The Unworthy Saint

The measure of any society is how it treats it’s weakest element – the widows, the orphans and the strangers in the land. – Sam Slovick (for Good magazine)

Someone once described walking as the process of falling forward, catching yourself, and doing it again. Our hair grows out, we cut it. Our car slowly (or quickly if you have an SUV) runs out of gas, and we must fill it up again. We work through the day and finally lay down at night to go to sleep – to restore our energy. We eat only to burn off what we ate in activity. There’s a constant wave to life – a cyclical up and down. Should we then be surprised when we fall into sin? Should we mourn the fact we’re no longer “on top of the mountain”, but we’re now in the valley? No. I think not.

I whole-heartedly believe we must mourn our sin – our soul must be grieved when we rebel against the Almighty God of the universe. But that is all. Do not mourn that you’ve fallen from some high place, do not be shocked when you sin next. Life is falling and rising again – it is a process. It is the process of death or sanctification depending on your path – if you are walking on the path of sanctification there is hope, there is grace, there is love. You will be tested, you will fall – but your falling is to be expected – we are weak vessels – we are not the Christ.

Mourn your disobedience to the Father, mourn the fact that your sin put Christ on the cross, but do not mourn beyond that, and end your mourning in repentance and the knowledge that your sin is paid for – we live on earth, a wholly fallen and sinful place. You will rise, and you will fall – it’s guaranteed here, in this time. But know that soon the sin cycle will pass and we’ll be in Heaven with our glorious King.

I think this is something that came from the E-Myth book, but here are a couple things I’ve noticed/been thinking on relating to management. The book, I think, talks about Entrepreneurs, Managers and Technicians. The concept is that the entrepreneur is the one with the vision, the manager is the one who takes the vision and distributes and oversees its playout and comes up with systems, and the technicians are the ones who carry things out, look for problems, come up with solutions, refine the systems, etc.

It’s important to understand the interplay of personalities between those 3 groups. The entre. with feel stepped on when the technician takes the vision and points out the flaws. The technician will feel the vision is “unmanageable” if it hasn’t been refined and grounded by a manager. The manager has to understand both personality types and know how to interface with both.

On a related note, one of the biggest management obstacles I’ve noticed is that much conflict comes from undefined quality standards – meaning the manager was expecting a quality of work higher than what the technician gives, or the manager was expecting the job to be done quickly (thus neglecting quality) when the technician wanted to make sure the job was done correctly. Much of the frustration can be avoided up front by 1) getting people who see quality as being the same standard and 2) defining that standard in the first place.