Peace

Jesus was a serious student of the book of Isaiah. Many of his precepts and parables are based on this text.

Isaiah teaches that when justice is realized in the community and righteousness characterizes the individual then the effective result is peace. The specific Hebrew word for this peace is שָׁלוֹם or shalom.

The peace of shalom is the achievement of balance, of wholeness, of completeness. This is the peace of right relationships fully realized. Shalom is used to describe the relationship of good friends. It is also used to describe the relationship of humans with God.

When our work-place is characterized by mutual respect and each employee is given the opportunity to develop his or her greatest strengths the effective result is shalom. I have been fortunate to be part of organizations that have experienced shalom. They are extraordinarily productive places.

In contrast, early in my business career I played a small role in a bitter labor-management dispute. I was part of a team providing counsel to the corporation’s CEO. The company was one of the great names in American manufacturing.

To this CEO and most of his senior managers the workers were principally cost-factors. To the workers the corporate officers were little more than over-paid exploiters. On both sides there was a sense of injustice. When management insisted on $100 million in labor concessions the contract talks soon broke-down.

Once the formal negotiations were cut-off both corporate and union leaders seemed to become more and more self-righteous (the opposite of biblical righteousness). In meetings with the CEO his language regarding the workers, and especially the union leadership, was increasingly abusive. This had become a personal fight and the CEO was convinced that to win he must destroy the union.

The strike continued for nearly six months. Eventually the company had to withdraw most of its demands and the CEO was dismissed by the Board. But within four years the number of employees working for the company had plummeted from over 103,000 to fewer than 16,000. The company never recovered. Neither did many of the union families.

No justice, no righteousness, no peace.

A work-place characterized by mutual respect and personal creativity is for many professional firms and other business organizations a real economic necessity.

Peter Drucker writes, “What motivates – and especially what motivates knowledge workers – is what motivates volunteers. Volunteers, we know… need, above all, challenge. They need to know the organization’s mission and to believe in it. They need continuous training. They need to see results… One does not “manage” people. The task is to lead people. And the goal is to make productive the specific strengths and knowledge of each individual.”

Isaiah was written at least 500 years before the birth of Jesus. Empowering individual creativity within a community of mutual respect is not a new idea. But it requires business leaders who are alert to the fundamentals of human nature.