God Intersections

I have been having a running dialogue with “the Big Guy” regarding His desires for the “authentic” Christian business owner.  In my many conversations with business owners on the topic the idea of building and stewarding a Christ centered culture is always talked about.  Christ centered culture is my term for aligning our words and actions around Christ based core values, being leaders of integrity and character, being kind and respectful  etc.  The idea is to “walk the talk”.

God showed up at one of my coaching sessions last week.   Toward the end of our time this particular individual started reciting a series of wrongs our government in general and our president in particular were perpetrating on we the American people.  The list of “wrongs” was extensive (provided by a popular conservative website) and while I have not checked each of them against snopes.com and other sites I suspect they were all grounded in fact.

As a coach and facilitator I spend much time helping people see life and business differently and in the process growing personally.  There is a danger in my role however.  The danger is getting lulled into thinking I am somehow more knowledgeable, mature, experienced etc.  In other words that “I am ahead of that person”.

While meeting with a friend of mine (Doug Cunningham) Friday for coffee, God showed up and taught me a great Truth (at least a great Truth for me).  The Truth is that growing into the person God has called us to be is simply a matter of experiencing and learning from the Touch Stones God has laid out for us.  The revelation is that IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT ORDER WE TOUCH THEM IN.  In other words I am never a head of or behind any person I work with.  I have experienced different Touch Stones and learned different things and while that is valuable it does not make be better, more mature, more spiritual etc.

The power in this thought lies in being free from the tyranny of linear growth.  We can be Transformed.  We can stop looking at our coaches/mentors/models assuming we can never “achieve” their results.  We can simply glean from their experience and wisdom, joining it with our Touch Stones and rocket into being who God has called and equipped us to be.  Let’s stop spending time trying to get the “order of growth” right and simply experience all we can, learn from those experiences using a God context and Trust God to Transform us as we “do our part”.

The last three years have been quite a journey. Many of you have made that journey with me. I have appreciated the company and the encouragement. The highlights of this journey have been many but three stand out:

1. God Intersections – the concept that as we turn over responsibility for our life and business to God, He will lead us by the Intersections He creates on the journey
2. Cooperative Capitalism – the idea that we can positively impact the marketplace by building communities of capitalists built on a foundation of Trust, shared values and a common purpose (which includes but is not limited to profit)
3. Poland – the God Intersection with Gabe Phillips of www.WorldVenture.com that is providing the opportunity to share God, Cooperative Capitalism and Truth@Work with business owners in Poland.

My last post discussed how consistently applying the Heart of God IN our business is the key to finding the blessings of God FOR our business.  As I continued pondering this subject, I had an interesting thought.

It is much easier to apply the Heart of God to our customers than to our suppliers and employees and even families. We naturally understand the importance of treating our customers with fairness, respect, kindness, honesty, generosity, supportiveness or however you define God’s heart.  Any experienced business owner will tell you how important it is to treat your customers “right”.

One of the great joys of what I do (following the God Intersections like Mr. McGoo offering to help business people) is that I get to meet many very cool people thus creating opportunities for God to show up and share His truth.

One of those Intersections was last week when I spent a couple of hours with a new client (Andrew Pinch of www.dandlpress.com ) for our first coaching session.  Andrew was sharing his goals, challenges and vision for the future, basic questions I discuss with all of my clients, when God showed up (or more specifically a God Idea showed up).  We were talking about the reason Andrew’s grandfather had started D & L Press 50 years ago and how the consistent application of that purpose had produced the company that stands today (they grew 80% last year).

As many of you know I have been working with business owners to improve their profits while building a Truth based culture for almost 3 years.  Seems like a long time to me but in the overall scheme of things a drop in the bucket.  Based on that experience here is my Current Best Thinking on today’s question.

Why don’t more businesses achieve their dreams and goals?

I believe there are at least three significant factors that are required to build the business of our dreams and the associated goals.

In my previous post I talked about the basics of Cooperative Capitalistic Communities.  These include regular participation in a group with the following characteristics:

1. Focus on growing your businesses and helping other’s grow theirs
2. Willingness to practice  transparency
3. Willingness to engage the Business Purpose and Vision of the Community
4. Willingness to abide by a consistent set of Community Organizational Principles
5. Interest in developing and living in a Community of Trust.

The foundational thought of Cooperative Capitalism is collaboration.  I don’t think I have ever met anyone who said they were AGAINST collaboration.  But when we actually sit down and give it a wing it rarely works out.  Why is that?  I believe there are at least 4 difficulties in effective collaboration:

I define Cooperative Capitalism as a free market concept where communities of business owners join complementary businesses, competitors (I know, I know), suppliers, customers and other businesses for the purpose of developing Trust and living shared Core Values while engaging in each other’s success.  In these challenging economic times, Cooperative Capitalism becomes viable because these communities improve the odds of success for all the members by providing experience, knowledge and encouragement to each other.

The basics of Cooperative Capitalistic Communities (I will try and refrain from the “CCC” acronym) include regular participation in a group with a:

God in business.  These three words did not used to go together, at least not in my life.  I used to believe that it was my job to be successful in the business world and then figure out how to apply that success to one of God’s ministries (preferably by giving money).  Financial success first, God success second.  Using a car analogy, I wanted to drive the car called my life to the point I had accomplished a given amount of success and then I would consider letting God drive.