Community – Page 16 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

August 7, 2019

Do no harm

One of the books I’m reading at the moment is “Jainism and Ethical Finance”, by Atul K. Shah and Aidan Rankin.

The first vow taken as a Jain is ahiṃsā – non-violence or the desire to do no harm.

The interesting thing about this is that it extends beyond humans to animals, insects, microbes and even plants. Strict Jains are vegetarians who do not eat roots, because this destroys a plant’s ability to reproduce itself.

That is a very thought-through concept of impact, that we could all learn from.

Especially as it doesn’t prevent Jains becoming highly successful business owners.

August 6, 2019

Neighbours

Last night, on my way to my pilates class, I spotted one of my neighbours leaving the house of another.

I happen to know that she visits this neighbour every day, with a meal, with shopping, to have a chat. She’s been doing it for at least 30 years.

For no other reason than that they are neighbours.

What struck me last night was the sweatshirt she was wearing.

“Love will save us” it said.

She’s right. Nothing else will.

July 26, 2019

Parasparopagraho Jīvānām

I’ve just ordered “Jainism and Ethical Finance”, by Atul K. Shah and Aidan Rankin, so I thought I’d find out a bit more about Jainism before it arrives (to supplement the tiny bit I know from reading ‘Kim’).

Two phrases really stood out for me in the Wikipedia entry on Jainism – ‘Parasparopagraho Jīvānām‘, the Jain motto, which means something like “the function of souls is to help one another”; and ‘Anekāntavāda’, the doctrine of ‘many-sidedness’.

To quote the Wikipedia entry fully,

Anekāntavāda ‘states that truth and reality is complex and always has multiple aspects. Reality can be experienced, but it is not possible to totally express it with language. Human attempts to communicate is Naya, explained as “partial expression of the truth”.’

Parasparopagraho Jīvānām and Anekāntavāda seem like useful things to bear in mind as we try to communicate with each other. At least to me.

July 23, 2019

10 years old

When my dad was 10, he was evacuated to a small Durham village, to be safer than in Newcastle upon Tyne.

When I was 10, men walked on the moon.

We live through enormous changes, often not realising how enormous they are at the time.

What happened when you were 10?

July 22, 2019

What makes the best process? Everyone.

The best process is one that everyone will use and improve of their own accord, because it helps them to achieve what they want:

Agency – to make their own ‘me-shaped’ dent in the universe.
Mastery – to learn and master new skills.
Autonomy – to be free to choose how they make their dent.
Purpose – to do this for something bigger than themselves, that has meaning beyond the sale.
Community – to do all this with ‘people like us’.

The easiest way to achieve that is to involve them in its design, right from the start.

July 12, 2019

The Joy of Tax

When things flow, it is sometimes possible to be wrong about their direction. Like when you’re sitting on a train at a station, and you think it’s started moving when it’s not, because the train next to you has started moving the opposite way.

When you’re operating within a system of systems, as we all are, all of the time, it is sometimes possible to misinterpret a symptom as a cause or a cause as a symptom.

It helps to take a step away every now and then and look for the bigger picture, to try and see how things might work differently, rather than trusting your assumptions.

Writers of all kinds can help us do this. Their assumptions may be wrong too of course, but at least they help us become aware that we’re making them. Sometimes, they even help us change them.

I thoroughly recommend reading The Joy of Tax, by Richard Murphy. Even if you don’t agree about the joy.

July 10, 2019

Of course I had to try it

I mentioned Tony’s Chocolonely 100% slave-free chocolate in an earlier post this week. So, of course I had to try it.

It’s good. Very near in taste to my favourite brand.

Which means I can happily carry on eating chocolate.

Phew!

Because the alternative was giving it up.

July 9, 2019

Trust

There’s a visible gap between the hands of the free-falling trapeze artist and those of her companion coming up to catch her. A gap that makes my stomach lurch just looking at it.

That gap is filled with trust. Trust that a promise made is a promise kept.

What happens, when trust gets eroded? When we discover that institutions and corporates aren’t keeping the promises they made? That the ham we’ve just bought that doesn’t actually contain ham? The car we’ve just bought puts out more emissions than we were sold? The pension we were relying on has been appropriated by the firm we’ve worked for for 40 years? The news we read on social media and in the papers is fake?

When trust disappears, we stop taking risks. We narrow our perspective. We lower our expectations. We start accepting worse instead of expecting better. Cynicism starts to poison everything.

The only antidote is to make our own promises, the biggest we can, in spite of that stomach-lurching gap, and keep them every time.

July 5, 2019

Play

“To exercise one’s capacities to their fullest extent is to take pleasure in one’s own existence, and with sociable creatures, such pleasures are proportionally magnified when performed in company.”

That’s when ‘work’ becomes ‘play’.

From “What’s the Point If We Can’t Have Fun?” by David Graeber – well worth a read over the weekend.

Have a good one.

June 28, 2019

Questions

People are asking big questions about accountancy.

Both from a technology perspective, as in this paper from Deloitte, and from a more existential perspective, exemplified by Professor Richard Murphy and the Corporate Accountability Network.

Big changes create great opportunities to re-think our models of the world as consumers and as producers.

Where do you think accountancy should go? What should accountants do? For whom? What do we want from accountants? Most importantly, what could we want? What should we want?

Big questions, now is a good time to ask them.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Community