I asked my husband the furniture designer* where he sees creativity in business. He says it's all in the relationships. There's the client, vendors, collaborators, assistants. Say a client wants you to make X. You say YES, even though you've never done it before. You seek out someone who knows more about X. You envision how you could work best together, meet them, present your ideas and remain open to theirs. Others have the right materials or technology or know-how for these aspects, so you bring them in too.
You nurture all these relationships to be mutually beneficial, staying focused on creating X together in the best way. There's lateral thinking, flexibility, and intuition required to go where the relationships and the project are really taking you.
And ultimately, it might not be about X at all.
Rick Jarow, a favorite spiritual teacher on abundance and right livelihood, says our work is just an excuse to heal relationships and mend our karma. Tell that to corporate America. As we've seen too often recently, people do horrible things to others and the environment, then wave it off: Oh, it's just business! It may be business as usual, but it's usually not just.
Beautiful furniture, or whatever the offering, may be merely a benefit of developing a network of trusted collaborators. Tending relationships with creativity in mind goes a long way toward healing the wound of extreme self-reliance. Abundance for one, abundance for all.
*Check out www.gobuildstudio.com to see simple, elegant, modern furniture.
No comments:
Post a Comment