The GEO Principle posits that the purpose of work is to grow closer to God. What an audacious statement! I want to encourage you to take a little time to consider what that means. It is an easy thing to say, but it would be truly an awesome thing if people believed it and actually behaved accordingly.
Think of the beauty of a commercial world where everyone knows God. Honesty and openness would lead to greater levels of trust between colleagues. Greater levels of trust mean less required supervision, which could lead to fewer layers of management and, ultimately, greater levels of work satisfaction, lower costs, better prices for customers and higher returns for shareholders. Workers who respect the dignity of their colleagues don’t discriminate or sexually harass. Employees who take pride in their work produce better products and provide better service. This could result in safer goods and happier customers. Auditors and regulators would have little to do. The business section of our nation’s newspapers would be filled with success stories rather than chronicles of corporate scandal. Living your faith at work is not only good for you, but it also is good for your company and the world.
Let me share a small example from my own experience. I think I am a better magazine publisher since I started taking my faith seriously on the job. I have been publishing niche magazines for a living since the early 1990s. Most of my energy goes into the company's lead magazine, a regional business trade journal. In the early days, I used to devote a lot of attention to the competition. Every time a competing magazine would come in the mail, I would rifle through its pages, counting advertisements. If I saw a company advertising in the competition instead of my magazine, I became upset. I'd rip the page out of the magazine and hand it to me sales manager. "Find out why these guys aren't spending any money with us!" I'd say.
And then I would look at the articles. If I saw one of our regular freelance contributors also contributing to the competition, I would talk to them about it. I would force them to make a decision: "Either work for me or the other guy." And the thing that would make me more upset than anything was when the competition would get a story we didn't get, especially if it happened in our geographic area. It would bother me to no end when a competing magazine published out of St. Louis or Chicago would get a story about a company in Minneapolis that we didn't already have. We beat the competition plenty of times, but I forgot that when the competition beat us.
Well, something happened when I started trying to bring God to work. I began to calm down. I began to worry less about the competition. One of the ways that I told myself that I am going to try to be serious about my faith is, I canceled my subscriptions to the competing magazines. Those magazines stopped coming into the office every month. At first I wondered what was in those magazines I was missing, but eventually I stopped worrying. All that energy that I used to pour into tracking my competitors went toward producing a better product out of our own office. Over time, it has made a big difference. Our editorial is sharper. No longer is it ever a reaction to things that have appeared in other magazines. We take original angles on stories. My blood pressure is down, my colleagues say I am easier to work with, and I think the magazine is stronger than ever.
As this blog unfolds, we will look more at what it means specifically to bring God to work. One thing is for sure, the results of such an effort can be remarkable.
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