Business Chiropractic

Until a few years ago I knew nothing about chiropractic and in my ignorance, like most of the population, I thought it the practice of quackery. But ten years ago I was recovering from surgery (most excellently conducted by the UK NHS), and discovered that conventional medicine had no explanation for my illness and no suggestions about how to avoid it happening again. It took me a year to understand that my lifestyle was the culprit and that I’d brought it on myself. I’m not good with pain so I decided it made more sense to protect my health than to manage illness. Deciding to change lifestyle was probably the best decision of my adult life. More recently, and before the election of Donald Trump, I realised that the world was in serious trouble and that the unchecked march of corporate expansion was largely responsible. The comparisons between my personal ignorance of healthy living and current standards of business life are striking. But having earned a painful hospital experience through my negligence, I’ve come to believe that a holistic approach to health makes sense in both personal and business life. Since conventional business methods, and support services, are so similar to standard practice in our ‘sick-care system’, and with equally ineffective outcomes for chronic illness, then perhaps we need to develop a new way of thinking that is concerned about overall business health. We need a complete reassessment of business practice that aims to optimise health rather than continue with the current truly unsustainable model. We need a Holistic solution. We need ‘Business Chiropractic’. Entering a hospital today presents visitors with a bewildering choice of departments that serve to segment the body into ‘problem areas’ requiring their own specialists. It’s a Frankenstein approach that fails to provide the life spark or to understand the body as a complex system. This approach spawns opportunities for often competing perspectives, unnecessary and ineffective surgical procedures and long medication lists to treat diseases rather than curing them. In modern medicine, ‘science’ trumps healing. In the business world a similar approach prevails. Many parasitic types of organisations have embedded themselves in the corporate psyche as indispensable support specialisms. Deciding how best to meet an organisation’s needs is a non-trivial leadership task but there is a danger of such deliberation detracting from the central purpose of an organisation. – What need does the organisation exist to meet? What are its core values? What cultural values are held by its staff? Supporting departments, even if outsourced, need always be a secondary consideration to a firm’s leadership. Here the firm’s CEO is more accurately considered to be the Chief Cultural Officer (CCO). His of her primary task is to nurture the creative culture both internally and externally and to underscore the purpose for which the organisation exists. This sends a clear message through the organisation and empowers local managers and their staff to buy into the vision or depart. Such an environment facilitates decision making as all departments share a common vision. Decisions are made for the health of the whole rather than the aggrandisement of individuals or fiefdoms. The Servant Leader models the behaviour expected of employees and replaces traditional command and control structures with decentralised decision making where staff can display the organisation’s sense of purpose. The Business Chiropractor of the 21st century helps the organisation’s leadership to establish the environment for optimum health. He or she engages the organisation in achieving a sustainable ‘Triple P Bottom Line’ that honours People, Planet and Profit and thereby encourages staff to increase discretionary effort in the service of their communities. Who are the key figures in your organisation that could benefit from such Chiropractic Adjustment?