Format: Paperback 126 pages
Date of publication: 2009
Publisher: Alder Media
ISBN: 978-978-901-343-2

introduction

This is not your usual business book. It is a deep book that delves into the crevices of life, extracting knowledge and information from the unexplored and under-explored. It is deep calling unto deep.

The average business book follows a very logical sequence. This logical sequence however ensures that certain topics cannot be dealt with. Unfortunately, these topics are so paramount to business success. They deal with practical issues that are not alien to the experiences of the entrepreneur - experiences he cannot resolve because information is not available. This book explores knowledge on the fringes of business experience; it also explores the business life.

The business life is something we hardly pay attention to. This despite the fact that the life of the entrepreneur is bound up in his business. In this book, we take on stress, managing growth, managing relationships, focus, structure, human resource management, and many more. It is a build up from Minding Your Business, the hugely successful business book I wrote many months before this. Thousands swear by it.

I had always known that Minding Your Business needed a follow up, but what to treat was a moral dilemma for me since I never want to write the same book twice. And so I thought hard on what road to take. This is the result of my cogitation. As you read this book, you will find out that it is truthful, rich and full of practical wisdom. It is the other MBA.

I have used photographs as both illustration and source material. This, apart from the style of language employed, and the graphical layout, makes for easy read. The pace of the book is a foxtrot. Fast and direct. As in all my writings, the style is conversational. I have no regard or sympathy for starchy grammatically impeccable syntax.

I do wish you continuing success in your business endeavour.

contemplation one [run, don’t faint] - chapter 1

Life is a treadmill. Nobody can survive living on a treadmill. We must get off the treadmill once in a many whiles, to think, and take a look at life. Without this, our lives become mechanical chores. We become lab rats going round and round in a round cage, with no beginning and no ending. The man who lives on the treadmill of life will ultimately die from exhaustion.

The business world is a treadmill going faster than the speed of life. And we never pause to consider. We never pause to ponder. And we no longer talk of wisdom. We talk of “strategy”, as if we are machines running machines. We utilise our brains but fail to utilise our hearts.

Businesses are not machines. They are made of people selling to people. Without contemplation, we cannot meet human needs at a visceral level. Without contemplation, we can hardly see the fit of great ideas. Indeed, many ideas will not come without contemplation.

I have written and lectured a great deal on business. I am also a business practitioner and consult for businesses great and small. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that “business unusual” things, like values, relationships and an understanding of self, to a very large degree determine business success. I have been amazed, over and over again,
at how the so-called “soft issues” determine the large numbers, and even business sustainability. “Soft issues” determine business mortality. It was the soft issues that killed Enron. It was soft issues that killed Worldcom. It was soft issues that killed Arthur Anderson. And “soft issues” will kill many more. If so, we have a serial killer in our midst. “Soft issues” are not soft issues. They are hard issues wearing velvet gloves. And they've been throwing sucker punches at us for ages.

Perhaps what I'm proposing is a Business Inside Out (BIO approach). All the strategy in the world will not save you from the stress produced by business; neither will all the strategising give you unique insight. Insight comes when we are alone with ourselves, by ourselves, beside ourselves.

There is strategy, and there is wisdom. An entrepreneur needs both! And then there are values and there is vision. An entrepreneur needs both too. And many more!

Thank you for this great book. The information is so direct but subtle in its delivery. Started some hours ago. Totally into it now.

Buying some once I'm through as gift to some of my clients and friends. Forgot to tell you to autograph it.

Thank you once again.

Seyi Body-Lawson

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