More coffee talk...
Within my profession of creative services, people often rely on their talent to produce results, which can be highly volatile. Creatives are infamous for living under 'feast or famne' cycles. Many Christians also seem to live in cycles of feast or famine when it comes to their spiritual characters. Just as many artists believe such struggle is part of their noble calling, many Christians come to accept their inward instability as part of spiritual warfare.
Our firm, which is managed by fellow Christians, has discovered a simple concept for creating propsperous stability: we consciously switched our primary metaphor for business development from hunting to farming. We do this by looking for ways to depend less on individual cunning talent and more on shared basic diligence.
The difference between talent and diligence is not unlike the difference between offense and defense in American football. It is traditionally held that offense relies much more on skill to 'make something happen', while defense can rely more on diligent execution. (Niether O or D is purely skill or diligence of course, but the ratios are different.) That is why it is often said that 'defense wins games.'
In our business, whenever we implement shared processes and systems that reduce the need for genius levels of talent, we enable the business outcome to be more predictable, and therefore more secure. We liken these processes to growing an apple tree. The metaphor goes somethng like this:
Most creatives, (and most small busnesses owners) have a deeply ingrained 'scarcity mentality' because they approach business development like hunting whoolly mammoths. When they bag one, they skin every thing they can off the bones, make clothing out of the fur, and even lampshades out of the skin. In a short while they are hungry again, so they must begin the hunt all over.
In our small creative firm we finally agreed that this is a weary cycle. So we decided on a new metaphor for feeding ourselves: growing an apple tree. For us this meant no longer hunting for mammoths...or even hunting for apples, but developing a community of people who could grow apples. But even before looking for the right people we looked for the right soil to plant in. This is perhaps the most important point...we began not with looking for the juiciest apples we could find, or the ablest workers...but the richest soil we could find to build our community upon and plant our apple trees in. We decided on a God-honoring soil with basic servant, compassion, and intregrity values that inspired people to build a lasting culture, not live as mercanaries.
Next we began building a cohesive set of shared systems and processes through every function of the company, from business development to product development. At first people struggled with this concept, because creatives naturally have their favorite hunting grounds so to speak, but after a few years we began to see a collaborative stable community emerge where previously only a tribe of opportunists lived together out of mutual advantage. Instead of eaters and looters, we began to see planters and builders. Finally the owners began to plan their personal compensation from end-result fruits like hopeful farmers, instead of skinning the top layer off of gross revenues like scarcity minded hunters.
Now this emerging culture in our company is more like a farm then a hunting party. Instead of the cyncical cycle of feast of famine there is overlapping cycles of harvest from these invesments. True there are seasons in our markets, but we see now we can have different harvests for different seasons.
To stay in the metaphor a little longer, I can say there are still hunters in our company. I am one of them. But the culture is not ruled by hunters, but by farmers...if people can understand my meaning.
The ultimate benifit for this cultural shift, is that our company, much like a farm or a vineyard, can actually become an asset that is handed down to the next generation of owners. Such an achievement is simply not possible with a hunting culture...which is why civilization began with the plow.
While I am not insisting that this is some grand theology, I do think there is some worthwhile correlations in spiritual things. Admittedly, I can only begin to surmise what they are. In general I do believe wisdom looks more like daily disipline then turbulent talent, and relies less on opportunity and more on planning. In our day we may have gained much scientific knowledge, but I often consider some 19th century wisdom we may have lost.
First off, the idea of "religion" has gotten a bad reputation in recent years. 150 years ago, religion was not a pseudonymm for dead formalism as it is today, but a reference to the practice of disiplined spirituality. (Ex. "methodism) I think the wisdom of growing a seed into a harvest is a concept lost on many 'spirit-filled' people today in the 21st century. Perhaps the reason that disciplined cultivation of character and spirituality is viewed with suspicion in the 21st century is because we have lost some of the farmer ethic and ethos of earlier days.
Edit: just some thoughts..
Blessings,
MC
