There is no doubt that we need talent in our organizations. The competitiveness of the marketplace and the shrinkage of the workforce caused by demographic shifts even before the recent downturn have created what is commonly referred to as The War for Talent. This concept grew out of research conducted by consulting giant McKinsey & Company who concluded that this talent war would be the number one strategic issue of the next 20 years. After all, if you don’t have the players to put on the field, the game is over before it’s begun. Leadership development. Talent development. Succession management. All these took on a new urgency in the wake of the McKinsey report.
Ever the contrarian, Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers, pokes holes in the new orthodoxy of “the talent mindset,” writing in The New Yorker 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).
From a spiritual perspective, I wonder if Gladwell goes far enough. God often employs the weakest and least talented to be the most powerful change agents. The followers of Jesus were judged to be unlearned and common (When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. Acts 4:13). Great leadership and great contribution comes from something much more than mere talent.
Consider these paragraphs from a perennial favorite:
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 sentiments might have been expressed today; in fact, as the vocabulary hints at, they were written shortly after the Civil War by the noted pastor and ex-prisoner of war E.M. Bounds. His challenge was for better leaders in the church. His lament that they looked to human and secular means and methods to accomplish the spiritual purposes of God.
I’ve taken the liberty here of substituting Business for Church in the opening paragraphs from Bounds’ classic Power Through Prayer. I’ve also substituted vision and strategy for the gospel, just to make a point.
The point is this: If we believe 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 this if we don’t engage the means and methods that God provides and become the kind of people God can use? Are we asking God to “bless” our work or are we entering into the kind of work God 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 person God desires?
- What is your perspective and practice on the “weak” and “less talented” in your business?
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Well done Dan. Taking the demographically driven Mckinsey work and the eclectic works of Gladwell whose worldview is not quite in focus in several of his books – other than a contrarian vein which attempts to debunk some conventonal wisdom about the relationship of success and intelect and how small changes can have large societal impacts once the tipping point is reached. Bound’s comment on God’s plan coming through men not organizations or things is quite true and I think on close examination neither you nor I would have labeled the Enron executive team as real "talent". In the secular world much is mislabeled and I doubt that is accidental. The Prince of Lies does his work well and therefore the Holy Spirit is hard at work raising up Godly men and women to labor in his fields and bring home his lost and confused sheep.
The most effective leaders of men I have ever encountered were not formally educated or sucessful in any worldly sense (not money or position or power) but were filled with God’s strength to bring healing to broken men and women who were undeserving in any conventional understanding of that word because they had up to that point in life been selfish and cruel and harmed especially those who loved them most. Most interestingly at the time of their deliverance they were not seeking nor did they want a relationship with God or anything to do with God. Truly undeserving – truly saved by grace and delivered through the least likey messengers – chosen by Him because from their own pain and degradation they could uniquely reach these lost sheep.
The Holy Spirit empowered these human messengers with the grace to touch lost alcholic and addicted souls and bring them ultimatly to the foot of the cross – where the real miracle happens.
But in the business world we will see in our lifetime a scramble for bodies as the demographic shortages play out. We will see an even more intense scamble for leaders as orgaizations already strapped for numbers will see leadership pools shrink. We may see evidence of the unseen hand of the third person in the Blessed Trinity – the Ghost often unacknowledged- as organizations realize that in order to attract, retain and motivate competent and effective employees they need to manage the human resource quite differently than they did in times of oversupply. The time may be ripe for God fearing men to step up and challenge the "use and spit out" model of human resource management that has only intensified in recent decades. When people have choices and organizations must truly compete to fill their ranks and be effective then the opportunity will be most apparent.
Today in small ways, in small organizations and in small corners of large organizations inspired people are taking this issue on – pushing an agenda of inclusion, fairness, openness and transparency. They are challenging the autocratic nature of business government and using small "d" democratic methods of decision making and consensus. They are engaging people’s minds and hearts – in most cases they are reluctant to name the soulfull presence in every room, at every human contact, the spirit that can give strength to the weak, courage to the faltering and wisdom to the uncertain.
When Christ left this world he anointed his followers with the fire of this Spirit and in every age he has kept that fire lit in the hearts and minds of his messengers ready to pick up the cross as needed and touch his people leading them inexorabley home to his Kingdom where he awaits them.
But leave it to the least acknowledged personage in our Divine Trinity to confound the powerful and the mighty with lessons sown in the gutters of humanity among the powerless and forgotten. Just as he did when rather than go to the Acropolis in Athens or the Colliseum in Rome and select from the leaders, the educated the "talent" or the Roman Empires equivalent of Enron – instead he went to the backwaters of Galilee and selected carpenters and fishermen and tax collectors and worse to bring a new message – he sent his son to a 14 year old peasant girl not the Roman palace. His work continues among the outcast so that the purity and power of his message can ring true and the messengers will have strength.
It’s been awhile Dan.
Thanks, Michael, for the insights and wisdom both from a biblical perspective as well as a seasoned business perspective. You’ve greatly added to the dialogue on this issue. And knowing that you are a leader who is very committed to the development of others makes your comments even more powerful.
And it has been awhile! I hope our paths cross again soon.