The Circle Manifesto

Commerce Based On Circle Wisdom

Marc Choyt — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:23:26 +0000

This past May, while receiving an award from Mayor Coss and the Chamber of Commerce for Excellence in Business, I viewed my physical surroundings: the wood on the tables, plated food, concrete, drywall, lighting and carpet, and wondered about the true cost of these commodities to the communities that produced them.

My sensitivity to the issue of transparency is acute because I am actively working to counter the ravages of commoditization within the jewelry sector. I know the gold in your wedding ring, unless it was recycled, may well have caused three tons of mercury laden sludge to be poured into a river where some child bathes every day. Perhaps you bought a diamond in the nineties, thus unintentionally funding wars resulting in the death of 3.7 million Africans.

You would never support these practices. Yet in my business, just as in almost every other area of commerce, marketing sorcerers spin illusions that disconnect the “consumer” from the consequences of his or her purchase. By not accounting for the true cost of the diamond ring, or even a banquet dinner in a hotel chain, I unwittingly contribute to the ongoing destruction which now threatens earth’s life support systems.
Commoditization is that natural outcome of large scale corporation’s functioning within local communities and economies as neo-colonial entities. Except in obvious cases, such as the recent attempt to drill oil in Northern New Mexico, the so called economic benefit of companies that colonize Santa Fe—jobs, price competition and availability of commodities—are rarely considered in light of hidden costs.

It is easy to feel depressed about our current resource to cash to trash model which creates spiritual impoverished wealth. I am, however, convinced we are in the process of radically changing to a new economic model.

Structures Behind Business Models

Most business are structured like pyramidal. Resources from the base, communities and the environment, are focused on driving profits, as represented by the top point. If the main goal is to deliver to shareholders, which is the law with publicly traded companies, the only way that you can move forward is by rapidly pulling resources from the community and ecology that you function in. Unmitigated growth, disconnected from life systems, is called cancer.

Yet triangles, which make up pyramids, exist in nature and serve a vital function. I’ve observed from tips of feathers, shark fins, waves, sunflower leaves and even our own teeth how triangles focus energy toward specific goals.

In nature, however, this triangular movement exists within complex relationships that are deeply interdependent and radically equal within the whole: the circle.
How can we use circle in business which can provide a foundation for a new and just economy? First, it requires a basic understanding how circles work in natural systems.

Right now, I look around at the circles in my environment through my round eyes: trees, fingers, a clay pot, light bulbs, my husky dog, Tasha, curled up by my feet.

Everywhere around me are circles functioning. Each point that makes up a circle supports a whole. We talk about the circle or life, or our community circle because the circle innately supports interdependence.

Experience has taught me that, just as the circle is the fundamental blueprint to nature, it is also the definitive blueprint for a well functioning community based on sustainability, which, of course, includes businesses.

Business is how we exchange with one another in our community circle.

The Santa Fe Farmer’s Market is a great example of a circle-based approach that helps the local community thrives. It involves community, interdependence and sustenance on the most basic level. Local, organically grown food only appears more expensive. In fact, it is simply reflecting the real cost of growing in a sustainable manner.
By supporting sustainable-based local business, we strengthen our own circle. Wealth that stays in our local community creates an upward spiral, strengthening our relationship with each other and our bio-region, instead of a downward spiral which concentrates wealth at the expense of economy and community.

These same principals can be carried through in resources that we import from outside of our community. Commerce is based on equitable exchange, or fair trade.
In the circle, all parts have a radical equality. As a business person, if I am to honor that basic truth that every person is a brother or sister walking on their own spiritual journey, this goal of fair trade needs to extend through out the entire circle of my supply chain, from mine to market. We all have the same basic needs and depend upon clean air, healthy food and water.

In deep reverence to the natural world, I call this great movement of interdependent circles building creative synergy “The Circle Manifesto.”

In Action

The movement from our current state of fragmentation to a circle based economy is a process. We have to heal thousands of years of patriarchal power systems and empires based on straight lines. Commerce based on sustainability is both a goal and a process. We also have to act within the context of sound economics.

Yet no matter where we are or what we are doing, we can find our community, strengthen our circles and make a difference.

In my circle-based company, we continually look for opportunities to create relationships based on our core values. Purchasing carbon offsets and producing jewelry in house with fair wages and recycled precious metal was a natural step. Internationally fabrication with recycled precious metal in a fair trade factory, which is starting this August, took us twelve years. We might be the first in the vast jewelry sector to achieve this.
Our current direction includes educating the trade and public through our blog and building a set of relationships with marginalized small scale artisan miners based on fair trade. I am trying to build a connection, a circle, between some small producer in the developing world and my customer by telling a universal story.

Right now, the movement for ethical jewelry is very small. Yet if just five percent of the public were to ask for fair trade or locally made recycled metal jewelry, it would tip an industry ignoring this wonderful emerging market.

For me, the balance between how I work with money, my humanity and passion for sustainability is a testing ground. I ask myself whether my decisions are going to altruistically strengthen interdependent circle or not, factoring in the survival of our company circle in the market.

Ultimately, each time I spend, it is expresses core values, my spiritual path. For better or worse, spending money is gifting back to the world. You can make a huge difference by aligning your money and your values.

I used to feel than an individual such as me could not change things very much in the vast jewelry sector. Trade shows were depressing affairs. But over the last two years, I am witnessing how a few people, a circle of passionate colleagues, are shifting the entire paradigm.

Regardless of the results, supporting life giving circles has huge benefits. Connections become profound. I live in thankfulness for the work I do, which roots my daily existence in regenerative joy.

But I am merely a student of these ideas and greater mysteries– a mad man in the mucky bottom of a real and metaphoric swamp. To find balance, each fall, I back pack up to 11,000 feet and hunt for elk.

The experience is a kind of medicine. By having my hands in blood, hauling down a hundred pound back pack, eating the meat all year, I know my debt to existence—to the elk, to the trees, mountain, clouds and sky.

What is ‘The Circle Manifesto’?

Marc Choyt — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:21:32 +0000

A Manifesto is a term for a doctrine of public import, though it often implies something revolutionary. The Circle approach to business as outlined here is the razor’s edge of social corporate responsibility. It is too late for sustainability. Business practices must work ultimately toward regeneration of our stressed systems, in our communities and our environment. Moreover, we have to show how this can be profitable; otherwise it will be too late for the mainstream to get it.

Here’s my definition, which I use for testing decisions:

“A circle based business is rooted in relationships that are nurtured by fair and equitable exchange. Every person inside and outside of the business is viewed as equal in their humanity.”

Paul Hawkins, Bo Burlington David Whyte, Jim Collins and many system thinking academics are to one degree or another, talking about circle and business. Yet they have not been able to name it so because the profound, indigenous knowledge, ‘Circle Wisdom’, has been crushed by the march of empire supported businesses which treat land and people as mere commodity in a cash-to-trash system. This must change now.

Since the late eighties I have been studying with Native teachers. Some, like the late Paula Underwood consulted with corporations. Others, lived relatively isolated lives teaching a few people who were willing to earn the knowledge. I also worked as a teacher in an Indian school before going into business. I learned about Circle Wisdom. My aim is to take some of what I learned from them and apply that knowledge to my situation. Circle Wisdom was once with us. I believe it is part of our lost heritage. Plato, in the Timaeus said, “…all things are alive.” How does that translate into business?

The answer is, slowly, over time and by making decisions that move us in the right direction; our true path. This is what we have done in my company, with the help of my awesome employees and talented wife, who is our jewelry designer. We have enjoyed ten straight years of double digit growth and been named by the Mayor of Santa Fe,NM, where we are located, as one of the communities most outstanding, visionary businesses. We have also had awards in our trade for outstanding service.

We have come full circle. Instead of crushing indigenous approaches, we turn towards that wisdom, using today’s contexts, to help us restore some kind of balance. If we continue on our current course, we will become extinct. So, I call this a manifesto; a doctrine which says, we must create wealth through the support of community and ecology. If we don’t, our children and their children’s children will not have a place to live.

Paul Hawkins is writing about the immune response of the planet. In these times, when it is easy to feel depressed over all the bad news, Hawkins points out that there are millions of us out there doing our thing to support the whole. And in my own small world, I am trying to work through social corporate responsibility and green practices in the jewelry world. Won’t you join my conversation in trying to understand how this might be done?

Using Circle Energy To Break Through Communication Barriers And Energy Blocks In A Critical Project

Marc Choyt — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:35:37 +0000

I have not posted for quite some time, mainly because I do not have the time to write for 2 blogs while working on the strategic elements of our company, developing a re-design of our website and attending shows most weekends in Aug/Sept. Fairjewelry.org was prioritized over circlemanifesto, for now.

We are nearly done with the re-design of celticjewelry.com. It should launch late Oct. A test version is already on line. The new design will incorporate a rating (FRE=fair, responsible and ecological) that can serve as a model for transparency for other jewelry companies.

Earlier this week the project seemed to be at an impasse over several issues. I wrote the following in response to one of our web consultants when he asked,

“Was it a design breakthrough or a team/psychological breakthrough?”

He said my response was a great blog post, which I would not have noted because I tend to think about blog posts as finished articles. But here’s what I said:

“On Weds I came home too stressed out about the whole thing. I wanted this project done by early September and I feel that the longer it gets put off the more sales we are missing. There was difficulty in communication around design, especially between Helen and the rest of us, and much of that centered around terminology. The information between Bob (our web tech person) and Helen around design was often channeled between me which did not work. I didn’t understand what Helen was saying anyway, partially because of my emotional reaction to her emotional reaction.”

“So I met Bob, Helen, Marek (who runs our blog and is involved with the project as well) and did a ceremony/circle in a format Helen, Marek and I have been studying with Indigenous people for over 15 years. In this circle, we each acknowledged the contributions being made, and we honored each other’s work, and considered the greater ramifications of what we were doing, and we asked for support from the universe for our project which we all see could have great benefit.”

“I knew we all needed to meet because the project was headed hitting walls. The idea for a ceremony was Bob’s. He did not want to enter a situation/meeting that was toxic.”

“The circle shifted the energy around the project for all of us. After that, we were able to come to easy decisions around design ideas and let go of a lot of the stress around the project to move forward. The conversation and decisions which previously had been difficult just flowed easily. There was actually a very strong agreement around how to move forward. One issue was the prominence of the FRE– which Helen and I wanted very high profile as we see it as our primarily added value– but Bob had not quite understood that. Basically, communication had been off to some degree or another between all of us.”

I have done a lot of this type of process in groups for many years. It really is about connecting into the greater good, asking for help and acknowledging each others human-ness.

Blogging For Socially Responsible Business

Marc Choyt — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:44:52 +0000

I am president of a designer jewelry company and for years, I always felt conflicted about having a business in a sector which has such a terrible record for environmental and social responsibility. To the progressive shopper, the jewelry industry is associated with blood diamonds, dirty gold, and lead poisoned jewelry imported from China.

I implemented a number of environmentally and socially responsible policies in my company, but that did not feel like enough. Then, in May, 2007, I started a blog that supports the movement to ethical sourced jewelry. It is currently the only blog of its kind in the jewelry sector. Immediately, the new blog became a focus for those involved in the ethical jewelry community. It was the first place where everyone could network and have a voice. Google ranked the site well within the first two weeks.

One of the most important personal spin offs was emotional. Instead of feeling helpless before huge problems in my sector, I felt suddenly empowered and fired up about my business. It was no longer about just making money, which does not really excite me. I began to see how I could help the world be a better place. I had a voice. I continue to write articles, interviews, list resources and post links to other people who are supporting this movement.

In this process, I have come to understand the limitations of our mainstream print media. We have been worshiping them, catering to them, writing our press releases and hoping that they will pick them up. In the jewelry industry we have many very good trade magazines, and I have great relationships with a few editors who really support what I am trying to do. But naturally, they focus on mainly mainstream issues around fashion and business. They cannot provide a lot of space to a small movement within the industry to promote radical change simply because the industry as a whole does not want radical change.

I suspect that there are many other business sectors where people are doing visionary work that is not being covered by mainstream press. Many of the current business approaches and structures are so confining that they limit the creative and spiritual potential. Blogging has been picked up in the tech industry and also, of course, in the political spheres, but what about manufacturing? What about other business sectors where great change is taking place under the surface?

Blogs can empower those working for radical positive transformation. They reward transparency and penalizes corruption. Blogs are the great democratic equalizer, the ultimate free press. They strip away spin like varnish remover on antiquated marketing techniques. Many jewelry companies are pushing their latest “green” or “eco” angle without talking about what they are doing in China, or how their mines might be causing toxic runoff in some developing country. You gain power (readership) by muckraking and breaking stories.

Reputations are made now on Google. Rankings are everything. It is more and more risky to hide or lie. Just consider what has recently happened to the CEO of Whole Foods who was anonymously blogging about the stock prices of Wild Oats before he purchased the company. Secrets are becoming a thing of the past. Radical transparency has even, in some sectors, become the ultimate marketing tool.

To start, all you need is a high school kid to help you set up one of the free services. Some of the better platforms include blogger.com, wordpress.com, typepad.com, vox.com. Once you have written a few articles, issue a press release. Email people to read what you’ve written and build the readership yourself. Be a gatherer of stories. Everybody wants a place where they can put forth their views. If you are serving your community and you have some passion around the issues, you will find a readership.

Always be positive. In other words, create information on the blog that can be useful and proactive. It is easy to complain. But it is much more useful to provide solutions. Moveon.org is a good example of an activist blog. They always have an action associated with each of their posts. Many of my posts offer solutions to issues: such ten steps a jewelry company can take to go green.

Also, it is important that your blog is niched. The jewelry blog is actually my second blog. My first blog had writing about corporate socially responsibility and mixed it with ethics about jewelry production. But they are two audiences. So I separated the blogs. In other words, keep your blogs focused.

Once you start, it is a commitment. You have to post at least once a week; preferably, more. As someone who already has more than a full time job running a company of ten people, posting a few times a week is a huge commitment, which is part of the reason I welcome the writings of other people. But blogging can serve a critical part of your search engine optimization strategy. The articles you write can be submitted to directories that can bring links and traffic back to your main revenue producing websites.

I have found that writing the blog has potentially huge spin off benefits for my company. I do not view my blog as self promotion, but when journalists are looking for authorities on particular subjects, they will check the internet.

Reading the news these days, it can be discouraging, but many great initiatives are taking place right now. Paul Hawkins talked those who are working for positive social justice and change as being the immune system of the planet. We can support each other and communicate among ourselves on the web, where we are all connected.

The Circle Manifesto: A New Economic Model Based On Ancient Wisdom

Marc Choyt — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:04:13 +0000

Most businesses are structured like pyramids. People and resources are used to benefit those at the top who set policy to achieve maximum profit. This narrow focus, mandated in publicly held companies by the law of our land, has turned our basic human need for exchange into a destructive pattern.

“Consumers” slowly undermine their own well being by supporting companies that function within local economies as neo-colonial entities. Money, disconnected from a place, is exported up to shareholders, leading to the fragmentation of economy and community. A few people at the top of the pyramid get very rich while we buy ten-dollar jeans at Wal-Mart and wonder where the money is for local schools.

Triangles - which make up pyramids serve a vital function in nature (look at the tips of feathers, shark fins, waves or teeth). Triangles are about movement toward goals. But in nature, this triangular movement nurtures relationships to find a greater balance based on radical equality and interdependence: the circle.

Over the last eleven years, my wife and I have attempted to run our company based on the circle wisdom teachings of indigenous elders. We knew nothing about business when we started but we saw how it is that everything around us is alive and has a right to exist. Like fools, we sought to bring this understanding into the business world.

We noticed how decisions are based on a hierarchy of values that is often determined by societal patterns. A pyramidal business model becomes a story that is often constellated around war, competition and hierarchy. A circle-based approach, however, requires considering community and the right of all that is to exist in the center of one’s decision making. One asks, is my action going to strengthen our interdependence or not?

Over time, we came up with this definition of purpose for a business based on circle wisdom to test our decision making processes:

The purpose of a circle-based business is to benefit community through relationships that are nurtured by fair and equitable exchange. Every person inside and outside of the business is viewed as equal in their humanity.

Our initial attempt to make our company circle-based brought contradictory results. Before I went into business I was a service volunteer, monk and high school teacher. Focus on money and numbers were both corrosive and grounding to my idealism, yet as I put my house on the card table and watched our company plummet into debt, I saw how it was entirely necessary. We could not actualize many of our values because we were just trying (praying) to forge relationships (sales) that would allow us to pay the next bill.

Yet we saw how nature’s circles build prosperity and abundance. The foundation of any circle-based business is generosity toward employees. If one person takes more than their share out of the circle, you begin to become a pyramid. As soon as we began to feel some stability, we were able to implement a strong benefit package and pay ourselves.

Compensation is only one part of being circle-based. You also have to attend to how the energy flows around an organization. Ten employees means one hundred and twenty possible relationships.

A few years ago we learned how just one unhealthy, platonic relationship between two employees can create a situation that painfully impacts the entire organization. Emotional and spiritual well being of everyone in the circle viewed equally in their humanity requires a lot of vigilance and skill from all who form the company.

Circle-based business is a paradigm shift for everyone involved. The employee says, “You’re the boss,” which is correct. But a circle is strengthened by everyone taking responsibility for their arc. We avoid top-down unilateral decisions, and empower everyone to hold their own arc so that we can focus, as business leaders responsible for the flow of the whole, on prosperity for everyone.

Studies in the Harvard Business Review1 back the notion of how attending to the well being of employees is a best business practice. Increased commitment from employees who love their job can lead to a 57% increase in an employee’s discretionary effort, a 20% increase in individual productivity and an 87% reduction in the desire to leave. (We’ve had three people quit in ten years.) The greatest indicator of business success is repeat business that comes from customer satisfaction. The greatest indicator of customer satisfaction is employee investment.

From a strong inner company circle, the circle-based businesses must also serve the greater Circle of Life, which is where this model becomes even more challenging.

Despite my efforts to be as green as we can, my business has a negative impact simply because our industry is not yet adequately supported by a market and supply chain. I finally have a supplier for recycled gold and silver, but can I afford to print our catalog on recycled paper when it doubles our cost? Not this year.

Since it costs more money to run a business in a way that serves the greatest good, the circle-based approach is ultimately a “spiritual” endeavor. Survival (ideally prosperity…) must be weighed against fair and equitable exchange. One lives in ethical gray areas. Finding the balance between money, humanity and sustainability becomes a kind of koan. Yet breaking free of current internal and external structures that no longer serve the common good can free a huge amount of human spiritual potential.

Ultimately, economy is either leading toward supportive interconnection, or toward our continued fragmentation. If we are to survive, we must begin to see how giving back is the only way to generating prosperity and abundance for all.

Reflections on Rage: Making Room in My Circle for “The Man in the Swamp”

Marc Choyt — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 22:00:12 +0000

Paula Underwood, my Iroquois teacher, was fond of saying, “The amount of conflict you can incorporate into your circle is directly proportional to the amount of peace you will feel.”

Here’s some conflict I’ve let into my circle recently…

I read this press release from Citizen Watch and I was so angry over what I perceived as “green washing” that I could punch my hand through a wall.

I mean, what does Eli Manning have to do with eco friendly consciousness or social responsibility? He’s so rich when so many people in the world are so poor. Feeling mighty righteous, I wrote this text:

“You could hire Eli Manning. You can hire my green penis and pay it a million dollars to endorse your next “eco-watch”. Listen, my green penis is just as relevant. As far as I am concerned, it can pass, kick and score field goals. No- it is more relevant. I have no children– over population is one of the critical issues for a sustainable future. My green penis would be a better endorsement — if it were for sale, which, I say for all Madison Ave — Alas, my good Sirs–it is not!”

Not really appropriate for someone blogging in support of social responsibility in the jewelry industry. Those adult businessmen who see me in their suits and ties at trade shows would react unfavorably to such a rant. My green penis does not wear a tie. Discretion became the better part of valor.

I have had a meditation practice for over twenty-five years. Pictures of my teachers on my altar stare at me every morning when I sit. Clearly, this is not an “enlightened” perspective. But is that level of cynical, embittered rage a sign of weakness?

The answer to this question gets to the heart of eastern practices versus the indigenous approaches that my Native American teachers have taught me.

Certainly, cynicism is fragmenting. Anyone can dismiss or at the very least, marginalize an attack. Imus, Stern and Rush will always have their limited demographic support for their toxic spew.

What is created over a thousand years can be destroyed in a few seconds. It is harder to actually build something and be life giving.

Yet the first step in working with circle is to give what is in your circle a right to exist. In this case, I am talking about my internal circle of characters. I am not one who has faith in an internal - or external for that matter - monotheism. I pay attention to the archetypal nature of my dreams. There are many characters within.

Working with circle wisdom means honoring the internal characters. This character who wrote the above passage I call the man at the ‘bottom of the swamp’ and he holds one of the critical anchors to my creative process.

He is not some sensitive new age guy down there. He is rooted in cathartic, earth-based perspectives. I have a lifeline down to him. His bullshit meter is hyper sensitive and he can be outrageous. I take him elk hunting, along with my mountain lion.

Alliances with one’s darker side give insight and power. For me, this means fleshing out and even dialoguing with that part of oneself. Ultimately, one gives it a job that it enjoys. He enjoyed writing about our green penis.

The swamp man’s job is to wake me up from the consensus trance. The next task is to use him as an alliance and then walking around the circle to hear all the voices. I gather all the wisdom I have to channel that energy into dialogue, taking us deeper, I go into the center of my world, the place of deepest humanity, and see the whole picture.

Anger and rage is tied to grief and grief is tied to pain, and pain tied to the universally tragic condition of living on earth as a human being. We are all one circle.

I think, as a writer, the more conscious we are of all voices in our internal circle, the more power we have. Character and insight depends upon empathy, and empathy starts with oneself.

Just because I wrote an attack doesn’t mean I have to use it. Just because I am angry does not mean I have to put my hand through a wall. Besides, I live in an adobe house and there would not be much left of my hand.

Though I do not agree with Citizen’s method, there is benefit. Even I have taken one angle and emphasized disproportionately in marketing my product.

This place of acceptance, like forgiveness, or love, is a process. It is hard to do because it is easier to feel outrage and self righteous than it is to go deep into one’s own heart and find the universal in one’s micro experience.

During extended meditation retreats I have come to really understand completely that what is outside me in the world is really inside me, in my heart and mind. All my life experience points toward one truth: the universe is a giant mirror.

I do not live enough in this wisdom. I can bitch and blame others just as well as the next guy. The recognition that we are all part of one circle, is a journey.

Inside of us there are many circles. There are many altars. There are many gods. Let us honor them all, and not make the mistake that Carl Jung warned us about when he said, “The gods have become diseases.”

My goal with my writing is to take the reader into the heart of our human experience as much as I possibly can. I want to give them no way out except through the understanding that we are all connected.

Now, what may we learn from that?

Leading from Behind: Leadership in a Circle-Based Business

Marc Choyt — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 19:22:25 +0000

My Iroquois teacher Paula Underwood, held ten thousand years of stories and history in her head. She called them her “data base.” The stories were the life lessons of a small group of people that valued learning above all else. The stories were in pots in her head, literally. Her father had planted seeds timed to sprout in the last part of her life. I was there when they came up through her poetic voice.

Before she died, I was a fortunate member of a small group who became certified trainers in her “Learningway” approach. We sat in many circles together over a ten year period. Sometimes we met in conference centers and other times she rented a house and gathered us together. It was like summer camp for adults, only better. We played, joked around and cried together.

Teaching us, one of the first things she pointed out is that, we were children in her culture. We knew nothing of her perspective.

With Paula, however, she told us our perspective as children was valuable because learning was her prime concern. I could relate to her example. It was similar to what I felt when I lived with Tibetan refugees for three months, in a small room, back in 1981; or with the Haitians, between 1984 and 1986. There are layers and layers of insight that take years to understand when entering a new environment.

Studying with Paula, I understood about issues of cross cultural sensitivity. Unlike my entry into other cultures where I felt insecure, to Paula we brought “New Eyes Wisdom.” Like children, we could see from a place that she might overlook.

I tell this same thing to new people I hire, like Matt. He is about to turn 17. He is handling a major part of our internet strategy upon which a much of our entire marketing strategy depends I have him full time for the summer, though he started working for us when he was entering his junior year of high school.

“You have what I call, “New Eyes Wisdom,” I told him. “You will see things that I never notice. Ways we might be able to change things. I want to know what you think.”

I always listen to what he has to say. He has skills and abilities that I do not have, from MySpace to Excel Spread sheets.

Honoring New Eyes Wisdom, honoring Matt’s view, is a way of honoring the next generation’s concerns and keeping one’s own learning process going. For Paula, our questions helped to bring the wisdom forward, the seeds in the pots to sprout and grow. For me, it is a matter of our company’s survival. I’m pushing fifty and this next generation is on a different train.

With Paula, as we learned together, I began to see how she had a type of leadership that is remarkably different from how most business people lead - a type of leadership which is core to a circle-based business approach. She would sit in a circle with us, as an equal.

If you want to begin to start applying circle to your company, this is a very basic step, but one that may take courage. Eliminate the rectangular and square tables and sit in a circle. Just doing that changes the dynamic of a conversation.

The circle has been used as a form to facilitate conversation in community for thousands of years. It is something we deeply and intuitively understand. Just being in a circle says we all have something to share. We all hold part of the arc. No one is above or below anyone else when they sit in a circle.

In the circle, Paula would listen to all the voices, allowing us to explore and learn in our own way. Then, she would really think about the history of her people that she kept with her, and try to find some kind of corollary in this “data base” that would apply to our situation. Since the history contained essential human experiences, this was not hard for her to do. Then she would make a decision.

We were going to put on a conference which has this material–or we were going to cover clan organization in the afternoon. She often taught the same thing over and over again, based on what was needed. But listening to her there was always something new because my perspective was changing, the deeper I went into the material.

I was intrigued by her leadership style. She was not above us or below us. She was with us in a circle, equal as a learner.

She called this approach, leading from behind. It involved gathering consensus, listening, and calling out what was real. This method empowered everyone. It was elixir to our souls. Our voices were heard and honored and often woven into a beautiful tapestry.

It was not that she went in without an agenda. In the conferences we held, she always had a plan. But in the moment, when we sat in a circle, she would listen to all of us and be ready to change her plan. It was musical and harmonious, John Coltrane on a riff, A Love Supreme from a Native American perspective.

How do I lead from behind in my company?

First, it involves seeing everyone who works for me as part of a circle. We are also a tribe of a sort. I do not have Paula’s data base, but I do have my humanity, from which springs a personal and deep concern for each of my employees. I want our company to support rich and fulfilling lives. I want their experience with our business to be full of learning. I want their tasks to be challenging, and ultimately, empowering.

Wait a minute. My employees call me “the boss.” “You’re the boss,” they say. How can I lead from behind when the structures of business are geared toward my leading from the top?

Now, I am in a clash of two world views. They work for me, right? I can sell the business off tomorrow if I so choose. Strip mine it and say, buy by. I make more money than they do (although not that much moreâ€”our highest salaried person makes less than two times our lowest salaried person.) But you get the point.

Most people would view this as a position of power, but for me I see it as kind of sacred trust. It is one thing to get up on the high wire.
It is entirely different to stay there and lean into the mystery of that next step.

Let’s get down to the bottom line, the straight and narrowâ€¦ We are the boss. The boss leads from on top. We are at the top of the Reflective Image’s hierarchical structure, mustering all our resources, including human labor, toward the direction we dictate, which benefits, ultimately, us.

I call this the triangle approach, though more accurately it is the pyramidal approach. The triangles connect at the top where the hierarchy gathers the benefit of all the labor of those below.

So once a year, my wife and I meet with a consultant who has been at the top of a sixty million dollar company. We hammer out “strategic objectives.” Then we make a list of action items with dates as to when they will be accomplished. After that, we look at the resources that we can muster to accomplish the “big ideas.”

This approach has been critical to our success as a company, but I generally leave the meeting feeling disoriented and confusedâ€”which is exactly what I pay him to do for me. I want him to push up against my idealistic views hard to see if they stand up.

Now I see how I have entered the business world with New Eyes Wisdom, trying, through my own idealism, to create something that does not fragment economy and ecology. Now that I am in two worlds, how do I reconcile these two worlds?

I’ve had to understand how these two approaches can work together.

In the extreme, one of the concerns with what my consultant teaches, the pyramidal approach, is that it turns the people who work for me into a commodity. This is against my core belief. It is a personal violation of my heart.

But there are other issues, as well. My naming top down view with its strategic objectives leaves me open to not grasping the complexity of the business environment which is based on thousands of relationships. Not paying attention to one of these relationships can sink a business.

Moreover, merely controlling and manipulating people for our own benefit, or the benefit of shareholders who are only interested in money, creates a chronic disenfranchisement in our business world.

A Harris Pole measuring the “execution quotient” of 2.5 million people, commissioned by Franklin Covey, had these key findings:

* About a third of workers say they have a clear understanding of what their companies are trying to achieve.
* Only one in ten feel energized and committed to their company’s goals.
* About one half feel their jobs allow them to apply all that they have to give.
* One third says they work in a win-win atmosphere.
* Three in five don’t trust their employer to keep commitments to their employees.

Our consultant is all about leading from the top. My heart lies in leading from behind. How do I bring these things together?

A few months ago, I raised this issue in a conversation with my Apache teacher, my current mentor. She has been meeting with me since 1989.

“As the owner of the company, how can I work with these two approaches; the circle and the triangle? How do they come together?” I asked.

“In a circle-based business, the pyramid is used as a tool of the circle,” she told me.

This helped me. Now, it seems obvious. The circle comes first. What does that mean? This gets back to my original definition:

“A circle based business is rooted in relationships that are nurtured by fair and equitable exchange. Every person inside and outside of the business is viewed as equal in their humanity.”

I have to be able to listen, understand and provide for the circle of our company. Then, from that, decisions have to be made that are truly in the best interest of the whole circle, and the circle with which we have exchange.

But let’s start with the company circle first and see what that might look like on the ground when I have a strategic objective that has to be implemented. In other words, I have to lead. This requires a mustering of resources and changing of personnel responsibilities. It may also require asking people to do what they do not want to do.

The critical issue, to me, is that my job is to justify and provide sound reasoning for decisions to everyone in my circle. I have to have a buy in; otherwise, I will be disenfranchising my employees and creating a disconnect between their work and their core beliefs. This is a huge responsibility. I cannot just tell people what to do randomly. I have to earn their respect for my decision. This involves a great deal of transparency and even vulnerability.

So, a circle-based leadership model must out of necessity, have a lot of communication and disclosure of strategic long and short term goals. My job is to bring everyone along with me as much as I can. Sometime this is easy. I have full support from my administrative staff during my recent initiative which has involved re-branding our image around our core values. This has involved shifting major tasks among several people.

Yet sometimes, we have had resistance. One example of this was our wedding ring initiative. Since we fabricate in metal, it is extremely difficult to make rings with our Celtic designs that actually connect seamlessly. Most other companies work using waxes and computer programs.

I explained how critical our wedding ring line would be to our company. Our ring line, two years ago, was anemic. There is a huge demand for rings I told our in house jewelers. We need this product for our company to survive. Yet there was definitely resistance from them when Helen introduced about a hundred new ring designs that she came up with in about a month last May. But from our point of view, their trade involves pushing their skills up to new levels.

We do not want to lose our jewelers. It takes a year for us to train a highly skilled jeweler into the basics of our line. I suspect that our last jeweler who left about a year ago did so because he did not want to make our rings, which are extremely difficult to fabricate. He was burned out, which happens, and he would have probably left anyway. But the rings were the tipping point.

In the macro sense, all these approaches add up to either yea or nay. How do we know, on the whole, whether we have a real buy in from our employees? Well, one sure test is to leave the company for four to seven weeks and see what happens. Helen and I have done this every March since 2000. Coming back, we find a day or so of work on our desk.

If we were leading from on top, in some kind of pyramidal structure, our employees would always be looking to us for guidance. Their values would be extrinsic to their work life, so they would need rules and scripts. Yet day to day relationships are too complex to deal with like machines. I want them to find their heart and express that. So when my employees ask me what to do, my response is almost always the same: “What do you think we should do?”

Leading from behind has empowered them to run the company without us, which frees me up to have enough time to focus on the growth of the company rather than just its day to day operations.

With Paula, the basis for leading from behind was a set of values based on her deep understanding and concern for the well being of all of us. She held a space where we all had a voice. She empowered us to find our own way in the processes and teachings, and encouraged a diverse understanding which she too learned. She held the circle. From the people in that circle, she created movement.

Similarly, my wife and I hold the circle of the business. The core of the circle is our profound respect and gratefulness toward all who work for us. Our task is to assure, to the best of our ability, that everyone is supported. All voices are honored. From that place, we are able to move toward objectives that are dictated to us by market opportunities. From that place, we can respect and honor everyone who does business with us.

The triangle becomes a tool of the circle. The circle-based business practices within the company are reflected in how we treat our customer base. From this, if we are true, our customer base will grow and support our circle.

Sounds easy enough, right? Not by a long shot. What are you ideas about bringing circle into business?

As Eco-Friendly, Responsible and Fair as a Jeweler can be… Using the Chicken Scratch Method

Marc Choyt — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:23:44 +0000

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show is the largest of its kind in the world. Every hotel in Tucson is taken over. Glamour of the biggest and most expensive gems in the world, everything that glitters under the sun. What I see when I walk in there is a slag pile, miles long and who knows how high. Besides the environmental damage, how much ill treated labor was needed to create this mess?

It is just like going into a supermarket and seeing all the meat wrapped in plastic without the visit to the slaughterhouses of Greeley Colorado, or going to the gas pump without seeing the caskets come back from Iraq. Jewelry is no different than any other commodity.

We’re certainly far more eco-friendly, fair trade and responsibility minded than the average jewelry company, which is not difficult because the bar is so low. We have fair wages at home and support a Fair Trade manufacturer as a main supplier. And we run a clean shop. We have carbon offsets. We recycle. We use green energy. But it is nearly impossible to be totally green as a jeweler selling main stream, given our industry’s current state.

We are not anywhere near as ecologically responsible as I would like.

How far can we push the edge and how fast can we do it?

Let’s assume that the refiner and manufacturer, Hoover and Strong will take care of my precious metal needs. I have a source, then, for responsibly mined metal.

What are the obstacles? The main obstacle has to do with our resource base.

Suppose I had unlimited resources. I could purchase my own mines and stone cutting factories around the world. Then I could implement fair trade practices and environmental stewardship.

Not being able to afford the above, suppose that we started producing jewelry that had only fair trade gems and used only recycled silver?

We would have to drop our Indonesian supplier, who works on a fair trade basis. Fair trade is generally tied to high eco standards. Our guy in Indonesia tells me that most of the metal he buys is recycled, but the rest is bought on the open market. It could come from anywhere.
Then we would have to toss out close to a hundred percent of our gemstone choices. We get these from suppliers out of Jaipur, India. They meet a particular price which makes our pieces affordable to the middle class. These stones are simply not available as a fair trade item yet.

Essentially, we would be starting a new company. Given that there is no strong market established for our perfect eco, fair trade jewelry, our chances of survival would be slim.

As I mentioned in my circle-based business article, our economy depends upon relationships that are built upon fair and equitable exchange. If there is no established structural basis for this exchange to take place, then survival is tenuous. Too much change can destroy the circle. Such a move would be irresponsible for my employees and the customers we have built a relationship with.

The one way out is to gradually begin to shift our company in the direction that we want to go.

One of my teachers, Paula Underwood, spoke of the “Chicken Scratch Path.” She would draw a diagram on a circle, like chicken feet. She explained that ultimately, every decision is a binary decision that is leading one direction or another.

Suppose you go five hundred miles, more or less toward the north east. Then you realize that you really want to be in the north west. You have to begin to chicken scratch your way over toward your idea. This is done by making small, every day decisions for the most part. Sometimes, however, you make a large decision, as we did when we dropped our manufacturing in India and Thailand. These companies did not work on a fair trade basis. This move made our hand woven chains cost between 20% and 30% more, but it was the right decision.

I spent a long time with Paula before she died. These were some of the most enjoyable, exciting times in my life. From Paula’s point of view, there is no way to always be on your “true path.” Life is never straight forward. Compromises are at every step. You zigzag your way, trying your best to move in the direction of, as she would say, “mainly who you want to be.”

“How do you know whether you are on your true path,” I asked her.

She explained that her ancestors had created a path of a certain width. She could zigzag within those edges. If she crossed them, her ancestors would let her know.

Who are my business ancestors? Patagonia? The Body Shop? Ray Anderson? They were all at the beginning of huge waves, but there are major differences, too, between what they did and what we are trying to do.

We have chicken scratched our company in the direction of our eco and labor values. But there are huge challenges to being who we want to be.

I have an idea: we could offer a fair trade jewelry line. Helen is working on a new series right now.

This morning we had a conversation that went like this:

“Why don’t we make this new line totally with fair trade gemstones?” I asked. “Then it could be a totally eco-line.”

“I want to offer it with tourmaline,” she says. Helen loves tourmaline. We know of no fair trade tourmaline sources.

“Hmm,” I say. “Well…”

“Why are we not printing our catalogs on recycled paper?” she asks.

(Let me pause here for from meta-analysis. Anyone married for a long time might recognize the logic behind this last conversational leap. Friends call it, “The Helen and Marc Show.” But it is also indicative of the strength in our company. We both are passionate and we both push each other. Plus, Helen has a solid bullshit meter, which is highly calibrated for me.)

“Our sales rep at the paper company told us it could at least double the cost. That’s forty thousand dollars instead of twenty. We have not even been able to afford to give raises this year. I am thinking that we can donate money for tree planting to offset our catalogs.”

I do not know how these things will work out. But you see, there are difficulties every step of the way. Even simple decisions are easy for many companies, for us to become major philosophical expressions of core beliefs.

Thus, we zigzag, trying to chicken scratch our way; trying to be “mainly who we want to be.”

It comes down to shifting sands: what are the compromises you are willing to tolerate? We moved to a fair trade jewelry manufacturer but I choose not to pay extra for the paper? Does that make sense?

What may be learned from this? How does a business chicken scratch their way without getting lost and without ancestors?

Meditations On A Circle-Based Business

Marc Choyt — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:24:37 +0000

“A circle-based business is rooted in relationships that are nurtured by fair and equitable exchange. Every person inside and outside of the business is viewed as equal in their humanity.”

In 1995 my wife Helen and I started our jewelry business. That same year we purchased, with a few friends, pasture land with a creek and water rights in northern New Mexico. It is a place where the mountains and mesa meet the plains. Years of cattle grazing had made the pastures marginal and creek banks devoid of vegetation, yet the land was still beautiful.

This shows our pasture land, looking south in May, 2007, before it greens up. (click on the image to expand it)

During our start up, which was in many ways the most stressful time of our lives, we loved to watch the hawks and elk, and the great storms rise on the horizon, tumbling toward us over the mountains.

Over time, we saw how the relationship to our business and the land around our creek, known as the riparian zone, were similar. In both cases, we knew very little about our environment, which supported our creek and our business. We were like children entering new cultures. We had only the beginnings of relationships with the land, neighbors, market, suppliers and a host of other complex relationships that enable one to thrive. Success in business and the restoration of the creek both depended upon interdependency with the greater ecosystem and that, we knew, had to be earned.

Yet despite the similarities, the creek and company were at somewhat opposite phases in their own life cycles. With our company, we were striving to develop relationships to suppliers, employees and customers which would start momentum, an upward spiral, toward growth. With the creek however, relationships forged over tens of thousands of years, were in a state of decline. Because the grasses and willow were eaten, the channel cuts deeper, creating further erosion; degrading the land and increasing solids in the water. The creek banks were cliffs, ten feet tall and devoid of life. Relationships were in what I call a downward spiral.

I was studying with Native wisdom keepers who taught me about circle-based business. Circles embody a pattern for relationships and spirals, upward and downward, defining movement over time among “all our relations.” As a student of nature and business, I became passionately interested in studying the causes of upward and downward spirals. Ultimately, I wanted to know if we could create spirals which are life giving, healing the fragmentation between community, ecology and economy?

Any company, no matter what the structure, can be viewed as a collection of relationships creating a stream toward a goal. This dynamic intent, always in flux, exists within a structure - the banks. The nature of the flow depends upon its greater community, flora, fauna, employees and customers. Both ultimately rely upon the health of the greater ecosystem to create growth and life.

With our company, we had few relationships that we could depend upon for support. We started only with our intent and our product, which was untested in the marketplace. We tried to forge interconnection and dependency through sales and marketing. It was, in essence, the beginning of a process of earning our place through exchange; our product. Metaphorically, we were like a creek at its initial stages of development, just after the recession of glaciers when the land was barren of interdependent life.

Our own creek, however, had relationships forged over thousands of years, yet its flow created a downward spiral, negatively impacting the environment. Cattle, eating fauna which held the banks in place, had created a tipping point. Grasses and willow were gone. Water flowed too quickly, cutting the banks more and increasing particulate matter in the water, which made aquatic life more tenuous.

This creek, running too fast, is a perfect metaphor for many businesses which are disconnected from ecology and community. A business has a set of people who determine its creek’s flow. It was not the creek’s fault, but that of the cattle growers which viewed the creek only as a commodity to support in the short term, a cash-to-trash economy. The flow continued to degrade the land, pulling wealth in the form of soil on its way to its goal; the ocean. This mirrors many a company, whose sole aim being profit, becomes detached from the effect its activities have on a community.

We hated seeing those cattle on our property which had been allowed to graze there by the previous absentee owner. People in small Northern New Mexican villages do not generally take kindly to outsiders and we felt reluctant to act too quickly in a small village where people eke out such a marginal existence. Our neighbor continued with their cattle grazing on our banks, preventing any possibility of recovery. I thought about how to create a company based on relationships that would support our economy and create benefit for the larger community without degrading the ecology upon which all of us depend.

This photo shows our neighbor’s creek, just beyond our fence line. This is what we started with, except worse.(click on the image to expand it)

Perhaps it was only because we had no business background whatsoever, could we have possibly even considered building a company on such a naive concept. The jewelry business is a commodity based business, cutthroat in its approach to resources, whether they be human or from the earth. It did not take long to see that our market place rewarded, at least in the short term, a company stream which is driven merely by profit on its way to an ocean of money.

Going To The Source

One day, looking for models of health, I followed our creek toward its source, the mountains. I found tall trees, willow and a wide range of interdependent biodiversity.

Grasses need the movement of ruminating animals, which provide waste products, thus increasing soil fertility. The fish are supported by the beaver, and the water tables benefit from having the water slowed. The sun, wind, clouds and rain provide a circulation of resources which support the whole.

In short, every part of the circle, each small arc, tested over thousands of years, is interconnected and critical to the whole. This allows water, the most powerful solvent on earth, to create an upward spiral toward life giving growth.

I want our company’s stream to also generate wealth that nurtures a wide variety of relationships in our own circle-based economy, supporting a vibrant community. As I began to study how this might be possible, I noticed that both the creek and my company had multiple currents and different depths creating movement in every direction, depending upon the landscape.

At the time, the most palpable current was stress. My wife and I just about drowned under the severe financial pressure of a current; the introduction (or lack thereof) of our product to the market place. Relationships take time to evolve and we had little control. Our inability to do anything but survive pulled on resources, mainly our home, which we refinanced to fund the company, and gave nothing back.

Upward and downward spirals are occurring at the same time. To a large degree, the healthier and more resilient you are, the more choices you have. We were making sales, which brought in some money, an upward spiral. We were also making a lot of mistakes, throwing money away which limited our choices

In natural systems, too, growth creates decay. Compost nourishes future growth. In business, the decay is often in response to the market, or personnel or any number of factors. We compost our errors and try not to make the same mistake twice. The essential issue is whether our learning curve is be fast enough to survive our cash flow.

In our company, it was a time of disillusionment. I could see the ideal through the fog of my desires. The collective members of the company would produce a product or service that flows outward into the greater environment. Energy would then flow back into the company in the form of revenues and other forms of support. However, this was impossible.

The drive to survive and fulfill our ideals was for us, at times, contradictory. A baby shoot coming from the earth is vulnerable. Water flowing from a receding glacier might never become a creek. About eighty percent of new businesses fail in the first year.

We did trade shows with five thousand vendors. I suspected that eighty percent of the buying is from previous customers. We were not even taking in enough business to cover our hotels, never mind the booth fees at four thousand dollars a pop. We tumbled tens of thousands of dollars into debt. We did not have a stable circle in our company, so it was impossible to consider building a circle-based business.

It has always been clear, however, that a healthy riparian and a healthy business are ultimately linked though all our relations and that my task was to attend to both.

I am writing a book on circle-based business and I am interested in what in your life creates an upward spiral and a downward spiral? Part of the book is based on studies with the late Paula Underwood, an Iroquois wisdom keeper who I loved like a grandmother. She would always ask, “What may we learn from this?“

Surgery

By 1998, just when our business was developing a modicum of stability, we asked our neighbor to remove his cows and hired a bulldozer. In a day, instead of ten foot cliffs, we had gently sloping banks and a very muddy creek. Call it surgery. Over the next six days, with a group of friends, we planted thousands of willows and seeded the open earth. On the seventh day we rested, ate Helen’s famous raspberry pies and drank a few beers.

We looked upon our work and wondered whether or not it would be fruitful. We were, in essence, trying to recreate an upward spiral by redefining the creek banks. Heavy rains can easily cause massive erosion on creek sidings which held no grass. On the other hand, a drought would make it unlikely that many of the trees we planted would live. Meanwhile, we began to build fences around the creek with the hope of eventually being able to create a pasture grazing system which would allow our neighbors to continue to use our land, but this time in a more sustainable manner.

Helen and I at the Buyer’s Market about eight years ago.

Nearly ten years later, our riparian area is the most beautiful stretch in our valley; teaming with biodiversity–beaver, ducks, trout, and a multitude of fauna. I call it Genesis.

With our business, we struggled to form a foundation by attempting, as best as we could, to build strong interdependent relationships. This started with our employees who created the stream from which all else flowed.

A study cited in the Harvard Business Review stated that increased commitment from employees who love their job can lead to a 57% increase in an employee’s discretionary effort, a 20% increase in individual productivity and an 87% reduction in the desire to leave. The greatest indicator of business success is repeat business which comes from customer satisfaction. The greatest indicator of customer satisfaction is how much your employee enjoys his or her job. Only a few people have quit our company over the past eleven years.

We also developed relationships with suppliers based on paying on time. We went as green as we possibly could. And we produced jewelry with integrity: they came with a life time guarantee.

We had struggles. There were times that I thought the whole thing might collapse and we’d end up losing our house which financed our business. Yet, from this foundation, we had ten years of double digit growth, which lasted until 2005.

Now, however, we are in a downward spiral. Sales are down considerably. I am left with attempting to assess how we are not in alignment with our environment.

Upward and downward spirals can exist simultaneously. The issue then becomes what is the nature of this growth and decay? As I am the one with the ear to the ground, most responsible for the strategic direction of our company, I have to figure out what is going on.

If there is a problem with growth or decay, it has to be traced back to relationships that are somehow not being nourished properly.

This is a high stake endeavor that I take quite personally. There are nine families dependent on the incomes my company provides.

All Our Relations

Now, I go back to what I learned from my Native American teachers. Certainly, upward or downward spirals must interface with the first part of my definition of a circle-based business: a circle-based business is rooted in relationships. They have taught me not to qualify what type of relationship because everything on the earth is interconnected. So relationship means, all our relations; animate, inanimate; it does not matter. Our lives depend upon exchange within this net which exists in complex interdependency within the Whole– or, as it has been described to me: The Movement of All Things.

To survive, we need to have direction and goals for certain, but many of the failures in business are because these goals do not even come close to understanding the dynamics of what takes place, even in a small company.

In the riparian of our land, there are hundreds of thousands of plants, from the blades of grass to the cottonwood trees. These are supported by billions of micro organisms which reside in the soil. The complexity of relationships boggles the mind.

This is our current state, May 2007. It is still too early in spring for everything to green up. The land is at 7200 feet and would be considered a Zone 4. (click on the image to expand it)

I employ ten people. There are one hundred and twenty-one possible relationships, eleven times eleven, in my organization (this includes the most important one, the relationship one has with oneself.) I could even say twelve times twelve, because my dog comes to work with me.

For a long time, we employed two people who had conflict with each other. It was early on, and both were critical to the company. I tried mediation which created a de’tente. This one relationship, out of over a hundred, was a constant hindrance, a drag to the flow of our company’s circular movement, bleeding out in unexpected ways that I am still learning about even a year after one of these two left.

At the current time, however, we have a fantastic team of people who for the most part get along quite well. Our product is highly developed and tested. Consider a circle as a business model: everyone holds part of the arc and energy flows around the edges to create movement, a flow and exchange from within and without. I do not at this time feel that our problem is with our people or with our product.

Now add to this dynamic of one hundred and twenty one relationships, each with its own upward and downward spiral, the relationships to customers and suppliers. Some of these relationships are distant; a jeweler receives her piece back for a repair, connecting him or her to a customer. The piece breaks again and then a third time. Now, our sales team is involved and unhappy, both with production and with having to deal with an upset customer. We reassess the item, involving more people. Already, this one piece of jewelry has impacted the entire organization, even if the fault is actually because of defective workmanship from a supplier!

We have relationships with thousands of people outside our company. These types of webs are constantly happening on every level, connecting us. Each involves a decision that will create an upward or downward movement. It is not always dramatic or product driven–someone can come in with a toxic mood. All this takes place in a market which is constantly in flux.

Even when you have smart people who try their best to make good decisions, there are so many variables it is impossible to ever really know completely what is going on. If we want to create an upward spiral, we must take into account internal dynamics as well as the larger environment; the market place.

This shows where our land ends and our neighbor’s begins. (click on the image to expand it)

I also have to consider the foundation for all business and life. Though almost all precious metal I purchase is from recycled sources, my business depends upon mining, which has a terrible impact on the environment. Though there are regulations that have mitigated impact, mining still creates a downward spiral for the environment which is exposed to concentrated heavy metals. Also, I import precious metal components and gemstones from developing countries that may not have strict environmental concerns. I would not want a gold mine in my back yard. Yet the result of the mining creates revenues for our company which supports the economy of my community.

It is hard to sort through all these factors. Bringing circle into business requires a strong sense of not only the bird’s-eye-view of the situation, but also how the energy flows and what its effects are. The question then becomes, what is being supported and what is being destroyed, or more existentially, what is the debt of our existence? Every decision resulting in an action has a consequence. One relies on a gut feeling for the best assessment that one can have. From this, I do my best to apply analytical knowledge.

I can review key performance indicators and adapt accordingly. I can contemplate case studies and speak with people who have lived through what I am experiencing. These are all important ways to keep on track as I set new goals. But I have to be careful to distinguish symptoms from causes. Further complicating my quandary is that my decisions, my lack of awareness, led to our current downward spiral. It is hard to see the forest from the trees.

In essence, to find a solution, I need my entire capacity as a human being. The criteria, for a circle-based business, is that the river moves on the basis of fair and equitable exchange. Business that acts outside of fair and equitable exchange with the economy, ecology and community are not circle-based.

La Acequia De Las Piedras Colorades

In March, 2007, I needed a break from the numbers which were not that hopeful and I took a drive up north to our land in Ocate, where I am a member of La Acequia De Las Piedras Colorades, or the ditch at the foot of the Colorado mountains in the small village there.

This is where I like to hang out and think about all my relations– on the porch with our rascal dog, Tasha, the Siberian Husky.(click on the image to expand it)

In 1824, the agricultural community in this village dug a ditch and created a diversion from one of the two streams that feeds the creek where we did our restoration project. The ditch flows about three hundred yards above the creek, following the contours of the valley. During wet years, it is used for flooding alfalfa fields.

Water is the issue in New Mexico. As the cliche’ goes, ‘it flows uphill towards money’. It is possible, for example, to sell water rights, which are critical for any type of development, from one district to another. This practice destroys the economic viability of agricultural villages.

I meet with the descendants of those who dug the ditch. We sit in a recently built public meeting house in a town with only a post office; a town where raising cattle might bring you almost enough income to purchase a steak from the supermarket thirty-five miles away.

I hardly say anything at these meetings, except, perhaps, to second a motion with unanimous support. After ten years, I have grudgingly earned a little trust and respect from them.

This is the Acequia (ditch) snaking through cottonwood trees. No water was in it at the time of the photo because my neighbor upstream was irrigating.(click on the image to expand it)

Years ago, the entire village came together to clean the whole ditch with food being provided by the women, of course. Nowadays, it is a struggle to bring enough people together to have a quorum in our legally recognized governing body. At the last meeting, one of my neighbors who I did not even know offered to clean the entire ditch for me because I was going to be out of town. The ditch itself, water, vida, creates and strengthens community.

If not for the three people on the board, we might end up losing our water rights to the state, which could sell them to Texas.

I think about the health of the community that supports my company. We had ten straight years of double digit growth in sales. Last year was our first decline, just five percent, off 2005.

Because trends were so strong up through October, I took too many chances with our marketing money and gambled on new approaches that did not yield what I had hoped. Now, I am faced with determining what is behind our downward spiral and how I can start to change the momentum.

Right now, when I assess my situation, I am feeling a bit pinched. We are holding back on equipment purchases that we usually make easily. The bank wants me to zero out my line of credit.

What factors have shifted, causing this downward trend? These questions are currently my razors edge. Certainly the on going war and rise in gas prices has hit the emotional mood of the middle class, and jewelry is purchased for emotional reasons. Consumer electronics have been a huge factor. People have cashed out their homes so there is little left in the trickle down. The middle class, my market, is hurting. High end jewelry, the luxury market, is up. This is part of a long trend, as I discuss here.

The ditch’s water creates life for the environment and the people in the valley, but not to the direct detriment of the creek. There is fair and equitable exchange between people and the land that is dynamic, organic and evolving over time. With few exceptions, from up above, the river looks like a cut in the lands. Since the valley was clear cut, the community, like the creek, has been in an inevitable downward spiral.

I grew up thinking that the only thing west of the Mississippi was California. These are the fly by people; often disenfranchised and marginalized by the liberal elite who think land has only one use; an imaginary mythical wilderness which is now gone.

I do not even eat beef. My idea of real meat is a freezer full of elk that I’ve shot and carried off a mountain on my back. I cannot help but feel that one of the potential solutions toward creating economic viability is right in front of them. They are raising organic, grass feed beef, but selling their cattle to regular feed lots for next to nothing. Yet people in Santa Fe are purchasing organic beef being trucked in from out of state, starting at $5.00 a pound for ground.

I talked to my neighbor about this but he was not interested in my idea. There are no slaughter houses nearby and ranchers are reluctant to change their ways.

I reflect about how much my understanding of this landscape has changed. Yes, they will probably again shoot the beaver that have moved into my riparian area; the only one in the valley. They will definitely shoot my Siberian husky if she continues to jump the fence and chase their sheep. Yet these people, salt of the earth, small time cattle operators trying to eke out a living in what I consider one of the most beautiful places on earth, are some of the last hold outs against the great machine that used to be called “progress.”

Resistance to change: such a human state of mind. What am I not seeing that is right in front of me?

In Practice

I return home to the source of my anxiety right now that keeps me tossing and turning in the arsenic hours between two and four in the morning: the downward spiral. What is the degraded environment causing marginality in my business growth?

Fortunately, unlike the folks in Ocate’, our resource and production base is still strong. We have a great facility and a reputation among our customers that reaches out into the lives of people who wear our jewelry and love it. Over the last eighteen months we left the Quickbooks universe to implement a new inventory based accounting system which better allows us to track our expenditures.

Right now, our staff receive three weeks of paid vacation, sick leave, holiday pay and a six percent unmatched retirement contribution. Wages are fairly distributed; the salary of the highest paid person is under two times the lowest paid person. We foster an environment in which everyone is respected for their point of view and their own humanity.

Even during our decline in overall sales, we won an award from our largest customer that named us, out of three hundred companies a ’superior supplier’. That’s out of three hundred companies, and every single one of them at least twice our size.

Here’s one reason why I feel we need circle-based business. My wife and I for the last seven years have left our company from three to six weeks every spring, which is our slow time, to travel abroad. With few exceptions over the years, the company has functioned perfectly while we are away. I come back with only a day of work on my desk. We employ awesomely dedicated people who are wonderful to work with. Given all we had accomplished, I naturally felt hubris.

One of the thoughts I had was to give raises to everyone who works for me as a way of “kick starting” better sales. One way to create wealth is through generosity. If you give away something, you will get something back. Indigenous cultures call this tradition “the giveway.”

This idea was vetoed by our CFO, however, even though she would be a beneficiary. Everyone naturally wants more, but we are all getting what we need.

If I were only interested in money, the decision would be fairly straight forward. We could cut four people and focus on the profitable, money producing channels of distribution. Our sales would go down, but all of those who remained would probably make more money. If our company had outside investors, I might be forced to do this, but I am unwilling to consider this as an option. It has taken years to create our outstanding team and I would not easily let anyone go.

The problem is clearly in my department: marketing. I hold this question for weeks, paying attention to elements that just do not feel right, particularly as I approach the major jewelry trade shows.

The beaver, with its dams that created flooding, was responsible for many of the fertile valleys in North America I am hoping that my neighbors will leave my beaver alone!(click on the image to expand it)

I trace that gut feeling and begin thinking about the similarities between my situation and that of my neighbors up in Ocate’. The trade markets, particularly the jewelry stores, which we have been targeting, view our product as strictly commodity. Jewelry might as well be cattle, or lumber for all they care. It is just something to sell and make money with. What upsets me most is that those who funded the blood diamonds in Africa, resulting in the death of 3.7 million people are still walking around in their suits and ties, doing business as usual with new ‘ethical’ rules.

Our company’s environmental, humanitarian concerns do not have much value in this commodity based industry. Up until now, I have marketed our work toward the mainstream jewelry buyer while the ethos of our company has been anything but a mainstream jewelry manufacture.

I think back to my meeting with the ranchers — if only they could get their product to affluent organic consumers, that twenty percent of the US market who use their money to support their eco-values.

But wait — if only I could get my product to these people…

Conclusion

The solution for me is the same as the solution to the small ranchers in our valley: targeting the right market. We both need to hit the same demographic.

We have been purchasing recycled gold and silver for our production, using “green” paper and switching to non-toxic chemicals in our work environment. For components that we imported heavily, we work primarily with an international manufacturer that works on a Fair Trade basis. Most recently, we implemented a program with an environmental organization to off-set our carbon use. We just do these things because they are the way we do business, given our values. We did not even consider the marketplace.

Now that we have a firm idea of who we are, we must adjust our marketing to go after the customer who sees value in what we are doing. We must target this community: the same group of people who shop for organics, support environmental sustainability and fuel the growth of yoga studios throughout the land. These are the cultural creatives, whose values are in sync with our business ethics.

A few people in the jewelry industry are standing behind fair trade and socially responsible business practices. Industry leaders have called it a ‘huge opportunity’. Though it barely exists to mainstream jewelry, I am willing to step into this wave. It is who we are already and that must be reflected in our marketing approach.

The lesson for me here is that a circle-based business has to have an alignment between resources, production and marketing. Our approach is to put our ethos into the center of our brand image to draw additional support from the community who see the value of what we are doing. This means a greater focus on expanding our direct relationship with customers, because I suspect that most jewelry stores, like the ranchers, do not want to change their ways.

Eighty years ago, Ocate’ was a vibrant logging and farming community. Now, it is in one of the poorest counties in the US. Hanging out there has helped me to understand downward spirals. I could not see the forest for the trees. I didn’t even notice our ethics because they were not market oriented. We did what we did because we love Mother Earth. But now that the market has provided an opening, we are well positioned to step into a new opportunity.

I write these words in the cabin on my land, realizing that I could be wrong in my assessment. Other factors, some completely unpredictable, might cause a further downward spiral, forcing me to take a different course.

Recently one of my neighbor’s thousand pound bulls busted through our fence and got into our riparian. I went after it to chase it out. I had helped my neighbor brand, so I felt comfortable as I ran at him. Things were going just fine, until it charged me, horns down, veering off just a few feet before impact.

Happy to still be alive, I contemplate the metaphor of large forces coming out from nowhere that can upset everything. A recession? War with Iran? A terrorist attack in a household without duct tape? No, these things are too obvious. My experience of studying natural systems in the context of business practices taught me that life is far more nuanced and subtle than that. The important lesson here is that a stupid eastern transplant who knows nothing about cattle, should think twice before chasing after a thousand pounds of grass fed, organic hamburger on four hoofs, with sharp horns in a remote village in Northern New Mexico.

I am convinced that the end stage of business has to be to mimic nature, to rely upon natural systems as a model for exchange and sustainability. Circle has to be part of that equation in business, just like circle is central to natural systems. That is why circle-based business is inevitable and why I call it a “manifesto.” We will find the circle by developing models that embody it, or we will degrade our natural systems so much that a recovery - surgery - might not be possible.

Taken in May, 2007, looking out from our pastures, west. Tasha on the prowl!(click on image to expand it)

Yet I also know that there is a long way to go on this journey just to find out what is possible. Business cannot merely be sustainable. It is too late for that baby step. We must find ways for business to help regenerate natural systems and our communities — some kind of antidote to the colonialism that nearly wiped out our indigenous peoples and their complex relationship to the land over the past several thousand years. Most business people have to see dollar signs first in this regenerative approach or it simply will not happen, unless we truly are in a new paradigm.

It is 7am here at my cabin in Ocate’. I go outside to our dry ditch, walk along the trench, step through my neighbor’s gate to where he has diverted the water. I lift some heavy sand bags and place them over the earth, blocking the flow into his fields. I cross the fence and walk back to my place. I wait for the water and as it starts to flow, I place a piece of plywood in front of a culvert. The water gathers, soon overflowing, it banks onto my fields. I feel my heart, breathe the air deeply and look down the valley at the mountains and low clouds. Sixty elk linger at the edge of the mesa. It is beautiful.

References

I was helped with seed ideas for this writing from:

Allan Savory’s holistic management work: http://www.holisticmanagement.org/

Paul Krafel’s home produced movie, The Upward Spiral: check out this clip on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-frWkYg2-Ew

Marc Choyt is President of Reflective Images, www.celticjewelry.com, an award winning designer jewelry company that exemplifies fair trade, ecological, socially responsible business. Marc authors www.fairjewelry.org a movement website for consumers and jewelers supporting green, fair trade, socially responsible business practices in the jewelry industry. He also originated The Circle Manifesto, www.circlemanifesto.com, a business model based on indigenous wisdom traditions.

In My Business - What Keeps Me Up At Night?

Marc Choyt — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 20:10:27 +0000

What keeps me awake at night running a small business in today’s market place?: An elephant in a bikini.

I sell a lot to galleries and boutiques, as well as jewelry stores. The galleries and boutiques are hurting. A manufacturing representative who I have been working with for eight years — she is one of the best — is deciding to move out of her showroom to cut expenses because business is so down. My business to stores is down considerably. Yet jewelry stores are doing just fine with their high end.

When you look at the economy from the perspective of employment, inflation annual growth and even the stock market, you could get the impression that the US economy is solid and sound. Historically the main economic indicators , it would seem that at least from a historic point of view, life should be pretty good. Yet, we know it is not so.

Inflation apparently is less than three percent annually, on the street it does not feel that way. We can see reasons why money is tight for many people. The price of fuel ripples through our entire distribution cycle. Commodities in the trades have had massive increases.

This disconnect has bothered me for a long time. As I deal with my major price increases which I have had to pass on, I have been trying to understand what is going on.

When I was in university, I had a history professor who once said: â€œStatistics are like a bikini: what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is blatant. Trying to know what exactly is going on is a little like the story of the blind men touching the elephant.

Speaking of elephants, what did the elephant say to the naked man? Not bad, but can you breathe through it?

Anyway, recently I found the information I need to help understand once again how those on top of the economic pyramid use the rest of us.

According to a study by the economists, Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordan of Northwestern University sited in the current Atlantic Magazine, after World War II, for twenty years, median incomes increased as much as the highest incomes in the US. For those decades, when the economy was strong, it filtered down to all levels. The wealth of the economy as a whole created greater wealth in our communities.

Think about what it used to be like in our parent’s generation. It was common for a middle class family to buy a home and send children to college on just one income. You could live well working as a clerk in an independent bookstore. Today, as we know, that is impossible.

I moved to Santa Fe in 1986 with a bicycle and a few hundred dollars in my pocket. Of course, I was wealthier than that. I had an excellent college education and training as a teacher. I was able to get a place to live and find a job that would support me in a reasonable manner. A few years later, with Helen, we bought the house we are living in today. I was teaching part time and Helen was learning to be a jeweler. Starter homes in Santa Fe were going for 60K to 80K in good neighborhoods.

Today, the wages for the jobs that I took in the eighties have basically remained the same. It would be impossible to get a start as a younger person in Santa Fe because prices for real estate and all living expenses have risen without a corresponding increase in wages. The same homes that were 70K are now $250K.

If the wages on the low end have not changed, yet there has been this kind of inflation in certain segments of our society, where is the wealth? What trend is behind this massive change that makes it nearly impossible for the middle class to get started on entry level wages which would have sufficed a few decades ago?

Over the past thirty-five years, wages rose in the middle income ranges just 11%. The wages of just ten percent of Americans saw their incomes increase as much as the economy did. The rise in wages of salaries at the top rose 617%. Between 1997 and 2001, the top one percent captured more gain than the bottom fifty percent.

Consequently, gains in productivity has not resulted in lower prices, increased distribution to investors or raises to employee salaries. It is given to the salaries of those at the top who control the media and public policy. Even the current political agenda has clearly been to distribute money from public money to the very wealthiest.

The leading economic indicators therefore can be seen as a form of disinformation, leading us to not believe what our experience on the street is actually telling us. Elephants in bikinis, everywhere, like locusts, invading the psyche of every American man who cannot sleep in those arsenic hours between one and three AM.

What does this mean for me, running a small business? Gold and silver have had increases of over fifty percent. I have had to raise prices for our pieces anywhere from 15% to 30%, depending upon the metal content. I have no idea how this is going to effect the economy of our company. I suppose that all domestic jewelry manufacturers have had the same pressure, simply because it is so expensive to run a shop in the US if you want to do it right.

The general public does not pay a lot of attention to the devaluation of the dollar, which has been fueled by our deficit. Not only have precious metals sky rocketed, but the cost of importing has gone up because the dollar is so pathetically weak.

Alas, as the old Roman saying goes, “Hope is the last thing to die.”