How To Use Feng Shui As A Management Tool

The versatility of feng shui offers many exciting new possibilities for practitioners once they begin investigating this ancient science of space. You are in good company when you incorporate feng shui as an additional management tool. Many of Asia’s business tycoons, politicians and CEO’s do so with great success, although few openly acknowledge doing so. In recent years, this ancient science of space is becoming increasingly respectable and rapidly gaining momentum in conventional mainstream thinking. Today, it is acknowledged as a vital factor in the success of companies and businesses. LILLIAN TOO shares some quick and easy ways to use feng shui to improve your business.

What can feng shui do for your business?

1. It can expand your sales revenue...

HOW? Tape three emperor coins tied together with red string onto your sales file, your invoice books or your cashier counters. The coins symbolize newfound money luck, while the red string activates the coins with yang energy.

The combination of yang chi with auspicious symbolism creates excellent feng shui. You can also expand sales volume by displaying the abacus , the golden garlic or the crab on the CEO or supervising manager’s desk. The abacus and golden garlic are symbols of “having wealth to count”, while the crab helps you to make good strategic decisions at all times. This will greatly assist those of you who are in marketing.

2. It can increase your business profits...

HOW? Generate wealth-creating luck in the office with correctly placed wealth enhancing symbols such as a pot of gold, box of ingots , basket of money notes as well as several golden ships that are symbolically sailing into your harbour bearing lots of gold and wealth. The use of symbols to generate wealth luck works very quickly.

The effect is usually felt immediately. I usually create a ‘harbour’ on a special table next to my desk to symbolize a whole fleet of ships sailing towards me bringing wealth. I always make sure that the ships sail towards me from one of my good directions.

3. It can make your business grow at a steady rate...

HOW? Create growth luck in the office by enhancing the sheng chi or growth energy of your office. Remember that businesses that stagnate eventually die. So always make certain that the corner that governs growth luck in your office is properly investigated before you decorate the area. The foyer is the front entrance of your office. So stand at the foyer, use a compass and take the facing direction of your entrance. This applies equally to all kinds of offices. Next take note of the following:

• If your facing direction is North, place a metal windchime hanging from the ceiling of the center of the foyer. Do not place crystals or ceramics here!
  
  
• If your facing direction is South, place a healthy, strong growing plant (a variety with rounded, waxy looking leaves) in your foyer.
  
  
• If your facing direction is East or Southeast, place a small water feature in the foyer. The water should be moving at all times. Do not place anything metallic such as windchimes or bells here.
  
  
• If your facing direction is West of Northwest, place a large crystal geode at the entrance foyer. An amethyst crystal with large crystal formations is best for this purpose. Do not have excessive or glaring light here.
  
  
• If your facing direction is Northeast or Southwest, place a bright light at the front entrance foyer. A crystal chandelier would be great. Do not place things made of metal or any plants here.

4. It can expand your customer base by enhancing your reputation...

HOW? From a feng shui perspective, expanding your customer base requires you to build a good name for your business. You can enhance your reputation with an aggressive publicity campaign, but you should also supplement with a special feng shui tip. Use a compass to locate your South sector and place the auspicious Horse in this sector.

The horse symbolizes yang chi but it also belongs to the fire element, which reflects the glory of the South sector. An auspicious horse can be a tribute horse bringing gold, or it can be a victory horse that can run faster than the swallow. It will enhance the South sector bringing the company an excellent reputation. Many corporate interior decorators who know feng shui recommend displaying a beautiful horse in the office lobby area, thereby discreetly bringing powerful chi to the company.

How can feng shui increase productivity?

1. It can expand staff morale thereby increasing productivity...

HOW? There are different ways of using feng shui to improve employee morale and productivity. Here are two tried and tested methods, which all business and corporate offices will benefit from, if nothing else then for forging a more conducive environment at work. When employee morale and productivity are down, the loss to the company in terms of costly mistakes can be substantial and when they are high, productivity levels soar!

• The first method is to ensure that you do a little homework before hiring new people and adding them to the existing team. By knowing what animal sign each potential new employee is born under, you can instantly check his or her ‘compatibility’ with the staff already in the office. The use of astrological affinities to determine compatibility will ensure harmonious relationship amongst office workers. So do make it a point to check the animal signs of all employees.
  
  
• The second method is to sit every member of your management team according to his or her personal best directions. This usually means their personal sheng chi directions based on the KUA formula. Readers who are unfamiliar with the KUA formula may want to read up about this method which spells out the good and bad directions based on one’s date of birth and gender. Once you know your KUA number, you will know your lucky and unlucky directions. With every member of the team sitting in a way that allows them to tap into their good directions, harmony is sure to reign at the office. If you want to make doubly sure this happens, and that none of your employees fight with each other, display a bowl of red apples.

2. It reduces employee turnover thereby creating a stable work force...

HOW? Stability of relationships forged between employees ensures that there are no negativities or harmful politicking at the workplace. The most common cause of high employee turnover is unhappiness at the office. Tensions, fights and quarrels are usually caused by stagnant or overly aggressive chi pervading the air. There are several feng shui remedies, which can quickly improve the energy, stabilizing the goodwill amongst staff.

• The first thing you can do when tensions and quarrels enter the office environment is to increase the amount of fire element chi in the workplace. Paint a wall red, paint the filing cabinets red, or simply increase the brightness of the office. The addition of fire energy will suppress the quarrelsome fighting star, wherever it is.
  
  
• The next way of reducing tensions at the office is to invest in a fierce looking and fairly sizeable rooster . According to Taoists, the rooster has the capability to “peck away all petty squabbling and politicking.”
  
  
• Finally, if you are game, try to figure out where the auspicious mountain star 8 is located within the office. This is based on the Flying Star School of feng shui. When you locate the mountain star 8, place a large quartz crystal or boulder in this area. This is the most powerful cure for quarrelsome energy.

3. It improves the health of the work force, reducing medical expenses and reducing worker absenteeism...

HOW? Unless the health of the workforce is properly taken care of, in the long run, the company loses out. The feng shui approach to good health is to take a preventive approach. This means to use feng shui so that illness is something the staff does not experience. When the office has good feng shui for health, then other than the odd cold or sniffle, employees will not succumb to visiting viruses and bugs.

• The most efficient feng shui way of ensuring good health at the workplace is to track down the whereabouts of the mountain star 8 in the flying star chart of the office. Activate this health star with a painting of mountains OR place a crystal geode nearby.
  
  
• It is also as important to update annual and monthly feng shui. Do this by tracking down the whereabouts of the illness star. This year, for instance, the illness star is in the Southeast, so in your office, the person who sits in the SE corner will get afflicted by the illness star. The remedy is to place a metal wu lou or a 6 rod metal windchime in the SE. In 2007, the illness star flies to the center of the chart, so everyone gets affected by the illness star. The cure then will be to move the windchimes to the center of the office.
  
  
• Make the office pulsate with life energy that makes people want to spend time there because they like the “feel good feeling.” Businesses, like human beings, can get tired and sick when the chi gets stale or stagnant. Feng shui restores the health and spirit of any business by bringing in a large dose of happy human energy, so throw a party each year-end. Such an infusion of yang energy is one of the best protective cures against illness luck.
  
  

Feng shui tips for the workplace

1. Sit with a solid wall behind you to ensure you have support. If there is a window behind you, cover it up with curtains or a solid divider.
   
   
2. Always place fax machines, telephones and computers in the wealth area, as these activate the chi there, making it stronger and more powerful.
   
   
3. Never have the main entrance opening directly to your table, as the chi coming in will be too harsh, causing bad luck, obstacles and problems to manifest.
   
   
4. Senior managers should not occupy any room with two doors. This will cause conflicts and too many opinions.
   
   
5. Ambitious CEOs who wish to rise to greater prominence are advised to place a dragon on the left hand side of their desk (facing towards the door) and a monkey sitting on an elephant in front. These are two of the most powerful symbols to generate upward mobility.
   
   
6. Cactus and other sharp looking plants should be banned from the office, as these plants cause shar chi killing energy to pervade the office.
   
   
7. Tables and chairs should be placed in a way that enables the chi to flow. They should not block the flow of chi.
   
   
8. If your staff frequently fall sick, hang 6-rod metal windchimes to overcome illness chi. Metal bells and Wu Lous are also effective.
   
   
9. Do not place an empty vase next to the main door, as this is inauspicious.
   
   
10. Do not place the photocopy machine near to the main door. Heat near the main door causes the chi to disperse.
    
    
11. The company signboard should be in the wealth area to tap into its auspicious chi.
    
    
12. Avoid clutter in the office; desks should ideally be kept as tidy as possible.

Important parts of the office

Creating good feng shui in the important areas of the office is sure to have a strong impact on the prosperity of the company. Incorporating feng shui principles in laying out office space will ensure that costly common mistakes that lead to sales declines, unhappy employees and turnover are avoided.

These areas include the entrances into the building and offices, the executive offices, the sales and marketing areas, the conference room where important decisions are made and the CEO’s room.

1. Ensure a direct view of the entrance. Never let key staff sit with their back to the entrance of an office.
   
   
2. Never sit an employee in the direct line to the door. This causes the employee to be directly hit by the rush of Chi which can result in negative effects on the health and productivity of the employee.
   
   
3. Install warm lighting (as opposed to glaring fluorescent lighting). Lighting changes the entire ambience and balance of chi in any room. Offices benefit from balanced lighting. When light is too bright, it cause irritations amongst the staff. When the lighting is too dark however, the energy becomes too yin. Balance is important.

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Feng Shui Case Studies in Business

Awell-known TRADING company had a beautiful bronze Tang Horse displayed in their conference room. They frequently received compliments on the horse. But when a new CEO brought in an interior decorator to rearrange things improve the look of the office, the horse was moved to a corridor outside the conference room.

Six months later, the CEO had a bitter misunderstanding with the owner and left the company. The owner brought in a professional feng shui consultant who suggested they needed metal inside the conference room to avoid poor collections and loss of business. Walking along the corridor outside the conference room, the feng shui consultant suggested bringing the Tang Horse back into the room. “This horse will do nicely,” the consultant told the owner, who upon thinking back over the past six months, realized that during that time without the horse in the conference room, there had been a massive drop in sales, and collection of money due the company was constantly delayed. The Tang Horse was immediately moved back into the room.

Note: While metal is not always the correct solution to a feng shui problem, in this case it was needed to avoid delays and activate increased turnover luck. In other cases, what may be needed may be different. Feng shui, properly applied, can contribute greatly to the growth of a business.

One time I was consulting for a property agency. I told them that the two of their rooms, occupied by their marketing manager and general manager respectively, should not be used as offices, but instead should be used as storerooms. These rooms were seriously afflicted. Staff occupying those rooms could not stay long at the company. I was then told that these offices consistently remained empty as GM and Marketing Manager of the company kept changing. Staff who had occupied them had either quickly left the company after a short tenure, or had developed serious illnesses.

Note: Companies incur a great deal of expenses when critically afflicted areas are used. Staff occupying such locations would not only get sick and feel lethargic; they could also develop more serious ailments. So when planning space usage or considering an expansion, feng shui inputs must always be taken into account. It is vital to minimize the negative effects of afflicted areas and to enhance auspicious areas.