What Works: Using the 10 Burning Man principles in your business

If you could rename the seasons in Northern Nevada, it might go something like this. Ski Season, Construction Season, Burning Man, and Nevada Day. Burning Man season is here! Soon you will start seeing art cars, buses, RVs, bike racks galore, and those people who call themselves Burners.

I’m a proud Burner. I’ve been one since 2013 when I first volunteered at the Reno airport. After a few years of enculturation, I set foot on the playa for the first time three years ago.

Part of enculturation at Burning Man is knowing (and agreeing to live by) the 10 principles while on the playa. However, I deeply feel the 10 principles have the ability to reshape everything — including leadership communication.

Radical Inclusion: In the workplace, this means we break up the silos. We stop saying, “you can’t sit with us” in the lunch room. What is this? “Mean Girls?” We stop excluding and start looking at ways we can be inclusive, of people’s participation and ideas.

Radical Self Expression: I understand dress codes. What I don’t understand is when employees feel like they have to walk on eggshells around their leadership. Enabling radical self expression is about allowing a safer space to express. Many a company has been saved by a whistleblower who wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.

Radical Self Reliance: This principle teaches people to rely upon their own resources, including their ability to figure it out. It encourages preparedness, for meetings, for project requirements, for anything that may come up. Radical self reliance also can mean you self-manage well in times of the unknown.

Participation: If someone wants to participate, this principle gives them permission to jump right in and give it a go. This encourages learning, growth, and enjoyment. When you participate in something new, you also learn if you like it or not. You learn more about yourself when you join in.

Immediacy: There’s something to be said for not overthinking, not future tripping, not worrying, just doing. This principle eliminates the pause before the action and results in the benefit of consistent, continuous, and fast effort. It’s the epitome of “get out of your head and get into action.”

Decommodification: We’re in business. Of course, we want our company name on everything. I’m not talking about just branding here. I’m talking about reducing your team down to the sum of their credentials: the school they went to, what awards they have won, what boards they belong to, the outside things that give them as a human meaning. When you strip all that way, you have a flesh and blood human with as much potential as they want to express.

Gifting: Appreciation without expectation of return reaps great rewards for the giver. When you cut the strings from your gifts, you are free to truly give versus give with a motive. Do a self check on your giving. Are you giving for a result? Or are you giving for your own joy?

Communal Effort: When we all pitch in, it gets done faster (more hands), better (more expertise), and it builds team work. This principle can be inserted into your culture to bring your team together without having to invest in a ropes course to do it.

Civic Responsibility: In business, we follow the laws of the land. Using this principle, we encourage honesty, integrity, and abiding by all laws. We don’t look for legal loop holes or balance our businesses in the grey area of the law. As a result, we don’t have to look over our shoulders when it comes to the law.

Leave No Trace: This is a great principle to launch in your kitchen. If employees share a kitchen, it can become a source of workplace stress. Wash dishes, wipe up spills (even water), don’t drop something and leave it, clean out the fridge on Fridays: leave no trace makes the environment better for everyone.

What did you learn about the 10 principles and how your company could benefit from one, a few, or all of them? Do any of you already practice the 10 principles in business? What has the result been? The floor is yours, Carson City.

Consider this my out of office message. And if you are going to Burning Man, I’m camped at 9:45 and Rod’s Road at Dr. Playa. Come by the ENT Clinic and let us take care of you with ear swabs and essential oils, daily from 12-3 pm. Plenty of gifted hugs and great conversations to be had!

ABOUT DIANE DYE HANSEN
Diane Dye Hansen has more than 20 years of experience in communication and change management gained in the sectors of government, non-profit, healthcare, publishing, advertising, entertainment, and technology. Her Critical Opportunity Theory helps organizations and leaders turn challenge into opportunity through proper leadership and team communication.
She is the president and founder of What Works Consultants, Inc., a consulting firm which helps business leaders communicate when communication is hard. This is done through research, strategic communication planning, change management consulting, human resources recruitment and training. She is a columnist on CarsonNow.org. To meet her and learn how she and her team can help your company, visit What Works Consultants, Inc. online at www.whatworksconsultants.com.