day 1317: Being Wrong Will Always Be Right

"Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life."

One of my favorite business bloggers, Seth Godin, writes: "Assume your plans are wrong".  He is referring to our inability to predict the future when we look more than a couple of generations out.  In his predicting of wrong, he is so right.  Whenever we become beholden to plans that are more than a decade out, we are probably going to end up disappointed because of the change that occurs around us that disrupt those plans.  And then add on generations of changes of leadership and personnel and who knows what will happen.  Ask Bill Gates about this as he readies to return to a more active role at Microsoft.  The company that he sees today is a far cry from the company that he founded and while he may know a few familiar faces from the old days, the executive suite is now filled with people that he wasn't together with in that first foxhole. We should plan strategically.  It's important we do so, and we need to try and look as far ahead as we can.  But, the attitude that goes with that far-reaching strategy needs to be open-minded enough that if things begin to change tomorrow, then we are willing to toss that plan out the window and redirect without remorse or frustration.

There is only one course for the future that we can be sure and that is God's course for us. In that we will never be wrong and we can always be assured of being right. We can never go wrong in keeping close and in God's will. We may wonder, "Does God really care about our careers, or our jobs, or even the spreadsheet that we have been slaving over for the last week?"  In actuality, He cares a lot, because He cares about us and what we do, how we do it, and how we do it with others, was all created by Him.  I believe He rejoices when we live and work to our full potential and like a parent, he hurts for us when we hurt.  But, He cares most fully in that in all that we do we put our trust and life in His hands for Him.  God doesn't clock out on us when we go to work, He stays right with us waiting on us to call upon Him.  God has a course for us and if we marry our heart with His, then that course will always be right.



Proverbs 4:23 (New Living Translation)

day 1240: Stripping Down!

...let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up..."


I'm in the process of buying a software business.  It's a great service and as we look at what we need to do first it is not what most would think.  The first thing we need to do is to strip it down.  What does that mean?  Well, it like building an airplane.  The designers of an airplane build it out with all kinds of great features and amenities, but at some point all of those get weighed against the size of the engine and the thrust available to allow the plane to get off the air, and stay in the air. Because the engines are what they are, there is only thing to do, start stripping away the features until everything comes in balance.  The same has to happen to this service I am looking to purchase. The same has to happen to all of our businesses. It's not easy as we can get very attached to features and before long they can become sacred cows.  Last week Bill Gates apologized for every letting Control-Alt-Delete get built and put in their routine.  He knows now that they should have stripped the feature down to one button. What are we hanging on to that needs to be stripped down?

We each have traits and ways of being that when pushed to name them we would say they are identifiers of who we are.  The question we must always be asking ourselves is whether or not those "features" are ones that are strengthening us in our relationship with Jesus, or holding us back.  Like the plane that can't take flight, or the software that is too feature-rich and sluggish, we have to have the courage to strip down these areas of our lives so we can bound forward for Him.

Reference: Hebrews 12:1 (New Living Translation)