Strategies@work Podcast

Many organizational leaders want to direct and dictate; they expect workers to understand and comply without question. But human beings don’t always understand and frequently fail to comply. Therefore wise leaders must learn how to communicate truth in a way that encourages comprehension and compliance. Furthermore, leaders must be able to communicate to all people in the organization regardless of their maturity, personality, or intellect. Asking powerful questions is one of the best ways to help all types of people wrestle with truth and give them an opportunity to better understand truth. Excellent organizational leaders must learn to communicate clearly, compellingly, and cogently. Powerful questions can be one of the best ways to facilitate effective communication and therefore release individual and organizational potential.

Gleanings - April 2014

Individuals, as well as organizations, should practice the principle of the tithe not as a ritual but out of a genuine relationship of gratitude to and dependence on Christ. We should be joyfully thankful to God and become dependent on him when we recognize God as the source of success in the workplace. One way to express grateful hearts is to practice the tithe principle both individually and organizationally. Management should seek to build organizations with individuals who practice the tithe principle from their hearts. And management should practice the tithe principle organizationally, as well.

Gleanings - March 2014

Individually, each worker must seek to develop and maintain an intimate relationship with Christ, which provides the basis for the process of finding and fulfilling his or her life purpose in accordance with the C4 principle. Management must function as under-shepherds to Christ by providing a context and culture that encourages the process of finding and fulfilling God’s purpose for each worker. This means that management must provide training in both the C4 principle and in how to live intimately with Christ. A worker who is unwilling to engage in the process of finding his or her life purpose should be encouraged to engage. Those who continue to refuse will be an impediment to the health of the organization. Such people must eventually be released. Organizations that build a culture of effectively shepherding workers will produce excellent value for those they serve and will be profitable as well.

Gleanings - February 2014

Leadership that transforms is not defined in terms of tangible metrics based on man's will and ways. This type of leadership will, at best, have only temporal success. Real leadership is about eternal success. It is about modeling and guiding others into living to do the will of God according to the ways of God in every area of life. The only true metric of success is obedience to and alignment with God. Any human-centered definition of success will, in the end, fail. Genuine leaders produce transformation in people and organizations because they facilitate alignment with the will and ways of God, which produces God-centered success both now and into eternity.

Gleanings - January 2014

It should be the aim of every organization to deliver quality products or services at a low cost. This requires efficiency at every level in the organization. Efficiency is a by-product of people living based on a biblically sound worldview. Therefore management must work diligently to train workers in a biblical worldview. Workers must be willing to learn how to think and live biblically. Workers who are unwilling to be biblically trained will be impediments to the organization's efforts to efficiently produce quality goods and services. Management must encourage workers to grow in a biblical worldview and cannot long tolerate resistance to this growth.

Gleanings - December 2013

Organizational leaders must be clear that God is the senior partner and they are junior partners. The only agenda of junior partners is to discern and obey the will and ways of the senior partner. Organizations committed to this truth will train workers accordingly. Success will be denominated in terms of obedience to and alignment with the will and ways of God. Any other agenda by junior partners will be an act of rebellion against the senior partner. And rebellion will not be blessed. Therefore everything in business is about the discernment of and alignment with the will and ways of God. This means that business is a holy activity.

Gleanings - November 2013

To build a world-class organization that will endure, one must build what God has authorized to be built. Building an organization for any other reason does not bring glory to God because it is not aligned with his will. Leaders and managers must ask themselves hard questions. Has God given them a directive to build their organization? If not, they should repent and seek the Lord regarding what they are to do. If they have a directive from God, they need to carefully evaluate the ways they are building to ensure they are building according to God's ways. God has both a will for what he wants done and ways he wants his will executed. To glorify him, management and leaders must build according to his will and ways. Any other method of building organizations is based on wrong motives, which will lead to judgment. Wisdom to win at work begins with the right motive—glorifying G od by aligning with the will and ways of God.

Gleanings - October 2013

Wise management will build organizations with people who are seeking clarity on and alignment with their life purposes. To do this, management will consider the background of each worker, recognizing that early childhood years are very important in shaping a worker’s ability to find and fulfill his or her life purpose. As a maxim, healthy workers come from healthy home environments. A healthy worker can easily be guided in the process of discovering his or her life purpose. For those workers whose home environments were unhealthy, however, management should look for those who are humble, submitted, and teachable. These are marks of a person who can overcome poor childhood training and be discipled into his or her life purpose. Those who cannot be discipled will need to be released; otherwise, they will become impediments to the success of the organization.

Gleanings - September 2013

Tangible assets are not true wealth. True wealth or riches are defined by Scripture in terms of alignment with the will and ways of God. We should therefore use money and other tangible assets as tools to align with God, in other words, as tools of obedience to God. As such, tangible wealth should be used to trade-up to gain true wealth. This should be the philosophy of stewardship for individuals and for organizations. Living according to this philosophy enables individuals and organizations to accumulate wealth that has eternal significance. Organizational leaders should invest in helping people find God’s purpose for their lives and then seek to utilize people congruent with God’s purpose. Helping people align with the will of God for their lives is one of the best uses of tangible physical assets. Furthermore, tangible physical assets should be used by management to invest in the growth and maturity of everyone in the organization. As individuals align with the ways of God (true wealth), the organization

Gleanings - August 2013

To develop world-class value, organizations must hire the right people. The seminal biblical principle for hiring is C4. By faithfully following this principle, management teams can properly build their organizations in alignment with the will and ways of God. This will serve as a safe harbor and lay the foundation for divine favor and blessings.

Gleanings - July 2013