Grace Note for June 9, Noted theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, noticed and wrote about an interesting thing that happens in groups and organizations. Put any group of people together, no matter their initial purpose, and it doesn’t take too long before two things happen: they start becoming self-serving and self-protective. And when that happens, their own self-preservation becomes more important to them than their mission or their reason for existence. A classic example from business is IBM. They used to rule the world, with a dominance nobody, anywhere, could match. But then a shift started occurring. IBM became more fixed on their preservation and self-interest than their purpose. And so for a time there, it looked like IBM was spending more time, money, and energy building huge, impressive corporate office buildings, filled with managers and executives, than improving and selling what had been state-of-the-art, cutting edge products. And in that gap, little upstart companies like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Compaq, stepped in and took a huge slice of the pie. Now IBM’s a great company, and it was smart enough to fix the problem and regain a whole lot of their market share. But it’s a classic case of not paying attention to business; of shifting away from the assignment, and worrying more about taking care of yourself than paying careful attention to your whole reason for being. This doesn’t just happen in business. Wake up, church!
Posted on: Mon, 09 Jun 2014 13:00:11 +0000
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