Some of my professional life has been taken up as a consultant to various management persons, companies, churches, missions, even modest companies like a local tire sales business, and large ones like Habitat for Humanity, IBM, Federal Agencies, and others, including Federal agencies.  In this concluding period of my life, I feel that most of these entities knew what they ought to do before I arrived, but they did not put into action what they knew.  They either needed a probe to go forward, or someone to resist.  Studies show that workers do not do as well as they feel they ought to do.  Their supervisors are in agreement with them.  Why do people tend to do less than they believe they should?  We know many of the reasons:

  1. They don’t know how to do the job assigned.
  2. They do not know the expectations of their employers related to them.
  3. They are not permitted to make any meaningful decisions related to them.
  4. They are not afforded meaningful feedback relative to what they do.
  5. They do not have adequate documentation necessary for carrying out tasks.
  6. They are not given pointed instructions for achieving infrequent tasks.
  7. They feel threatened by workplace or personal obstacles.
  8. They are sometimes throttled by interfering organizational structures.
  9. They are ignored, sometimes punished, even when performing rightly.
  10.    They are sometimes rewarded when doing their tasks in less efficient ways.

If owners/managers/workers were given the list, they would smile knowingly, and get on with the meeting’s objectives.  For most of the problems they present, applications of what they already know would bring them out of the problems.  They have already had consulting conferences, and many of the participants have closed them, filed the notes, and proceeded doing what they have always done, so they will invite another consultant to repeat issues in some fresh style what they discussed earlier.  There are several solutions that might be introduced, like meaningful evaluation of goals and procedures on a periodic schedule, but as important as this is, it is not the burden of the analogy here.  Christianity is concerned about economies as servants of all – especially the suffering needy.  I am writing this during a period when Wall Street has lost much of its luster as a business and investment opportunity.  Some of the largest companies in the world like General Motors, and various banks, have failed.  Without bailout, they would have taken bankruptcy, perhaps ceased existence.  Fifty years ago, the common statement was: As General Motors goes, so goes the nation.  What a frightening conclusion that would be at this writing.  The conclusion ought to be that there is need for better ethical procedures and evaluations.  Control of those guidelines would, perforce, relate in some way to legality.  What if the market managers would assist the authority in designing a program in a free society, with the thought of the good of all the people in mind?  Government and business ought to be friends.  Scripture is the guideline by which Christians ought to live, so will proper guideline directions point society’s life.  Freedom and need open the way to cooperation.

The depravity of the human race troubled George Washington for a free society.  He rightly believed that depravity needed to be factored into society’s management.  Righteousness exalts the nation.  Were movers and shakers of nations less concerned with their own greed; distortions of freedom; political priorities; competitive chicaneries; distorted marketing procedures; misunderstanding of factors like the sufferings of the poor; and, relief from sharing benefits of technological advances with the workers – we might expect better economic times for all the people.  Freedom invites divine ethics.  Guidelines, rightly found in values, serve us.  It is concern for others.   In nearly every proposal I have read for improvement in companies, governments, education, and entities like churches, I have felt that positive forms of planning that included the understanding of human error, the benefit of cooperation, the openness of problem solving, the lesser concern for gaining larger margins of profit, the warmth of relationships between persons (workers and management), and the ideals of life would prosper economies. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020