Homeostasis

Homeostasis was published in Edition 22 of the Inner Self Magazine. www.innerself.com.au


Ever had a massage first the first time in a few months and it really hurt? Your body has settled into a position where it held itself in a safe pattern for survival so it could control the pain by walking a different way, or hold your shoulder in another angle in homeostasis. It is only when massaged that you actually become aware and actually feel the pain. 



This metabolic equilibrium, known as homeostasis, is maintained by complex biological mechanisms designed to minimise and offset disrupting changes to your physical body. Of course, without that massage, you would eventually feel excruciating pain resulting from the inevitable homeostatic imbalance thus providing you with feedback and information to make new choices and craft new behaviors to balance the health of your body. Pain provided feedback that drove you to that massage in the first place. Designed for survival, your body constantly adjusts its internal environment to maintain a stable equilibrium. Hence your blood clots in response to a cut, you shiver when you are cold, or sweat when you are hot to cool you down. 


This intelligent seemingly automatic balancing act of homeostasis isn’t limited to our physiology. NASA scientist, James Lovelock, formulated the Gaia hypothesis in the 1960s, based on his research and observations of Earth’s systems which displayed cyclical behaviors consistently producing environmental conditions necessary for its survival in a constant state of homeostasis. Weather is one typical homeostatic response created by the cyclical behaviour of water specifically designed to keep the earth in balance. 


As with the body, extreme pain can be experienced for example when storms, floods and droughts express a planetary homeostatic imbalance thus providing humanity with feedback and information to make new choices and inspire new behaviors to equilibrate the health of our earth. 


As with the body and the Earth, your business is a complex organism demonstrating the same natural cycles and homeostatic behaviour. Every organisation began with someone’s story. A perception of pain was the source behind the creation of your organisation – whether commercial, not for profit, company, partnership or sole trader. There is a story at the core of why your organization began and this story with its patterns, design and structure is the source of your homeostasis. There is organization and an order – cycles, behaviors and balance – and these produce conditions necessary for survival as a business.

As the Global Financial Crisis was marketed via the world media, small business belts were tightened as financial service companies closed their doors, banks regulated their lending rules, people began to save more and spend less driving the world’s economy with new consumer behaviors. Overnight, key businesses across the globe failed, while end user wealth declined resulting in extreme bottom line pain. 


We humans truly don’t like to experience pain. While our bodies and our environment clearly demonstrate the feedback functionality of pain, humanity perceives pain as unpleasant and something to be avoided, fixed, cut out, anaesthetized and numbed. Yet pain provides the greatest source of feedback in every system. Consider how our perception of global financial challenges impacting on our markets, affecting the ebb and flow of customers and subsequently our bottom line actually highlighted the importance of our awareness of the inherent balance that exists in our business.

DAN SIMMONS in the book The Fall of Hyperion said “Pain … has a structure. It has a floor plan. It has designs more intricate than a chambered nautilus, features more baroque than the most buttressed Gothic cathedral…. it is a poem.” When the going gets tough the tough get creative and find new ways to attract a customer, new products and services and new markets to sell to. Innovation and Creativity is one form of homeostasis. Financial homeostasis, debt, maintains money in circulation for people to earn and spend. Consumers will always consume. What they consume depends on the greatest pain in their lives. We are all consumers and how we measure the metrics of our own stories impacts on our purchasing decisions. Get a massage OR buy a new pair of shoes? Join the gym OR buy the latest I Phone? Hire a new staff member OR buy new office furniture? $410 billion military budget OR build a space age stadium and make a bid for the 2020 Olympics? The metrics of why and where we spend our money as consumers is great feedback to use as marketers
in our own businesses. 


Start with your current reality of your business and see the beauty as well as the pain of it. Ask these questions. Where is the pain in your business? Where is the homeostasis? What is the core story in your business? Do you know your target market homeostasis? Do you know their story? What are their cyclical behaviors? What are their purchasing and investment cycles? What feedback do they regularly give you? Start with yourself as a consumer and evaluate your own behaviors and apply that to your own business. Value what you have now and value the metrics of the homeostasis inherent in your business.

Confucius said “The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.” Get to know the self-regulating mechanisms that preserve survival not only in your body or on your planet but in your business so that when you experience pain, you see it as an opportunity.