Strategy

Creating a workplace intentionally characterized by a balance of tsedaq and mishpat resulting in shalom will produce a sustainable competitive advantage.

This sort of advantage strengthens the ability of the business enterprise to avoid emerging threats and seize emerging opportunities. If the enterprise can avoid and seize more quickly and adroitly than its competitors, it will thrive.

Good strategy is especially valuable in a time of uncertainty. Drucker explains, “We face long years of profound changes. The changes are not primarily economic changes. They are not even primarily technological changes. They are changes in demographics, in politics, in society, in philosophy, and, above all in worldview… The only policy likely to succeed is to try to make the future… To try to make the future is highly risky. It is less risky, however, than not to try to make it.” (Management Challenges, pages 92-93)

Even in the midst of this profound change, however, there are some certainties. Many of these certainties reflect human nature.

When we read the Bible, Homer’s Iliad, Plato, or Shakespeare we may be surprised at how little human nature has changed over the many centuries. Our nobility and our perversions are remarkably consistent.

This consistency is helpful to the strategist.

David Aaker, a professor in the business school at UC-Berkeley, outlines six dimensions for strategic assessment:

• Customer Analysis
• Competitor Analysis
• Market Analysis
• Environmental Analysis
• Self-Analysis
• Portfolio Analysis

At least five of these dimensions – and a case can be made for all six – are focused on how humans behave and why.

Jesus is our most trust-worthy guide to the qualities and complexities of human nature.

Jesus was one of the most effective change-agents in history. If Drucker, Porter, Kotter, and others are right, business leadership is increasingly a matter of leading change. (See links to these authors in the right column.) What does the career of Jesus and his teachings tell us about how to lead change?

In one of his best-known parables (Matthew 13) Jesus says, “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they had not much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when they sun rose they were scorched; and since they had no root they withered away. Other seeds fell upon thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil, and brought forth grain, some hundred-fold, some sixty, some thirty.”

Have you ever tried to spread a new idea? In many cases you are barely heard, the audience is too self-absorbed to really pay attention. Some in the audience respond with immediate enthusiasm, but there is no follow-through. Some will make an earnest effort to hear and follow-through, but other issues and other problems undermine consistent implementation. In only a few instances will the new idea take hold, be nourished by colleagues, accepted by clients, and ultimately flourish.

Isn’t this reality? If this is reality, why are we so often surprised and disappointed by how difficult it is to promote a new idea? If we can reliably predict this range of response, why do we spend so much energy on the seeds among the thorns? Why don’t we do more to celebrate and support the few seeds among the good soil?

Why do we feed problems and starve opportunities?

In less than three years Jesus spread seeds of change that continue to produce. He approached his ministry with a strategy focused on radical change.

Jesus taught, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars… and there will be famines and earthquakes… And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24: 6-14) John Kotter, author of Leading Change, would call this establishing a sense of urgency.

Jesus allied himself with John the Baptist and called together a team of twelve fellow change-agents. Kotter would call this creating a guiding coalition.

Shortly after the beginning of his public ministry Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount. In this single statement he outlined most of his fundamental principles. Kotter calls this developing a vision and strategy.

Kotter emphasizes that management almost always undercommunicates the vision for change. He highlights the following key elements for effective communication:

• Simplicity,
• Metaphor, analogy, and example, Multiple forums
• Repetition
• Leadership by example,
• Explanation of seeming inconsistencies,
• Give-and-take.

Jesus did not read Kotter, but I wonder if Kotter has studied Jesus. Certainly the gospels demonstrate that Jesus was a master communicator.

Much of the gospels consist of private conversations between Jesus and his closest disciples. In these conversations Jesus helped his guiding coalition better understand the details behind the principles. He sent them out on missions of their own and he modeled effective ministry for them. Kotter would call this, empowering employees for broad-based action.

In the ministry of Jesus and in the generation immediately after the crucifixion it is also possible to observe the early Church observing Kotter’s final three stages of leading change: generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing more change, and anchoring new approaches in the culture.

Jesus has a goal. He has a strategy to achieve the goal. He applies expert tactics to implementing the strategy.

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.

Wealth

As the young man walks away, Jesus remarks, “Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Clearly the values of business and the values of Jesus can be in conflict. Even for the most creativity-loving entrepreneur, wealth is usually an important measure of success. There is, however, a difference between using wealth as one of many measures or as the only measure.

As the parable of the young man demonstrates, it is important not to obscure the fundamental question of self-identity. Are we only the sum of what we own, or are we something more and something much more profound?


Self-Portrait with Vanitas Symbols, David Bailey (1651)

In the business world the enthusiasm of entrepreneurship is often succeeded by the discipline of quarterly statements. An enterprise founded on audacious risk-taking, becomes acutely risk-averse. Once we have “got it” we almost always focus on “keeping it.” This focus on preserving instead of growing often sows the seeds of self-destruction.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter writes,

One common problem in emerging industries is that pioneers expend excessive resources defending high market shares and responding to competitors who may have little chance of becoming market forces in the long run. This can be partly an emotional reaction. Although it may sometimes be appropriate to respond to competitors vigorously in the emerging stage, it is more likely that the firm’s efforts are best spent in building its own strengths and developing the industry.

Build your own strengths – discover and amplify your authentic identity – and develop the industry – contribute positively to the community of customers and competitors that will expand your opportunities.

Wealth is not necessarily a problem. Greed, avarice, and fear of losing wealth are serious problems. Wealth that is used to advance justice – social harmony – and righteousness – personal identity with God – can be good, even very good.

Many business scholars argue that in today’s economic environment the primary role of the business leader is to perpetually challenge the enterprise to change and grow.

Peter Drucker has identified five deadly business sins:

1. Worship of high profit margins and of premium pricing.


2. Mispricing a new product by charging what the market will bear.


3. Cost-driven pricing.


4. Slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday.


5. Feeding problems and starving opportunities.
   

These are business sins because they seek short-term financial gain at the expense of long-term strategic advantage. Wealth is what we have today. Value is more than wealth. Value is the capacity of the enterprise to adapt to changing conditions, to be even more creative, and to be even more adept at taking risk.

Jesus does not want us to confuse wealth and value. We should not be possessed by what we own. We should use our possessions to fulfill our greater purposes, both as individuals and as business organizations.

Righteousness

In Isaiah 33 it is written, “Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.”

Justice is the foundation of a healthy community. Righteousness is the foundation of a healthy individual.

In the book of Isaiah the most common Hebrew equivalents for righteousness are three forms of the verb צֶ֫דֶק or tsedaq. These terms are closely related to justice. But where mishpat (see yesterday's post) is a community value, tsedaq is more personal. Justice is evidence of God’s will expressed in community. Righteousness is evidence of God’s will expressed within the individual.

In Matthew 19 Jesus recites the six commandments of social justice and the young man responds, “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” To which Jesus answers, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow me.”

The young man’s follow-on question suggests he has perceived a void. He has fulfilled the obligations of social justice. But at a deeply psychological and spiritual level his beliefs and behavior are not fully integrated. Something is missing.

The follow-on answer Jesus gives for filling the void is not well-received. Matthew reports, “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.”

Jesus perceived in the young man an unresolved tension. Was his fundamental sense-of-self a reflection of his possessions? Or was the young man’s self-identity a reflection of his relationship with God?

The young man was unable to readily conceive of a self that was not dependent on his possessions. The young man was also unable to conceive of a more profound self entirely independent of any externality. Righteousness is a full acceptance of our shared identity with God; the discovery of our authentic selves within the purpose of God.

Are we creatures of our salary, our office, our authority over others, or are we expressions of the creativity and love of God?

The corporate bureaucrat – so well captured by the Dilbert cartoons – is desperate to preserve every illusion of authority and prestige. Most of us have encountered the petty tyrannies that result from what is basically a fearful seeking for control and external assurance of meaning. For such a personality, giving up the external symbols of success is too great a risk.

Alternatively most entrepreneurs I have known display very little concern for the external symbols of success. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, is famous for still using a wooden door on saw-horses as his desk. Entrepreneurs are much more focused on the thrill of the creative process.

The risks of real creativity require a sense of self that will survive multiple failures large and small. The business leader who succeeds over the long-term – through good times and bad – is someone whose whole personality is ready to take the risk that is always part of creation. In religious language we might say, the righteous person is ready to take the risk that is always part of giving oneself over to God.

Justice

The parable of the vineyard is based on the Song of the Vineyard in the fifth chapter of Isaiah. Jesus draws heavily on the book of Isaiah and its recurrent themes of justice, righteousness, and peace.

For Jesus, what is justice? The ancient Hebrew equivalent for justice most often used in Isaiah is mishpat. This is not a philosophical abstract or a promise of a heavenly future. Mishpat is here and now. It is justice-in-action. The claims of justice are real, and if justice is ignored the consequences – here and how – are serious.

Mishpat is especially concerned with a harmonious web of human relationships. Justice is a community value. The vulnerable should be protected. The powerful should be restrained. The widow and the orphan must be sustained. The rich man should share.

The Ten Commandments are foundational to justice. When a rich young man comes to Jesus asking, “What good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” (Matthew 19:16) Jesus responds by referring to the six commandments focused on social relationships.

The workplace is – or should be – a community. The social relationship of manager to managed, colleague with colleague, and professional to client is the essential reality of commerce. When these relationships are not sufficiently and appropriately nurtured, the enterprise will suffer. The community of work, as with any community, depends primarily on the level of trust that exists between the parties.

In the business context, we might re-phrase the six commandments given to the young man as:

• You shall not kill the career plans or good ideas of another merely to advance yourself,
• You shall not cheat on your colleagues or employer by fooling around with competitors,
• You shall not steal money, ideas, or credit that is due others,
• You shall not bear false witness,
• Honor those who have hired you, supported you, mentored you, and given you professional opportunities,
• You shall love your colleague, your client, and your competitor as yourself.

Behaving consistently with these principles of trust-making and trust-keeping builds the foundation of future success. Persistent failure in maintaining trust will lead to the eventual failure of any business enterprise.

In the same chapter of Isaiah as the Song of the Vineyard we read: “Woe to those who draw iniquity with cords of falsehood… Woe to those who call evil good and good evil… Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in those own sight… Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in flame, so their root will be as rottenness and their blossom go up like dust.”

There are often short-term benefits to bad behavior. But lying, stealing, and breaking trust are rotten and will finally produce nothing but dust.

When employees know they can count on their employer to behave justly and when customers are confident they will be treated justly, such a business enterprise will – over the long-term - enjoy a very substantial strategic advantage.

Work

Work was as much part of self-identity in the First Century as in the Twenty-first Century. Throughout the gospels we are introduced to vivid characters primarily in terms of the role they play in the community: householder, tax collector, teacher, herdsman, fisherman, centurion, scribe, and more. We often do not know the character’s name, but we are told their economic and social role.

Jesus fully embraced the world of work. When he wanted to clearly explain some difficult teaching he often chose a work-related analogy.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells spiritually purposeful stories about farmers, merchants, shepherds, kings, servants, day-laborers, tenant farmers, capitalists, lawyers, scribes, and investment managers. He refers to a wide range of other occupations. Jesus saw the world of work as a common reference point and a rich resource for spiritual wisdom.

Jesus viewed the world of work as ripe with spiritual potential. He also recognized that it could be easily be spoiled by spiritual neglect.

The world of modern corporations – huge enterprises serving mass-markets with thousands of employees scattered around the globe – was not a feature of the First Century economy. But even here a careful reading of the gospels can find relevant counsel.

In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, beginning with verse 33, we read of an early capitalist who “planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country.”


The Red Vineyard, Vincent Van Gogh (1888)

But when the absentee landlord sent business agents to collect the rent, the tenants refused to pay. The tenants even “beat one, killed another, and stoned another.”

Finally the landlord sends his own son, who the tenants also kill. Asked by Jesus to finish the outcome of the story, the disciples predicted the landlord would put the original tenants to death and find new tenants “who will give him the fruits in their seasons.”

The parable clearly endorses the worth of what we would now call “value-added” work. Most interpreters of the passage perceive that the work of the early capitalist is analogous to the work of God in creating the underlying potential for future productivity. The early investment justifies a long-term return.

Some contemporary interpreters also see in the parable an early inkling of the “alienation of labor.” The tenants were not around to see the work of the landlord. The landlord is not, evidently, in any sort of direct relationship with the tenants. The tenants have had to work hard to nurture and harvest the vineyard. Some would argue that a sense of antagonism regarding the demands of the landlord is human nature.

But Jesus makes it clear that a rental fee is entirely justified – in fact it is profoundly just.

Jesus in Our Context

To fully benefit from the insights of Jesus we must approach his teachings with a fresh perspective. Too often Jesus is read with a kind of awe and piety he would disdain.

Christianity proclaims that Jesus, the son of God, was fully human. He prayed for daily bread, he enjoyed a fine wine, he laughed with his friends, and he feared death.

For Jesus faith is not a set of religious beliefs, it is a way of living.

But for many modern Christians their faith is focused on another world, not the everyday world of work, politics, entertainment, preparing for retirement, and making ends meet. Faith is a private matter that looks beyond the everyday to the eternal.

This separation would be entirely alien – would probably be repugnant – to Jesus. Fundamental to the teachings of Jesus is the integrity of faith and daily life. Faith is a way, not just to heaven, but to living in harmony with our most basic nature. For Jesus, human nature was created by God and at its core is incorruptibly good.

Whenever we live in a manner that is inconsistent with this nature we are setting ourselves up for unhappiness, failure, and worse. Living our lives in a manner that is coherent with our fundamental nature is the way of justice, righteousness, peace… and ultimate satisfaction.

Jesus was, of course, very much alive – and entirely contemporary – to those whom he encountered. But for us there are only a few stories passed down through twenty centuries wrapped in a social and economic context that is unfamiliar to us.

Jesus has been further distanced from us by a wide array of religious imagery and ritual that would often cause him to smile and occasionally frown. Unfortunately, many of these practices – beautiful and rich with meaning – can also serve to make Jesus seem outside our daily reality, when his teachings were meant to shape our daily reality.

In the following we will re-examine the teachings of Jesus, mostly from the Gospel of Matthew, with a particular emphasis on their implications for the daily life of business and commerce.

For some Christians this effort to insert Jesus into the heart of the modern business enterprise will be troublesome. Some will perceive that in the process of updating the teachings of Jesus for a corporate context I have misconstrued and misrepresented the essential gospel. I am sure my skills are insufficient to the task, but I am equally confident that if Jesus was walking with us today, he would be visiting the corporate canyons more often than the great cathedrals.

For some Christians – and even more non-Christians – this blog will seem a fatally flawed effort to join the sacred and the profane. For these readers any corporate leader who gives serious attention to the counsels of Jesus is clearly unsuited for the hard-nosed competitive turmoil of corporate life. Corporate leaders require a warrior instinct, not the sensitivity of a saint. I would respond that more than a few saints were also warriors and business leaders would benefit from the courage, consistency, and realism that characterized the life and teachings of Jesus.

But this requires a new – and probably more accurate – understanding of both Jesus and his First Century context.