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You are here: Home / 2015 / Archives for July 2015

Archives for July 2015

Don’t Divide Your Christian Principles from Your Practical Decision Making

July 21, 2015 by Matt Perman

This is well said by Phillip Johnson, in his foreword to Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth: 

Every one of us has a worldview, and our worldview governs our thinking even when — or especially when — we are unaware of it.

Thus, it is not uncommon to find well-meaning evildoers, as it were, who are quite sincerely convinced that they are Christians, and attend church faithfully, and may even hold a position of leadership, but who have absorbed a worldview that makes it easy for them to ignore their Christian principles when it comes time to do the practical business of daily living.

Their sincerely held Christian principles are in one category for them, and practical decision making is in another. Such persons can believe that Jesus is coming again to judge the world and yet live as if the standards of this world are the only thing that needs to be taken into account.

That’s a very profound statement. It is worth re-reading and reflecting on.

I remember experiencing this dichotomy in my own life. My senior year in college, I had an internship as a claims adjuster at a large insurance company. One of the things we were taught was that the popular dictum “the customer is always right” would bankrupt the company.

The reason is that customers often had an inadequate conception of their insurance policies, thinking that certain things would be covered when they are in fact not. If we granted the wishes of the customer in each of those cases, we would be paying far beyond what the policies were designed to cover, which would indeed spell disaster for the company.

In this case, of course, the reasoning is correct. The policy rates were set on the basis of the limitations on the policy spelled out in the contract, and to go against those would be to over extend the capacity of the company to pay the claims. I don’t think there is anything unbiblical about sticking to agreed upon characteristics of the insurance policy, especially since the customers are able to read and agree to the policy with full knowledge and consent when they sign on.

The problem, though, was that this could easily have an unwelcome side effect. Even though the company did not advocate doing so, nonetheless this reality could easily create an adversarial mindset toward the customers of the insurance company. You could go in expecting them to disagree, and your mission was to make sure not to give in. Your task could easily become not seeking to maximally serve the customer within the constraints imposed by the policy, but standing your ground against the customer. And justifying that by saying “this is what the policy states. You just have to deal with it.”

That would be an example of following the standards the world often follows — and thinking you are justified in doing so because, of course, you really can’t pay out for things the policy does not cover. Right?

The problem here is not with upholding the policy. The biblical answer here would not be to go against the agreed upon characteristics of the insurance policies. The problem is with what is being left out — namely, humanity. 

The biblical answer here was not to go against the policies, but to remember compassion and understanding. As claims adjusters we might not be able to give the customers what they really wanted in certain cases, but we could always accompany that with saying “I understand this is frustrating. I am sorry about this. And perhaps the conception of this policy is not as helpful as it should be, and we will need to look into that. But this is the policy that was agreed on, and this is what we have to stick to.”

That is a very different approach than just giving people the cold hard facts and saying “deal with it.” It seems so obvious. This is a way of treating the customer with dignity and respect, even when they are not “right” and cannot have their way.

Yet, that that is the type of thing you don’t always see. Perhaps some people think that showing understanding opens them to liability or risk. To acknowledge the person’s frustration, they think, is perhaps to acknowledge that the policy is indeed bad, thus opening them to a lawsuit.

But fear of risk is never a good reason to fail to take the actions that are necessary for affirming a person’s dignity. People’s concerns need to be validated. Even if the company is technically “right,” as was the case most of the time in these situations, it is never right to toss that out as a cold hard fact that a person just has to “deal with.”

This is just one small example of how Christian principles can be set aside in the name of seemingly doing “the right thing” according to a certain (even legitimate) set of standards, and how a Christian view can come in and provide what is missing so that people are always treated the way they ought to be treated.

There are lots of other examples that are more extreme and more significant. Regardless of the situation you are in, always remember to ask not only “what are the typical practices for handling this situation in my industry” but also “what does God have to say about this type of thing, and how does that apply to me as well?”

Filed Under: Business Philosophy, j Productivity in Society

Is Excessive CEO Pay a Problem?

July 20, 2015 by Matt Perman

I am a capitalist and I believe in the free market. Government interference almost always makes things worse, not better. Then, when the government “solution” causes those worse problems, people forget that government caused those problems in the first place. And so another government “solution” is called for, and so the cycle continues.

So one might expect me to say that high CEO pay should not be considered a problem.

But that is not what I think. My thinking is in line with Peter Drucker’s thinking, well summarized by William Cohen in The Practical Drucker: Applying the Wisdom of the World’s Greatest Management Thinker:

Drucker defended perceived high executive salaries in his earlier writings. He knew how hard executives had to work to reach the pinnacle of their careers.

However, skyrocketing executive salaries caused him to drastically alter his opinion. He said executive salaries at the top had clearly become excessive and that the ratios of compensation — top managers in relation to lowest paid workers — were the highest in the world. Moreover this income difference wasn’t slight — it differed by magnitudes.

Drucker felt that this was morally wrong, and that we as a nation would end up paying a tremendous price for this. Indeed, in 2001, the ratio of average US CEO compensation to average pay of a non management employee hit a high of 525 to 1. At that point, Drucker recommended a ratio of no more than 20 to 1.

Interestingly, Drucker drew a parallel between high executive salaries and the demands of unions for more and more benefits without increases in productivity. He predicted we would pay a terrible price for these examples of gluttony from both management and labor. “It is never pleasant to watch hogs gorge,” he said. In fact, we have been paying this price for several years.

I agree that in general, CEO pay is too high in proportion to the pay of the non managerial worker. I believe this causes all sorts of problems. While I believe that companies ought to have the freedom to pay their executives what they choose, as it is their money, that does not mean that all of their decisions are by definition morally good or beneficial.

So what is the solution? Well, we know what it is not. It is not government interference, such as in the form of wage controls. That will simply cause even more — and likely worse — problems (see first paragraph). A company owns its money, and has a right to do with it what it chooses. For the government to come in and force certain wage restrictions or other such things is simply a disguised form of stealing. It is for the government to force itself into participating in the management of the company, which it does not have a right to do.

So what, then, is the solution? The solution has to come from the market it self; from people. From persuasion, not force (read, laws).

And that is one of the beautiful things about the free market. The market does have imperfections. But, just as with the scientific method, by being left free those imperfections often become self-correcting as we begin to see the damage they are creating.

The imperfections of the market can often be overcome by ordinary people making good decisions and using influence to change culture. And so even when the market is imperfect, it must be left free to correct itself. (Cases of ethical violations of course excepted.)

And that, I believe, is the solution here. But at some point, this specific issue of extreme executive pay needs to become a bigger issue. It’s not a crusade I’m interested in taking up. But it is something worth thinking reflectively and intelligently about — from a free market (rather than command and control) perspective.

 

Filed Under: Business

Getting Collaboration Right

July 16, 2015 by Matt Perman

A great post at the 99U: The Collaboration Paradox: Why Working Together Often Yields Weaker Results

A key excerpt:

Most of the heavy creative lifting happens when we’re by ourselves, working on our own. We’re in a better position to evaluate the merits of an idea after we’ve given a topic some thought, not when encountering it for the first time.

For collaboration to work, we need to understand the crucial role of alone time and focused, individual work. Collaboration is essential, but it only yields better results when combined with individual work rather than seen as something that renders the individual work unnecessary.

Filed Under: Collaboration

Beliefs Before Policies!

July 14, 2015 by Matt Perman

Thomas Watson, Jr., the second president of IBM and 16th US ambassador to the Soviet Union:

I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions. Next, I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs….Beliefs must always come before policies, practices, and goals. The latter must always be altered if they are seen to violate fundmantal beliefs.

Note that: if your policies are inconsistent with your beliefs, you change your policies — not your beliefs. So many companies do the opposite, saying they value people all the while enforcing policies that communicate anything but that.

Of course, the way you know whether a company (or person) really believes something is by what they do.

So what are companies that institute person-depleting policies really saying?

Filed Under: Business Philosophy

Love Your Neighbor By Removing Pop-Ups from Your Website

July 11, 2015 by Matt Perman

This is an excellent, very well reasoned article by Steven Kryger: “Why I Removed Extremely Effective Pop-Ups from My Website.“

Filed Under: Web Strategy

Making Work Meaningful

July 10, 2015 by Matt Perman


This is a great TEDx talk by Ryan Hartwig, co-author of Teams that Thrive. It’s called “The Myth of Meaningful Work.”

Does this mean that we are wrong-headed in wanting our work to be meaningful?

Not in the slightest. What he means is this: meaning is not something first of all found in the job. Rather, meaning is something you bring to the job. We make our work meaningful. We can (and must) bring meaning to our jobs.

Meaning is in the way the work is done, and therefore any task — whether it is regarded as “meaningful” by society or not — can be done with incredible significance.

In fact, it used to be that most people did experience a deep connection between their work and meaning. So what happened?

Scientific management.

We changed the way we do work as a society in the quest to utterly maximize efficiency. The result was that we turned work, which is in itself meaningful, into alienating labor. We forced people to start doing work in ways that take the meaning out of their tasks by reducing the space for personal initiative and contribution and introducing more control-oriented management practices.

Of course, as he points out, there were many excellent benefits of scientific management. It really did increase efficiency, and that was needed. But the principles were taken too far.

What we need to do is find ways to help people overcome the gap between work and meaning that has been imposed so often not from the tasks themselves, but from the way in which we make people do them.

The talk is a great overview of these things, and closes with four suggestions for helping people bring meaning back into their work.

Filed Under: Work

Why Read Books? (And How?)

July 6, 2015 by Matt Perman

A fantastic article at the 99U.

And a nice start:

Warren Buffett is undoubtedly considered one of the greatest investors of all times. His empire, Berkshire Hathaway, is worth $355 billion, an increase of 1,826,163 percent since 1964 when Buffett took over. He owns (or owns big chunks) of some of the biggest brands in the world including GEICO, Dairy Queen, NetJets, half of Heinz, and significant holdings in companies such as American Express, IBM, and Wells Fargo.

But Buffett’s very best investment—responsible for literally billions of dollars in profits over the years—was very cheap. Because it was a book. That’s right, a book.

Filed Under: Reading

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What’s Best Next exists to help you achieve greater impact with your time and energy — and in a gospel-centered way.

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About Matt Perman

Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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