Bible Business School

When I was in college, I saw a bumper sticker on a car in front of me that has stuck with me over the last 15 years. It said: 

A Thorough Knowledge of the BIBLE

is Worth More Than a college education

It was actually a college student who was driving the car. I wasn’t sure what to make of that bumper sticker. It was brash and seemingly over-confident in its assessment right down to its capitalization. Sure, the Bible is life-changing but could it really hold the key to everything that I would encounter as an adult? I dismissed it as the bumper sticker of a narrow-minded Bible thumper. But recently, I’m beginning to think differently.

I read a good amount of business and leadership material. Not sure why – it’s what I’m into at the moment. But what I’ve noticed is that most often, the “jewels” of HBR, leadership journals, or the Godins and Peters of the world can be found in the book of Proverbs. And it usually only takes two sentences instead of twenty pages. Proverbs is full of something that scholars call “aphorisms” – They are simply generalized pieces of wisdom and wit that stand the test of time. Sure, Solomon probably had something to do with writing them, but more likely he was involved in the process of collecting them. They already existed and were in use not just in Jewish circles, but in other religious/ethnic circles as well. Why? Because you can live your life by them. Here are some Proverbs and their business counterparts.

Dan Pallotta from Havard Business Review says this about workplace gossip:

In business, for some reason, we don’t appreciate that the stakes are just as high, despite the fact that we spend much of our waking lives at work. Think of the amount of energy that goes into people undermining other people — all working for the same company — through gossip, for example…But gossip kills possibility…We end up working harder to undermine our fellow workers than we work to make the business work out in the market place. Competitors couldn’t possibly thwart the possibility of our success to the degree we thwart it ourselves.

The book of Proverbs deals with this same issue in 1/3 the space:

Proverbs 14:15: “The gullible believe anything they’re told; the prudent sift and weigh every word” (Message).

Proverbs 16:28 “A troublemaker plants seeds of strife; gossip separates the best of friends” (NLT).

Business and Marketing leader, Daniel Pink  has been promoting a new type of business training he calls the Four-Word MBA:

Lots of people spend lots of money on business school — and it’s often a worthy investment. You can learn new skills, broaden your network, and postpone reality for two years. But I’ve always thought about offering a far cheaper business credential — enduring advice for managers of any kind that I call The Four-Word MBA.

Here it is:

Talk less. Listen more.

Give it a try. It’ll make you a better leader.

I love Daniel Pink’s writings, but this idea is already in a book I own:

Proverbs 12:15: “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to others” (NLT).

Proverbs 19:20: “Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise” (NIV).

My kids aren’t ready for the Harvard Business Review yet. But they are old enough to absorb the wisdom found in a proverb. Why? Because it’s never too early to learn about people. And no matter what business we enter, we still have to build relationships with those around us. The book of Proverbs can give them a head start. I don’t know that my kids will slap that same bumper sticker on the back of their car once they arrive at college. But maybe that wisdom can translate into a foundation for living that will enhance the knowledge they gain once they are there. It’s just a guess. Check back in twenty years and we’ll see.



Why We Compete

So, some more thoughts on competition. There are plenty of reasons why we compete as adults. Of course, I can only speak for myself but I hope I can shed some light on this idea. For many years, my main competitive motivation was pride. I wanted to be the best. I felt that I was entitled to be the best. The truth is I’m not the best…no one is. So, in its infancy (or before we “grow up“) competition is a product of our desire for personal esteem. Small amounts of this are okay I suppose but not the level we normally associate with narcissism. And even into adulthood, occasionally we find the individual who is still captured by their own potential for greatness and their willingness to steam-roll others to get there. I must say that the majority of my experience with competition falls into this category. It’s drives our love of football teams and our aspirations of climbing some sort of corporate ladder. It’s the driving force that makes someone at Catalyst wish they were that person speaking on stage and network their brains out behind the scenes to “connect” with the next ministerial conquest.

But there’s a much more devious form of competition that enters when we grow up. Competition based on fear. And unless you’ve been under a rock somewhere, this is the most common form of competition you will encounter. It is the foundation for much of our business practices and even affects our churches. When you are economically secure or work in a safe corporate culture or a church environment that is open, you don’t see this type of competition. But when our families are threatened, our finances are at risk, reputations are jeopardized, or people start throwing around terms like “divisional restructuring,” cooperative trust and loyalty disappear. And this is the mantra of fear-based competition: “I don’t have to be first…just don’t let me be last.” This competition based on fear makes us do some strange things. Though I beleive it’s important to be thankful for what we have, I am amazed at people’s willingness to oversell the value to “2nd tier” schools, vacations, cars, and luxury items simply because “1st tier” is out of reach. I can’t send my kid to an Ivy League college so I’ll talk about how high the average SAT score is and how low the acceptance rate to my public school choice is. I can’t own a beach house in Destin, Florida so I’ll buy one somewhere else and rave about the “up and coming” location. I can’t own a Mercedes but have a Tahoe. It’s the idea that drives the old joke about “Thank God for Mississippi” since Mississippi is worse off than the state you live in.

Churches are designed to be the exception to this simply because the gospel states the opposite. We are all on the same page. Now, you might assume that my next conclusion is that “we are all on the same page because we are all sinners.” And that’s true – I’d put myself in that category. But the church has a more urgent message to convey: we are on the same page because we are accepted in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:6, NKJV). Everyone is “1st tier.”  But churches don’t always convey this message well. But that doesn’t mean that each person cannot grasp it on their own. I’ll talk about how to do that in the next post.

A Humbling Realization…

This week, I discovered a hangover from staying at home full time that I didn’t expect. In fact, I thought the opposite was the case.

Stay at home life is very different from the corporate world. Not worse or better – just different. Though it has it’s own tremendous obstacles to overcome, stay at home life does move slower than the office. No doubt about it. At home, I had time to be more deliberate with my actions and attitudes, particularly where the girls were concerned. To me, that’s almost by design. Time moves a little slower at home so that best choice can be made for your kids as each question you answer shapes their worldview. Thank God for that extra time. Like I’ve said before, that’s what makes stay at home parenting such a sweet gig. Of course, it’s a catch-22 – I’ve talked about boredom at home in this post.

My realization this week? I can’t remember everything. It’s not that I am forgetting everything. I remember plenty of details. The problem is that the information comes too fast. I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around the sheer number of details, dates, and names of being the family minister at a 1200 member church. I’m sure I’ll adapt over time and begin to unconsciuously filter the information by level  of importance/relevance. But right now it’s a little overwhelming. I also have a newfound respect for those working parents who can “downshift” with ease when they walk in the back door of their homes. That, my friends, is a learned art.

After this realization the first thing I thought about was my corporate executive wife. She had to deal with this almost three years ago and I had no idea how to help her. But more recently, I got to thinking about how many times I’ve forgotten details that she had told me previously while at home that completely flew right past me. Or, better yet, when I asked her for the same information three times over. Geez. At that time, she was going 80 mph while I was going 40. I have a feeling that I may have dropped the ball a good bit. She never told me if I did though.

How’s that for a good wife?

Are We Losing Relationship to the Advances of Technology?

I was listening to a song a few days ago that talked about how rapidly our world is changing and how technology is moving so fast. That (in conjunction with the fact that I almost went crazy in the last two days while our servers at work were down) got me to thinking about how technology is front and center of our society. It makes me uneasy. And I consider myself a technologically competent individual.

Of course the lack of true interaction with others certainly bothers me – an emoticon and a hug are very different, though they may attempt to convey the same thing. But what really bothers me about the technology craze is that we seemed paralyzed when technology is unavailable to us. As if we are incapable of remembering how we functioned without it. But people have “survived” for centuries without modern advances. How is that possible, when technology seems to be indispensible to us as a society? Truthfully, we value a set of cultural ideologies that would be lost on those who came before us – things like material items, expediency, and personal space. But no matter what anyone tells you, sitting across from someone and looking directly into their eyes while they talk feels more “real” than any chat room or message board ever could.

So what did people value prior to the technological explosion? The same things that are still valuable today. Things like friendship, kindness, honor, truth, family, and practicality. Let’s face it, when it’s easier to send a text to someone who is fifteen feet from us in the next office, then we’ve missed the point. Generations of people have gotten along just fine without our modern technologies – some might say better. And personally, I wonder if we weren’t meant to live life at a slower pace than we do. There seems to be no room for margin, for learning “on the job” or for making mistakes. Our culture has made it difficult to learn life by practicing it. And, to me, that’s sad.

Am I screaming the evils of technology? No. I’m a young guy and I certainly like my PDA, DirecTV, and mp3 player. But there’s a subtle difference between a person that picks up the phone to call a friend or walks down the hall to discuss an issue at work and the person that doesn’t take the time to do either. Which type of person are you becoming? As inconvenient and inefficient as it may seem, I’m trying to be the first person.