All things are connected.
Several years ago, I was asked by a business journal in Phoenix to comment on what I felt was a core competency of a company they were celebrating, one that I had been working with for some time. I wrote that I felt there were several competencies I would consider, but the one that stood above the others was the owner’s ability to build relationships both within the company and within the communities his company served.
As I’ve worked with clients over the years, I’ve witnessed how this relationship-building skill plays a central role in a company’s continued success. And it applies to relationships with communities of thousands and communities of just two.
Relationship building is just one small outward example of the principle of connectedness. But it goes well beyond this and applies to the connectedness we have with things that have taken place before our lifetime, or the lifetime of our business, and that will apply to things long after we are gone. It also applies to things not as visible as relationship building.
If you’ve been reading this series from the beginning, one of the things you may have noticed is that most of the points are closely linked to the others. So, even these principles are connected.
It’s easy to think of our business as an isolated entity that affects mostly ourselves. It’s not. It touches everything else in our life and everything else touches it. Granted, this is a point easily missed when we’re up to our chin in just trying to survive or grow.
When our head is down and we’re immersed in the go-go phase of our business, it’s easy to be consumed in our own bubble and to get lost in the weeds. We don’t always see the bigger picture and how everything we do is connected to everything else: people, relationships, money, health, communities, and even love. Most things we experience in life and in business have a way of circling back and revisiting us later in life—what some call karma. It’s always best to set the stage early for a rewarding reunion.
Not only is everything connected to everything that exists now, it is also connected to everything that will come. Even if only in a very small way.
Many of us have witnessed relationships that have been started because of chance encounters, only to learn later how many seemingly disconnected events had to take place to lead to that encounter, and then to realize the impact that one encounter had on future events.
In my early years as a business owner, I was so busy running around with my hair on fire that I didn’t always pay attention to what I was doing, why I was doing it, or the long-term implications of the things I was doing. At the time, it wasn’t about a sense of mission or interconnectedness, it was about feeding my family, meeting weekly payrolls, and covering the schedules of employees who didn’t show up for work that day. I didn’t have time to think about connectivity or any other fluffy stuff that didn’t address my immediate needs.
But that was the whole point. By not understanding the relationship between my immediate actions and the things I kept telling myself I wanted to achieve through my business, I was actually creating drag on them and making more work than I needed to. A moment of quiet and silent reflection might have provided the insight I needed to make better decisions at the time that would save me a lot of heartburn as I moved downline.
This concept of connectedness isn’t limited to the world of business. It exists in every facet of our lives, and it exists in nature and in science as well.
The first law of thermodynamics is a good example of this. In a nutshell, it states that “Energy is always conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed. In essence, energy can be converted from one form into another.” Since we and everything we do in our business is an expression of energy, then we’re not only connected to everything that exists now, but we’re connected to everything that existed before and everything that will exist in the future. It’s no wonder that sometimes after I’ve voiced a strong opinion on a subject my wife accuses me of sounding just like my father. I guess I am him. And he is me.
Noted theoretical physicist Dr. David Bohm states, “The entire past is enfolded in each one of us in a very subtle way. If you reach deeply into yourself, you are reaching into the very essence of mankind.” He goes on to mention Mach’s principle (named after the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach), “The whole is as necessary to the understanding of its parts, as the parts are necessary to the understanding of the whole.”
Translating these lofty scientific principles into the language of business means that the things we engage in every day are built on (connected to) everything that has gone on in business before us. And the things we engage in today will be part of what future businesses will be built upon.
On its surface this idea of connectedness might not seem important, but it is. Fortunately, we don’t have to be a theoretical physicist or an engineer to appreciate the benefits that our connectedness can bring. We don’t even have to observe physical evidence of it. All we have to do is be open to seeing it all around us.
