The Power of Helping versus being Helped

I have a new friend / client who has a neat story about how he came to be a Christian.  He was an atheist for 38 years, and quite content.  However, one day his neighbor's five year old child was diagnosed with Leukemia.  My friend began volunteering to raise funds for the child's treatment.  As he became more involved, he says he took his eyes off himself for a moment, and was able to see the hope all around him.  As a result of his efforts, and the relationships this developed, he became a Christian.  Where he lives, he could have gone his whole life without hearing a strong evangelistic message, yet he was able to see through service the reality of God.  How cool is that.

This story came back to me as I was teaching a lesson the other day about the four friends who had a crippled friend they wanted to get in front of Jesus.  They brought him to a house on a blanket with the expectation that they would get him in front of Jesus who was reported to be able to heal.  Unfortunately, the crowd was made up of people who were looking to critique Jesus rather than support him, so they had no desire to let the men through.  Instead of giving up, they climbed up on the roof, busted a hole in it and lowered their friend down on the blanket where Jesus was able to forgive and heal.

Often times, when we think about those of our friends in need, whether physical or spiritual, we put them in the blanket, and try to get them in front of Jesus somehow.  We see our role to bring this "crippled" person forward with the idea that he can be healed if we do so.  Many times this does take place, when we see the obvious "injury" and see the need to help this person overcome it.

Where we miss out, though, is when we see a person who doesn't look or sound crippled yet we know they do not experience the joy of a relationship with Jesus.  We cannot picture them in a blanket being lowered in front of Jesus, nor can we actually figuratively picture them in a blanket at all.

Consider another possibility.  What if the four friends that carried the injured man were not all believers.  What if only two or three were, but asked the non-believers to help, and they saw the importance of helping enough to agree to carry the blanket.  Think of the impact on them from the experience of Jesus' healing of the paralytic on the blanket.  Maybe you need to approach your friends differently. Get them to help you help someone else.  Create a project to feed the homeless and take your friend with you.  Help out a widow or orphan in your community and ask for help to do so.  Perhaps by their joining you in caring for someone else, the same change will take place that affected my friend.

Hey, you have nothing to lose, and someone will gain, regardless of the impact on your own friend.  Whoever is getting served will benefit. 

Try it and tell me how it goes.

What does Strategy have to do with Human Resources?

What does Strategy have to do with Human Resources?

Chris Byrd, Wisdom Selling Solutions

I was recently at the SCMA Human Resources meeting, introducing Wisdom Selling Solutions to the various attendees.  As I would describe us as a strategy consultant, it was obvious the confusion about exactly why I was there representing Wisdom Selling.  Quite frankly, I don’t blame them, given the usual connection of strategy to the business leadership, not Human Resources.

However, the truth is that strategy is intimately connected to manpower, and the ability of a Human Resources team to actively participate in the strategic planning and implementation of the organization can make a world of difference in the success or failure of that organization.

Consider the following.  Imagine for a moment the CEO of your company called you into his office and gave you an hour just to tell him your dreams for the future of the workforce.  What kind of things would you tell him?  Do you even have the time to consider all of the possibilities that talent management and development could bring to the company?  How do you get to the point where you can move beyond the constant tug of legal compliance, and move to a contributor of strategy to the organization?  

Think about the following business terms and how they translate into HR.  Each is key to business strategy, and can be key to HR strategy as well.

Sales – this is a transaction taking place.  It is the goal of the business, because if this does not take place, there is no revenue whether the company provides products or services.  The sale is a trading of value.  What one entity has provides so much potential value to another that they are willing to trade something that has more value to the initial company.  For example, I might have a candy bar that cost $0.25 to make, but its value to you is a dollar, so I can sell it on its value and receive the dollar, which I value higher than the candy bar, or I wouldn’t sell it.

Your transactions are many.  Ultimately, though, the main transactions are hiring, on-boarding and retaining.  Hiring is the sale in that you provide a position to someone who values it highly enough to trade you the value of their experiences capabilities and interests.  

Marketing – this is creating the environment for the sale to take place.  Simply put, this is finding the persons who might value what you have to offer, presenting the value in a compelling way, and promoting this value to access the people who would want it.  Often this is mixed up with advertising and promotions, which is a key element, but marketing is so much more.

You create job descriptions, company websites for hiring, and brochures that tell your story.  You place this information where those most likely to fit your needs are known to frequent, and promote the opportunities available within your organization.

Strategy- this is the understanding of who an organization is, and who they want to be.  Further, it is what they want to accomplish.  Once understood, the plans to reach the destination can be developed and implemented.  

As an analogy, consider driving around in your car.  At any point, if you don’t know where you are, you are considered lost.  Now, many of us drive around looking for landmarks to tell us where we are currently.  Others of us will stop and ask for directions.  Now, if we don’t know where we are going, any road will get us there.  However, if we plan to arrive somewhere, we can use our roadmap to show us the best routes to take.  We can use the information on the map to tell us how far away it is, how long it will take, and what milestones we will pass along the way.  Nowadays, with GPS, we can even have a voice tell us when to turn.

Strategy works the same way in Human Resources.  If you know the state of the workforce, the capabilities, the interests and the level of engagement, you are in a great position to match people up with current and future positions.  Information is always going to be king in your world.  The more you know about people, their interests and potential, the better you are going to be able to fit them to the appropriate positions and retain the best talent.  The better you are able to equip your managers to lead each individual that reports to them the better their leadership can be.  

If you are connected to the pulse of the business, you can see more clearly where the people plans need to go.  If there is going to be a succession of promotions, what is the plan to backfill, for example.  When you know the capabilities of the talent that exists, you can see the gaps that need to be filled over time.  You may suggest hiring strategies that don’t make traditional sense because you can see the big picture.  You may change the onboarding process because you are hiring more young leaders, and they need to be treated differently to stay.

Obviously, these are broad generalizations, but hopefully they provide you some insight into how valuable strategic thinking can be in your department.  I encourage you to find ways to be more efficient in your transactional responsibilities, so that you have time to contribute to the future workforce success in your company.

Wisdom Selling Solutions provides strategy consulting for Business Owners, Executives and key Human Resource Leadership in support of successful strategy implementation.  WSS provides information, analysis and tools to help make your job more productive and interesting.  Contact us today for a free demonstration of these tools.

Have You Ever Been Asked What You Believe In?

Recently I had the opportunity to quote for working with a new client.  He is starting a business, and plans to run it with Christian principles, making sure he focuses on customer satisfaction but at the same time presents the organization as focusing on doing things in a way that reflects his beliefs.

As part of the interviewing for working together, he asked me what my story was, how I was brought up in the church, my core beliefs, etc.  I was fascinated by the request but realized how important it was to accurately reflect these so our business arrangement could be long term and successful.

Have you ever been asked to share what you believe with someone as part of understanding who you are?  What would you say if they did ask you, or would you say it is private?  See, I am of the school of thought that we should always be willing to share our story, whether it be about our religion, our interests, family, etc.  People want to know who they are working with.  I encourage you to practice your story telling, in both written and verbal form.

Here is what I sent back, as a reference for you, and perhaps to help you understand me a bit more.

"I come from a strong Christian background with two good parents who invested in me.  I also experienced a consistent run of quality teachers and ministers at the Southern Baptist churches where I attended growing up.

I realized early on that I was a creation of God, who built us to have communion with him.  Through sin we became separated from him, and were no longer able to access the face to face walks that Adam experienced.

What I learned next is that God hates sin, and that each of us has this in us, breaking our connection to God, and putting us in jeopardy of eternal separation, since the only way to be in connection is to not have the sins on us.

While He created ways for early worshippers to reach out to him through sacrifices, He made the decision to allow us once and for all to receive a sacrifice.  He sent His Son, Jesus, to earth in the form of a man to fully experience the life of a human, with all its joys, sorrows and temptations.  He was born to a virgin and remained sinless while on earth.

He came with a purpose, and that was to die as a sacrifice, once and for all, to take our sins out of the way of our connection to God.  His death accomplished this once and for all, and His resurrection from the dead further demonstrated his overcoming the evil in the world.  God then told us through Christ, with further clarification from Paul in Romans that we can come to God through a belief in His son as our savior, and through the repentance of sins.  We turn to God and away from Sin.  I believe that I have asked Christ into my heart, and He has indwelt me with the Holy Spirit who guides me to the truth.  I believe my salvation is assured.  I also believe that my connection to God is always under attack and that I need to constantly gain wisdom, be vigilant, and repentant when I fall.

I love to learn, and spend a lot of time thinking about the mysteries of the Bible, from how we deal gracefully with sins among non-believers, to how we protect our families, to how we minister.  I write alot and blog a lot about these thoughts as I try to work out my salvation.  My wife and all four of my kids will be with me in heaven thanks to their decisions.  We are active at MountainView Baptist Church where I teach college students, play bass in the praise band, and have been interim minister of music.

I fall a lot.  Being a Christian is not easy and I find myself dealing with the challenges all the time.  Mainly these are in the areas of worry and criticism.  But I am working on it constantly, as I want my business to be one that is identified by its Christian Wisdom, and by the ethics and morals by which it is run."