Being an executive is fundamentally a process of creating and inspiring excellence in decision making and execution.
Becoming elite in this process is a challenge that holds significant potential. The problem often isn’t information, the problem is being able to curate the mass of information into a succinct, trustworthy, doable process.
What if you could legitimately refine it to ten principles, ten commands?
When you consider the Bible, what do you think you have?
When you consider your business and the Bible what connection do you assume is there?
My assumption based on four decades of conversations? If I ask this question on the weekend, I will get one set of answers. If I tap into most minds during the week a different or more vague answer will emerge.
I was talking with a corporate CEO and began to describe just a few of the principles of business defined in the 10 Commandments. He instantly became intrigued and asked for me to send a synopsis of the principles for each of the 10 Commandments. Those principles are the focus of an upcoming book, “The 10 Commandments of Business.”
Without exaggeration, these are ten of the most powerful principles that define business at its highest. I’ll share them concisely over the next ten blogs.
If you can avoid pontificating or creating meaning just so we can say there is some, what difference does it make in business if you have no other gods but God? That’s the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before [ahead of] me.”
How would this make you a better executive or entrepreneur?
Why would this make a difference for your business?
What does it mean for something to be your God?
If someone or something truly is your God, it holds a unique and powerful position. If you have clearly decided who or what your God is, and this God is the God of the Bible, your life will have been defined in an unparalleled way.
This is what it defines.
This is how determining that God is the God of your life can transform your leadership in the corporate marketplace.
- Increased Confidence
Whatever is your God defines what is true and what you can trust.
Immediately before declaring what were to be the 10 Commandments, God said this to the people of Israel, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Deuteronomy 5:6 NIV).
To be concise, what God is saying is that the basis for my commanding you is I am trustworthy, all-powerful, immediately active in your real life, and the source of your freedom.
Everything else including the 10 Commandments comes from this first reality.
In a world where things are infinite and we are finite, having someone infinite that you can trust absolutely is the ultimate differentiator.
- Enhanced Wisdom
God knows exactly the right moves to make. He claims the right to command those moves. God isn’t guessing. When the One who created it and defined it commands it, it’s wise to listen.
Business is action made on decisions. When the fundamental principles driving those actions and decisions are based on trust in a final source of authority, it creates clarity and confidence.
In executing business decisions wisdom is not an intermural sport. It requires professional proficiency. God’s commitment to giving wisdom is not relegated to “spiritual things.” Business is His creation, and He is passionate about your involvement and effectiveness in it.
His intention is to give you guidance, strength, wisdom, and competence in executing this thing we call business.
- Anxiety Relief
Anxiety predominantly arises out of stress and trauma from what is uncontrollable which includes among many things economic trends, the results of foolish decisions, and relationship realities [HR] outside of yourself. If you are knee deep in the responsibilities and risks of business, you have at least been tempted with the issue of anxiety.
When God is your God, He creates legitimate confidence over the things you cannot control. He has the ability to turn around otherwise destructive realities.
God’s ability and desire to impact life is communicated numerous times through the Bible. A brief example is in Proverbs 21:1. King Solomon clarifies, “In the LORD’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels toward all who please him.” God has got your back, and He is capable of bringing business altering influence even over kings.
When He is your God, the anxiety release that trust brings is unmistakable.
- Personal Value
It is often assumed that people of standing, power, or influence must have significant confidence. That often is only partially true. People in significant positions with heightened responsibility regularly struggle internally.
Success tends to be defining, and because success is regularly tenuous your sense of value can equally be tenuous even or especially if you are successful.
When God is your God, He claims not only the right but the reality of being the definer of your value. What you do has value, but you are valuable because God has made you that way not because of the value you create.
When your value is settled, you are settled. When your value is tenuous, a soul-level unease pervades everything you do.
- Power in Negotiation
Herb Cohen was an elite negotiator. He understood people and how to negotiate for the best results. During Reagan’s defeat of Carter in the 1980 election, Carter brought on and then ignored Cohen’s advice on how to negotiate the release of the Iranian hostages. As a result, Cohen in a subsequent letter to Reagan told how this would cost Carter the election and foretold the hostages would be released on the day Reagan was inaugurated. Both came true exactly as Cohen described.
He wrote in his book, Negotiate This: By Caring but Not T-H-A-T Much,
I have been asked numerous times, “How were you able to analyze this matter and foretell the outcome with such certainty?” My best answer is that, unlike others whose intellect and intelligence were superior, I didn’t have a career or reputation invested in this crisis. And I was less inhibited by a desire for acceptance or fear of disapproval.
That’s the power of settled confidence and personal value in negotiation. That’s the power that having God as your one and only God brings to your ability to make challenging decisions in business.
Having no other Gods other than or ahead of God is the most powerful and fundamental business principle you can embrace. All other principles rise and fall on this reality.