Lead Like It Matters to God: Values-Driven Leadership in a Success-Driven World by Richard Stearns

Author:Richard Stearns [Stearns, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christianity, business
ISBN: 9780830847310
Google: A3D6DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2021-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

WHEN MONEY BECOMES TOXIC

The pursuit of money can have all kinds of unintended consequences where we work. The almost-universal human quest for more money and greater wealth infects virtually every organization on the planet. The love of money, like the drive for success, is like that carbon monoxide leak in your home: you can’t see it, smell it, or taste it, but it can poison you if you’re not careful.

MONEY IS A NECESSARY BUT DANGEROUS THING THAT MUST BE HANDLED WITH CARE.

Stop and think for a moment about the pervasive influence of money in your place of work. All of us are paid with money. Money is used as a proxy for your worth as an employee, with more “valuable” employees being paid more than less valuable employees. Incentive systems almost always involve money. Perform well and you will get more of it; perform poorly and you will get less. Money creates jealousies and inequities in our workplaces, and those paid less often resent those who are paid more. Money can be like gasoline on the fire of office politics as it motivates some people to posture and maneuver so that they are in the best position to get more money than their coworkers. Money provokes some people to lie or misrepresent their results. Money can also motivate theft, embezzlement, or even just cheating on expense reports. And, if that’s not enough, money is the motive for a huge percentage of all crimes committed in the world. Money is a necessary but dangerous thing that must be handled with care. Again, while money is an essential tool, it is also a “drug” with a lot of adverse side effects.

But perhaps more damaging than all the above is that money sometimes replaces purpose in an organization. Let me say that again: money sometimes replaces purpose. Steve Jobs, the cofounder of Apple, said this about money: “Apple’s goal1 isn’t to make money. Our goal is to design and develop and bring to market good products. . . . We trust as a consequence of that, people will like them, and as another consequence, we’ll make some money. But we’re really clear about what our goals are.”

Isn’t it interesting that the creator of one of the most successful companies in history said that their goal was not to make money? Steve Jobs understood that money is no substitute for purpose. Apple became a great company because he focused on its higher purpose to design and develop remarkable products. Money can become a counterfeit purpose that infiltrates an organization and over time replaces its higher purpose. At first, it may be unnoticeable, and the company can continue to perform well. But over time, if a higher purpose isn’t lifted up by its leaders, the company just becomes a host organism for people who want to extract money from it. And the people who work there become just pawns on the gameboard, the means to the end of bigger salaries and bonuses for the executives and shareholders.

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