The Three P's

People, Purpose, Process.  The three P's of community.  They can be applied to Christian community,  and they can be applied to organizational (workplace) life.  When one is missing or neglected, the others become distorted and negelected as well.

When people are placed below process in organizations,  this breeds contempt of process,  for where people (and with them,  their sense of purpose) are overshadowed by process -- and the "process" is one that is being arbritarily applied to people by some individual or group as a dictate from on high ---- then the process becomes a point of resentment,  for it is not connected to a sense of purpose that the group shares.  Where employees "participate" and "contribute" out of a sense of ulimatum,  the group life suffers. 

It's also not a simple matter of letting everyone do exactly what they think ought to be done.  There is such a thing as consensus and discernment in workplace projects.  This is where Purpose and Process blend -  Process,  where a healthy balance is struck between it and the Purpose,  becomes an encourager and enabler of the People.  The Process values the discernment of ways to achieve the purposes by applying the strengths of the people.  Here the test is how willing the managers are to let their agendas and assumptions be challenged and allow the discernments of the group/team to reshape "their agenda" into that of a team agenda.  There has to be some care and feeding of real discernment about the mission of the project,  and how to utilize the best talents of the whole team.

The application of this call to balance of these three P's would seem to be all important in the organization/workplace that is in existence to support the Church.  As readers of this Weblog may well know,  much of my model of Christian community is derived from the life and structures of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., where "call" is paramount;  it is the beginning of activity which leads to structure (or "process").  At COS,  "structures" come into being because someone has sounded a call they have heard,  and one or more have responded,  and structures are discerned which lay the way toward living out of that call.  This works within the community to shape an Outward Journey to complement the Inward Journey that has nurtured the call,  helped in discernment of the structures for the implementation of that call,  and bound the members who have responded to the call.

For Church organizations to speak the language of "corporate speak" over the language of theological community seems to be a breach of the call that corporation has to hold higher the values of Christian community and call than those of "organizational management".  This is not to say that certain of these management principles do not hold valuable insights that can be pressed into service of a Christian organization.  But when one gets the sense that values such as discernment and call are considered too "impractical" or do not promise sufficient ROI,  then a corporation is out of balance.

The corporations I am directing this to are the Christian-based organizations,  but there is much to be said of love and purpose and fulfillment in the secular world.  It works.  The article I wrote after I read this article in Fast Company by Yahoo Sr. exec Tim Sanders testifies to this conviction making its mark on the secular corporate world.  (MY article is named after Sanders' article Love as Killer App).  I often have difficulty getting myself to say "Christian" and "Secular" in the same thoght,  because it seems to let the "secular" world off too easy.  They are not exempt from the responsibility to love.  I just interviewed for a job with a company which seems to get this.  That employees are valuable,  that their ideas are valuable,  and that community is important.  Many compnies will "talk the talk" and sling around the "community" term,  but continue to condone practices which drain the life out of employees.

For Church organizations to speak the language of "corporate speak" over the language of theological community seems to be a breach of the call that corporation has to hold higher the values of Christian community and call than those of "organizational management".  This is not to say that certain of these management principles do not hold valuable insights that can be pressed into service of a Christian organization.  But when one gets the sense that values such as discernment and call are considered too "impractical" or do not promise sufficient ROI,  then a corporation is out of balance.

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:39:47 PM.