I Am Who I Am

In the Books of Moses the framework for fulfillment – the means for individuals and organizations to claim their true self – includes six fundamental characteristics: creating, empowering, loving, refraining, framing, and redeeming. These are among the principal characteristics of God. Because we are created in God’s image and likeness they are among our principal characteristics. Our true self – as individuals or a community – will be bound up in living coherently with these characteristics.

We could be even more reductionist. We are meant to be creators. An early commentary on the Torah taught:

Everything that God,
The source and substance of all,
Creates in this world flows naturally from the essence of God’s divine nature.

Creation is not a choice but a necessity.
It is God’s nature to unfold time and space.

Creation is the extension of God.
Creation is God encountered in time and space.
Creation is the infinite in the garb of the finite.

To attend to creation is to attend to God.
To attend to the moment is to attend to eternity.
To attend to the part is to attend to the whole.
To attend to Reality is to live constructively. (Pirke Avot, Chapters of the Fathers, 6:2)

What we create we are inclined to value. Because it is our creation we delight in it and may value it as much as we value ourselves, which is Rollo May’s definition of love. In love we empower, in love we refrain from interfering with the others freedom to choose, in love we create and apply frameworks to inform our choices (and the choices of our beloved), and through these choices we are able to find fulfillment, and even to reclaim our identity from bad choices.

During his encounter with the burning bush, Moses asked to be told the name – really the identity – of God. Moses was told “I am Who I am” (Exodus 3:14) or, in some translations, “I will Be what I will Be.” Rabbi Joseph Telushkin offers that the phrase can also mean “I shall be as I shall Act.”(Talushkin, Joseph; Biblical Literacy)

The tense of God’s name – present or future – has been argued over with a depth of emotion and division that religious controversies seem especially to spawn. Given the all-encompassing nature of God, I advocate giving equal attention to both present and future. The ancient Hebrew texts capture this in the name given to God by the early writers: YHVH. Rabbi David Aaron explains that this is “an amalgam of the verb ‘to be’ in the past, present and future – was/is/and/will be.”

Peter Drucker argues that the fundamental role of management is to create the future. This is done through strategic planning, what Drucker calls the “entrepreneurial skill.” Further Drucker gives particular emphasis to the creative tension between the present and the future. He writes, “The future will not just happen if one wishes hard enough. It requires decision – now. It imposes risk – now. It requires action – now. It demands allocation of resources, and above all, of human resources – now. It requires work – now… There are plans that lead to action today – and they are true plans, true strategic decisions. And there are plans that talk about action tomorrow – they are dreams, if not pretexts for non-thinking, nonplanning, and nondoing. The essence of planning is to make present decisions with knowledge of their futurity.” (Drucker, Peter; Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices). We create the future by making choices now.

We are each in a process of becoming. It is always so. Each new moment presents new opportunities, new threats, and new choices. We choose – even if we choose by avoiding decision – and the consequences of our choice contribute to a new creation.

In leading and managing an enterprise we face the same reality. Drucker writes, “We must make the present create the future.” This is the fundamental task of the enterprise. This task will preoccupy the leaders of the enterprise and defines the most important contribution that can be made to the enterprise by any of its stakeholders. The creation of a sustainable future requires that we make choices coherent with our true selves: creating, empowering, loving, refraining, framing, and redeeming.