Business as a Living System: Why You Need Both Flow and Structure
When I started my coaching groups, Her Circle, I spent the first session in each location listening to the women. They told stories of how they started their businesses, what they love about their work, what they hope to build — and the parts they wish would disappear.
As I listened, I held two markers. Blue for challenges. Orange for everything else. Slowly, the whiteboard filled.
Blue letters claimed the left side. I knew the feeling of each challenge intimately. I’ve worked for myself for most of my adult life. Marketing, finance, sales — big words hiding many hours of shooting in the dark. Hours no one pays you for. Hours that can feel endless and unrewarding. Especially when you’re doing it alone.
On the right side, the words carried light. Energy. The women described how they feel with their clients:
“It’s light and effortless.”
“I feel no resistance.”
“It’s my time. Freedom.”
“No matter how old I get, I will never stop.”
“My work is a little door into the world of imagination.”
I resonated deeply. When I sit with a client, facilitate a group, or enter a creative process, I feel lifted out of the ordinary. Time shifts. I experience flow.
Then I looked back at the group and heard the silent plea beneath the conversation:
Help me fix the blue side. Make it go away.
I know that plea. I see it on my daughter’s face when I ask her to tidy her coloured pencils after she’s been immersed in her art. I know it in myself — lifting my head after cooking dinner to find the kitchen has exploded.
Years of running a business — and a lifetime of being a creative person — have taught me this:
The blue and the orange belong together.
The challenges and the joys are yin and yang. The tedious parts anchor us in the physical world. The expansive parts carry us into imagination and possibility. We need both. One roots us. The other reminds us we are boundless.
Holding both is the work.
Holding both is how we grow.
This is the dance of business as a living system — of life itself. It will never go away.
How does this translate into real life?
One way to see it is in how you design your week.
In my current routine, I choose to embrace this dance. I honour both my need for flow and the business need for structure and form. For example, I stay on top of my to-dos using the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach, supported by a dedicated app and a weekly review. I’ve created a practice that breaks the big tasks — marketing, finance, sales — into small, manageable steps.
And I also protect creative time every week. Time without clients or business demands. Time to enter flow.
Does it get out of balance? Absolutely. Do I still have days when I wish someone would take the admin away? Definitely.
The difference now is that I accept both sides belong. That I ask, “how do I make it simpler?” Instead of “how can I make it go away?” I accept that sometimes it will get messy. I don’t resist it. I don’t waste precious energy giving out to myself. When I notice I’ve lost track of either end — the backend of the business or my creative flow — I have a baseline I can return to.
If you imagine it as an infinite loop, sometimes one side expands more than the other. That’s okay. What matters is that it’s alive. Moving.
If running the business feels too much, or you can’t access your flow — if you feel stuck on one side of the loop — reach out. You don’t have to figure this out on your own.