Ten tips for designing your business and life in a way that both win.

1.  Picture the benefit you want to bring to self and others:  Be clear on what constitutes a good life and excellent work for you.  Is it lots of time with the kids, enough money to buy a sailboat, or collaboration with really smart people?  With that in mind, make work and life choices that support your dream. 

2.  Be good to yourself:  Healthy people create effective (or healthy) organizations.  When we run, meditate, eat well, make plenty of time for fun, we are more energetic, able to infuse vitality into the relationships and organizations we build. 

 3.  Work wisely: Make a thoughtful pace the rule in your workplace so that creative juices can flow and produce truly imaginative products and services.  Limit a crisis mode of operatiion to truly exceptional circumstances.

 4.  Embody deepest values in what you do:  Communicate those clearly.  You’ll attract like minded folks - owners, employees and customers - who all paddle in the same direction.  Connect work to some larger cause that benefits all.  Tell the story of those connections, and in so doing, make meaning.

 5.  Combine freedom with connection:  Define circles of autonomy where an individual can do what they want without outside approval.  Boldness in business happens when people are truly free.  But we make the most of that freedom when we are richly connected with others doing similar work.

 6.  Be a standard-setter in the key element of your enterprise:  Obsess about quality in that one thing and don’t compromise.  In other aspects, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

 7.  Make profitability and outrageous generosity your hallmarks:   One is a sign of strength, the other, a quality of soul.  The two reinforce each other.  So, yes, work for a strong bottom line always, but also create opportunities to give back something truly valuable to the community.

 8.  Commit: Work is like marriage.  If we are always looking, we will be unhappy.  Only in commitment can we really focus our full energies and reap the benefits of our wholehearted effort.  “This is what I do.  It is who I am.  I will make it great.”

 9.  Balance progress and peace: Yes, we want to conquer the world, but also we see value in accepting things as they are.  Success is directly related to our ability to be both enterprising and  mindful of the moment even though these two instincts may lead in different directions.

 10. Hold life lightly: When we see work as an expression of our most playful and creative natures, it becomes irresistibly attractive.  Fear is ugly and turns people off.  Fun is like a magnet, and only with fun do we make room for love.