Get up. Stand up.
[ or perhaps: What I was really trying to say last week. ]
At heart, I’m in the business of helping people create the conditions in which they have the most fun doing their best work. All my talk about structures and systems isn’t about getting organized for its own sake. It’s really about building an environment in which you can thrive being yourself.
Creating that environment requires some sort of practice of self-awareness. It can take any number of forms, but it is an essential element.
One thing that comes out of a practice of self-awareness – and one reason it is necessary – is knowing your standards (how you choose to interact with the world) and boundaries (how others can interact with you).
And it’s through knowing your standards and boundaries that you know what sort of policies and procedures you need in your business. These are the small things that add up to something big – the beams and nails and sheetrock – that create the overall structure of the environment you work best in.
Yet it’s one thing to know what your standards and boundaries are and sometimes quite another to understand how to implement them as policies and procedures. (To continue with my analogy – knowing what materials you need isn’t the same as knowing how to build a house from them.)
That’s where an understanding of the role of law in your business comes in.
The beauty of getting a handle on legal stuff is it gives you useful tools and language to communicate your standards and boundaries. Even when you’re feeling a little wobbly inside about what you are asking, it provides the stable structures that help you stand up straight and confidently describe what you require.
And what you aren’t clear on, it will help you to get clear on. By engaging with legal matters you will be asked questions that need answering in your business. And that kind of clarity – within yourself, your business and the people you work with – is empowering.
Because, for starters, you’ll have important documents that protect what you’ve created or describe what you will and won’t do within a project or relationship. But in the process of filing those forms and composing those agreements, you will also have practiced being clear about what’s okay – of getting comfortable with saying it out loud – and that has benefits that extend well beyond the legal sphere.
• • • • •
Related posts:
Organized under Uncategorized.
