Most Interesting Thing I've Read Lately

I read about business pretty regularly, especially for healing arts professionals or microbusinesses. Here's a selection that I found particularly interesting recently. It helped me understand where I am in my business and that it's part of a natural evolution. It also helped me appreciate that the things I'm angst'ing about are also completely normal (and, no, I'm not crazy!).
From:  Twelve Months To Your Ideal Private Practice, a workbook
By:  Lynn Godzki

Certain themes consistently emerge at different stages of small-business development -- concerns about survival and competition, a move toward stability, a drive to expand, a push to affililate, and so on. These themes tend to occur across the board in all businesses and follow a similar progression. As such, they are the evolutionary markers of a business. Although the markers are not strictly linear and don't arise in identical ways, if you are familiar with them and know where to look, it's possible to see the developmental path of any business. You can spot which stage is currently occurring, and if you understand the ramifications of the particular stage, you will know what tasks the business owner [you] needs to attend to in order to master the challenges of that stage. You can predict what will happen next as the business continues to evolve. You have a perspective from which to lubricate instead of obstruct inevitable business changes. You can begin to enjoy the bumpy ride of business a lot more by highlighting the most positive aspects inherent in each stage. Business success becomes easier...


Nature works on change; the world around us is in a state of constant flux. Change in one's business often occurs as a response to a changing environment and small businesses as are expecially reactive to external forces. But even though business evolution is constant and can be reactive, it is not necessarily random. It can be charted...


We naively think that our business success or failure is based primarily on factor that involved our psychology, or skill level, or other personal issues; while this may be true, rarely do we factor the developmental arc of business into the success or failure equation...


The following chart is a very brief representation of [Don] Beck and [Chris] Cowan's color coded spiral dynamics model...

Color	Thinking	Value Systems – Bottom Lines
Beige	Automatic	Basic Survival
Purple	Animistic	Myths, traditions, and rituals
Red	Egocentric	Power, glory, and exploitation
Blue	Absolutist	Authority and stability
Orange	Materialistic	Success and material gain
Green	Humanistic	Equality and humanism
Yellow	Systemic	Choice and change
Turquoise	Holistic	Harmony and holism