Moving with and Beyond CSR: The 6 Ps of Conscious Business

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Moving with and Beyond CSR: The 6 Ps of Conscious Business Jean-Sébastien Simon, High Performance Coach and Trainer in Conscious Business at ESSEC Business School, opens a series of 8 features on the Triple Bottom Line as a basis for new business approaches that go beyond CSR towards more Conscious Business.

Jean-Sébastien Simon, High Performance Coach and Trainer in Conscious Business at ESSEC Business School, opens a series of 8 features on the Triple Bottom Line as a basis for new business approaches that go beyond CSR towards more Conscious Business.

CSR and the 6 Ps of Conscious Business. By Jean-Sébastien Simon.

For those who have been blessed with good health and economic stability during the COVID crisis, this period has been a beautiful opportunity to reconnect with essential parts of their lives such as family, leisure time and essential values that might have been neglected in the “business as usual” that characterized the pre-COVID industrialized world.

This unique moment has allowed leaders, managers and people all over the globe to re-consider what really matters in their lives as well as in their work.

Indeed, some businesses have collapsed, some have remained stable, and others have thrived tremendously during this crisis. Like a forest fire, which burns the old trees and creates highly fertile ground for the new forest to grow, this crisis is accelerating the emergence of new business paradigms.

Moving towards the next level: The 6 Ps of Conscious Business

While some businesses are struggling to fix things to maintain business as usual, others are moving forward, surfing the wave elegantly and moving towards the next level of evolution.

This evolutionary process is not new and had already been well documented by leaders in the business field: from Fred Kofman’s Conscious Business (2006), to Frédéric Laloux’ Reinventing Organizations (2016), Isaac Getz’ Freedom Inc (2009) or John Mackey and Raj Sisodia’s Conscious Capitalism (2014).

Theory is ever-evolving with the precious feedback from practice, thanks to the multitude of organizations worldwide engaging in Conscious Business. They range from small businesses such as Sounds True Media, counting 90 employees (and 20 dogs) to multinational corporations such as AES with 40,000 employees worldwide.

CSR and Conscious Business. Moving with and Beyond CSR: The 6 Ps of Conscious Business: Jean-Sébastien Simon, High Performance Coach and Trainer in Conscious Business at ESSEC Business School, opens a series of 8 features on the Triple Bottom Line as a basis for new business approaches that go beyond CSR towards more Conscious Business.

This knowledge is not only used by business practitioners, it is deeply craved by business students who are striving for purpose and fulfilment both in their professional and personal life. I have been surprised to witness how quickly the two classes of Conscious Business I taught at ESSEC Business School filled up with a hundred students for a single semester, with students sending email requests to attend the class as extra auditors for no grade. Even more surprisingly, this class did not exist three years ago. This Conscious Business movement is a true emergence.

In a series of articles, we will see what conscious business is, and six key characteristics that are required to define a Conscious Businesses today:

  • Serve a higher Purpose, which means that people are working for something greater than themselves…
  • Support People, helping them grow and thrive…
  • With a healthy Psyche (mind and body).
  • And have a positive impact on the Planet (yes, these are the basics of the triple bottom line).
  • Create Prosperity, which goes beyond the “profits” approach in regular businesses.
  • Establish the right Processes which support the five other “Ps”, in order to make this endeavour sustainable and effective.

This work owes a great debt to all the great beings who have contributed through their research and their practical work and experimentation to this emergence that can benefit People, the Planet. It is truly standing on the shoulder of giants.

The intention of these features is to serve the next generation of business leaders who will create businesses in a much more awake, aware, mature, wise, loving and integral way than we have in the past.

Maybe they will call it and enjoy it as “being-ness”, instead of “busy-ness”. May they, too, stand on the shoulders of giants.

References:

  • Carney, B. M., & Getz, I. (2009). Freedom, Inc.: Free your employees and let them lead your business to higher productivity, profits, and growth. Crown Business.
  • Kofman, F. (2008). Conscious business: How to build value through values (Vol. 1). ReadHowYouWant. com.
  • Laloux, F. (2016). Reinventing Organizations. Nelson Parker.
  • Mackey, J., & Sisodia, R. (2014). Conscious capitalism, with a new preface by the authors: Liberating the heroic spirit of business. Harvard Business Review Press.

CSR and Conscious Business. Moving with and Beyond CSR: The 6 Ps of Conscious Business: Jean-Sébastien Simon, High Performance Coach and Trainer in Conscious Business at ESSEC Business School, opens a series of 8 features on the Triple Bottom Line as a basis for new business approaches that go beyond CSR towards more Conscious Business.
Jean-Sébastien Simon
This series of eight features on Conscious Business can be followed weekly from September to December 2021 via CoBS Insights.

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The Council on Business & Society (The CoBS), visionary in its conception and purpose, was created in 2011, and is dedicated to promoting responsible leadership and tackling issues at the crossroads of business and society including sustainability, diversity, ethical leadership and the place responsible business has to play in contributing to the common good.  

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