Who’s Running Your Business? Developing your Inner Business
Team
by Paul Gale-Baker and Robin Gale-Baker
How could our business be better? How could it offer us more,
in financial, emotional and spiritual fulfilment? Most of us
in small business or with professional practices would like our
business to be something more than it is.
For many of us, though, we feel like our business is stuck;
we are working too hard for too little and not having time for
the fun in our lives. What brought us to this point? How did
we get from a vision we once felt excited about and began with
such high hopes to where we are now?
Others of us who are doing well in our businesses may still
wonder why it is that we can’t quite take it to the next
level. Why is there a ceiling on our efforts, our imagination,
our creativity?
Most of us want to know how to fix it. We call in a consultant,
talk to our accountant or attend a motivational seminar. This
‘how to’ is important. If we don’t know the basics
of business planning and marketing, we’re unlikely to succeed.
More crucial to lasting success, however, is knowing who is running
our business.
The truth is our business is rarely run by an inner business
team which combines the skills of an entrepreneur, a manager
a worker and a marketer. All too often it is only one or two
of these ‘business personalities’. Yet all businesses
need the services of each of these personalities.
To get a sense of who is not involved in running your business,
take a moment and ask yourself: “What is not happening in
my business?” Then consider if you were to bring in an employee
to make this happen, what role they would fill. Would it be someone
to manage and plan, someone to come up with business ideas, someone
to do the work or someone to promote the product.
What happens is that most of us have become identified with
only one or two of the business personalities. When this happens,
we don’t have access to the parts of us which can plan or
generate ideas or do the work. Our ability to run the business
in an effective and satisfying way is severely curtailed.
In fact, all of us can have access to and benefit from those
parts we thought didn’t exist. We all have an Entrepreneur,
a Manager, a Worker and a Marketer. By becoming identified with
one or two only, we have disowned the others, but they still
exist, buried inside us and we can all have access to them. Once
discovered, however, to have them work effectively, we need an
Inner CEO - the Aware Ego process.
What people in any business - large or small - need to do
is to develop their Inner Business Team and their Aware Ego process.
In our Who's Running Your Business? course we make use
of the process of Voice Dialogue to allow people to experience
these parts of themselves which haven’t been partners in
the business.
Once the Inner Business Team is functioning as a team, we
need to look at the other issues that arise. It may be that you
are working longer hours and want to work less. Perhaps you are
feeling burnt out or lacking in creativity. You might feel an
undefined block each time you come to do something new.
At this point we look at who stands in the way of the Inner
Business Team. Is it the pusher who drives us to work hard but
ineffectively, a rulemaker who sets a limit on what we earn or
a critic who tells us we won’t succeed? Is it a part who
won’t let us have a life outside work? Separating from these
selves makes it much easier for the Inner Business Team to do
its work. At the same time, what has been previously unavailable
can become accessible. We can discover our creative side , or
bring in an inner parent to look after our anxiety.
The Aware Ego process orchestrates the Inner Business Team,
allowing time for each to do their job. It also manages the other
parts who may otherwise interfere with the process or our Inner
Business Team, while bringing in other parts which are useful.
We have developed the Who's Running Your Business? course
to assist people in their own businesses or in organisations
to develop their Inner Business Team and their Inner CEO to help
reach the vision they have for their business.
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