My wife, Kathy, recently visited a car wash. When Kathy approached the attendant’s booth, the attendant began sharing about the benefits of their monthly club. Kathy stated she just wanted their cheapest car wash. This lady forced her canned sales pitch on Kathy anyway. Kathy said, “I’ve been coming here for two years. I just want the cheapest car wash.” ...
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Scott Cook, cofounder of Intuit, and Professor Nitin Noharia discussed how to enhance customer value. The article highlighted CEO of RELX, Erik Engstrom. Engstrom has been asking his team customer-obsessed questions for twenty years. Some of Engstrom’s profound questions include: “How does the customer measure value? How do we know? How do we ...
Professors Denise Daniels and Elaine Ecklund developed a Faith at Work Matrix on the different ways we can live out our vocational calling. The second approach is by serving others at work. These researchers discovered that one common way that we can use our work for God’s glory is by leveraging our workplace as an opportunity to serve others. Joseph’s ...
Business negotiations are fraught with opportunities to become stressful experiences. In this series, we’ll discuss five guiding principles on how best to negotiate agreements. The first principle is to clearly define your desired outcome from the transaction. Recently, Rod needed to hire a new videographer. He examined his budget and considered the maximum value he could afford to pay. Even ...
I’ve personally been involved in at least seven business startups. In this series, let me share seven keys to success for aspiring entrepreneurs. Legendary consultant, Peter Drucker, wrote, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” In my opinion, the first key to success is producing a product or ...
In the book, Every Good Endeavor, authors Timothy Keller and Katherine Alsdorf paint a picture of work as multi-beneficial. Work allows us to use our God-given talents to serve God, our employers and our customers. We also honor God by doing our work in a way that serves our professions and our communities. Psalm 90:17 says, “May the favor of ...
As a member of my church denomination’s outreach committee, I was expected to take a mission trip to see our contributions at work. Although I had asked to visit a project in Europe, a late change redirected me to Venezuela, a country for which I had no interest or understanding. Praying furiously to God for strength and assurance the ...
Rarely do I see a spiritually encouraging article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, but recently I read, “Bible Sales Grow 22%.” Even though print books only grew 1% this year, Bible sales soared 22%. Since some estimate that the average household owns 3.5 Bibles, the more pertinent issue is how many of these new Bible owners ...
One of the responsibilities of a CEO is to manage risks. Last month when United Healthcare’s CEO was murdered, this tragedy highlighted a risk that will probably now receive significant attention. That’s the risk of unhappy customers responding in unexpected ways. The bigger the company, the more removed CEOs can become from policies and decisions being made at frontline levels. ...
In this series we’re discussing different ways that business can shape our faith. A profound way that God has used to shape my faith is by trusting God with our marketing strategy. Decades ago, God sent a radio executive to ask me to produce a radio vignette on integrity in the workplace. I had no experience in radio, but I ...
Equipping Others to Do Work Differently
