Last weekend, Alex and I travelled to a tiny community called Angsbaka in central Sweden to a conference/festival on living sustainably.

I was there to give a talk on how digital is changing the way we work and also to give a workshop on my programme Mindful at Work (which took place in a round strawbale house - lovely energy!).

The tagline of FuturePerfect was 'an adventure in living well' so I took as my starting point how we can 'work well' especially how digital can facilitate this.

Here in the UK, but increasingly in Sweden as well, the way we are working isn't working. We create lifestyles and behaviours for ourselves that are unsustainable for our planet and that don't make us happy in the long term. The price of maintaining a certain type of lifestyle is having to work long hours or stay in a job you hate but pays well.

“There is more to life than just increasing its speed.”   Mathatma Gandhi

A second issue is that when we are working, many of us are not working very effectively. We create mountains of busywork to keep us from doing our Great Work. Increasing emails, social media and our 24/7 connected culture through our mobile means that we never really switch off from work.

But instead of digital being part of the problem, I see its potential to be part of the solution.

With digital we can increasing choose who we work for and how we create value and meaning in our work. It's never been easier to use the social web to set up your own microbusiness - all the tools are free, you just need a good idea. A digital microbusiness can enable you to work on something you are passionate about rather then having to leave your values at the door when you go to work.

With digital we can choose where and when we work. With faster broadband speeds, cloud computing and communications technologies such as Skype, you can choose to work from any where you like - your front room, your local cafe or another country. You can downshift to the country without having to worry about finding work in rural communities or downshift in the city and work less.

With digital we can choose who to work and collaborate with. We can connect with people on the other side of the world and expand our market globally.

And this is only the beginning. The internet is barely 20 years old and we are only now starting to see some of it's potential.

The overall consensus at FuturePerfect was that by living sustainably we can actually live better and happier lives and I think that our working practices have a huge part to play in this. Everyone has to make a living somehow, but if more people can transition to having a freer and more flexible working life that creates value for others, then we are on the right track.

Digital can be a real enabler of this: an adventure in working well.

Chris Sacca is a a venture investor, public speaker, and former employee of Google and was one of the early investors in Twitter. Here at the Wanderlust Festival in Vermont, CA last year, he talks to Soren Gordhamer from Wisdom 2.0 about being mindful in our Twitter and digital use.

As someone with 1.3 million followers and, by his own admission, a pretty busy guy, Chris gives a refreshing and candid perspective on his social media use and how he makes time for other things in his life outside work.

Enjoy!

This is a question that was going through my head repeatedly yesterday at the inspiring and thought-provoking Comment Conference organised by Editorial Intelligence at the Cass Business School and Lloyds Banking Group in London.

The conference brought together opinion formers, industry leaders and entrepreneurs to discuss the future of Enterprise in the UK. Panels debated The Skills Agenda, Women in Enterprise, and Entrepreneurship.

An interview with Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of the John Lewis partnership, one of the largest co-operatives in the UK illustrated a radical approach to good business. John Lewis are owned by their employees whom are called 'partners' and the management team, whether at local or national level, are accountable to their employees, not the other way around. In fact, the mission of John Lewis is to 'create the happiness of their members' through meaningful employment and great working conditions. In this they recognise that organisations are essentially collections of people and without the buy-in of their people they would not be as an effective business. Financially John Lewis have a goal of making 'sufficient' profit for their partners instead of maximising profit for a few shareholders possibly at the expense of the planet or other people. This is where 'greed' gives way to 'enough' - a lesson for many businesses.

Stephan Chambers, Director of the MBA at the Said Business School and Chairman of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship spoke of his belief, that I share, that business can change the world. He said that governments and NGOs have been unable to solve some of the world's most endemic problems such as climate change, poverty and food security, problems that are going to radically change the world we live in. If these organisations have failed, perhaps business can step up to the challenge and create radical and sustainable solutions to these pressing problems.

Corporations simply going about doing business as usual is quickly becoming untenable in today's climate. More and more businesses are beginning to realise that doing the 'right thing' can be good for the planet, their people and the bottom line. Ian Chesire, CEO of DIY chain Kingfisher/B&Q called for a radical reappraisal of capitalism in the Guardian in March moving from a maximum linear growth model to one of 'maximal well-being for minimal planetary impact'. If only all companies were so forward thinking.

In one of the Thoughts for the Day, Giles Gibbons, founder and CEO of Good Business made a plea for getting away from unhelpful labels like 'social enterprise' and instead working towards helping more businesses be social and more third sector organisations be entrepreneurial.

I think he's right. My vision is of a world where all business is social, that doing the right thing is demanded by employees and consumers and that there is nowhere for the dinosaurs of the 20th century to hide.

So yes, I think that all businesses can be social. And soon, they will have to be.

 

 

 

A beautiful and thought-provoking video today from Brene Brown about the power of vulnerability. As a reseacher Brown has been studying her topic for over 10 years and has found that three things differentiate those who feel no self-worth and those who have an inner self confidence. Those characteristics are courage, compassion (towards oneself and to others) and being able to connect with others.

The common thread she saw again and again in people with these characteristics was vulnerability.

Vulnerability in a business context is, at first glance, a strange concept. However, by opening ourselves up and being our authentic selves on the web and in person, even if that might invite criticism, we can really start to connect with others.

Brown urges us to let ourselves be seen, to love with all our hearts, and to practice gratitude and lean into joy.

What a wonderful philosophy to live by.

Enjoy.

I am three days into a month-long stay in Amsterdam working at social enterprise co-working space The Hub. Funded by an EU grant, I am spending my time here researching mindfulness and consciousness in business (and having a well-deserved break!)

Thomas Vaassen, one of the co-founders of The Hub Amsterdam, is also co-director of an innovative organisation called Realize! Along with his partners Diederick Janse and Jeroen Maes, Thomas "develops conscious people in conscious organisations" with the aim of 'waking up' employees, managers and leaders to a new way of working.

Reading their website this morning over a double espresso (this Hub has the best coffee machine - The Hub Islington take note!), I came across Conscious Business - the brainchild of Fred Kofman, co-founder of consulting firm Axialent and internationally acclaimed speaker and author.

In the best-selling book, Kofman identifies 7 principles of Conscious Business: unconditional responsibility; essential integrity; ontological humility; authentic communication; constructive negotiation; impeccable co-ordination; and emotional mastery.

The first of these, unconditional responsibility, had me thinking about choice in business and especially how we choose to spend our time.

Similar to the Buddhist viewpoint, Kofman argues that as human beings with independent thought we always have a degree of choice in determining how we respond to situations no matter how much or how little influence we have over the situation. In this sense we can interpret the word 'responsibility' as 'response-ability' - our ability to respond.

We have a choice whether to open our Inbox or to pick up a ringing phone and interrupt our flow. But overtime through the formation of habits and reactions we lose consciousness of our choices and start to act in an automatic fashion.

The more we are conscious that we are a human being with independent thought, the more unconditioned our responses will be. If we think of the analogy of a snowy day (normally it would be rainy but the Dutch snow is falling outside), if I explain to myself that I have wet clothes because I forgot an umbrella this morning, I begin to see myself as part of the problem. I have no influence over whether it snows or not but I do have a choice in how I dress for it!

Taking this principle into our working life is a powerful reminder that we do have a choice. We have a choice how much information we decide to consume on a daily basis, we have a choice whether to spend all day in our Inbox or doing our great work, we have a choice whether we switch our phone to silent and really engage with someone in person.

How can you apply the principle of unconditional responsibility in your working life?

PS If you would like to read more about the other six principles of Conscious Business, Realize! have a useful summary on their website.

[Image with thanks to Chicago Art Department via Creative Commons]