Chapter 11
What Activities
Independent Professionals
Who Work with Organizations
Should Make Their Top Priority
So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia,
and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
And when they arrived in Salamis,
they preached the word of God in
the synagogues of the Jews.
They also had John as their assistant.
Now when they had gone through the island to Paphos,
they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet,
a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus,
who was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man.
This man called for Barnabas and Saul
and sought to hear the word of God.
But Elymas the sorcerer (for so his name is translated) withstood them,
seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
Then Saul, who also is
called Paul, filled with the Holy
Spirit,
looked intently at him and said,
“O full of all deceit and all fraud, you son of the devil,
you enemy of all righteousness,
will you not cease perverting the straight ways of the Lord?
And now, indeed, the hand of the Lord is upon you,
and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.”
And immediately a dark mist fell on him,
and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.
Then the proconsul believed, when he saw what had been done,
being astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
— Acts 13:4-12 (NKJV)
You may be wondering why there is a chapter devoted to
independent professionals. Let me explain. I’ll begin by defining who such
independent professionals are.
The people I have in mind are the
independent professionals who help organizations to make improvements. Some
professionals and their firms provide information. Others supply expert
knowledge. Still others coordinate complex tasks. Many combine these roles.
What kinds of expertise are
involved? While not intending to exclude any category of independent
professionals, I’m writing about people who serve their clients as accountants,
actuaries, advertising copywriters, analysts, architects, artists, attorneys,
auditors, chemists, construction managers, consultants, designers, economists,
editors, engineers, geologists, instructors, investigators, investment bankers,
lobbyists, market researchers, media buyers, money managers, musicians, nurses,
physicians, physicists, planners, product testers, professors, public relations
counsel, researchers, risk management evaluators, scientists, security experts,
software developers, translators, and writers.
Why do organizations seek help in
making improvements from independent professionals? Here are a few of the many
reasons:
• Obtain better results than what
could be accomplished with their internal staffs.
• Check on the work of the
internal staffs.
• Seek an independent opinion.
• Reduce risk.
• Meet a regulatory requirement.
• Cut costs.
• Expand capacity to make
changes.
• Temporarily increase staffing.
• Build credibility for a
decision.
• Encourage consensus.
When a client engages an independent professional or firm,
it’s not unusual for more than one of these reasons to apply.
Independent professionals are
important resources for making improvements because their opinions carry the
weight of their training as well as the credibility gained because of their
client experiences. In addition, they are normally retained because some
important activity needs to become more productive.
In some cases, independent
professionals or their organizations become known for achieving a certain kind
of change that clients seek. For instance, architect Frank Gehry learned to use
high-strength, lightweight materials such as titanium to design buildings that
appear to be much more like abstract sculptures than traditional structures. As
a result, clients who want their buildings to make dramatic visual impressions
may engage Mr. Gehry rather than a more conventional architect.
Consequently, highly regarded
independent professionals can have outsized influences on what an organization
does through what they endorse, what they oppose, and what they ignore. Put
together such a professional with an organization that needs a new direction,
and the strengthening can be astonishing.
Let me provide an analogy for
such a combination. Sawdust by itself has little value except to catch whatever
drops on the floor so that the droppings can be more easily swept and picked
up. Similarly, petroleum is just a messy fluid or tar until it is refined into
usable products. If you combine sawdust with adhesives made from petroleum
products, you can make composite boards that are stronger than all but the
hardest rare woods … and at a cost that is quite small by comparison to using
any kind of cut lumber.
The opposition of an independent
professional can be even more powerful. It can be like running into the
proverbial brick wall. If such a professional takes a strong stand against a
proposal or plan, many organizational leaders are likely to change their minds
… particularly if the reasons for the professional’s view are easily
understandable.
Let’s now consider the effects of
a professional’s silence. Professionals vary in how much unasked-for advice
they provide. Some professionals appreciate that their clients want to know the
professionals’ every thought. Other professionals wait to be asked before
sharing a point of view. Still others may be reticent even when asked, feeling
that their roles should be entirely subservient to the client’s wishes.
Unless an independent
professional has been specially chosen in part for his or her religious
beliefs, rarely do clients expect such professionals to make unasked-for
suggestions about how client organizations can be more fruitful for the Lord
Jesus Christ. Anticipating the possible lack of such an expectation, many
independent professionals feel quite comfortable being silent because they see
it as improper to make any spiritually related observations or comments except
when engaged by a religious organization, church, or synagogue of their own faith.
During any silences about
spiritual issues, much potential fruitfulness can be lost for serving God’s
purposes in all dimensions of creating and improving a 2,000 percent nation.
Such missed opportunities are especially great when the independent professionals
and their clients are Christians who seek to do His will.
I believe that independent
professionals can play many valuable roles that assist their clients to follow
the Lord’s will including:
• Supply their personal
testimonies to prospects and clients about what God has done in their lives and
has called them to do.
• Share and discuss Bible verses
that apply to the tasks at hand.
• Provide information about the
effects experienced by their clients who followed God’s will in accomplishing
similar tasks.
• Encourage clients to include
more Godly purposes when conducting their activities.
• Pray with clients to receive
God’s guidance and blessings.
• Help clients to find other
independent professionals whom God has appointed to serve His purposes.
Some independent professionals will undoubtedly cringe while
reading this list, concerned about losing clients to secularly focused
professionals and organizations. I recommend that any such anxious Christian
professionals read Romans 8:27-37 (NKJV):
Now He who searches the hearts
knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for
the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things
work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called
according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to
be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among
many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He
called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also
glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who
can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him
up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who
shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is
he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen,
who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is
written:
“For Your
sake we are killed all day long;
We are
accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”
Yet in all these things we are
more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Jesus did not
promise us a life free from difficulties in serving Him, just as He did not
avoid experiencing the difficult trials that led to His death and resurrection.
He suffered and died because He loves us so much and wants us to have the
opportunity to receive His glorious grace and mercy through repenting of our
sins and accepting Salvation. If our life goal is to avoid trials because we
proclaim Him, we have to seriously consider if we are His faith-filled
followers:
“Or what will a man give in
exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this
adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed
when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:37-38,
NKJV)
Why are independent professionals
so important in standing up for God’s purposes? Their behavior is often a model
that influences what their clients will decide to do. In addition, consider
that those who lead churches, Christian ministries, and Christian organizations
often lack an understanding of a secular organization’s context and issues.
While such faith-filled Christians can certainly refer secular leaders to the
Bible and pray with them, only independent professionals are likely to be able
to ease a client’s concerns about how to deal with spiritual issues in terms of
all the responsibilities that leaders of secular organizations have.
Here’s another analogy that may
help to explain what I mean. You can have dry matches, something to strike the
matches on, newsprint, wood shavings, small kindling, and large logs … but you
will have no light and heat until you strike the match and apply it to a
properly prepared stack of the combustible materials. The independent
professional is often like the match that is struck into flame through
conversations with clients who can be encouraged to organize what they do to
spread the flame efficiently throughout their own organizations and their
stakeholders. After seeing such a flourishing fire, competitors and those who
watch an organization may also be encouraged to prepare and to light their own
fires so that even more of God’s purposes are accomplished.
Let me leave you with a
cautionary tale. A client once retained me to help him with an extremely
difficult task that would require participation by many top professionals. Part
of my task was to recommend who to work with and what to ask them to do. Based
on prior experiences, I had become very impressed by the probity and sagacity
of a certain well-known attorney. Knowing my client to be a man of high moral
standards, I recommended we meet the attorney.
At the meeting, the attorney
indicated that he would be willing to work with us but that he would also like
to involve a junior partner. This gentleman seemed very bright, well educated,
and motivated to do a good job. We proceeded to work with both men. Our project
didn’t go as we had hoped, and the client ended up with a big bill and not much
to show for it.
About four months later, we were
shocked to read in the newspaper that the junior partner had been indicted (and
was later sentenced to jail) for participating in providing insider information
to an illegal pool of traders. We never knew whether the junior partner had
compromised our situation, but none of us ever went back to that well-known
attorney or his firm. We also didn’t permit attorneys to advise us as much on
critical transactions.
From such a loss of faith in an
individual, a loss of faith in God can follow among those whose relationship
with God isn’t mature. So if you are such an independent professional, be sure
you always behave in ways that bring glory and honor to God.
In terms of how to accomplish
these tasks, I wrote extensively about how certified tutors can help in Chapter
Eleven of Help Wanted. I encourage
you to read that material for more perspective on how to accomplish what
independent professionals should be doing.
In Chapter 12, we look at what
professional tutors of Godly breakthrough methods should teach.
Copyright
© 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012 by Donald W. Mitchell.
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Scripture
quotations marked (NKJV)
are taken
from the New King James Version.
Copyright
© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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