Business is Romance

The reason it doesn’t make sense, and is at best half the picture is as follows:

Wars are based on violence – business needn’t be, and effective sustainable business isn’t.

Sports are based on beating someone – business needn’t be, and effective sustainable business isn’t.

Violence is about doing something harmful to someone against their will. Good business, and by “good” I mean both effective and ethical, markets and sells with permission. Acquiring and developing relationships with customers is a lot more like a win-win romance. You meet them, show your best side, start slowly, get to know each other and if it works for both parties – end up in financial bed together. See Mr Godin on permission marketing and tribes. I interpret his message as “Stop trying to rape your customers dumb-ass.” To me Business as romance is a better metaphor.

Metaphors are lenses and shape how we see the world, so if we keep using this metaphor it WILL change us and our world. Choose.

In competitive Western sports* there is a winner and a loser and you become the former by beating the latter. This is so embedded in our culture that we take it for granted that this is just how things work. Survival of the fittest and all that right? Wrong. Modern views of evolution see this as only half with the picture with cooperation and niches being the balancing side, but even if it were the case in biology as in sports, why does it map what we do in business? Business successes are about doing something new and original or developing a really good “fit” to a customer base – survival of the “stand-outs and fit ins” if you will 🙂

Unlike sports you can never “win” in business because there will always be more money, customers, targets etc. If you compete you will always be a loser.

But what about people taking customers away? Your “competitors” will only be able to befriend your customers if you let yourself go, trash the relationship and become unattractive. Viewing other businesses as competitors is a mistake – seeing clients/customers as needing to be “won over” is an even bigger one. It’s all just a web of love affairs. Business is Romance.

I’m not saying there’s no sports/war-like competition in business, I’m suggesting it’s overstated and usually a bad simile for what’s going on. Google or Amazon don’t “dominate” their markets – they practically ARE their markets because most people love them. It’s a marriage, but there may be a divorce one day if they don’t manage the relationship, but they have no serious “competitors” right now. Similarly with small businesses operating in niches. I run a business training company that specialises in embodied training – my supposed competitors are mainly my friends, and we support each other’s events and help each other out. How is that sport or war? It’s more like a dance where people who like each other and have similar interests hang out and look for romantic partners together? Life is a cooperative game not bloody football. To use a cookery analogy, why not stop fighting over crumbs and bake more cakes? Having the exact same business as others is like only going after married partners at the dance. Even companies who offer similar products to similar clients as myself, I choose to see as partners of another kind. The aikido metaphor of “attackers” giving us growth opportunities and challenge gifts that make us stronger – works well for me. There’s a native American tribe who have a saying, “Kill your enemy- make him your friend.”

There’s a natural progression at work that I see happening all around – there’s some growth pains because of it right now. Developmental models largely agree with each other and track the following stages of growth in both individuals and societies cross-culturally:

Me vs. everyone (egocentric) – “I win you loose”

Us vs. them (ethnocnetric) – “we win they loose”

Us (worldcentric) – “we all win/there is no win-loose”