Loving Monday: Relationships

I once knew a very talented professional who took on extra work at any opportunity. He was ambitious, yes, but he was also good. No task was too menial or mundane; he volunteered for everything and he generally did everything well. He was friendly and engaging, what everyone would call “a really great guy.” He was also helpful and supportive to his colleagues.

He was gradually promoted, assuming greater and greater responsibilities. At some point, he caught the attention of the top executives, and the promotions started happening faster. Then he made it into the executive ranks, one of the youngest ever to do that.

And something happened.

The change was almost immediate. He became suspicious of everyone and everything. His staff couldn’t do anything without advance approval, which slowed everything down and stifled creativity. His people actually began to fear him. People on other teams began to avoid him (and his team) whenever possible. As the criticism increased, his behavior only became more extreme.

Finally, it became so bad that even top management noticed (yes, I phrased that correctly). Interventions were attempted. They’d work for a time, and then the problem would return. While all this was going on, people were damaged. Relationships were destroyed. Work and performance suffered.

Eventually, he was asked, or told, to leave the organization. He was readily hired by other employers, and then let go after less than a year. He couldn’t stop the destructive, and self-destructive, behavior.

Years later, when I asked one of his former supervisors why the behavior was tolerated for so long, he said, “He got the work done.”

“But eventually he didn’t get the work done,” I replied. “Eventually, what he was doing meant the work didn’t get done.”

The former supervisor shrugged. “It’s the way things are here.”

And the way things were was toxic. It still boggles the mind what organizations will tolerate, especially in bad leaders. They seem to forget, or avoid recognizing, that the way work gets done is through the relationships people have with people – colleagues, suppliers, customers. Forget what the purpose of all this is, sacrifice those relationships, and you ultimately sacrifice the work – and the organization.

As John D. Beckett says in Loving Mondays: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul, “Our lives and what we do with them are important to God. A close relationship with the Lord will bring about a compelling and necessary result. We will find it possible to bring every aspect of our lives, including our work, into alignment with God’s truth and design. This in turn will transform us into people who are not only more effective as human beings and as workers but more pleasing to God.”


(Over at the High Callings Blogs, we’ve been discussing Beckett’s Loving Monday, led by Laura Boggess. This week, we’re focused on the final section of the book, chapters 22 through 24, which bring together the themes and ideas of the book. Check here for last week’s discussion.)

Join this week's discussion at the High Calling Blogs: The Ultimate Goal.

Monica Sharman's Annual Spring Almost-Burnout.

Lyla Lindquist's Loving Monday: Unqualified.

Loving Monday – Writing a Vision

Twenty years ago, I was writing a speech for a CEO. He was to be speaking at a meeting of what one might call critics, at various stages of friendliness toward the company. He didn’t really have a good grasp as to what his subject should be, and we had gone through a series of discussions of ideas submitted by me and a lot of others.

He wanted to make a statement that would tell the audience that he understood their concerns, that he identified with their concerns, and that he was doing something to address them. Other company executives had come forward with plans and proposals, but the price tags were potentially horrendous. He was taken with several of the ideas, but he balked at the cost (and his investors would balk, too, if they saw the estimates).

His challenge to me was this: is there a soft path to get to the hard decisions? Could we chart a course that would get to where we needed to go?

And I wasn’t to talk with anyone about what he had asked me to do.

The project was one of the most intense writing assignments I’ve ever undertaken. I read and researched. I wrote draft after draft. I read and researched some more. I finally reached a point where I was ready to submit a draft to him.

As the text of the speech draft moved toward conclusion, I had included what I thought was a rhetorical device – a repetition of a phrase that summarized the ideas expressed in the speech. The phrase was “It is our pledge,” and I used it seven times to express seven ideas and imply seven commitments.

He didn’t call it this, and I didn’t call it this, but essentially what he had asked me to do was to write a statement of vision for the company – a vision of what might be and what could be. Previously, all we had were financial goals.

He gave the speech. It became known as “The Pledge.” It upended the company and the industry.

Rereading it now, it’s still oddly current. But I realize something about it now that I didn’t understand then. It is not a “religious” statement by any stretch of the imagination. But it is shot through with Biblical principles, principles like stewardship, honoring God, loving your neighbor and sacrificial acts.

And I realized that, acknowledged or not, all vision statements I’ve ever seen come from the same source. It’s as if we’re all, in one way or another, attempting to reach toward the standards and the promise God offers in the Bible.

(Over at the High Callings Blogs, we’re discussing John D. Beckett’s Loving Monday: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul. The discussion is led by Laura Boggess. This week, we’re focused on chapters 18 through 21, covering the ideas of work-family balance, prayer for business, vision and values. Check here for last week’s discussion.)

Related:

Join this week's discussion at the High Calling Blogs: Tightrope.

Monica Sharman's Vision and Balance.

Lyla Lindquist's Why Family Matters.

L.L. Barkat's How We Fall Apart.

Loving Monday – The Compassionate Enterprise

I’m originally from New Orleans, a Nawlins boy born and raised. But I haven’t lived there since I graduated from college, and that was…a long time ago. But my mother still lives there, in the same house since 1956; my older brother lives in what is now a northern suburb across Lake Pontchartrain; and I have relatives all over the city.

In late August of 2005, I was at a school function for parents. And I was thankful that New Orleans had been largely spared from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, particularly since my then-82-year-old mother and her older sister had refused to evacuate and decided to stay together in my mother’s house. I was listening to a presentation when my BlackBerry buzzed with a message from my younger brother, who lives in Houston. This is what the message said: “The levee on the 17th Street Canal has been breached. There are also reports that the London Avenue Canal has been breached.”

I knew exactly what that message meant. Exactly. New Orleans was flooding. The city had not been spared. It was everyone’s worst fears realized. The 17th Street Canal was a border between New Orleans and suburban Metairie, and it meant that some of the wealthiest parts of the metro area were flooding. The London Avenue Canal bordered the Ninth Ward, and it meant that some of the poorest sections of the city were flooding.

Then another message from my brother: the St. Charles Parish levee on Lake Pontchartrain had been breached. I knew what that one meant, too. The airport runways were going to flood. And possibly my mother’s house, which had survived every hurricane large and small for the previous 50 years without a drop of water inside the house.

The next five days were a nightmare. And my company, my Fortune 500 company that many people love to hate, demonstrated a depth of corporate and individual compassion that still amazes me.

The company has a large manufacturing plant on the river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The plant had done a phenomenal job of shutting down and protecting the facility before Katrina arrived. But a third of the plant’s employees – more than 200 people – lost their homes because of Katrina. They had no place to live, not even with relatives because a lot of their relatives were in the same predicament. So the company brought in trailers for all of the employees and their families. A fund was created for employees to contribute to help those who had lost their homes. The company made a large and generous donation to the Red Cross for relief efforts. And employees from the manufacturing plant who had boats became part of the rescue flotilla, pulling people from atop flooded homes and buildings.

And then there was me, a total basket case trying to figure out how to get my mother and aunt out of the city. Miraculously, while she lost electricity (normal for a hurricane) and water (not normal; water pipes had broken everywhere), she still had phone service (erratic but she had it) and her house did not flood. The flooding stopped a few blocks away. That week, my boss let me work the internet and the phone to get them out of there, track down other family members (scattered from Florida to Texas and as far north as Ohio) and become a mini-information center for people trying to find family and friends. I didn’t do one lick of company work that week, but I worked 12 to 14 hours a day.

We got them out; a neighbor who had evacuated to Lafayette snuck past the military and police roadblocks to check on his house. He took my mother and aunt to my nephew’s house in Lafayette, and my brother eventually got them to Houston.

And my company, well, my company demonstrated its compassion and generosity. It’s a side most people don’t see – the side that sent donations and resources when tsunamis hit southern Asia, when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and when the earthquakes struck Haiti and Chile. It’s what the company does.

(Over at the High Callings Blogs, we’re discussing John D. Beckett’s Loving Mondays: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul. The discussion is led by Laura Boggess. This week, we’re focused on chapters 15 through 17, covering the ideas of the compassionate enterprise, extraordinary service and giving something back. Check here for last week’s discussion.)

Related posts:

Join today's discussion at HCB: What I Hold in My Hands.

L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone: You a Philanthropist?

A Different Story: Risky Business

What Is a Person Worth?

At the end of chapter 11 of Loving Mondays: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul, John D. Beckett says this:

“I’m convinced most employees want to see their companies prosper. They know their success depends on their employer’s success, and they will work hard to contribute. But they must be provided a dignified and supportive work environment. They must be viewed as valued, important, worthy. They bear God’s own image. If they are of infinite worth in his eyes, they certainly deserve no less from us than profound respect” (page 92).

Years ago, when I first became a “people leader,” I had all of three days to prepare for a people review session coupled with succession planning. As we gathered together for an all-afternoon meeting, things went much as I expected them to, except when we began to discuss one of my two new direct reports.

“Big Boss wants John fired,” my boss said.

What?

“He thinks he does mediocre work at best. We have to do something.”

Then the person John had reported to for five years before me spoke up. “Yeah, John’s a real problem,” she said. “It’s probably best that he leave.” Other heads around the table nodded in agreement. The HR person sat quietly, not saying a word.

I first had to resist an urge to reach across the table and slap John’s old supervisor. Then I said, “And how many times has John been told this in his performance reviews? How many times has he been told his performance is lacking? How many times over the past five years (a figurative instead of a literal slap) has he not gotten a bonus because of performance problems?”

Silence. An uncomfortable silence.

“The answer to all of those questions is zero, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” my boss said. “He has to go.”

“I’m not going to fire him until he’s been told he has performance problems and is given the opportunity to improve.”

“I think that’s the wisest course,” the HR person said.

“You’re wasting your time,” my boss told me.

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But I have to do it this way.” I knew John’s performance problems as well as anyone. I knew them better, in fact, because I had done that kind of work and job before.

So I had a conversation with John, and explained the problem. He was surprised but not shocked. He had felt people’s expectations for him were low. And he struggled to do things better but was never given any guidance.

So we agreed on a 90-day plan. Part of that plan was for him to get himself familiar with a radically new approach to the work – which was one of the reasons I’d been put in charge of the team. There were other things he had to do as well. We had weekly check-in meetings to look at progress.

At the end of the 90-day plan, we had a talk. And I asked him how he thought he did. “I feel like I did great on some things,” he said, explaining. And I agreed. “But on others, like the new way to get the work done, I feel like I missed the boat. I see what you’re asking for, but it’s just not me.” And I agreed with that, too, asking him what he thought the next steps should be. “I need to find another job,” he said, “either here or elsewhere. But I expect you’re probably going to need to get someone in this job pretty quickly.”

Three weeks later, John left the company. We worked out a severance package of three months pay and medical benefits until COBRA kicked in. A few months after leaving, John found a job he was much better suited for.

The HR person asked me why I went through all the hassle, time and trouble when everyone, including me, knew what the outcome was going to be.

“You won’t like my answer,” I said.

“Try me,” the HR person said.

“Because I believe every one of us is made in God’s image, and because of that, we each have the same inherent value in God’s eyes. It doesn’t mean that our skills and abilities and talents are the same. And it doesn’t mean we all perform the same. But it means that I have to value people like God does, and treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve. And John deserved dignity and respect.”

HR didn’t know what to say.


Over at the High Callings Blogs, we’re discussing Beckett’s Loving Mondays. The discussion is led by Laura Boggess. This week, we’re focused on chapters 12 through 14, covering the ideas of individual value or worth, the blueprints for our lives, and trouble finding us at work. Check here for last week’s discussion.

Related posts:

High Calling Blogs: Blueprint (this week's discussion on Loving Mondays)
Monica Sharman's Snowflakes and Fingerprints
L.L. Barkat's Loving Mondays: Blueprints
Lyla Lindquist's Loving Monday: What are we doing here?

A World Split in Two

Ideas have consequences. But I didn’t know that a question I was asked when I was teaching an adult Sunday School class had its roots in the Pietism movement in the 17th century.

For two years, I attended a lecture and study course called Salt and Light taught by Jerram Barrs of Covenant Theological Seminary. Barrs, who had studied with Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri, was teaching about culture and faith, and that the gospel was the transformational message for all of life, and all of creation, including the arts, education, the environment, the public sphere, work – everything that is the world we live in.

When I finished the series, a pastor at our church asked me to teach the material in an adult Sunday School class, and I readily agreed. The class was well attended, and things went fine until we hit the lesson on work, and I repeated what Barrs had emphasized again and again, that God saw work as another area to be redeemed, that we were to live and be our faith in the work place, that God saw all work as holy, and there was no difference between a pastor’s work, a missionary’s work, an accountant’s work, a salesman’s work, a writer’s work – it was all work in God’s eyes.

You would have thought I had just lobbed a live and very angry skunk into the middle of the room. The reaction was surprise. I was asked if I meant what I said. The reaction went to shock when I said yes.

Everyone was polite, but some people did not come back to the class.

The idea that full-time ministry or missionary work is “higher” than any other work came from, among other ideas, the Pietism movement in the 1600s, which, as we find out in John D. Beckett’s Loving Mondays: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul, started a good thing but evolved into the kind of two-tiered reality envisioned by Plato. This was a division between the material and spiritual world, with the “spiritual” being on a higher plane than the “material.”

And that was what prompted the question in the class – what was thought to be Biblical turned out to be Platonist, or cultural. And it’s defined a lot about how Christians view the world they live in.

Ideas have consequences.


Over at the High Callings Blogs, we’re discussing Beckett’s Loving Mondays. The discussion is led by Laura Boggess. This week, we’re focused on chapters 8 through 11 (the chapters are short and easy to read), covering the cultural and philosophical background of a Biblical understanding of work. Check here for last week’s discussion.

Related posts:

Lyla Lyndquist at A Different Story: Just Another Piece of Pie
L.L. Barkat at Seedlings in Stone: Chocolate Bread and Stripey Cookies
Monica Sharman at Know-Love-Obey God: Jesus Was More Than Hands On

Update: Jerram Barrs' newest book, Learning Evangelism from Jesus, was today named by Outreach Magazine as book of the year in the evangelism category.

Why Bad Stuff Happens at Work

Over at The High Calling Blogs, we’re discussing chapter 4 through 7 (they’re short and easy to read) in John D. Beckett’s Loving Monday: Succeeding in Business Without Selling Your Soul. These chapters complete part 1 of the book, in which Beckett describes the history and the background of how he came to develop a business management practice and philosophy that were biblically based.

Beckett had joined the business his father started, and a year into it his father died, leaving Beckett the choice of running the business himself or selling it to one of several companies ready to buy it. With his mother’s support, he chose to continue the business, and in short order faced a warehouse fire that nearly destroyed the business, a unionization effort and his own internal struggles over business versus ministry.

Of all the material he covers in these chapters, one statement particularly stood out for me – the words of a conference speaker who had challenged Beckett to explore the Bible: “Vast areas of scripture will never be meaningful to us unless we go through the experiences for which they give insight. It was for this reason that God allowed all of his servants in Scripture to experience conflicts, and it is for this reason that we go through them as well.”

In other words, all of the conflicts, the hardships, the problems, the upheavals – all the bad stuff – are designed to drive us to God’s word, and thus to God. All of the problems and conflicts we experience at work are designed – purposefully – to lead us rely on God and not ourselves, to teach us and to mold us.

It puts that bad boss relationship I once had in a totally different light. It wasn’t about how to deal with him; it was about what I was supposed to learn about God.

Oh, boy.

Come take a look at the discussion on Loving Monday led by Laura Boggess.

Loving Mondays

Over my adult life, one of the things I’ve thought and prayed about has been work, and specifically, what it means for me as a Christian to live my faith in the workplace.

Some assumptions are packed into that statement. First, that my faith has a place where I work and in what I do. Second, for a Christian, work is a ministry field, and it doesn’t matter whether I’m a full-time missionary working overseas or a full-time writer or PR person working in a Fortune 500 company. The mission field is the mission field.

This doesn’t mean I preach in the hallways or hand out tracts in the cafeteria or corner people in their offices or cubicles and ask questions like “Have you ever thought about eternity?” That’s not me.

Instead, no matter where I’ve worked, I’ve tried (note I didn’t say “succeeded”) to live my faith. That is, I’ve strived to make my words and actions speak for my faith, or, more accurately, be my faith. Work is a gift from God, and like all gifts, there’s an expectation I be a good steward.

It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been downright hard. I’ve tripped up. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve struggled with all of the contradictions and inconsistencies and failings that are the workplace, and that are me. I’ve seen the workplace soar with human achievement, and I’ve seen the workplace descend with a viciousness and human destructiveness that’s astounding.

The workplace is a lot like life because it is life.

Over at the High Calling Blogs (HCB), Laura Boggess is starting a discussion of Loving Monday: Succeeding in Business without Selling Your Soul by John D. Beckett. The book is about the application of Biblical principles to the workplace. I’m joining the discussion, and I’ll be blogging here on Mondays for the next several weeks about what I’m reading and thinking, and commenting on the posts at HCB.

Laura is one of the editors at HCB, and she blogs at The Wellspring. I did a blog post about her back in December. She’s a great, and faithful, discussion leader, and this promises to be a deep and wide discussion.

Read her first post on Loving Mondays.