As I love nothing more than educating myself on any subject, I’ve spent a good deal of time reading about what makes a business successful. Not only is Ocean SF, the company that will support me well into the future, it is also the business that will support my children through the remaining years of high school and college, and those first shaky years after graduation. I have been working very hard on Ocean SF for well over a year now. It is no mere hobby.
What I have learned is; love is a great attractor to success, and passion is the most important ingredient in business. Having purpose and a clear vision follows these. Studies now show that the control managerial styles of the past are no longer viable.
“Applying chaos theory to organizational practice tends to go against the grain of most formal management patterns. Order can be confused with the more popular notion of control. It is hard to open ourselves up to a world of inherent disorderliness.”
My business partner and I do most of our meetings on our boat now, or on the boats of other people. We talk for hours about our company, our vision, sustainability and our brand. Because Ocean SF is such a great love of mine this doesn’t feel like work. Recently, we had dinner at the Yacht Club with a group of friends. Andrew and I had met prior to this and then joined a group for drinks on another boat before dinner. At the end of dinner I looked around our table and noticed that we had been talking about our business for two plus hours. I finally apologized, but our friends told us they are used to it. I am thankful for so much support from everyone around me.
“Typically businesses are organized around structure and design. Charts are drawn to illustrate who is accountable to whom or who plays what role and when. Experts break down organizations into the smallest of parts. They build models of organizational practice and policy with hope that this atomizing yields better information on how to improve the organization’s functioning. However, chaos theory implies that this is unnecessary, even harmful.”
When my business coach told me, if I were in her accelerator program I would be flunking, I just blinked. I knew that I was not turning in my documents as requested. But since I was paying her $220 per hour for each private session, I didn’t feel I had to. After two decades running projects I was absolutely sick of spreadsheets and project plans and working just the work, so other people might think I’m working.
After years of working as a Product Manager, Project Manager, and Marketing Director, I didn’t feel that my business needed a share drive full of documents and a group of people to update them. I was operating from a, “what absolutely, must logically, happen next,” form of management.
Startups are overwhelming in the sheer amount of work required by the founders, and to organize it well I simply base my efforts on priority.
I would literally think, “what do I have to do today, so that it won’t bite me in the ass later,” and that was all.
“Self-organizing systems are those enabled to grow and evolve with free will. As long as each part of the system remains consistent with itself and the systems’s past; these systems can harness the power of creativity, evolution, and free will—all within the boundaries of the organization’s overall vision and culture.”
My business partner and I are very different. He knows things, that I don’t know, that I don’t know. However, together we agree on just about everything. This is a refreshing change from working with other people where I’ve spent time defending my position, or saying nothing, but feeling my work was pointless. Andrew and I just decide. He takes over, or I take over, or we collaborate, with little discussion. We share the exact same vision.
“Informal leaders emerge in an organization not because they have been given control, but because they have a strong sense of how to address the needs of the group and its members. The most successful leaders understand that it is not the organization or the individual who is most important, but the relationship between the two. And that relationship is in constant change.”
Ocean SF is a community of the like minded; sailors, adventure seekers, environmentalists and entrepreneurs.
Love and blessings to all.
Read more: http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Bun-Comp/Chaos-Theory.html#ixzz4yY2mFqlg
Sydney 