Look at God’s Word with me and see if you can find benefit for your business by studying His Word and His View on order in our lives.
We see in the creation story a God who is a God of order. He unfolds His creation by day and in particular order. He shares in His Word the particulars of His plan unfolding. This becomes a recurring view of our God in the Old Testament. He had a plan Himself for creating the universe.
When He wanted Noah to build the ark, (Genesis 6:11-21) He provided very specific and detailed plan. He basically gave Noah a blueprint to build the Ark and a Policy and Procedures manual to live by through the flood.
He continues to give very specific directions and details to His people to perform Kingdom work for Him. He also gives us Words to live and worship by. We see it in the story of Moses and the plagues. Again the Lord provides colorful detail to the plans of building the tabernacle. (Exodus 25:8-38) Later He gives Nehemiah specific instructions in rebuilding the Wall.
Why Is Order and Structure Important?
Why do you think God gives His people such specific instructions? What are the benefits of providing detailed “how to” guidance to people?
In what areas of your business do you see similar benefits to providing documented instructions to your team?
Policies are like the ten commandments. They are general practices established within a company that can be either written or unwritten. It is against God’s law to steal. It is also breaking most company’s policies to steal.
Procedures are descriptions of how your company will handle upholding, implementing or enforcing a policy.
Blueprints are instruction manuals on how to perform functions in a process, job, or business. It is the detailed “how to”.
Where Could More Structure Help Your Business?
Make a list of areas in your business where policies, procedures or blueprints would be valuable.
Prioritize by choosing your top two areas to begin to focus on in each category.
Structure Isn’t Meant To Stifle Us
Adding structure seems stifling and punitive to many of us flexible, free wheeling, entrepreneurs. But in reality we all need to understand our boundaries. We need the safety of an instruction manual to get started. We want the guidance of policies to help us make decisions and stick to them.
God wants us to be obedient to His ways as a sign of faith. The trust and faith that we are dependent on Him for the best way to live life.
It is the same for our employees. Put yourself in their situation.
How We Feel Without Structure
Have you ever been thrown into a job without a job description or any training? How did you feel? Do you feel that you were as effective as you could be? Did you worry that you were not doing things correctly in the beginning?
How was your stress level at the end of the day? Did the lack of rules, policies or procedures help you be more effective?
We know one of the Golden Rules is to love other’s as we love ourselves. How might you implement enough policies and procedures to provide a sound foundation without removing trust, innovation, and freedom for your employees.
What one step could you take today to provide a foundation for your team that will support their success?
Sue, you continue blessing me with your wisdom tips. I’ve never been one to value structure and order. I always thought that’s the way I was built but a small exercise with my wife and son changed my perspective about it and allowed me to welcome order, structure and discipline.
My wife and I used to always scramble to know what to make for dinner each night. Sometimes, out of frustration or to save time, we would just go out to eat (more often than we wanted to).
One day we decided to create a weekly food menu where my son, my wife and I would each have our say of what we wanted for dinner. I’d choose two days, my son would choose two days and my wife would choose her days as well. We figured that since we were planning dinner, we wouldn’t eat out as much so we’d end up saving money so whatever we wanted for dinner was fair game since we’d still come out ahead.
The first week we had ribs, salmon, sandwiches and whatever else we wanted. What came of that was no eating out, we ate amazingly well the entire week and we shopped for what we planned for. The most gratifying part was having more family time since we didn’t waste time figuring things out.
It’s funny that it took food to give me the understanding of how freeing structure truly is.
Thanks for sharing!