day 1151: The Search Is On!

"Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well..."

Many of us who are working today can remember work before the times of voice mail, email, cell phones, air cards, texts, wifi, gogo, and even the internet. It's hard to think about work before all of these great tools. They have made us more productive and yes, probably because of the always connected nature of these tools we have added some stress to our working (and outside of work) lives. I also marvel at what we did for knowledge accumulation and knowledge dissemination before the advent of the search engine. Google is a verb and a household word today. We turn to Google first (sorry bing and yahoo) to find something we don't know, for quotes, for articles, yada, yada. We turn to Google and the other search engines for just about everything we need or want to know. What did we ever do before search engines? But search engines can't tell us everything we need to know. We are faced with decisions each day at work about what is right and what it wrong. We can't (yet) put a decision in a search engine and have the search engine run an algorithm that will spit out what the is the right thing to do in that situation. Fortunately, for us we have the ultimate combination of a search engine that leads us in what these right and wrong decisions should be.

Between our prayers, the Holy Spirit, and the words given to us in the Bible and those who we are closest in our faith, we have our own algorithm that are built for each of us personally. And we can see in Galatians 6:4 that when we search to God for what is right and wrong that we can find what it is that we are supposed to do and find the outcome that we can expect; "Be sure to do what you should, for then you will enjoy the personal satisfaction of having done your work well..." Today you may be searching for what is the right thing to do, the right decision, the right words to resolve a situation with a co-worker, or you may be looking for the right decision for what to do with your career. Today you can know that you have an even more powerful search engine to access for these decisions. You don't even have to be online as God is much closer even than that to you, if you allow Him to be so. A search engine even better than Google? Yes, you have it even closer to you than your fingertips.

Reference: Galatians 6:4 (New Living Translation)

day 1115: Better Claims

"Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me."

I was reading an article about truth in advertising and was reminded that if you are going to make a claim of something you have being better than someone else, that you have to be able to empirically back that claim up.  If you can't then you can't make the claim.  Well, you can, but you run the risk of being challenged and then being embarrassed if found out.  That's why we don't see a lot of "Tastes better than…", or "Cleans better than….".  Now, this is not to say that consumers can't be asked to give their own personal testaments and claims, like "Bing searches faster and better than Google", or "Pepsi tastes better than Coke".  Those are opinions and can be utilized, if they are not coerced or scripted for actors.  It's a fine line, so we should be careful about making claims of better, unless we are sure.

Jesus came to give us a better life and He made many claims that this was so.  He died for those claims so that indeed He could rise again, to substantiate that the claim was true.  Even after that ultimate gift and sacrifice, we can find ourselves not taking in the full advantage of the better life that He wants for us. If we believe and allow Him to work in our lives, then we can be walking proof of His claim and we can further substantiate that all that He said was true.  There is a reason that we are called witnesses.  If we take in all that He has for us, then we can testify on His behalf and be a witness to the world.  On the job is one of the most powerful witness stands we will ever have.  What will we do today with the truth of our better life.

Reference: John 14:6 (New Living Translations)

day 1002: Competition

"When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket."

 All around us in competition.  We can't open a business site or newspaper and not have competition right in front of us.  Samsung vs. Apple, Coke vs. Pepsi,  Bing vs. Google.  Need I say more?  But what is it about competition that can be harnessed for good and advancement?  A lot in fact.  Business thrives on competition.  We love to know who is the opponent, identify their weaknesses and then go after them, keeping score until we are the victors.  Many a business plan is built on just the simple fact of doing what someone else is doing better, faster, bigger!  Knowing our competition and being able to articulate clearly to everyone in the organization what is the definition of winning over them, is a great thing.  Leaders have it harder in this respect.  If you are number one, then the competition is you and that is harder than being number two. But, all but one doesn't have that problem, so the rest of us can take the time to find a competitor and then set plans to be better than them.

Inside of organizations and companies there is also competition.  This we must be careful of and personally watch that we don't get caught up in these games.  We have to be able to set an example as believers and followers of Jesus that we aren't those who compete with others in order to build ourselves up or tear down the other person. When we are thought about by others we want to be known as the one who builds up our peers and rides above the game of internal competition.  We can't want to hurt someone else because we can't win.  In Genesis we read of a wrestling match and we know who finally won.  God will wrestle with us over our competitiveness and guess who ultimately wins out?  We need to be careful that we don't find ourselves caught up in competition that just doesn't really matter.

Reference: Genesis 32:25 (New Living Translation)

day 1001: Inquiring Minds Want To Know

"Go to the Temple and speak to the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah. Inquire about the words written in this scroll that has been found."

I have taken liberty with the pun, "Inquiring minds want to know". I knew this quote back in the day as the first word being spelled, "Enquiring".  That is from the tabloid rag, "The Enquirer".  Regardless, it holds up that those who are inquiring do want to know more.  The new TV ad is out with the blind test between Bing and Google as search engines.  I had to laugh the first time I saw it as someone in the ad agency must have come in and showed the Microsoft marketing team the power of the Pepsi vs. Coke blind taste tests of the 1980's.  And why not, as that advertising campaign worked then, and it can work now, just in a different age.  What I also find interesting about this ad campaign is that the premise of a better search engine is one that does the better inquiring for us.  For instance, if we wanted to search blue, we can't just put in the word blue and get what we want. That is because the painter is looking for different shades of blue, the psychology student is looking for how people use the word to describe their mood and the Will Farrell fan wants to see the clips from Old School. So, we have to modify the search.  What technology can do for us to get us the best search results is yet to be seen.  It's not only about how we inquire, but how the technology knows us. That is where it is all going and in our businesses knowing how someone inquires about our products and services so we can deliver to them what they want in the fastest and fullest way is a competitive advantage.

I am finishing up a biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm actually listening to it as an audiobook and it is fascinating. Bonhoeffer was a true student of the God's Word and he came up with his ways to study and learn the Bible.  I was most struck by a statement that he said about how his life changed when he stopped reading the Bible and instead began to "Inquire it". I'd never thought about using the word inquire as a verb when it came to reading the Bible, but that pivot of thinking can be a real life changer if we let it be so.  God's Word is there to open up Him to us, if we decide to truly get inquisitive.  There is no substitute for what was written and prepared as a direction gift for our lives.  How much we want to inquire defines how much we want to know. Let's be people who always, when it comes to God's Word, have inquiring minds that want to know.

Reference: 2 Kings 22:13 (New Living Translation)