Conscious Finance – The Missing Element
Conscious Business is a global movement emerging in response to the unsustainability of current business practices.
As part of this movement, there is plenty written and taught about Conscious Organisations and Conscious Leadership, key pillars in the evolution of Conscious Business.
To be truly successful as conscious business leaders, though, we need to also talk about money because money plays a vital part in how our businesses function and how we can remain true to our Vision, our Purpose. It matters how we earn money, how we spend it, how we invest it and how we distribute it back into the communities we operate within.
We have noble ideas of how we want to do good business, yet so often, the practicalities of money appear to limit us and we make sub-optimal decisions, from a place of fear, anxiety or scarcity, without really knowing there is another way.
To be truly conscious in business, we have a third pillar
Conscious Finance
Why Does Conscious Finance Matter?
To quote Carl Jung, ‘until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate’.
Within businesses, until we make our relationship with money conscious, it will direct our organisations and we will explain away unexpected or poor outcomes as ‘unfortunate’, ‘poor planning’, ‘wrong timing’, ‘wrong product’ – or any other of a myriad of explanations.
Equally, we may believe our successes are purely because we made good decisions, unaware of the intangible influences which support us to succeed.
We may rely on financing which does not align with what we want for our business, not seeing any other alternatives. When business gets difficult, we become disempowered and are vulnerable to the vagaries of the financial systems.
We are likely to be making decisions influenced by an unexamined set of beliefs about money – our own and probably everyone we are in contact with – and we will not be open and transparent about this – because it is unconscious and unexamined.
We are out of power when we act from this place and so we are not thriving in the way we know we can thrive.
How does Conscious Finance help?
Conscious Finance helps to make your unconscious money story conscious – at the individual and the organisational level, regardless of whether you are ‘for profit’ or ‘not for profit’ and everything in between.
We start with the leaders in the organisation (usually the point of greatest leverage for change) and then work with the areas in the business which are in direct contact with money – Sales, Marketing, the Finance department. This is done in alignment with existing conscious leadership work or customised for different needs and combines one-on-one work with group work.
By using dialogue, practical exercises and an increasing awareness of how you relate with and to money, the unconscious behaviours, beliefs and fears which drive many of your financial decisions can be brought into awareness to be seen and released.
You learn how to move, individually and collectively, from the contraction of being ‘hi-jacked’ by your unconscious fears and beliefs into expansion and trust, empowering you/the group to make the right decisions, at the right time, for the right reasons.
You learn to relax around money issues so that discussions and decision-making can be transparent and truthful. You strengthen your commitment to conscious business as you see how business can be an engine of prosperity for All
Conscious Finance is relevant whether the activities of the organisation are ‘for profit’, ‘not for profit’, or anything in between – and the benefits will have a ripple effect on all your stakeholders and in your personal life.
See Working Together for how we can bring Conscious Finance into your consultancy work, your organisation and your personal world
Conscious Finance helps organisations to engage with finance in the context of the 4 P’s of People, Planet, Purpose and Presence to bring about a 5th P, which is Prosperity for All
When you practice Conscious Finance, you strengthen your relationships, you deepen your trust, and you align more fully with Life.
This is good business doing good
and serving All
Embedding Conscious Finance in our organisations is not just helping us to make conscious decisions relating to money, it is actually transformative work. Expanding our understanding of money as an evolutionary teacher of Wholeness and the supplier of the requirements of life, Conscious Finance is revelatory as it shows us the extraordinary beauty of life, which is available to us at all times, and it guides us as we all learn to engage in conscious and fair exchange, truly an outward expression of love.
Conscious Finance – The Commitments
When we practice Conscious Finance, we commit to the following:
Conscious Culture
- Create Conscious Organisations which help all to prosper
- Practice Conscious Leadership
- Understand the true nature of money
- Take radical responsibility for
- Our personal money story
- Our business’ money story
- Our impact on the planet
- Our impact on people’s lives
Conscious Relationships
- Build relationships with all stakeholders which deepen trust
- Be authentic in our relationships
- Be transparent in our agreements
- Recognise polarity – seek win-wins
- Develop agility and resilience to handle the unexpected
Conscious Exchange
- Understand what Fair Exchange truly is
- Recognise true abundance which supports the planet and all beings
- Practice elegant sufficiency
- Think and act regeneratively
- Be truthful in our accounting
- Understand our financial statements as a feed-back system
- Integrate non-financial metrics