A month ago, I sat down for lunch with two friends from London who have been working at the heart of the investment banking industry. They explained that things were much worse than they appeared at the time, and they claimed that the entire financial system was going to have to be pulled apart and rebuilt in the upcoming months and years. I wondered if they were being a bit dramatic.

Until last week.

In case you missed it, we’re in the midst of what’s already being called the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression. And it’s not even close to being done yet. As part of this, we’ve seen lots of people talking about why this happened, but no real long-term solutions. People agree that widespread greed and hubris got us into this mess, but they’ve been assuming this is just the nature of business, and so the failure was primarily one of regulation.

But while greed can be the root of business, it doesn’t have to be. In Megatrends 2010, Patricia Aburdene (who correctly called both the IT and Internet revolutions) explained why conscious business is going to be the economic trend of the next decade. My calling is to support this trend, and I’ve already seen lots of evidence of it on Main Street (particularly among practice builders and small businesses). However, Wall Street has seemed locked in place. More and more people are looking to create careers that provide both money and meaning, but Wall Street’s obsession with money-money-more-money-need-to-make-more-money-Today!-tomorrow-doesn’t-count-money-money-money has been holding this wave back.

Until last week?

For as I look at this crisis, I wonder if perhaps the core failure was not an issue of regulation, but of consciousness. Perhaps this crisis isn’t just a wave of destruction, but it’s also the birthing pains of a new stage of growth. Perhaps the financial hurricane that’s pummeling New York (and still has a long way to go) isn’t just a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity to embrace some radically new ways of doing business.

I have no idea how this is going to play out. But one thing I do know is that there has never been a larger need, or a bigger opportunity, to learn how to do business in a new, different, and more heart-centered way.

To see some leading ideas on how to do this, please feel to check out The Essence of Selling By Giving or An Introduction to Selling By Giving.

Love and light,
Brian