Is your business driven by a strategy that benefits people and the environment, or if not, do you want it to be? Here are some best practices to make sure you’re on the right track, or to help you get started.
What is a conscious business?
A conscious business values personal fulfillment for employees and mutual respect among all stakeholders, including employees, investors, and vendors, as the foundations for success of the business. It’s important that all stakeholders have a voice in how business is conducted, feel empowered to express their opinions, and have their needs considered and met when possible.
This type of business is also driven by some purpose beyond simply making a profit, for example environmental sustainability and social justice. Business decisions are made with a particular set of values in mind. Stakeholders feel driven by the need to solve a problem and success for the company is measured by more than just revenue.
Common practices of conscious businesses
A conscious business actively promotes learning and development for employees. Business systems that create cohesion both internally and externally foster an environment where everyone learns and grows together.
Allowing for transparency within the business and to customers and other stakeholders facilitates authentic communication. Encouraging honest feedback from everyone inspires engagement, creativity, and high performance, ultimately resulting in better products and services.
Spending money where it makes a positive difference also matters. It’s important to invest in the right areas and eliminate wasteful spending, for example by paying employees well and choosing high-quality vendors from the start to avoid the expense and hassle high employee turnover and the negative impact on the company that would result from working with low-quality supplies.
How self-service integration helps conscious businesses
With self-service integration, all developers are empowered to connect applications and services themselves in an environment that allows for open collaboration (learn more in our blog article “What’s self-service integration and why do you need it?”). Using a tool like Starlify, you can invite all your stakeholders to view or edit your application networks for efficient collaboration.
Working with self-service integration, you’re able to design your company to be self-organizing, self-motivating, and self-managing, as well as fostering an environment of high trust between all stakeholders. With everyone able to get a complete and current overview of what’s going on, your business can remain agile and ready to implement new strategies that may not be immediately obvious.
By optimizing the use of available resources, you avoid unnecessary physical and financial resource consumption, plus you optimize output from the hours your employees spend at work. Self-service integration makes it easier for people outside of the IT department to get things done faster and frees your IT teams from focusing on mundane tasks, giving them more time to work on projects that lead to innovation and accelerate growth for your company.
Open collaboration in a network that includes all stakeholders sharing their ideas, expertise, and opportunities drives the best innovation. Plus, when stakeholders are motivated by values that are in line with those of your business, such as environmental sustainability, the solutions that arise from collaboration will be in line with those values.
