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When I was younger I was fortunate enough to learn some Ojibwe lessons. I was taken under the wing of a native woman who thought that everyone should learn these lessons, and so she decided to teach some of us wasitchu’s. It was a great experience to learn about cultural beliefs and ways. Since then we have parted ways but the lessons are always close to my heart, and embedded themselves in my beliefs. Where is this going? Let’s fast forward.

Everyone who has taken Organization behaviour has been introduced to needs theories: Maslow, Herzberg, Alderfer and McClellan. Now I’m sure there are other theories out there, but here are the introduction staples. Let’s take a closer look at Alderfer. His theory was a simple 3 tier needs theory: Existence, Relatedness and Growth.

Existence – The basic needs to survive.
Relatedness – The desire for relationships
Growth – A desire to improve

Now lets rewind. There is a native lesson I learned called the 3 Sacred Fires: Blue, Red, Yellow. The analogy goes, like this, like a fire there are many colours. But to truly have a fire that lasts there must be a blue flame in the center, your center. As you meet that the red and then the yellow flame will follow

Blue Fire – The will to be, the will to know.
Red Fire – The fire of equanimity, generosity, and compassionate wisdom
Yellow Fire – The fire of creative mind. The wisdom to succeed

All through these fires, if you have successfully solidified your blue flame, you can choose to help others with their fires, by lending your fire to help ignite theirs.

Sound like a needs theory to me. It also has a nice twist of community to help others with their needs. Tribes are high performing collective work groups. I’m sure I’m not coming up with a new theory here, but I’m thinking if there is a parallel between needs theory and the 3 fires, what other leadership or organizational lessons could be learned. The Native tribes like the Ojibwa survived through organizational behaviour. They were the masters of it and had to be to survive. So, what I’;’m going to do is take a look around and look for some other lessons or folklore from some or the native stories I know and some I don’t to see what else there might be out their. Who knows a little spark could go off and we could see an interesting old new theory emerge.

As I’ve been getting into the world of business, I’m still an infant in this world, I’ve been noticing a trend. It seems to me that people are afraid of the theological implications of business. Why is it that people are afraid of the spiritual in business? I’m willing to admit that my new eyes in this world are wrong. I’m willing to admit that I’m not reading the right places or seeing the right things, but if that’s the case, can someone please let me know.

With so many people around the world believing in something beyond, I find it strange that it’s not as widely spoken about in business. Words like faith are intently avoided. I came across a post that Curt Rosengren, The Occupational Adventurer(sm), made about meditation. I was happy for the fact that such a world like “meditation” and “centering” made it into a blog about business; I was happy at the fact that he was making a good point about the importance to take a moment to calm. But he then decided to keep going with, “I don’t mean wrap yourself in a pretzel and contemplate the sound of one hand clapping meditation.” What’s that? Did that sound like a little slam? My point here isn’t an attack on Curt, thank you by the way for triggering this little thought. My point is that if yoga or thai-chi or meditative chanting is a tool you’ve found to use, then use it.

You can’t be afraid to believe in your beliefs in this world. If you are where a suit and in an office you can’t be expected to put your spirit away in a little box and hide it. Their is a warning….you can’t shove it in people faces either. If they don’t believe in your belief so be it, move on. I’ve found the most interesting conversations and those most enlightening moments with co-workers are when I speak about the spiritual things.

The other day, I was watching an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And interestingly enough I actually got a business insight from the Ferengi. Now, for those of you unaware with this species in the Trek world, it’s pretty much a business driven society. They have their “Rules of Acquisition” that they live their lives by. Business is their religion (which on a side note is another post I’m working on…you’ll see) Now ultimately, when you have rules like “Employees are rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them’, or “Never be afraid to mislabel a product’ chances are you might not learn a lot of desirable ideas.

But this particular episode had to do with “The Great Material Continuum’. This is what caught my interest. The analogy of this continuum is a great river. By steering the current of commerce “The River will provide”. This particular episode dealt with trying to obtain a certain item. To obtain the item the Ferengi character had to barter items. Now, some items were “borrowed’ and there eventually became a whirlwind of ruffled feathers and nervous people. As the deadline came closer and closer the whirlwind got bigger and bigger. But the Ferengi had faith in The River. Ultimately the task got completed and everything was not only put back, but their were also improvements along the way. Now to the ah-ha. In looking back at my life and decisions I’m guilty of allowing this fear to change the course of the outcome. Now, the outcome was good because of sound decisions, but imagine what could happen with a little faith?

It’s time I started from scratch again. As any of you who have been coming back to my site praying and hoping for any at all some sort of update, you haven’t been getting one. Why? I don’t have a good explanation. It’s just laziness. Well ladies and gentleman, change is in the air! I’ve formally put in notice with my job, and in about a little more than 2 months down the road, I will be officially an entrepreneur. I will be working for myself. All this has accumulated from gut feelings of despair and monotony. I’ve been educating myself, reading various blogs and becoming a little bit of a sponge for leadership and a bit on design. As a result, I’ll be trying to post more interesting articles.

New Look

Off the bat as you can see, I’ve changed the look. It’s the same but different. It’s been XHTML-ified, revamped using a nifty thing we like to call web standards. It’s not perfect and sure, people will always have something to say, but it’s the effort of evolution that counts. Along with the snazzy new colours I’m going to try and do a but of colour coding on these posts. If it’s a post about business, or pleasure, philosophy, or music, you should so see a difference in the post off the bat. I thought about adding more, but, half the appeal about the new look is simplify.

New Thoughts

Well with all of this change I’m sure a question is what will you be expecting with this new leaf? What’s different? What’s changed? You’ll be reading more opinionated and sharing types of post. It seems that I’ve got thoughts and ideas that I’ve been keeping stored in my brain. I’ve been afraid to share but I need to put myself out there with some opinions, some thoughts and some theories. If I don’t then no one will benefit, no one will improve and ultimately, I won’t improve.