God creates light, firmament, vegetation, stars, moon, sun, time, sea creatures, birds, insects, animals, and finally humans. Creation is achieved through the mere utterance of a word. God conceives of light, says light, and there is light. The Gospel of John explains, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)
Most of my work focuses on helping clients organize their thoughts (at least a few clients will be offended to see this stated so clearly). To the extent I am helpful it is because I am outside the daily grind of the client’s context, so I can listen to and look at that context with more objectivity; I try to bring professional discipline and skill to how I listen and look; and I endeavor to clarify the words that I use – and the client uses – to describe their reality.
The words we use reflect how we interpret – make meaning of – what we experience. Finding the right words is not just an academic exercise; it is a process for clear thinking. The words we use create the reality we experience. What we tell ourselves of this experience – and what we tell others – really makes the experience.
The books of Moses tell us that on the sixth day of creation, God said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them.” (Genesis 1:26-27) We were created in the likeness of God and like God can create with the mere utterance of words.
The Creation of Eve by William Blake (1808)
A few year's ago I went through a home renovation. Several sub-contractors were involved. All were male, about the same age, and most seemed to have grown up in the immediate vicinity. Regardless of who did the work, the specific tangible outcomes were good.
The customer experience, however, varied significantly depending on the team involved. One team was vulgar, vaguely angry, played the hardest of hard rock, and left behind a mess that reduced my wife to tears and took me several hours to pick up. The team of painters was pleasant, polite, and played a variety of country, bluegrass, gospel, and rock at reasonable volumes. They cleaned up after themselves and left the place looking better than they found it.
Once stepping past a painter I excused myself. He responded, “Not a problem. We need to remember we are in your way, you are not in our way.” I am convinced those words were part of a culture that had been purposefully created by the owner-manager. Those words made the reality.
Peter Drucker has argued that “there is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. Markets are not created by God, nature, or economic forces but by businessmen… The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. He alone gives employment. To supply the wants and needs of a consumer, society entrusts wealth-producing resources to the business enterprise.”(Drucker, Peter; Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices)
Drucker is careful in his choice of words. We do not find the customer, we create the customer. He goes on to explain, “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two – and only these two – basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are ‘costs.’”
Marketing is a persistent and disciplined sensitivity to and engagement with the reality outside the enterprise. For Drucker, marketing answers the questions: Who is the customer? What does the customer value? How does the customer buy? And what does the customer need? In answering these questions and organizing the enterprise to respond effectively to the answers, we create the customer. The questions are words. The answers will be words, words worth struggling over.
The second business function is innovation. Once the answers to the four marketing questions are crafted, plans and instructions must be developed to execute the answers. The plans should focus on how value will be created, how products and services will be delivered that the customer will want to buy. The plans and instructions will consist mostly of words or other symbols of communication. The plans and instructions will be the product of analysis, experience, and imagination, made real in a community through communicating and collaborating with others. Before a tangible product or service can be produced, we must first create intangible, yet true, value in the words we use to understand and shape reality.
In the likeness of God, we utter words and worlds are created. Moses learned – and tried to teach – that fundamental to our shared identity is the power and need to create. Embracing our need to create, and to be co-creators with others, is a key step in becoming our true self.
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