprised as the men responded with such warmth, recognition and appreciation at surfacing something clearly felt but rarely expressed by many men.

On returning to Australia my friend gently but firmly pushed me to the decision making point about my aspirations for the size of the business and my role in it. I was on the verge of angry tears as I realised the extent to which my need to prove myself was driving my attraction to building a more sizeable venture.

The ultimate death of this aspiration came not long after. That week as I was traveling to the airport to fly to Tasmania for the Christmas break I realised that after all this time I could let this need go. When I looked at it, I did feel I was a success. A success in my own terms.

Clearing the debris of this unconscious but all pervasive motivator I was able to objectively appraise the options before me. I found I was still interested in the notion of putting myself to the challenge and learning that a larger business would involve. But importantly, what was also clear was the criteria for having a business in my life.

On the plane returning to Melbourne, reading an article on the notion of a utopian society in the Australian Financial Review, I set down what I really wanted from my business. Firstly it must materially and energetically support those things that are most important to me in my life. At present that is my spiritual journey as a Buddhist practitioner, the relationships in my life and a lifestyle of health, simplicity, style, enjoyment and balance.

Secondly the business had to fulfill a clear and pressing business need of my clients, while also being socially beneficial. The work had to be fulfilling and finally I wanted it to demonstrate a viable alternative model of working.

With these criteria scribbled in the margin of the article it was crystal clear that I didn’t want or need to put the hard yards into building a larger enterprise. In fact I valued the simplicity and relative ease of my life and that the micro business model, networked with other such people, suited my personality and could deliver on the criteria.

At the same time a peer in a different industry had decided to head down the business building path. A decision which clearly supported his own unique set of criteria and motivators.

What is interesting to me is not the outcome of the decision so much as the process. Seeing those dark nooks and crannies of my mind that hold my desires and needs, fears and fantasies. The ultimate clarity and authenticity of my own decision came as a result of the skillful means employed by my friend which helped me to lay these out in the light of day and have a good look at them. To consider their appropriateness as motivators for business decisions.

Business is not some safe house in which I can escape from my patterns and ways of being at a personal level. In fact it often provides a movie theatre sized screen on which to see these patterns at work.

Walking down Collins Street the other day I no longer felt the subtle need to be respected, to be liked or to be approved of by the traffic of my professional peers. I felt a calm sense of doing what I really wanted; of using economic endeavor to achieve a life of my own design. I realised I had many things to thank my father for in achieving that success, but nothing more to prove.

Andrew is a facilitator and consultant in organisational change and good governance. ad@andrewdonovan.com.au

This article was first published in Ethical Enterprise News, Summer 2001.

Ethical Enterprise News is produced quarterly by Ethical Enterprise Network, an Australian network of enterprises committed to ethical, sustainable and just business practices.

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