Business has become shorthand for money, pressure, competition, targets and long hours. We talk about “business life” as though it stands apart from real life, as though we can leave our humanity at the office door and collect it again on the way home.
What does business really mean?
Business is not busyness
A full diary is not proof of value and neither is constant activity, nor an owner who never stops. Sometimes I see people lean on busyness as a very sophisticated avoidance technique and, as a result, an entire organisation works harder because nobody has paused long enough to find the source of the problem and why everyone wears the busyness badge of honour.
Business is not merely making money, and yes, of course money matters. First the revenue generation, then the profit because without sufficient return, a business cannot survive, invest, employ people, reward risk or continue creating value. Money is the silent applause of a job well done.
Let’s remember that a business is not the same as a company. A company is a legal structure. The business is the living system within it where people, relationships, knowledge, promises, decisions, resources and consequences all reside in their own ecosystem. Nor is business simply employment for its owner. If every decision and every result depends on the owner’s time and energy, they may own a company, but they have created a demanding job instead of a hard working business. I believe very strongly that a business should support its owner, not destroy its creator.
So, what is business?
I’m fascinated by history and how words have evolved over time so I’ve researched “business” and found how businesses existed long before the modern corporation.
Its history is revealing and is developed from the Old English bisignes, which held ideas we now separate including care or concern, anxiety or solicitude, occupation or toil as something that kept a person engaged.
Solicitude means care but carries the possibility that care may become worry. Let’s face it, many owners today know that tension. They care, they start a business, they become occupied by the business and then become preoccupied by it.
By late Middle English, business became associated with an appointed task, with the commercial aspects to know today coming many years later. Reflecting on some of the original meaning, perhaps we have retained rather too much of the anxiety and lost too much of the care.
For most of history, work was woven into life. Workshop, farm, household, marketplace and community were connected. Industrialisation moved work into factories and offices; law made companies separate legal entities. Whilst industrialisation and companies brought opportunity and scale, people started treating business as separate from nature, community and humanity. It isn’t.
Business connects humanity, nature and community
Every commercial decision enters someone’s life. It shapes how people feel when they wake, the energy they carry home, the resources we extract, the places we affect and the future we help create. There is no business decision without a human or ecological consequence.
At its simplest, a business is an organised human system that creates value, delivers it to others and receives enough value in return to continue.
At its best, it is more than that. It is a purposeful way for people to combine their abilities and resources to create useful value, while generating enough return to nourish its people, reward its owners and sustain its future. I’d call that thriving.
Profit may be needed for the longevity of a company but humanity is the essential ingredient.
Business should be woven into life not built at the expense of one or more lives. A woven thread contributes to the whole cloth, just as a business should contribute to improving whole lives of everyone associated with the company. A business should create peace, purpose and profit. Done well, it works hard for its owner, contributes something worthwhile to society and leaves people and places better for having encountered it.
Get in touch and let’s have a confidential conversation that costs nothing, but might change everything. 30 minutes for a virtual coffee. No script. No sales pitch. Just an honest conversation between two people. Nothing to prepare… just turn up.
Love. Gail.