I finally replied, “Sorry, I just don’t think within such a framework.  Maybe I would say it’s more about influence and impact.”

After this afternoon chat, where we touched upon other topics, I came back to the idea of “success to significance” that evening.  It had been several years since I read Bob Buford’s “Half Time.” It really didn’t speak to me back then and I realized even more so today.  I’ve attended some conferences inspired by “Half Time” which primarily targeted very successful businessmen in their 50s and beyond, and gained a great amount of insight and inspiration.  I was one of the thirty-something attendees blessed enough to attend and learn from those with more experience and wisdom from life.

The concept of “success to significance” does speaks well to successful business owners or Fortune 500 executives in their 50s and beyond, especially those who were consumed by their drive towards their goals of success.  But the yearning question for me since that afternoon chat was, “Why is a successful life bifurcated?”

The big picture concept of “Half Time” is that there is the first half of life where people focus on achieving their successes and the second half where you can refocus (or recommit to God) on being significant in your life mission for God. This would typically translate into more time and commitment to church or some ministry. I don’t believe it was intentionally stated, but this transition lessens the significance of work.

In rereading “Half Time” this past week, I didn’t understand why these concepts couldn’t be applied to those in the “first half” of their lives. This bifurcation of church and work; business and nonprofit work; Sunday and the rest of the week are concepts I previously identified (“Cultural Cocktails: Biblical Faith and Work with a Splash of Eastern and Western Philosophies”) as fruits of dualism from Western philosophies and not a biblical perspective of living our lives.  The idea of “success to significance” seems to be a continuation of dualism that is core to Western culture and which heavily influences the church in the U.S.

If I were to take a cynical viewpoint of this concept, I would say that it’s excusing successful people for placing God second or lower in their lives during their first half.  In reality, I know that it does speak well to many, allows them to recommit their lives to God and creates an impact for God in many areas. But this is not a message or a model for a wider audience.  This is not a concept to behold for future generations.

From the start of a career, people should constantly be seeking and praying for their calling whether a corporate career, tech entrepreneur, restaurant owner, physician, school teacher or missionary.  This calling is a person’s ministry and sphere of influence.  Not a means to a ministry, but how God will use you to reach others.  People should be constantly defining their life’s mission and aligning their goals with God’s goals for their lives.

A few years ago my parents successfully sold their coffee chain, took a year off to travel, and began praying about their next business.  My mother is definitely a person that wants to work until she passes.  Both of them want to stay active, but they were patient about their next business and really wanted God’s hand upon it.  I remember them telling me that they regret not being truly committed to God as they worked hard, stressed out and sold their last business.  They really wanted to commit everything to prayer and rely on God in all matters of their next business idea.  My parents told me not to wait until I was in my fifties to realize this truth, but to really submit to God now and seek out his will.  After hearing their earnestness, I heard and understood the regret in their voices. So it echoes within my heart as I write this and say to myself, “I don’t want to experience a half time in my life or to find significance in my faith after success.  I want my faith to be integrated into the life I lead today.”

My answer would say that it depends on the industry, who is on your team, and how quickly you need to scale due to market conditions (e.g. competition, policy changes).

First, I would say where you are in life is the primary factor.  Are you single versus married?  Renting versus having a mortgage?  No children versus one child and another on the way?  When a person is in their twenties and not married, bootstrapping is much easier since you probably have lower rent costs, no mortgage and can eat ramen noodles all day. Next is probably how much savings you have, how much your family network could help you out, and how much credit card debt you’re willing to take.  I remember being a fool, but a giddy fool, and signing up for dozens of credit cards with my co-founder, Jimmy.  It was a fun but stressful time, especially when my dad had the “poker talk with me”.

“Bernard, business is like poker, you have to know when to fold…”

Older entrepreneurs can bootstrap too depending on the business and market, how much they are willing to eat into their nest egg, and if their spouse works.  From my experience, usually a household with kids does not want to see money going out towards risk investments. Which is why you see even successful entrepreneurs, such as those who cashed out more than several million, still go back to the investor well because their wives clamped down on their bank accounts.

Your targeted industry matters too.  Bootstrapping is very difficult if you’re in clean-tech or biotech versus social gaming or social media, so these scenarios aren’t relevant in these sectors since typically cash needs are $20 million, $50 million or greater for just the product development.

There is also a point to which bootstrap can only take you so far. If the competition is fierce and your competitors already have a good war chest or their product is slightly ahead of your features, then outside money makes sense.

If your company is starting to get interest from investors, I would recommend that you go with the momentum and fundraise because most startups are beauty queens (or kings) only once. I’ve seen many startups pass on funding when they were hot only to go back to the well that became dry or venture capitalists had a new flavor of the month.

An ideal scenario to bootstrap is if you’re in your mid-twenties, a stud game developer, and creating a social game with a solid creative partner. Build it, launch it on Facebook, and hope that it goes viral so that you can make money, sell it, or get a higher valuation.

In the end, I would recommend bootstrapping if you can to increase your valuation from investors, but also be aware of the point when it begins to be a drag on your product development and growth.

Pink talked about Karl Duncker’s candle problem and variations of his experiment that explored the science of motivation.  One experiment asked a group to solve this problem and explained that it would be timed to established norms. A second group was offered financial incentives. If you were in the top 20% of the fastest times, you would receive five dollars. If you were the fastest of everyone, you would receive twenty dollars.

The results were obvious, right? The second group, motivated by financial incentives, took on average 3.5 minutes longer. Yes, longer. Would this work in third world countries and developing economies? Yes. This study has been replicated over 40 years across numerous cultures.

What is basic knowledge in the social sciences should have been an epiphany in the corporate world, but this hasn’t occurred yet. Dan Pink went on to explain how extrinsic motivators, such as carrots and money, work for simple tasks, but not for complicated tasks.

He stated, “If you want engagement, self-direction works better.”

As long as the task involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected: the higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for “even rudimentary cognitive skill,” a larger reward “led to poorer performance.
— D. Adriely, U. Gneezy, G. Lowenstein, & N. Mazar, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Pink’s talk sent me back to my high school years where I recalled listening to the common sermon on storing up treasures in heaven (Matthew 6: 19-24) and being turned off. I remember thinking as a young believer, “Why would the idea of storing up riches in heaven motivate me at all? If accumulating wealth didn’t interest me as a non-believer, why would it interest me as a believer?”

Reflecting back on all those sermons, I don’t remember a pastor ever analyzing this and bringing out God’s wisdom that was as insightful as Dan Pink’s talk. Maybe these pastors should have read what Pink discovered. Of course, part of my lack of recall could have been due to my own ignorance since I incorrectly assumed these pastors were discussing a similar monetary system would be established in heaven as on earth. Heavenly dollars? Who cares about storing up treasures in heaven?

Now since I’m a bit older and a little more informed, I realized after listening to Pink’s talk that God already knew this about us.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Matthew 6:21

The treasure that motivates us in what’s in our hearts. Hopefully as believers it’s Christ and God’s words for us. It’s not a promise of material wealth that will motivate people to change and live a life to glorify God, but the relationship that God offers—the daily sanctuary, peace, joy, wisdom and love that he freely gives.

John MacArthur has a great story on this:

During the time of the Decian persecution in Rome, the Roman authorities broke into a certain church thinking they could loot their treasures. The Roman prefect who was in charge stepped up to one saint named Laurentius and said, “Show me your treasures at once.” Laurentius pointed to a group of widows and orphans who happened to be eating a meal and said, “There are the treasures of the church. We have invested all we have in them.” That is treasure in heaven. Beloved, remember that what we keep we lose, and what we invest with God we gain eternally.

So if pastors and Christian leaders would pierce into God’s wisdom on the question of what motivates people, how would this reflect on their sermons? Their actions?

As business executives and managers, how does this affect your approach in working with your colleagues? I assume, to understand people better, you would first have to learn more about them and try to see where their hearts lie. This sounds like a commitment of time to me. Some people are open books, but most take time to reveal their hearts. If you can’t find any widows and orphans, investing in the people around you is a good start to building up your treasures in heaven.

This presentation was at last week’s TEDGlobal conference held at Oxford, UK.

I think Alain’s reference to St. Augustine’s City of God is excellent because whether you believe in a God, gods or no gods, such thinking puts you in a certain perspective. I believe much of what we have achieved is by grace or what others would call luck. I am not disregarding personal and professional development, but I believe the starting point in life is a huge driving factor of “success” or comfort in life.

If I was not blessed to be born into a stable family with loving parents and a modest amount of wealth— if I was born instead into poverty—life would be very different today. I still remember the children from Alex Kotlowitz’s There Are No Children Here who never assumed adulthood was a given…

“If I grow up, I want to be a bus driver…”

It’s not just about wealth. It’s a blessing to grow up healthy without a major accident or disability. Or a difficult family situation. These are all factors into the development of relational success, financial success and professional success.

If you accept the premise of a supreme being or a force far greater than yourself, then your personal ego or idol of self becomes smaller and you accept the uncertainty of success, failure and everything in between.

An entrepreneur shows his true colors in a period of crisis, not in a period when everybody is having success. — Giorgio Armani on the opening of his new $40 million Manhattan store in the middle of the recession.

When I saw this quote in Fortune magazine a couple of weeks ago, I immediately thought of personal experiences seeing people for who they are under intense, competitive athletic contests, such as pickup basketball. The mild mannered guy in my dorm or the well-liked summer intern became complete morons on the basketball court. One of them was a raving lunatic who prompted me to say outloud, “Who are you?”

In some cases you can excuse rude and unsportsmanlike conduct due to ignorance, especially if the offender rarely played basketball. But for those who knew how to play, there was no excuse or cover from the clear lens that pickup basketball provided into the character of people. On the basketball court, tortoise shells disappear and your character is naked for people to see. If someone you knew was already labeled as a prick, playing a few pickup basketball games confirmed these truths and probably enhanced your perception of their character deficiencies. It’s like bad skin in HDTV, pockmarks look like craters and wrinkles like canyons.

The same goes for crisis situations in a company, especially if you’re an owner or executive. The more at risk you feel, the more your raw emotions and character comes out. Are you going to step up and execute or are you going to fade away from the challenge? Are you going to remain a supportive team member or are you going to succumb, pointing fingers and backstabbing your colleagues?

One company I was advising had an executive with a sterling reputation; The ultimate “nice guy” loved by everyone in his past firms. But he never encountered a downturn in his prior companies. When this company came under financial distress, his true colors were revealed. He became like a man in the desert for 40 days without water. Nothing mattered besides his own reputation and stake in the company. Some of the employees were wondering who Mr. Hyde was that was sitting in Dr. Jekyll’s corner office. He shifted his responsibilities to his colleagues as he looked for his next position, which created more distress on the company. The company needed him to step up instead of trying to step out. He left before the company survived and turned the corner from their crisis.

This reminded me of Peter’s denial of Jesus during the intense episode of his arrest. Peter denied his association with Jesus three times because he was fearful of also being arrested and possibly facing death. Peter denied his greatest responsibility and commitment during this time of crisis.

Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”

Immediately a rooster crowed. Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: “Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.”
— Matthew 26: 74-75

Is your company going through a crisis in this downturn? How are you responding? Are you satisfied with your performance? What areas can you improve upon? Are these situations allowing for a period of self-reflection? Would your colleague say these times are bringing out the best in you…or the worst? How do you know that?

How do we stop this? What treatment can heal these deep wounds? Wide sweeping federal policy? Complete reform of our banking system? State and local initiatives?  Independent corporate reform through industry associations? Spiritual reformation?

There is also denial in the air. Last week in a board meeting of a nonprofit I am committed to the executive director stated that their umbrella association told them that even during downturns giving remains consistent. I silently shook my head but didn’t get a chance to remind them this isn’t just any downturn. When some of their wealthiest donors lose 50% of their wealth and 18% of overall American wealth disappears, it will affect their giving.

While contemplating on these larger scale issues, I narrowed my thinking to Christendom because I wanted to revisit a number that kept bothering me after reading Al Lunsford’s piece, Business is Our Mission.  Al referred to research that indicated a global cost of $347,000 per baptism. What??  I had to do a double take. Of course you cannot put a price on a soul, and no one knows what the Spirit of God is doing or how long that work will take in a person’s life (or how long it has gone on already), but that’s not what this is about. When Nike states their customer acquisition costs are $100 per person against a lifetime customer value of x, are they placing a value on human life? Of course not. They are using financial tools to pursue efficiency and improve their understanding and intelligently utilize resources. And that, we have to assume, is what that $347,000 per baptism number is all about as well.

As I’ve been thinking about this, it was interesting to learn from a friend that a large parachurch organization ran a similar analysis and found their cost of conversion to be approximately $300,000. Whether cost per baptism or cost per conversion, these financial exercises bring important questions to the forefront.

“$347,000” bothered me so much that I contacted the International Bulletin of Missionary Research who put together the insightful study that produced this number. I haven’t heard back after my initial inquiry, so I decided to do my own back-of-the-envelope calculations.

The International Bulletin of Missionary Research estimated $410 billion/year in giving to “Christian” causes worldwide over the recent years. This was broken down to $160 billion to churches and $250 billion to parachurch organizations every year. Let’s assume that $347,000 per baptism is simply the total giving of $410 billion divided by the number of baptisms tracked. If this simple method was used, then the cost per baptism is tremendously overstated since we would have to assume a large portion is allocated to the operations of those churches and parachurch organizations.

I am assuming the primary mission of these organizations has something to do with making followers of Christ. The question is how much is being spent on the core mission of these organizations and how effective are they? A comparable question in the business world is asking how much do we spend on marketing and how effective is our program? For many companies, the benchmark is approximately ten percent of budget. Ten percent of $410 billion is $41 billion, which would make the figure $34,700 per baptism.

I would assume though that a church and parachurch organizations should be more focused to their mission than a companies, and, one could argue, their core mission should be their only focus. If a church were a business, would it really only devote 10% of the budget to getting out their message? Eyeballing, 30% or higher seems more appropriate. If this really is the case, I think $104,000 per baptism—or higher—is flabbergasting. And I suppose if one went with the argument that the only mission of a church or parachurch is making new Christians—a premise I don’t think stands up to biblical scrutiny—then the simple arithmetic of total expenditures ÷ number of new converts = cost/baptism, more or less. $347,000.

$347,000, $104,000, even $34,700…all seem ridiculously high. It screams waste to me. How much is being spent on non-core programs or questionable activities? There are easy targets like some mega-church pastors who have private jets and chauffeur-driven limousines. I wonder if some of them have Ferris wheels in their backyards, rent out Disneyland for their children, or bought gold plated driveway gates with God’s money…

Most systemic problems are hidden and not so overt as that, so I don’t believe the bling bling pastors should carry the whole burden of waste. Over the past decades I’ve heard or read about pastors of small and medium size churches retaining secret slush funds or making questionable purchases for their families. But does this add up to billions in waste? Probably not.

I’m guessing most of these non-core expenditures are for ethical but non-essential purposes, so how do you make a judgment call on such things and who is held accountable? There is pressure to grow, to buy bigger buildings, build bigger parking lots, or to have a summer retreat lodge. Nowadays churches have to provide social services as much as delivering God’s word. Golf groups, open gym, counseling and so on. Nothing is wrong with these services but what do they have to do with extending the kingdom of God—especially if they pull followers of Christ out of the world to the supposed safety of Christian ghettos?

If churches were to model themselves after a business organization, I would say an ideal example is the advertising firm. Think Crispin Porter + Bogusky—a lean and mean organization with a team obsessed on their client’s ad campaign. Their creatives are up day and night sweating to develop the best methods of reaching into their client’s customer base. As in any great firm, they are conscience of their client’s dollar and how best to spend it.

Reality is different. Most churches wouldn’t be compared to an advertising firm. Maybe an auto manufacturer? Steel company? I’m thinking country club. High operational costs, high touch, and high service. Also they might be characterized as insular, having rigid semantic biases, and of course a snotty attitude towards non-members.

Maybe today’s financial crisis is a blessing for “Christian” organizations across the globe, but especially in the most developed nations. The larger scale issues point to systemic deficiencies across a our society that is crying for change. What are some of these changes?

Openness!
There needs to be a willingness to open up and reassess where these organizations stand. Leaders needs to ask hard questions and then to create change. This process takes wisdom, courage and humility. I was encouraged when I saw Bill Hybels’ 2008 leadership presentation on “the wake-up call of his life” when he and the Willow Creek Community Church staff discovered their programs were not effective in creating sustainable growth for believers. He asked the hard question: “Do you ever wonder if we’re using God’s money and God’s resources in ways that are really achieving the mission of our church?”  Every church and parachurch organization should ask this question every month.

Transparency!
There should be transparency of organizational budgets. Technology allows for this, so why not put up detailed budgets on Google docs or a wiki for everyone to see? This transparency creates accountability beyond the pastor or executive director and maybe a board made up of long-time friends.

Focus!
It’s time to rethink the assumption that, if we build it—church campuses, religious non-profits, alternative communities within communities—they will come. Does God dwell in sanctuaries made by human hands? Do we really expect religious professionals, who are outsiders in the places we work, to communicate the good news of the kingdom of God to our colleagues, while we—the insiders—stand passively by, wishing we could contribute more?

Action!
It’s easy to criticize organizations in their inefficiencies, but I believe at least half of the problem rests in the people who fill up pews and fellowship meetings. Believers have become old country club members who love to lounge on the greens and talk shop with their buddies. Maybe some of us have had too many manicures and hate to dirty our fingers. Believers need to step out of the comfort zone and engage the world —not be afraid, not separate from the world, not arrogantly defying, but engaging the world as it is, not as it is supposed to be.

The tail is wagging the dog. Proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor does not require a 501(C)(3) corporation. The kingdom of God is not infrastructure dependent. New converts shouldn’t cost a nickel as they have already been paid for. At $347,000 per baptism, maybe it’s time to rethink Church.

The influences of Confucian and Buddhist philosophies led to subtle differences between mainstream U.S. and Korean American churches. One amusing feature was that morning prayer time in Korean American churches was flooded once each year with mothers praying for their children’s SAT exams (the same phenomenon occurs in South Korea during the national college entrance exams). I don’t suppose it was amusing to those mothers, some of whom would pray for hours the same repetitive prayer (which seemed to me to confuse the notion of grace and work). This fervent style of praying might leave outsiders thinking all Koreans are Pentecostal, but this style was distributed across the board, even within more subdued denominations like Korean Lutherans or Methodists.

(Not that I’m anyone to talk. I’m a practical person and not very righteous, so when it comes to praying, I think it would be far more effective to ask one of my upright, godly friends to pray for me for a few minutes than for me to pray for 10 hours straight. But I digress.)

One influence of Confucianism in Korean culture was evident in the careers that first generation Korean American parents emphasized to their children. I call them the three P’s: physician, professor and pastor. The honored class in Confucianism is the “scholar” and all three P’s are generally considered scholarly. Physician was always number one and what parents obsessed about. Sandra Oh’s character in Grey’s Anatomy is not the only Korean American you’ll see at a hospital. I can think of at least 10 “Cristina Yangs” I know off the bat. The second tier of acceptable professions would be in academia and a reason why South Korea was typically number one or two in the number of PhDs per capita. The last of the top three was entering the ministry. While not universally welcomed by parents, it was an acceptable option in many families.

The Western influence — and the primary foundation of my thinking — expressed the ideals held by most Americans. One aspect of this is the foundational philosophy of dualism, which traces its roots to Plato through René Descartes. Without going into the complexities, a basic influence of dualism is the separation of the spiritual or mental substances and physical substances, with no relationship between the two. You could picture a higher plane of life containing the spiritual substances and a lower plane housing the physical.

Dualism enabled many of us to grow up compartmentalizing our lives. This eased us into the role of “Sunday believers” since there is a “natural” separation between church and the rest of the week. This may be a reason why some “Christian” businessmen can be the most unscrupulous professionals you’ve met, since they can subdivide their conscience employing the “this is business” rationale.

Outside the church, dualism became evident to me through my involvement in two post-graduate programs at the intersection of the public and private sectors: the Public Policy program at Columbia University and the Coro Fellowship. The Coro Fellowship, a leadership development program for those interested in public service, sent about two-thirds of participants into the government and nonprofit sectors and one-third into the for-profit world. I saw a similar distribution in the Public Policy program at Columbia: 2/3 to government and nonprofit, 1/3 to business. What surprised me in these two programs at the confluence of human ideals and professional development was finding a measure of disdain for those of us who entered private industry. As if our choice repudiated of what we’d just experienced together by choosing to work on the lower plane.

I am no longer surprised to find evidence of this dualism in the world of believers. There is separation of church and work; Sunday and the rest of the week; faith and execution. Ambition for work is bad and sacrificing work is good. What happened to the stewardship of ALL that God gives us? Did Joseph choose to leave his day job as second in command only to the Pharaoh of Egypt and look for a less demanding “9 to 5″ job so he could volunteer more at church?

Joseph took his work to heart and glorified God in the best manner possible. The difference lay in his worldview which did not separate between his spiritual and physical worlds. Each was connected and united with the other. Even the word lev — the Hebrew word for heart — encompasses not only the heart and emotion but our intellect and mind. This biblical perspective doesn’t compartmentalize our worlds; it creates a holistic understanding of our lives.

I will acknowledge that taking such an approach might make life more complex and highlights tensions between the various circles of ours lives. But isn’t life about tension? Doesn’t this make things more exciting? To think about actually implementing our faith in our business decisions and professional relationships? To actually be salt and light outside of the salt mines and sunlit mountaintops?