Be a Context-Master

Are you an aware and responsible participant in creating the context of your business, or are you leaving this all-important aspect of attracting and maintaining purposeful and prosperous relationships to chance?

Context is that which influences the meaning or interpretation of actions and events. For example (provided by my friend and colleague, Charlie Badenhop), imagine that you've just played a winning soccer match. In the exuberant celebration that follows, your teammates dowse you with a pail of cold water. In comparison, imagine that you step out of your office dressed in business attire, and a stranger dashes up and pours a pail of cold water on you. How does your reaction to being dowsed change with the change in context?

In business, context affects your vision, motivation, ambition, and follow through. It also affects how others perceive and respond to your offer. In other words, you are both the dowser and the dowsee.

Some aspects of context are outside of our control. Things happen. Markets rise and fall. Yet some people thrive even in hard times. These are the masters of context.

Masters of context concentrate on what they can influence and let go of the rest. Masters of context pay keen attention to the mood they create around their product and services and to the beliefs they hold about themselves and about their customers and network. Masters of context are rigorous about how they use language to make offers, requests, and promises.

I'll examine each of these areas of mastery in a future column. Meanwhile, notice how you participate in the context of your business. Are you aware of the mood in which your offers live? Are you conscious of the beliefs you hold? What does the way you speak and write tell your clients and prospects?

For now, just notice without making an effort to change anything. Make notes about what you notice. The simple shift into an open, spacious curiosity will produce some interesting results.

Meanwhile, here are three very different books, windows on context. Read them all to expand your thinking and build a foundation for mastery.

"The Experience Economy, Work is Theatre & Every Business a Stage" B. Joseph Pine II, James H. Gilmore. Of the three books, this is the one that most directly addresses context. The authors propose that the value added that generates economic returns is value all about the experience (or context), rather than the content of your product or service.
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"Growing a Business," Paul Hawken A highly readable, personal account of the challenges and satisfactions of growing a business, with a practical emphasis on ethical issues and personal satisfaction, from one of the founders of the successful catalogue company, Smith and Hawken.
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"The Heart-Math Solution," Doc Childre and Howard Martin. This book outlines three powerful, simple practices you can use to generate an authentic, attractive context for you work, one that aligns with your core values and that is compellingly attractive to the clients who are the best natural match. (Don't expect the book to talk about context, it doesn't, at least not the way I do in this article. And it does apply.) Buy it now at:
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