corporations are crumbling
as heart-led businesses emerge
One of the best things about our Covid experience (and let’s face it, there weren’t many), was that people started to question how they spent their time at work and they started to question the behaviour, power and control of large corporations. Could they work from home, how could they improve their relationship with their families and would their quality of life generally get better? For many, it meant cutting out the commute and working from home, or being paid to do nothing as their place of work was closed.
The lockdowns were an opportunity for people to reconnect with their families and spend more time together. It was a very positive experience for many. For others it was more challenging, but it was still a chance to become more aware of and change the family dynamics that weren’t working.
The people who had previously requested to work from home and were told, “this is not possible for business reasons”, suddenly had the evidence that they could actually be trusted to do a full day’s work from home. I’ve got to say, having experienced over 40 years of office life, I’ve seen some people spending more time deflecting responsibility than doing a full day’s work, even when they are physically in the office… but that’s another story.
People also had the opportunity to do more of what they love to do. They were able to exercise more, create more, cook fresh food from scratch, spend time with friends and lead a more heart-led life.
Awareness is the first point of change and once you experience something that you love, the desire and pull to go back to it is extremely strong. So having been in a 9-5 job with probably 1-2 hours (or more) travel per day, many people increasingly resented the world of ‘work’, especially for large corporations.
There is also the issue of equality, pay, hours of work, quality of work, recognition and being heard. Whilst some high flyers enjoy the challenge of the career ladder, increasing pay and bonuses and working long hours, many employees are on the treadmill, swallowing the lie that this is all life has to offer. It’s a painful realisation for many that their work pays the bills, but doesn’t pay enough for a life they might love - these are the people that ask, ‘Is this really it?”
Some people will be ok with the treadmill and the apparent security and certainty that they believe it gives them. They may be ok with an ‘it’s fine’ life, and may accept boredom or even resentment as their lot. They may be ok with knowing that people above them are paid significantly more, assuming that those people are smarter or carry more responsibility than they do. However, the Covid experience has changed that for many of us, and we are starting to question more and more, especially about what is real, true and fair in our world.
All of this got me wondering about values. If a corporation has embedded strong values, which are apparently demonstrated daily, why do they need to be communicated internally? Over my years working in HR, I spent a lot of time on defining, communicating and integrating values into organisations. I often couldn’t remember the values, especially when there were more than five or in one ridiculous instance, 17 of them – I know I wasn’t alone in that.
If you’ve ever worked for a large business, you’ve probably experienced ‘values’ communication. Thinking back over the years, how aligned have the values been to the behaviour or actions that you saw and experienced? I would imagine that the answer is “not very”, and that is because although these values reflected what our intuition knew was the right thing, they were rarely a reflection of actual behaviour.
There has been and still is a lot of bullying in organisations, both overt and subliminal. People are often very uncomfortable with being honest about calling out behaviour or poor performance and so they find other ways of dealing with it, such as; ignoring it, shaming, using humour to deflect, not giving a decent pay increase, moving the employee to another team or dismissing them without ever discussing what the real issue was.
Take ignoring bullying as an example. The repercussions of this are huge and with massive financial cost to the business. If someone behaves inappropriately and it is not dealt with, other people start behaving inappropriately too, especially if they see their boss not dealing with the obvious issue. If it continues, people leave and it’s always the top performers who go first, because it’s just not worth the compromises required for them to stay. So the cycle of negativity spins on, subliminally and overtly – hugely affecting the bottom line. The ‘shadow of the leader’ is a powerful thing in determining how people behave.
When people are told, ‘that’s not possible for business reasons’ or ‘the business has decided’ - who is the business, what are the reasons? The people are the business and the business is sometimes used to justify decisions that are based on lies or deceptions and are bad for the employees – all so that a human being does not have to be accountable for the outcome.
The most significant impact on a company’s success in my experience, comes directly from poor performance in senior leadership teams. It is rarely dealt with properly. The most common factor in ignoring poor performance comes down to relationships. Even when it is blindingly obvious to all employees in a leader’s team that they are incompetent (& probably don’t even enjoy their job), they continue in the role because of their personal connection to the most powerful person in the company. This results in a lot of tears, anger and resentment, which after a good cry and venting of frustrations, people around them either leave or carry on, and the negative behaviour is perpetuated through resentment. The number one need for people is to feel heard and that often doesn’t happen – it’s interesting to me that hear is in heart.
In the past, people would put up with the corporate power games and nefarious behaviour to worship the money god, but that is changing. We are going through a massive shift in consciousness and awakening that is bringing about an awareness for a lot of people and they will vote with their hearts (and then their feet) more and more. What we have experienced with corporations, is magnified by the globalists and the truth is emerging around power and control and what is really going on in this world.
The only businesses that will survive and flourish over the next ten years will be truly heart-led with authentic leaders. We are already seeing large businesses fail on the high street, nefarious banking activities are coming to the fore (just read ‘The Title is Unimportant’ if you want an insight into that) and corporations, identifying as government bodies, are going bankrupt all around the UK.
This is the most exciting time to be alive and I know that’s a struggle to believe for some. We are seeing more chronic and serious illnesses, young people are experiencing heart problems like never before, the number of excess deaths is significant, the emergence of political incompetence and lies, and inflation is ‘off the scale’ high. However, this is all part of the big reveal and the big levelling. We are meant to see what has been going on under the surface for hundreds, even thousands of years, so that we can be sovereign and true to the nature and pure love that we are.
”It’s all ending
we’ve gotta stop pretending
who we are”
– Don’t Speak, No Doubt
We have been conditioned not to feel pain, not to feel strong emotions (especially at work) to deny them and do anything to avert change that we don’t want. We are now being invited to get comfortable with being uncomfortable – it is the way human beings grow. It is challenging to feel scared, to not know and yet we are not meant to know everything and how it’s going to turn out. That is the beauty of a life full of opportunities and possibilities – not this fear based, well defined narrow path that we have been conditioned to believe is it. It is so not it! Life isn’t a business to be managed; it is a mystery to be consciously lived.
And through this significant change, I see the emergence of heart-led, creative businesses of all sizes that embrace change, treat everyone as equal, ensuring they are heard and that they enjoy what they do. Imagine if… everyone was paid the same and truly equal. Now I know that is a massive stretch from where we are right now – call me an idealist….. but every journey starts with a single step. Life isn’t a business to be managed; it is a mystery to be consciously lived.
My words are always an invitation to become aware of something new and take action to start to change whatever is not in alignment with who you truly are. If it seems like a giant leap to get what you want, take a small step. As Rumi says,
“although the road is never ending, take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance… on this path let your heart be your guide, for the body is hesitant and full of fear”
Trust in love.
Much love
Pauline