On December 11 2021, I got the privilege of attending a Kansas City business workshop put on by God’s Relay Race. What really stuck out to me was the competency of the leaders to set in order all aspects for the greatest return on investments.
It was not just for finances, but setting goals, serving others well and giving other people a voice to influence change inside of the organizations. God has you stewarding.
Show Notes
Here is some of what was discussed.
Truisms vs Truth
FIRES Drill
SWOT Analysis
The Ultimate Question: Here is a link to Amazon The Ultimate Question
Leaving a Legacy
God’s Relay Race is a workplace prayer gathering that meets on the second Saturday every month at the Plexpod in Wesport.
GRR Prayer Group: Your invited the Second Saturday of every month from 8-10am at the Westport Plexpod (prayer for the marketplace in Kansas City, get prayer, worship time)
To add to your calendar, click on the link below.
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Transcript
Nathan Sack 00:13
Thanks for joining us for another faith horizons podcast. The purpose of a faith horizons podcast is to discover the kingdom of God in Kansas City, one conversation at a time. On December 11, I got the privilege of attending a well resourced and simplified workshop for business CEOs and leaders. What really stuck out to me was the competency of the leaders to set in order all aspects for the greatest return on investments. It was not just for finances, but setting goals, serving others well and giving other people a voice to influence change inside of the organizations. God has you stewarding. So there was a it was a great questionnaire, I call it a questionnaire with teeth because I felt like I was on Shark Tank without any planning. I will live up to these questions. But this questionnaire re calibration page, re calibrating your your business to True North was just an outstanding thing. One of the things that was brought up in the workshop was truisms versus truth. And, Scott, would you mind sharing with us about truisms versus truth? This was outstanding because I, it’s very difficult sometimes to define what is Kingdom versus what is the world and because you’ve got them right next to each other. It was so easy to to find. Oh, that’s a worldly truism. And this is the biblical truth.
Scott Stanger 01:42
Yeah. Well, in business world, I mean, you often hear this phrase, cash is king. And that’s a truism. In other words, it contains some truth. But it’s not the ultimate truth. Because we know the king is Jesus, he’s king of kings in the Lord of lords, I guess you could say, he’s king of cash, maybe. But cash is king. In other words, you need cash to operate your business, it’s so important to measure it to have it to understand how you can access it when you need financing, whether it’s bridge loans, or long term loans, or so on. So cash is king. Another truism is if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. And so we had our little workshop, it was two hours, and there was the first half in the second half. And the first half was more about the the financial aspect of the business, the different financial statements of an income statement, a balance sheet and the statement of cash flows. And just going into some of the the basics of that the differences, some things to look for inside of your financial statements. But this goes right along with it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. If you don’t have good, accurate, reliable and timely, another timely, what does that mean? Legit means if if I can’t get my numbers fast and get them accurately, I’m not going to be able to make decisions when they come up. And so if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it when so when you say I want to grow or want to have more equity, or we want to get a better return on our investment, all these things, well, you’ve got to have these financials in place. And then so those are truisms cash is king. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. But truth, truth, Trump’s truisms because truisms have truth in them, but they’re not full truth. And we have to go to God’s word for full truth. And proverbs 28: 2 this one is really good order is maintained by a man of understanding and knowledge. So that’s not gender specific man. But a leader, a leader needs to have understanding and knowledge about their business about their product or service. What sets it apart, what’s unique, what has God called them to be in the marketplace, not just as a as a leader, but as their organization, what is the product or service, he is uniquely called him to go and to deliver as a solution to society.
Nathan Sack 04:10
Thank you so much. I was really just a really I again, I say it was outstanding, just to take the world’s perspective and put it up next to the kingdom perspective. Oftentimes, there’s some overlap, but they’re not the same. One of the other things you brought up was the ultimate question. Yeah, if you can, if you get to share the ultimate question. Sure.
Scott Stanger 04:29
Several years ago, I don’t know 1520 years ago, there was a best selling book that was written called the ultimate question and is by these marketing, Brainiacs. And, you know, we’re out there we want customer feedback. Tell us your Why do you use your product? What do you like what you don’t like and blah, blah, blah, but it really comes down to one ultimate question, and that is, would you refer us to somebody else? So and then they’ve got this this measuring system? called NPS Net Promoter Score. I don’t think that they came up with it. But it goes hand in hand with this. And so whether you’re asking a customer or a prospective customer, would you refer us to somebody else? You could ask the same type of question to your employees? Would you tell your neighbor about us to come and work here? Would you tell your cousin would you tell your your friend, this is a great place to work? Referral, you got to start there, all those other questions about your product or service, or the place to work? All the other aspects are secondary compared to that first one, right there. It’s the ultimate question, would you refer. So if you’re putting a questionnaire together out there, or some kind of online survey, make sure you ask that, in fact, you could probably just ask that and start there and figure out why they do or don’t
Nathan Sack 05:54
refer you. And then once you have that feedback, you can act on it, act on it, there you go. Another great questionnaire, which I thought it was fantastic. And you had a you had a short story to go with that story. I think it’s the truth was the fires drill, if you could just go into the fire drill, and if you would like to share, you know, some of how you’ve implemented that in the past, that’d be great.
Scott Stanger 06:17
Sure. Well, and it’s, it’s a very common tool in the business world is something else. And it’s called a SWOT analysis. In other words, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. And those first two strengths and weaknesses. Those are internal to your organization, what you can basically control the the other the opportunities and threats, those are external, those are things that are beyond your control, you know, you can, you can leverage opportunities, and you can mitigate threats, but you can’t really control them per se, like you can your own strengths and weaknesses.
And, and so, fires drill is a way for you to systematically accumulate those things that fit into that SWOT analysis, a SWOT analysis where you sit down with your team, at least once a year, probably just once a year, where you sit down and you do a deep dive on your organization. And you just break it apart and you say, Wow, what are we really strong at? What are we weak at? And in the, the market? Or the industry that we compete? What are opportunities? And what are threats? Well, you somehow have to fill out all those things. And how do you do that? You do that over the course of time of collecting little data points, little ideas, through a fires drill, you can do it daily, you can do it weekly. I was at one place where we did it at the end of each work shift. We were in manufacturing, fires drill, that’s an acronym for fix, improve, replace, eliminate, start, drill down, just like we know what a fire drill is, well, it’s kind of a fun play on words of fires, drill, figure out those things that need to be fixed, that are broken and need to be fixed. Figure out those things that, yeah, they’re good. But can they be improved, to better or to best, figure out those things that maybe are obsolete and they need to be replaced or upgraded, figure out those things that, hey, we need to stop doing that. In other words, eliminate those things, and then figure out those things that need to be started. Maybe you did them at one time. And for whatever reason they stopped, resume them or they just start them over or start them brand new fires drill, if you will have you yourself and your employees just walking around with glasses, I’m wearing glasses here. But with glasses of a fires drill, in other words, always looking for those things that we need to fix, improve, replace, eliminate, start, then you can accumulate a list. So when you sit down once a year, and do your SWOT analysis, you’ve got a long list of things to prioritize into your SWOT and come out with action items for the coming year. All right, these are the big rocks or the the B hags, the big, hairy, audacious goals, or the wigs, the wildly important goals, the things that we are going to really focus on this next year to to improve the performance of our business and fulfill the purpose that God’s created us for.
Nathan Sack 09:33
Thank you. Yeah, that it was it was really eye opening. It was a very simple way to, you know, to find a problem to find something that you should start I mean, often we don’t ask the people who are working for us, what should we start but that’s where we should probably start is with the people who are currently engaged working with us to find all of these areas of improvement, replacement and starting
Scott Stanger 09:59
your People are where the rubber meets the road. That’s they’re the ones who are interfacing with a customer, they understand where the when the customer is unhappy. They’re the ones out there they hear at first, they understand they see the production line, and they see where there’s inefficiency and waste and quality issues. They oftentimes have the solution, but management and I know I’ve sat there in that corner, office and and thought, oh, we have the best idea. Now we need to go out there and do walk around and in our job sites and through our offices or the production floor, do walk arounds and do these fire drills ourselves and help others inside the organization to identify those things of
Nathan Sack 10:50
Amen. There was a strong word that was that I felt like wasn’t strong word in this workshop and it was given by another member. He said to the we should remember that you’re just stewarding. You don’t own anything God does. But we’re stewarding the things of God because we’re ambassadors of the kingdom of God on earth. We’re ambassadors for the Lord, just to remember that so that you go out with the right lens is that I’m stewarding the garden of God, I’m stewarding the business of God, I’m stewarding the people of God.
Scott Stanger 11:25
Yes, absolutely. You know, the you think somebody like Sam Walton, I mean, he’s one of the most successful businessman in our generation. His name may still exist in a form, you know, on Walmart, still exists on the business, but he doesn’t exist in the business anymore. He’s passed on, we need to understand that we want to create these businesses that can be passed on to the next generation raised up and empowered, that they can stand on our shoulders and accomplish greater things than what we even envisioned accomplishing in the business. That’s, that’s what God is all about. He’s a generational God. He’s a God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you know, these, these blessings that just cascade from generation to generation, and snowball. And so you’ve got to, you’ve got to go out there and understand this be a part of this. And we certainly saw that in this workshop that we did last Saturday where we had the older generation connecting to the younger generation, you know, yes to mind. Malicah 4:6 will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and hearts of the children to the fathers. We saw that happening right there in our midst. As these older business men leaders, we were passing on insights and imparting a blessing to these younger business owners to run hard and fast in the lane that God’s given them. Amen. That’s why the gods relay race is so fitting for what we’re doing here. We’re taking this baton and we’re making this this this handoff of the baton of the kingdom authority and ambassadorship to the next generation to go and run their leg.
Nathan Sack 13:12
Thanks, Scott for putting on such an incredible workshop. I will be sure to include a link to the book that was referenced the ultimate question. Thank you so much for joining us for another faith horizons podcast. We look forward to sharing more conversations from the kingdom of God in Kansas City. If you’d like to partner with the faith Horizons mission to discover the kingdom of God in Kansas City, one conversation at a time. Please go to www.patreon.com forward slash faith horizons. Thank you so much.
