Blessed Strategy: A Spiritually-Based Guide for Growing Your Business and Leading With Purpose

III

Copyright © 2019 Dr. George N Taylor III/EntOrgCorp LLC.

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ISBN: 978-0-578-22203-5 (sc)

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Dr. George Taylor III/EntOrgCorp LLC

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DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to God, my wife, my mother, and to the memory of my beloved dad.

INTRODUCTION

Throughout my time as a business professional, entrepreneur, consultant, professor, and researcher, I have focused intently on solving problems. For example, as the owner of an organizational development consulting firm, I focus on addressing three areas articulated by organizational leaders: organizational strategy mapping and alignment; leveraging capabilities of people, processes, and systems; and, maximizing utility of resources. As a professor, I work to resolve instances of knowledge gaps and facilitate learning processes so that students are equipped with the skills and provided information they need to achieve their purpose. As a researcher and business consultant, I provide solutions to business problems that impact the growth and survivability of business firms.

The needs mentioned above are often big problems and helping to solve these problems has brought many of my clients and students, success, and for me, a great deal of professional and personal satisfaction. Yet, in working to solve these problems over the last few years, I too have also learned. I learned a great deal about myself and the nature of others. I have had the honor and opportunity to work with some of the brightest minds one can expect to encounter. And, through these encounters, I have nourished my true spiritual self.

Although it’s not always explicitly stated, the majority of business leaders and managers across the industries and sectors that I have come in contact with are often grounded by a spiritual force. And, when I investigate the business principles and philosophies that guide these leaders, I receive comments that sound like this: We are committed to doing good things. Or, Our purpose is to connect with others and demonstrate that much good comes from doing good. The underlying themes of these discussions are based upon spiritual principles. This is good news yet also cause for some concern. The good news is that these business owners and professionals recognize that businesses should serve a purpose; a purpose that includes profit, for sure, yet also extends beyond profit. A purpose that seeks to connect the business to its customers, community, and the larger society. The drawback is that there remains a belief that the explicit articulation of being a spiritually-based leader or having a spiritually-based business is something to shun or that reference to biblical (or belief equivalent) principles somehow makes the company weak. There may also be a belief that such spiritually-based connections and principles make it seem that the company is simply riding the wave of spiritual sentiment, making such efforts unauthentic or faddish. At the other end of the spectrum, and related to this notion, is that a spiritually-based purpose and culture is bad for business. That it represents a push toward unwanted belief systems and principles in a world where the business should appear as a secular artifact within a contemporary landscape. Scharmer, a protégé and colleague of Peter Senge, writes, "Is the rise of spirituality just an epiphenomenon of the baby-boom generation’s growing more reflective, or is it related to a cultural shift in society at large?¹"

As I prepared to write this book, I thought deeply about what it means to be a spiritually-based business leader and entrepreneur. I reflected on the business leaders that I truly thought were effective from a spiritually-based perspective. I researched and spoke with business leaders that truly motivate their employees and engage their customers. I reflected upon leaders with reputations of not only being astute business entrepreneurs and business leaders, but also have strong community reputations that represented spiritually-based principles. I spoke with and researched entrepreneurs and organizational leaders that represented courage and did not hide in the tall grass, making their spiritually-based belief systems known.

In reflecting on spiritually-based business leaders, I not only reflected upon the traits, I dug deep into the performance actions and results of these leaders. I immersed myself in literature and spent hundreds of hours reviewing my interviews and journals. A few consistent themes continually reappeared during my inquiry and reflections:

• Spiritually-based entrepreneurs and leaders build long-lasting cultures. While writing this Introduction, the founder of Chick-fil-A, S. Truett Cathy had recently died at the age of 93. A glance at the headlines read Chick-fil-A Founder Credited His Success to Christian Principles (NPR, 2014, September 8) or Rick Warren’s opinion that Chick-fil-A Founder Truett Cathy Truly Lived His Faith (Time, 2014, September 9). The culture of Chick-fil-A remains one of the most admired cultures, and although there are critics, the company is clear in its values and be rest assured that the culture built by Cathy will remain for quite some time.

• Spiritually-based entrepreneurs and leaders, and their organizations, show a sincere, deep concern for their customers, value-chain partners, and employees. Howard Schultz, former CEO and Chairman of Starbucks, is perhaps one of the most well-known examples of this. In fact, one can reflect back during the economic crisis of 2007-2008 and recall how many customers and business observers claimed that Starbucks had lost its way. That the focus on the customer and the experience – the elements that made the company truly unique – got lost during the leadership churn the chain experienced during the early 2000s. In comes Schultz, who refocused the Starbucks back to its roots – its culture - to regain its market position and presence. In fact, I wrote this chapter in a Starbucks location where a manager was interviewing applicants. Although I do not agree with open-store interviews, one statement really stood out to me: the manager, in telling his story, remarked that "I fell in love with the company."

• Spiritually-based entrepreneurs and leaders, and their organizations build a connection with their communities and target specific areas of concern. A well-known example of this is ServiceMaster, a company that serves commercial and residential customers by providing a vast array of maintenance offerings ranging from pest control, lawn care, and other landscaping needs. What makes this company special is that its spiritual values are tied to concrete business goals, which include having a strong commitment to its local community and society at large.

These themes were not only interesting, they were astounding. These are the principles, traits, and performance standards that are indicative and associated with high-performance organizations. In plain language, the behaviors related to spiritual leaders correlate with the performance principles that matter.

From an entrepreneurial and business researcher perspective, I believe that individuals that start businesses are instrumental to the health of the national and international economies. It is the entrepreneur that scales her business, which provides jobs that grow economies, markets, and industries. With that belief, coupled with my own extensive history and experience as an entrepreneur, I wanted to provide a guide for entrepreneurs and small business owners to gain the benefit of a framework that focuses on long-term strategic success. Yet, I thought it was important to do this from a spiritually-based perspective.

Make no mistakes, there is no shortage of books that outline the steps to strategy planning and execution; however, there is a need for a business guide with a practical focus on strategy planning and execution for entrepreneurs, leaders, and companies that have a goal of operating from a spiritually-based perspective. There is a need for a comprehensive framework that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners embed spiritual approaches into their company’s DNA; its culture, from the beginning.

The content and layout of this book is designed to have you not only rethink your business yet also to encourage you to reflect upon your individual and business purpose. It’s designed to get you and your team to go beyond schematic changes and encourage ways to ensure that your business approach is indeed spiritually-based from the beginning, and that your approach is authentic and consistent with who you are.

Next, this book is comprehensive, and while there are some common themes of strategy planning and execution, there are plenty of fresh perspectives. These perspectives are based on spiritual and biblical principles and practices. The result is a spiritually-based long-term strategic framework. This framework is called Blessed Strategy. Blessed Strategy is a spiritually-based strategic framework embedded in biblical principles that guides you in developing and executing business actions and measuring the result of those actions. The reason that I mention this is because you need to know what to expect. The Blessed Strategy framework is open to anyone that is interested in spiritually-based leadership principles, and is considering starting and building a spiritually-based business. Yet, it is targeted explicitly toward the entrepreneur or business owner who is seeking to re-develop and scale their business based on spiritual values and principles. My personal connection to these principles is from a biblical perspective, yet feel free to connect and relate the content to a spiritual perspective that is comfortable and appropriate for you and is based on your spiritual model and is appropriate for your business. My goal is to facilitate access to the power of spiritual and biblical principles for your business; it is not to advocate a single perspective of spirituality. I hope you are excited about undertaking and exploring the benefit of having a Blessed Strategy framework. I am excited for you.

With all of this, let’s get started.

The Problem

I realize that books aimed toward business owners are not uncommon. In fact, much of the information provided in these books is redundant and can even be found for little or no cost. Yet, it is rare that these books focus on the strategic long-term success of a business based on spiritual and biblical principles in an explicit sense. Further, business plans and non-profit organizations offering business advice, as valuable as they are, generally focus on the short-term tactical elements of business development with an emphasis on obtaining start-up funding and building a network of professionals. That is important information; it’s so important that I encourage you to review the literature and attend the events they offer. However, as valuable as the information provided, the core problem remains unresolved. That core problem is this: entrepreneurs and current business owners are