There is no doubt that we need talent in our organizations. The competitiveness of the marketplace and the shrinkage of the workforce caused by the present demographic shift have created what is commonly referred to as The War for Talent. This concept grew out of research conducted by McKinsey & Company, America’s largest and most prestigious consulting firm. McKinsey concluded that this war would be the number one strategic issue of the 20 years ahead. If you don’t have the players to put on the field, the game is over. Leadership development. Talent development. Succession management. All these have taken on a new level of urgency since this research was reported.

However, Malcolm Gladwell, author of the Tipping Point, writes in his article, The Talent Myth, that an exclusive focus on talent and talented people may have contributed to the downfall of companies like Enron. Enron was a star disciple of McKinsey. Gladwell pokes holes at the new orthodoxy of “the talent mindset.”

But from a spiritual perspective, Gladwell doesn’t go far enough. God often used the weakest and the least talented to be His most powerful change agents. The followers of Christ were judged to be unlearned and common. Great leadership and great contribution comes from something much more than mere talent.

Consider these paragraphs that I recently re-read.

We are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Business and secure enlargement and efficiency for its vision and strategy. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. Business is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. "There was a man sent from God whose name was John." The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." The world’s salvation comes out of that cradled Son. When Paul appeals to the personal character of the men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their success. The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it. When God declares that "the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him," he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery (today we might say, information) is apt to forget. The forgetting of it is as baneful on the work of God as would be the striking of the sun from his sphere. Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.

What Business needs to-day is not more machinery (or information or technology) or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost (in today’s vernacular, we might say “Spirit of God) can use — men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost (Spirit of God) does not flow through methods (or technology or programs or structures), but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men — men of prayer.

These words might have been written today, but were written shortly after the Civil War by E.M. Bounds, a pastor who had also been a prisoner during the war. His challenge was for better leaders in the church. His lament was they looked to human and secular means and methods to accomplish the spiritual purposes of God.

I’ve taken the liberty of substituting Business for Church in the opening paragraphs from his classic “Power Through Prayer”. I’ve also substituted vision and strategy for the gospel, though you might not want to do that.

The point is this. If we believe that work is spiritual, that work is from God, and that work can express the purposes of God and make a difference in our world, then how do we hope to accomplish those this if we don’t engage the means and methods that God provides and become the kind of people that God can use? Are we asking God to “bless” our work or are we entering into the kind of work that He has in mind?

• To what extent do you believe and act upon the conviction that the preparation of your heart before God is the single, most important thing you can do to prepare yourself as a business leader?
• Would you and others consider prayer to be your strength as a business leader?
• How committed are you to becoming the kind of man that God desires?
• What is your perspective and practice on the “weak” and “less talented” in your business?