October 17; Do Your Job And The Results Will Follow
MANAGEMENT BY THE BOOK:
365 Daily Bible Verse &
One-Minute Management Lessons For The Busy Faithful

Chapter Ten: Deciding 17 October

Now get up and stand on your feet.

I have appeared to you

to appoint you as a servant

and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me.

Acts 26:16

Appoint

My cell phone bill was $1800. It was the 1980’s and business was learning the benefits of the new technology. We were seeing efficiencies gained with continuous communication for the travelling salesman: me. But I was paralyzed learning of the cost.

“This is awful,” I said to John, my sales manager. “My sales don’t cover my salary or—this month—even my expenses.” It was a thinly capitalized start-up with slow revenue.

“True,” John says. “But your job is to generate the sales—place the product in the customer’s hands; we’ll figure out profitability soon enough.”

***

My sales manager was helping me to understand Peter Drucker, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” (Drucker 1954)

The boss was right: establish the relationship (my job) and good management (his job) would give the product a future. It was a team effort.

My manager had played collegiate football and knew well the link between coaching in sports and managing in business.

Indeed, “Coaching is management,” says Dr. Jerry Bell, founder and CEO of the Bell Leadership Institute and professor at the University of North Carolina. (Gerald D. Bell) (Dean Smith 2004)

Professor Bell writes on the basketball coaching philosophy of Dean Smith,

We asked our players to concern themselves with things within their control, our mission statement was: Play hard; play smart; play together. We knew if we did those things, we would be successful a large percentage of the time. (Dean Smith 2004)

A game’s final score and a business profit are merely the byproducts; the end results of well executed behaviors. The daily drills and work and work-outs are the processes that move us incrementally to our goal(line). This is how supervision does its job.

I did not understand at the time the ‘organize’ part of management. This is the decision of the manager to select the people and the resources to do the job. My sales manager’s encouragement was part of the ‘lead’ definition. The ‘control’ part of management was the evaluation of my sales numbers. And that was the source of my worry and whining. I needed to fear less about the cell phone cost and do the work. This was my appointed task.

Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. Acts 26:16. Bible teacher Randy Yeager explains,

The reason Jesus wanted Paul to stop groveling in the dust and stand up was that He had work for him to do. It is false humility and a facade behind which we conceal our sloth when we fall before our Lord on our face. We are to stand on our feet and “go and disciple all nations” (Mt. 28:19). One cannot do that when he is lying in the dust on the Damascus road.

We do the work of sharing the Gospel. The Holy Spirit does the rest.

***

My sales manager promised that I would get all the resources that I would need to do the daily drills to reach my sales goals. Just as Commentator George Will, Ph.D., once wrote, “If you will an end, you must will the means to that end.”

My boss paid the $1800 cell phone bill.

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