Finding Balance in Business
Let's talk about form and flow -- and how intuition will only get you so far.
There’s a very particular astrological feature to my natal birth chart: Saturn conjuncts Jupiter. That just means Saturn and Jupiter were nearly in the same spot in the sky on the day I was born.
For years, I’ve been actively working to reframe it as a blessing. But it’s totally both a blessing and a curse.
What it means is that I have to do my Saturn (structure and systems) to get to enjoy all the magic of Jupiter (abundance and expansion).
Thanks, Universe.
How “Structure” and “Systems” have become dirty words
In the past decade (plus?) there’s been an amazing rise in business and in the world of The Feminine.
And we’ve needed it.
We need intuition and embodiment when we make business decisions. We need the heart to play a role in values, principles, and operations. We need to put people above policies and profit alone.
The only way we are going to construct the future is with a healthy dose of feminine principles.
Co-creation. Collaboration. Intuition. Purpose. Pleasure.
And in some ways, we’ve been tempted to lock away all the Masculine, not just the wounded, problematic version that makes the patriarchy so problematic.
We’ve scoffed at hierarchical structures and oppressive systems (as we should).
We have tried to create so differently that we’ve introduced a new set of problems for our teams and businesses. (Let’s face it: while it’s nice to give people some freedom to creatively name their positions or grow in their roles, they still need to know what their responsibilities are so they can really own them and elevate what they do.)
We need the healthy Masculine in business for success.
I remember the first time I heard my business coach say, “systems are sexy.” That’s one of those phrases that definitely gets the side-eye, and you check exactly how much alcohol or kombucha or coffee the person has been drinking.
This was 8 years ago. I had just discovered that I could hire people to help me in my business. (This was news to me! I thought I had to keep doing it all myself.) I had signed up for my first mastermind, and the head of the program, Christine Kane, was totally the super intuitive type of business leader.
But here she was, claiming that systems were sexy.
You don’t realize how much you need systems — ways to get part of the magic of what you do out of your head — until you have team members.
Systems shouldn’t be rigid, I learned. There should be space in them for evolution and growth and innovation. But you need them to provide a foundation for the work that you do together.
You cannot build your whole business around your intuition alone. If you do, you will be the bottleneck for everything.
Think about your business like a living cell.
There’s form. There’s flow. There’s function.
There are boundaries, but they aren’t rigid. A cell is changed by its environment. It interacts with its environment and the things in it. It knows when to work with other cells to be part of something greater.
On embracing form and flow
Every November, I make plans for my business for the next year.
Somewhere around April to June, something changes (a pandemic hits, a team member leaves, AI makes its grand debut — it’s always something), and my plans get revised.
I don’t hold rigidly to a singular vision. I make plans based on the information I have so I can move forward in smart ways, but I invite change, new insights, and innovation along the way.
I truly believe the best businesses are fluid that way.
They’re not all fluid (we don’t switch from building websites to selling jewelry to offering dance lessons), but the form is forgiving.
We learn, and we adapt. We use our intuition and our logic.
Right brain, left brain. Feminine, masculine.
It’s a singular system that all works beautifully together.
If you let it.