Business Karma’s Going to Get You

Instant Karma's going to get you

Gonna knock you off your feet

Better recognize your brothers

Everyone you meet

When he wrote “Instant Karma” in 1970, there is little doubt that John Lennon understood the revolutionary power of the concept of karma. What is less certain is that he knew how much karma affects business. Giving your expertise to those who need and deserve it can be a transformative experience—and not just for the individual on the receiving end. The energy and attitude we project into the world is reflected back to us, which makes karma a critical concept for any business.

There are two different kinds of karma: the first follows from your personal attitude while the second is a reflection of your organizational culture. Both will follow a similar focus—help everyone you can, expect nothing in return—however, their applications are extraordinarily different. We tend to conceptualize karma as a person doing good for the unaccountable benefit that doing good brings back to them; when this is visualized at the organizational level, we begin to see the critical importance of business karma.

Personal karma is typically understood through the Biblical maxim, “Do unto to others as you would have them do unto you.” This is a version of the first law of karma, which says that every good deed is met with a return that is greater than the deed done. There are 12 laws to karma, and the two most important from a personal karma perspective are the law of growth (i.e., growing within oneself) and the law of connection (i.e., everything is linked). Your ability to do good comes from your own personal growth and realization that your organization is connected at every level: when the company wins, chances are that you win, too.

Business karma for organizations functions in a slightly different fashion. As others have argued, there are two firm rules in business: first, not everything we do produces results, and second, generating good results usually comes from having done something right. These two rules emanate from the same point of inception—good business is created from good process. This means that when we think about the notion, “You reap what you sow,” it follows that strong support will come to those who themselves provide strong support for others. Embracing business karma means radically altering one’s perspective on succeeding to allow others to participate in the process.

Another way to think of karma is as a long-term investment. This is because your willingness to help others succeed reflexively supports your own aims. Additionally, you never know who is paying attention: the person you help in the mailroom might one day work their way up to the C-Suite level. This is to say that, over time, the benefit of helping others can be observed in the connections you make—at its most basic level, this is what networking is all about. The difference is that, with business karma, you never act as though you are too good to help a fellow employee even if they are an intern or an entry-level worker.

So how does one “pay it forward”? Start by being intentional about the way you interact with others. Remember that you are not above any interaction and that there is something you can learn from everyone with whom you work. Most importantly, act from a place of wanting to genuinely do good in the world, not to just have good things come back to you. You would hate for your business karma to be built on bad karmic practices.