day 1391: A Hack for Life

While I am on a pilgrimage walk on the Camino de Santiago (St. James Way) in Spain, I have asked some of the most committed and courageous faith-driven business leaders I know to guest contribute to Purposed worKING.  Enjoy! - Rusty

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"He makes me lie down in green pastures"

In Silicon Valley, everything is subject to being “hacked”.  Silicon Valley folks love to make anything they can get their hands on smaller, smarter, faster, stronger, or less expensive.  I have friends working to build everything from a driverless car to a monitor that tells you how many calories your dog burned while you were at work.  Wired, Fast Company, TechCrunch, Engadget, RE/Code, and a host of other magazines and websites have created an entire industry dedicated to reporting the latest and greatest innovations in technology.  The need for instantaneous news updates and social connections have created billions of dollars in market value for companies like like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.  Apple employees go to work at 1 Infinite Loop and Facebook employees at 1 Hacker Way in case they forget the goal is to always innovate and move forward.  

But, could it be possible to go too far too fast and for too long?  The same media outlets listed above are also filled with stories of burnout, questionable business and personal decisions, and intellectual stagnation made by the same companies and employees that had been previously praised as the best and the brightest.  How does this happen?  Should the employees work harder or smarter and figure out a new hack for management and work style?  Should companies replace their management or board periodically to bring fresh thoughts and energy to the front lines?  How can we engineer our way out of the inevitable future obsolescence?

My suggestion is that every manager and employee stop and think about one key word in the Verse 2 of Psalm 23 - “ He MAKES me lie down in green pastures.”  God doesn’t suggest, prod, or offer that we take five every now and then for a quick touchbase.  He tells us specifically that we have to stop and spend time with him in his green pastures and by quiet waters.  Only when that happens deliberately and regularly are we fully available and able to have God refresh our soul (v.3), guide us along the right paths (v.3), live life with confidence (v.4), nurture and heel us (v.5), and bask/share in his eternal glory (v.6).  

The Bible is filled with verses and examples of people stopping and seeking God and the promises of Psalm 23.  Jesus is described as stopping and seeking God at all times of the day, on land and water, in public and private, and alone and in groups.  Sometimes He took hours or days to be with God.  Other times, He is quoted saying simple, straight forward prayers during the rush of the day.  

I encourage you to stop what you are doing and "hack" your calendar to regularly stop and just spend time with God.  No need to send an email invite or set up a video call.  Prayer and time with God is the original killer mobile app and is available anytime and any place.  

Reference: Psalm 23 

Kevin Miller
Coitcom

day 1323: Next Door

"He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him"

Social media sites have begun to evolve as we knew they would.  After all of the large scale platforms, would come the sites where we hone down interests, commonality and ultimately, only capture and share the information that we want, with the closest people in our lives. Path is the perfect example of this.  The neighborhood site, NextDoor, also embodies these traits.  What I find fascinating about these types of services is that we will certainly see more and more of them beeing created with more and more specific sets of shared interests. I envision that before long Facebook feels more like the front page section of the newspaper and we will run over to other sites to go deep into what might be covered in the other sections.  Example; we don't look for jobs or business stuff on Facebook - we use LinkedIn and others for those efforts.  What will make these interest specific sites work will be how well we are allowed to know each other and how deftly they can find our commonalities without being in our face, or too obvious about it.

Have you ever been amazed that you find out something about someone else, that when you do, you find it in common with them?  Sometimes it is shocking that we never knew.  It's those moments that it feels like we are bonding and creating a relationship that will last forever.  If we can only get to that moment.  How many people in our workplaces do we know are believers and followers of Jesus?  There are many that we don't know because we haven't had that moment of sharing with each other. And who best to be the first to share than us?  One well placed word of our faith opens up the opportunity to create a bonding friendship and a strengthening of our faith by having other believers around us.  Can we find a moment this week to share this important part of us with others?

Reference: John 1:10 (New Living Translation)

day 1108: Brand Assets

"Let the heavens be glad, and the earth rejoice! Let the sea and everything in it shout his praise!"

I was very close to purchasing a company this past week and as I was doing the due diligence I realized that so much has changed when we stop and think about what are the brand assets that a company has today versus not that long ago.  With today's social media platforms you have to run through all of the places where the brand might appear and be sure that they are being utilized correctly by the company. And it's beyond the obvious of a trademark or a domain name and the associated URLs.  Today we have to think about Twitter handles, Facebook Fan Pages, Pinterest Boards, LinkedIn, Google+,Glassdoor employer profiles, and on and on.  Who would have contemplated 15 years ago that the company's blog might be one of the most valuable PR assets of the business.  For one of my companies, that is more than true.  Today, PR drives more organic traffic to the site than does SEM/SEO.  So, it's probably a good time to do an inventory and check of all of the brand assets that are out there to make sure they are up to date, consistent and sending an aligned message.

You probably know where I am going with this post.  Yes, we are indeed God's walking, talking, testifying brand assets. God works through people and we are His, so we have to be the living brand that He needs us to be today.  If we think of ourselves this way then we will want to be sure that all of us is totally aligned and consistent with bringing glory to Him in all that we do. Just one small area in our life that we lose control of, can be worse than someone hacking into the company's Twitter feed.  God gives us much to work with.  Let's be sure that we are living up to the requirements that come with what has been given.  We can be sure that our brand is shouting out God's praise today! Let's do be sure.

Reference: Psalm 96:11 (New Living Translation)

day 1054: Co-opetition

"A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking."

Tom Friedman wrote in yesterday's New York Times about the need to collaborate to solves big problems.  He contrasts how Silicon Valley works so well with companies, innovators and entrepreneurs working together to advance the agenda of technology and innovation, to the lack of collaboration of our government representatives. He posits that without collaboration that the big issues we face will not be overcome.  He is right about Silicon Valley.  Even though there is a great deal of competition here, there is still an overarching shared sense of optimism and willingness to assist each other to move bigger things forward.  Friedman quotes LinkedIn Founder and Chairman, Reid Hoffman when he calls this "co-opetition". It is true that we all need each other and even competitors need to work together to solve bigger industry problems.  This is why it always best to be on the best terms with those we compete and always be open to the idea of "co-opeting".

As believers we will many times think that our cooperating and collaborating should be in times of need and help.  If that is the only time we are fellowshipping or spending time with other believers then we are missing blessing and opportunities to grow from these positive and encouraging interactions. Yes, we have to be there for each other when the boat needs filling but let's also be sure that we are there for each other when we see the beginning of the opportunity, when the fish are about to start running.  In our workplaces, there is always someone who needs to know that we will welcome cooperation and not let our competitive nature overtake the giving of ourselves. This example could well be what opens the opportunity for us to share why we are who we are and what it means to bring glory to God in our work.

Reference: Luke 5:7 (New Living Translation)

day 943: Closeness

"And His disciples said to Him, 'You see the crowd pressing in on You; how can you say, 'Who touched me?"

We all know the importance of being close to our consumers but never more than now are we experiencing the ability to not only know who they are but to really know about them in a way never possible before.  How we act and interact with the web is not a full picture of a person but in many ways it has proven to be the best consumer information ever.  Tracking and following what and how someone experiences things on the web and through social media opens up all kinds of opportunities.  Many companies are capitalizing upon the information and targeting very precisely their products and services.  Others would like to do so, but they are bound by privacy restrictions as well as the "creepy factor".  For instance, LinkedIn, if they wanted to do so, could predict exactly when someone is going to change a job and where they are going next.  It's not a hard algorithm. A person gets active on LinkedIn and starts updating their profile and making lots of connection.  Bingo, they have become an active job seeker.  From there they start adding connections from people at different companies and each time more than five are added from a single company, bam now we know a company they have interviewed with.  And then one day all of the flurry of activity stops.  Boom, in two weeks or so we will see an announcement and changed profile to a new company and role, most likely to the company where the last set of connections were made. Who would want this information, beyond obviously the current employer of the job seeker?  Well, if I was a real estate agent, a moving van line, a clothing store, a financial advisor, a credit card company, a car company, yada yada, I might be interested.  So, the challenge is how do we take advantage of the consumer closeness that we can have to move our business forward?

In the account of the woman with the blood there are many, many lessons for us to take with us.  I have heard and read this story many times and I was always struck by how Jesus, even when bustled by the crowds, was in tune enough to feel the closeness of those around Him.  When the woman touched his robe, he could feel her faith.  How wonderful it would be if we could each have the level of faith that the woman had who at that time didn't know what, if anything, would happen, but still she reached to touch Jesus.  That is true faith. And in this lesson is also a call to each one of us to be close and aware to those around us so that when they reach out, we can know them and respond in a way that is with caring and His love.  There is no excuse in our advanced world to not stay in touch, know, and be close to others.  Let's today be close.

Reference Mark 5:31