It is now documented that your heart is a fine sensory organ connected to the body’s nervous system and processing information independently of the brain’s cerebral cortex. Your brain may have millions of synapses but only a select few fire when it is processing information. Your heart has 40,000 synapses and they all fire at the same time!

Like all organs, the heart also shines an electromagnetic field. The electric element of your heart’s radiation is 60 times stronger than that of the brain, whereas your heart shines its magnetism with a force 5,000 times stronger than the brain’s. This is why you can ‘feel’ the mood in a room, or indeed you know if someone is looking at you before you look at them. Your hearts are already talking, even before you turn your heads towards each other.

Humankind has spent the last 300 years researching ourselves into the ground in scientific pursuit of ‘proof’ of something before we trust it or believe in it. This has created a notion in modern man’s thinking that only the visual and concretely physical world is reality. Well, science is now coming full circle, and beginning to find physical proof of the esoteric, intuitive insights which we all know as hunch, gut feeling – or desire!

So how is one to apply this insight in daily life? Well, I advise the following: Trust your heart! If it feels right, it is because it is! And why do I argue that business decisions is a matter for the heart? Because when decisions are taken with your heart, they are true to your honest, purest desire, which is one of confidence, community, and inclusion.

The tired old logic of your brain is trained to chasing bottom lines and calculating stiffly as if it were a spreadsheet. In the 21st century more and more people will realise that this medieval approach to business operations is outdated and unhealthy for the planet on which we live. The new paradigm begins today – let the hard facts in your life align with the heart facts in your life.

(some information in this piece from Institute of Heartmath)

This was revealed by a study comprising interviews of more than 4,300 staff and customers of 56 businesses by the renowned IMD business school in Switzerland. The study showed that there is a strong correlation between the self image of the business and its brand value among individuals working in the business, and how good a bottom line it could muster. These findings were achieved by indexing how staff and customers felt about the brand, and comparing it to the financial results during the same period.

So lack of pride in the company we work for turns out to be a decisive influencer of how profitable the company is. The study showed that when individuals working in the business feel more positive about their workplace than do the customers, sales may be as much as 16 percent better than in other scenarios. Other scenarios would be staff having a more negative perception of the company than customers, in which case the sales results are trailing below average in the study. Or, in the case of staff and customers having the same level of pride about the brand, there is no measurable effect on sales results in the study.

This should be interesting to put before marketing heads and advertising agencies, who often spend energy and time promoting the company and its brand externally, while internal levels of employee satisfaction and pride may be lacking. Indeed, often company management will look at investments in company image as a way out of poor sales figures and internal morale. Well, they shouldn’t, according to the professors at IMD.

The IMD study points out that in recent years it has been a mantra for many marketing advisors to strive to create a balance between external and internal perception of a company. But in fact, argue the experts, the best way to improve sales figures – and ultimately customer satisfaction – is to focus on internal morale and the level of pride and devotion that employees feel about the business.

Here’s my advice: Next time your management talks about growing its reputation positively in the market place, you now have the ammunition you need to tell them to invest in you! Get your boss to understand that he must take care of you and give you reason to be proud of the company for which you work. When staff devotion goes up, external reputation and sales figures follow.

Does this sound complicated? Well, yes, digital trade with direct payments across borders requires is a lot of technology and business structure to be sorted out, but the business logic is very simple. Even better, these payment communities create the foundation for a wave of sustainable production and direct to consumer relation via the retailer.

Today, much fresh produce arrives in the supermarkets from fishing boats and farms in far-flung corners of the world. Roses from Kenya, peppers from Chile, fish from the Chinese sea. Human beings toil from early morning to create a fresh product to hungry consumers in the big cities around the world. The local farmer or fishery depend on local traders and agents who pick up the produce, and most often they sell it on to retailers via importers or auction systems. who then sell it on to supermarket chains. All of these links in the chain take a cut on the payment to the farmer or fishery, and at the same time the people on the farm or aboard the fishing boat have little if any idea about where their products end up.

Now, this is changing. The  payment community lets producers and buyers create direct relations via online ‘profiles’ (yes, not too different from a facebook page).  And in the background, the payment community operator connects each company profile to a regulated money transfer service such as Moneybookers in London (ensuring that the handling and transfer of the virtual money transfer is done according to EU regulations, monitored by the Financial Services Authority). Via this type of community, farmers in Africa now gain the power to create business connections directly to supermarkets and retail chains in other countries, who appreciate this opportunity to buy directly from the producer.

For the farmer, this type of service means he gets paid much quicker, and most likely also more, for his products. He speaks directly with the buyers from the retail company, who in return promote the produce to consumers with specific information about the farm and the people who made the product. This creates the basis for long lasting and sustainable business relations, where product quality, timeliness and instant payment gain importance, while price undercutting, off-loading bad products and taking a cut of someone else’s payment all diminish.

This new type of digital business interaction indicates how aspects of global business may look in a decade or two. Gone will be the auctions that control major parts of much fresh produce trade in the world. Gone will be the many steps of product buying and selling. Instead, business can return to striving for proper produce for a proper payment.

This is bad news for old fashioned auction houses and import/export agents, and it is bad news for banks, who charge through the roof for anyone sending money across borders. It is good news for you and me as consumers, and it is good news for the people in the farm or on the fishing boat. And it all runs on the cloud. What’s not to like?

Are you interested in digital community payments solutions or would you like to know more? Please send an email with a brief description of your need.

This was found to be the case by the Great Place to Work Institute in its ‘UK’s Best Workplaces’ ranking (published in British Airways’ magazine June 2011). The experts argue that small workplaces have a better culture which more resembles the family environment with an informal management structure. In these environments, employees are more involved in decision making. This creates a sense of empowerment and trust between all staff.

Another strong indicator is that in small workplaces employees more often say ‘yes’ to the question whether they feel their employer treats them as people! (Really, what else can you treat your staff as…). Again, this creates a basis for pride and a feeling of responsibility about the work carried out.

And how might this affect the bottom line? Asks the article, and delivers the answer itself by quoting the MacLeod Review, Engaging for Success (2009):
18% greater productivity
16% greater profit margin
50% fewer days lost through sickness
87% less likelihood that employees will leave

The companies analyzed had, as a whole, better profitability and bottom line results if they had female directors or leaders. A professor at the university states that ‘female management is gold dust for business management’. Overall, the fiscal results of companies with female leaders is an average of 4% better than that of all the businesses analyzed.

Commenting on the results the professor (who is female herself) says that female leaders typically work in more inclusive ways than their male counterparts. Much research has previously documented that female leaders typically attend more internal meetings and also spend more time preparting themselves for meetings or decision-making.

And finally, the management decisions made are often better for the actual business in the long run, because the female leader tends to invite more input and opinion from employees and other managers in the organisation.

The findings were published in the Danish magazine Lederne. A consultant points out in a comment to the findings ‘good management must view any issue or problem from many angles in order to take the better decision about how to move forward. In management teams with no femaly influence these decisions tend to be less nuanced and more narrow-minded’.