Conscious Business is both an emerging, new paradigm (mindset and practices) for doing business and a movement within the world of business. While there a growing number of perspectives on what Conscious Business is, I am going to summarize what I personally consider its essence:

Becoming More Aware

Consciousness can be defined as what you’re aware of, including where you are directing your attention to and what is driving you. It is your level of awareness and focus of awareness as well as your intent. Through human will, consciousness becomes manifest in action. In my view, Conscious Business is cultivating an expanded awareness and applying it to business.

While heightened awareness of the external environment has always been valued in business, Conscious Business, in my opinion, places primary emphasis on the internal lens through which we view the world, particularly personal purpose and values. It involves paying particularly close attention to and placing worth on what’s going on in our inner world. It also implies that the more we are aware, the better.

Focusing on the Inner First

I think the cornerstone of conscious business is the belief that everything first happens in the mind. So if you want to accomplish anything, it first has to happen in your mind. If you want to change things or produce a different result, you first have to change something inside of you. It is placing primary importance on what’s going on inside rather than outside, beginning with being rather doing, placing awareness before action. As such, individuals can inhabit a “state of being” consistent with the future they want to create and then act from that consciousness. They experience thought as creating both inner and outer experience.

Being in the Present

A key characteristic of this state is being fully in the present, for example not operating from past patterns or thinking about some future. This sometimes referred to as Presence (by Eckhart Tolle) or mindfulness (greatly popularized by Jon Kabat-Zinn). Mindfulness is increasing being accepted in the business world, but my sense it has been often utilized as a means of reducing stress. In my mind, Conscious Business entails utilizing meditation, mindfulness and other forms of mind training as essential practices not just to manage stress, but move into and operate from more whole brain states of being where we are more energized and receptive, and have access to more wisdom and intelligence as well as intuition and creativity. Needless to say, here we are more capable and able to function closer to our full potential.

Driven by Love

Dr. Joe Dispenza depicts an aspect of these expanded states to include “elevated emotions” such inspiration, awe, joy,  enthusiasm and compassion. To me, Conscious Business strives to be love-based and does not shirk from using the L word in the context of business. Most business today is still fear-based, driven by mindsets of scarcity, survival, distrust, threat and zero-sum competition. Being love-based, a Conscious Business “leads from the heart”; that is it understands the importance of integrating and harmonizing heart and mind at work.

Operating from a Realization of Interdependence and Pursuit of Higher Purpose

I think most every Conscious Business tends to be built around a two principle framework of higher purpose and interdependence. It is based on a deep understanding that a company exists as part of an interconnected and interdependent ecosystem, which, in turn, is part of an ever expanding fabric of ecosystems; that it operates as part of a living, dynamic whole and not as a separate entity. As such, a conscious business considers and aims to optimize outcomes for all its stakeholders: (customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, local and greater community, environment ). It creates “a game worth playing” for all players. This compels it to take a long term view of its action and impact.

Moreover, it is driven by a higher purpose that is greater than itself. It exists to be in service of a cause. It seeks in some way to provide benefit and value to human society and/or the planet. A conscious business may explicitly see itself as a force for doing good in the world or solving some particular global problem.

All Businesses are Conscious to Some Degree

There are a growing number of frameworks and movements (some of the one’s I’ve explored are summarized on the Models and Movements page). I particularly like this pithy encapsulation by Conscious Business pioneer Fred Kofman:

“Conscious business is such a discipline. It integrates heart and mind in the practice of business as an expression of human values.”

He goes on to add:

“The bottom line is clear: You don’t need to sell out to be successful. You don’t need to drop out to be happy. When you do business consciously you manifest your true self and inspire everyone else to realize his or her own true nature.”

While articulating clear and useful models and ideals for conscious business practice, I find myself thinking that all businesses are conscious to some degree and trending toward consciousness. So, I am in support of any person or company that is taking steps in that direction, whether they use the constructs and language of the Conscious Business paradigm or not.