Biblical Business Radical: Who Are You Attracting?

Christ attracted all types of people. Look at His first inner circle: a tax collector and those who owed taxes and even a person identified as opposed to Roman rule (probably not a person who would support someone who's profiting off of Roman rule), a person probably of mixed heritage (half-Jewish, half-Egyptian), a guy with ties to the religious elite and those who distrusted the elite, and so on.

In business, we often hire people who will make us look good. If we're authoritarian in management style, we don't hire self-assured, self-starting, initiative-taking, quick decision-making, risk-tolerant people. We hire more passive, risk-averse, comfortable with direction-taking (not direction-making), more likely to ask-for-permission versus ask-for-forgiveness people. This is a dynamic I'm also learning with a church staff search team. We're trying to hire a self-starting, direction-making, quickly decisive, innovative, visionary person. Yet our search team doesn't reflect that. We're being slow, methodical, perhaps a bit fearful over a poor hiring choice, unclear about criteria or end result--what are we hiring for: the person's process or the end result.

If we want diversity, how do the hiring processes reflect that desire? How diverse is the hiring team in cultural backgrounds, personality styles, behavioral styles, values (while focused on the common mission and corporate values), etc.? How well does the hiring process reflect expected future behaviors by the candidate?

Biblical Business Radical: Better Leader than a Pagan King?

John Maxwell makes an observation after contemplating the story of Esther. Mordecai subverts a plot to kill the Persian king Xerxes--who's ruling an empire stretching from India to Ethiopia--and subverts a plot to kill all the Jews in this extensive part of the world. Maxwell suggests that a real leader "cannot be successful unless other people want him [or her] to be." Successful leaders are helped by their followers. 

Successful leaders are only successful because they have followers who work for their leader's success.

I'm not saying that Xerxes was a good leader to work for. Nor was Belshazzar, for whom Daniel worked, or the pharaohs of Egypt, for whom Joseph worked. However, if you read the scriptures carefully, even when the kings were wicked, the Lord blessed their reign through the work of Mordecai and Esther, Daniel and Joseph. They may have been tyrants but Joseph's, Daniel's, Mordecai's and Esther's courage to constructively challenge the king couldn't have been the first time these leaders were confronted with some sort of ugly truth.

Wouldn't it be great though if your employees worked towards your success? How are you like the good leader for whom they enthusiastically would work for? (Enthusiasm and commitment, I think, are the two sides of the Engagement coin. It's probably why employee engagement is so low despite 30 years of focus on improving it.) How often does your team tell you ugly truths?

Even if you're not a good leader, have you thanked the people helping you succeed? Don't take their efforts for granted, like "it's their job and their thanks is to stay employed." And recently in a conversation, another business leader shared that he once worked through the night for a presentation the next day. He wasn't thanked. Likely, his boss probably presumed he'd be willing to do this all the time. Maybe even shrunk the lead-time on future, similar efforts. This is the opposite of thanks. And resentment could build. Maybe bad leaders don't have efforts sabotaged--believers are to supposed to put their best efforts forward for Christ as the Lord and not the human lord--but they may not be getting much more than 78% effort (low engagement can mean 22% less productivity). All of this starts with a foundation of trust: being trustworthy as a leader. Without this foundation, all other efforts are worthless. 

Trustworthiness comes from competence, dependability, integrity, approachability and mutual vulnerability (e.g. admitting a mistake so they will tell you about their mistakes). How would you rate yourself and how much are you sensing that your team is working with you and for the organization's success?

Biblical Business Radical: Fear of Failure?

Recently our church had to revise the road as its entrance. I looked at the new curvy roadway and wondered if the civil engineer considered snow plowing patterns. I realized that probably most successful people have had failures in decision-making and learned from them. It's easy to consider road design if you basically have 3 seasons. 

It's easy to design "finder's fee" contract if there aren't long-term relationships. I remember a referral fee being owed to a third-party engineer for bringing a commercial customer to our company. No business was transacted at the time but 10 years later...new players in the customer firm sought us out. We won a contract. And without any effort by the engineer, he was owed a "finder's fee" of a significant dollar amount because of the size of the contract, and the open-ended language in our contract with him.

Before we begin an initiative, we'd like to know there's a high probability of success. No fault in that. However, if the margin of error or the margin of uncertainty stops us cold, we have a high degree in the fear of failure. I remember seeing a sign in small airfield building: "If at first you don't succeed...don't try skydiving." 

Some business people who are also followers of Christ believe that success is guaranteed because of their status as believers. If you're not succeeding, something's wrong with your faith. There are many promises in the bible purporting this. There are also many examples where failure occurred despite great faith: Christ in the garden of Gethsemane wishing there was an alternative to crucifixion in order to accomplish the Father's plan; Job; the Israelites in Egypt post-Joseph and pre-slavery. And then we have Paul's "list" of the faithful--some even "the world was not worthy" of their presence--in Hebrews 11 who were victorious, blessed, "obtained promises" and experienced resurrection of themselves and loved ones...and also the ones who were martyred, or lived in extreme poverty, suffering from diseases and oppression and without any homes, family or community. "All of these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised..."

Christian businesses fail too, in spite of prayer, talent and dedication of the business to the Lord. Does it mean you lack faith if your business is struggling? No. It's just not the right time. Or the promise is meant for someone else--"...because God had provided something better for us, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect." If the business is dedicated to Him, and consistent with a servant mission--and we believe we are but stewards and not owners--then it's His prerogative to decide if the business succeeds or fails.

I once had to learn that lesson. After the loss of several hundreds of thousands of dollars, I realized that, unlike the parable of the talents, instead of increasing my pile of talents, the Lord decided to redistribute the wealth to His other children. And it's a good thing to prune some businesses that are inhibiting growth for other businesses. There are necessary endings. Only the Lord knows what's best for all in His kingdom.

Failure is not a sign of disfavor. Even in the best of times, not all Israelites or first-century Christians thrived economically. Monetary or military success is not a sign of God's favor either. Otherwise, we'd be worshipping the way Persians, Greeks, Babylonians and Romans did and wouldn't even take a chance to believe in the God of the Marginalized People--the weak, the poor, the powerless, the least, the last and the lost. But like the person designing roads and the contract writer, you might only prevent future disaster from having learned from past disasters. And this is a best reason not to fear failure: we can learn from them, and we can watch God redeem situations despite our best/worst efforts.