44 Business

Business likes to dress itself in seriousness: the suits, the targets, the language of winning and losing, the sense that everything depends on it. This card arrives to loosen that grip. Underneath the seriousness, business is a game. A set of rules we agreed to play by, and rules can always be redrawn and boundaries pushed up against. Think of the hemp plant: for thousands of years it was grown for rope, food and medicine. Until someone looked at the same plant and saw a building material, a fuel, a plastic.

Nothing about the plant changed; what changed was the imagination brought to it. The rules of what hemp was "for" were never fixed, and neither are the rules of your work. Your work is the same blank page. You do not have to copy what has gone before, run the business the way businesses are "supposed" to be run, or measure success by someone else's scoreboard. This card is not telling you to care less about your work. It is inviting you to hold it more lightly, and to create it in your own image.

What would you build if you truly believed it was yours to draw however you liked? The most alive enterprises are not the ones that followed the rules best; they are the ones that played. Take it seriously enough to do it well, and lightly enough to enjoy it. It is only a game. So make it a beautiful one.