Being in business we get swamped with information – everything competes for our attention and it is easy to loose focus. Big-Technology changes every 3 years and the next big thing is presented as the solution to our business challenges.
By comparison there is my friend Hannah Foster. She is a jazz musician and here she is performing at The Orbit.Business is different to authentic jazz. This is art, this is quality, this is enduring – there is something self- evident here. This is not a chasing after the wind. This is a timeless pursuit of purity, truth and quality. The song, the composer, the genre are immaterial. The strength . . . . the driving force is the pursuit of quality. All else are details.
Quality IS business, regardless of product, service, trend or fashion. It is the tensile strength around which we pack the building blocks of our business. Time and technology can change but the inner value of quality must be enduring. It is our luxury yacht during the boom times and our life raft in the bad – it is also the tether keeping our business networks together.
Business’ are built around values and principal of these is quality. As Robert M Pirsig expressed, it is impossible to define but it is self evident. Absent or present, we know.
As any jazz musician will tell you its about depth; how deep are the layers of quality on which you build your business? With depth comes the ability to follow trends with a effortless grace and ease. If quality is a permanent core value, disruption, noise, change and information-overload can be easily processed.
Coach Steve Eilertsen is a personal and business coach working out of Johannesburg, South Africa
Photographer: Vicky Bergallo