Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Work

Is It Right To Pray For Business Success?

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Prayer Integrates

Many of us grew up with a compartmentalized view of life. The wisdom of the day went along these lines: “Your personal life is your personal life. Your business life is your business life. Don’t mix the two.”

While there is something to be said for keeping healthy boundaries and focusing appropriately, there is a dangerous downside risk to one’s ethics and behaviors. As we separate our spiritual life from any part of life, we’re dis-integrating.

The cost of being off-purpose in real dollars and human terms is incalculable.

As we advance from the agrarian age to the industrial age to the knowledge age and head into the age of purpose and meaning, integration—not disintegration—is the norm. Central to each individual’s personal life is their spiritual life or faith. If you are inclined to pray in your personal life, perhaps the role of prayer in your business life is a concept you’ve never considered.

Can I Pray for Business and Career Success?

  • Pray unceasingly.
  • Pray from your spiritual tradition for wise guidance, profitable relationships, and right decisions.
  • Pray for your co-workers, clients, team members, vendors, and competitors(!).
  • Pray before you go into a meeting or start on a sales call.

Just don’t pray as some sort of prosperity gospel or demand on God. To pray for business success isn’t really prayer. It is a demand and expectation for a result, not a relationship. Placing your agenda ahead of God’s agenda is akin to self-idolatry. It is the arrogance of telling God you know better. Pray, but trust God for the result that is best for your maturity and growth.

Formal and Informal Prayer

There’s formal prayer where you get down on your knees in a praying position clasping your hands together and perhaps using a book of common prayer or a guide. You may be in a service at a house of worship or next to your bed saying your prayers.

There’s also informal prayer. Invite prayer to be a casual part of your everyday walking about. Take one-minute prayer breaks. You’ll be amazed how much dead time opens on your schedule.

  • Do you wait for the hot water to come or the bath to fill? Pray.
  • Do you wait for a meeting to start? Pray.
  • Do you commute to work, drive to appointments, sit at your office desk, etc.? Pray!

Recognize these seemingly empty minutes and redeem the time with a prayer.

Our Unfair Advantage by Dr. Jim Harris
Click the book cover to buy it at amazon.com

“But Kevin, I don’t know how to pray for my business.” I hear that from time to time. A great resource for you is Our Unfair Advantage, written by my Christian friend and colleague, Dr. Jim Harris. Discover the why, what, how, and importance of getting counsel from your most important “silent partner”—the Holy Spirit.

Pray, Don’t Prey

Don’t, however, prey on people or use your faith as a means to excuse yourself from excellence, rationalize your mistakes, or create personal entitlement.

If integrity is an important value to you, then be sure to hold dear forgiveness as a complementary value. Master the art of being aware of your defensiveness, calming yourself, acknowledging your errors, asking for forgiveness, and giving thanks for the lesson learned.

You’ll become a more authentic and trusted leader when you can admit and right your wrongs within the scope of your control and authority.

This On-Purpose® Business Minute explores the power of being “on the job” and praying for owners and employees alike. What do you think? Is it right to pray for business success?

How’s Work?

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How’s work?

There’s a question we often get asked. The typical response is something like “Fine” or “OK.”

But is it really?

For many people work translates into a job—a mere means of provision to support the family. A steady income doesn’t mean a steady life.

Work isn’t necessarily fulfilling or rewarding at a deeper level.

It is just a paycheck on the way to the weekend where real life is lived. In today’s economy, it is easy to look around and feel lucky just to have the regular income.how's work

A sad reflection of this reality is the current trend of companies offering work-life balance programs in the workplace. But work-life balance is a myth. These programs, regardless of how well intended they are, reveal a sad reality on both the employer and the employee side.

Our lives and our work are so dangerously enmeshed that we need help separating ourselves from our work.

We’re workaholics in jobs that don’t really matter to us all that much. In other words, fear of loss motivates us more than what we have to gain. Too many of us are resigned to an unhealthy settling for work-life balance as an easy compromise over developing a healthy work-life integration. Have we just given up hope?

Isn’t all this talk of work-life balance code for “my job is sucking the very life out of me, but I need it to pay the bills, so I guess I will die trying to make it work”?

Fortunately, someone in HR has figured out that if we can equip you to learn work-life balance you won’t burn out or die as quickly on the job. This means you’ll keep being productive and won’t be such a drain on the company health care benefits program for a while longer.

Is it just me or is there something horribly skewed in this picture?

What if life and work are true blessings where work is a high and noble expression of our calling—and a steady income? Is this possible?

Can life and work be meaningfully integrated instead of separated and balanced?

Tell me if I’m wrong.

Why Do You Work?

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How many times do you say, “I’m off to work”?

Does saying that conjure up light bulb with quotation "Are you being and becoming, or just selling out?"emotions of joy and excitement, or do your teeth clench and does your stomach churn and turn?

Your answer to this question goes to the heart of your life, health, and well-being in your spirit.

  • Are you one of the fortunate people who loves their work and has skillfully integrated (not “achieved” a work–life balance) the lines between work and life?
  • Have you become so fully integrated that you are on-purpose in business and in life? Are you compromising or being conditioned for your next great assignment?
  • Are you selling your soul or sailing along on-purpose?

Lots of questions for you to ponder.

Does thinking about this sound like work to you?

Sooner or later you will either answer the questions or pay the price for not answering them.

Got a comment to make? Go for it below. Let me hear from you.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

What Is Your Cost of Pride?

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We businesspersons tend to be an independent breed.

We take pride in our work ethic, standards for excellence, and accomplishments. This is often what it takes to start a business, to persevere in the challenges, and then thrive.

There’s often (not always) a downside to this self-reliant trait.

This On-Purpose Business Minute invites you to consider the cost of pride especially in light of the subtitle to The On-Purpose Business Person: Do More Of What You Do Best More Profitably.

How do you know if your pride is costing you?

After watching today’s On-Purpose Business Minute, invest 159 more seconds to assess yourself with the following 10 questions:

Here are the 10 questions about pride:

  1. Do you describe yourself as a helper?
  2. Are you a low-maintenance friend or employee?
  3. Are you apt to say, “It’s just as fast to do it myself“?
  4. Do you believe “If I want something done right, I have to do it myself”?
  5. Are you one who hates to burden other people with your problems?
  6. Are you the person most people turn to for advice, wisdom, and counsel?
  7. Do you find yourself being more and more burned out and then bitter towards others?
  8. Are you easily frustrated that others can’t do what you do as fast or as well?
  9. Do you say, “I can’t afford to hire the expertise I need, so I have to learn how to do it myself”?
  10. Do you say, “I know what I need to do. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet”?

The more questions you answered with a “yes,” the more likely it is that your self-reliance is costing you more than you imagine. You are pushing people away from helping you and shouldering too much of the burden yourself.

Determine your cost of pride.

It could include job loss, slow business growth, long hours, stress, high turnover, ill health, strained relationships, being passed over for a job/raise or a hundred other costs. Do a quick assessment of your cost of pride. You may be stunned.

Share your assessment with a trusted advisor or friend. Invite them to identify what you’ve missed or where you are blind. Ask them for their opinion, be quiet, and avoid being defensive.

The simplest and most comprehensive action to take is to adopt and live into the On-Purpose Approach of Doing More of What You Do Best More Profitably.

Keep this adage in the forefront of your mind. You will prosper!

Are You In The Midst of A Tough Shift™? (part 2)

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Are You In The Midst of a Tough Shift (part 1)

A Tough Shift™ happens when we’re not making a smooth and peaceful transition personally, professionally, and/or corporately.

Often these transformations are due to a change in the environment beyond our control and we’re reactive.

Sometimes, however, we proactively choose to take the bull by the horns in order to improve our situation, life, or business. Either way, it is a risk that’s not easy but a decision that’s designed to hopefully improve our station or circumstance in life.

An essential element of any tough shift is the ability to have a firm grasp on reality. Hindrances such as denial, blame, and fear cloud our progress. The management of personal growth is a core life leadership skill to develop.

Businesses Go Through Tough Shifts 

The On-Purpose Business Plan provides key links from deep strategy to customer satisfaction. Here both the science of business and the art of leadership come together to create an integrated, living organism or culture. On-Purpose® has been leading this charge since the late 1980s. In recent years, the trend toward a more human and humane approach to business has emerged. Most company leaders, however, are stuck in the midst of their own Tough Shift. The old ways don’t give in to the new ways easily.

If you’ve read The On-Purpose Business Person, you’ll recall that there are “the man” and “the old man.” Here the classic battle is played out in this modern parable. Here the four pillars of an on-purpose business create the corners of building a business true to the past yet responsive to the future:

  1. The On-Purpose Principle: Aligning the Purpose of the Person with the Purpose of the Organization
  2. Think Inc!: Leading like the owner of the business — 100% responsibility
  3. The Service Model: Closing the gap from purpose to performance to serve customers and beyond
  4. The Manner: Do More of What You Do Best More Profitably

The Really Tough Shifts are Shifts in Culture

To illustrate the point on a large scale, the United States of America is in the midst of a tough shift over the prevailing culture of the country. The centerpiece of such a battle would appear to be opposing political parties and ideals. Below the political bickering is a war waging over what is the contemporary role of the U.S. Constitution — the “deep strategy” for the country. This fight is not just between the Democrats and Republicans—it is within each party as well.

Putting aside politics and looking at this from a strategy lesson point of view we can broadly see

  • The Constitutional conservatives revere the founder’s intent and take to heart the oath of office.
  • Living Constitutionalists see the document as a living, breathing document that offers structures but needs regular amending to conform to contemporary needs.
  • Populists see the Constitution as an impeding relic of the past that hobbles efforts to serve the people.

And so the child-like bickering across all candidates continues on the surface versus the depth of matters at a root level. Governing is serious business—whether it is running a country, a business, or one’s life. At some point, the adults in the room need to be in charge.

A former business partner of mine was keen to observe, “They’re looking at the hole instead of the doughnut”—his folksy way of saying people are focused on the unimportant … and it isn’t just in Washington, DC. Look in the mirror and see if your dissatisfaction with DC isn’t simply a projection of your personal dissatisfaction with yourself thrown onto an easy target.

Do you see why being On-Purpose so profoundly matters to your way of life? If you’re in a Tough Shift, don’t blame Washington, the economy, your past, or whatever else you can conjure as an excuse. It is unbecoming to you because it keeps you from becoming the true you.

Purpose Is Unchanging

Your purpose is the one place where opposing forces have the best chance to agree, or at least agree to disagree, hopefully agreeably. Purpose is this seemingly distant place from everyday life, yet this is where performance is birthed. When purpose, vision, missions, and values are confused, then the country or company (or person) are sure to be as well. Yet most discussions in businesses center around tactics in the absence of agreement about what is really most important … to inform the tactics.

Managers tend to see changes in the marketplace and the business needing to respond to such shifts strategically. Adjustments to the business of the business are much more about the science of business. Most are fairly straightforward patterns to those of us who have been around the block for a few decades or more.

For example, things are stirring at On-Purpose Partners. We help our clients to make decisions that are on-purpose. We do this as a business advisory firm by clarifying deep business strategy, design, and strategic story to feed into the corporate culture and business brand to merge into a more fully integrated customer experience (see the On-Purpose Business Plan).

A few years ago, I felt called to re-invest my time and focus on the personal leadership aspects of the business. We’ve always been about leadership—helping our client companies and individual coaching clients to be leaders in their field/industry or life, respectively. People are the essential distinctive to any organization. Healthy people are more likely to create a healthy business, period.

The world needs to be on-purpose. After over 25 years of developing all this content and writing books, we’re poised and positioned for remarkable service around The On-Purpose Principle—aligning the purpose of the person with the purpose of the organization. It is exciting, yet a tough shift filled with financial risks. I’ve been at work on this tough shift within our business for the last couple of years. Frankly, it has been slower than I anticipated, yet better than I expected. You can expect to see more offerings for individuals to be on-purpose across the world. Yes, the vision of “Every Person On-Purpose” or The On-Purpose Planet continues to inspire me.

Hopefully, today’s Tough Shift point of view has stirred some thinking for you to ponder about your life, your business, or your country.

Bottom line: These Tough Shifts are tough! I welcome your prayers and thoughts.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Are You A Purpose Driven Person?

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Today, let’s explore the difference between being purpose driven and purpose called.

Let’s start by defining our terms.

What does it mean to be driven?

Mules and horses are driven by the coachman or whip, as he’s called. For many of us it is too easy to get on a track at work and in life, lean into the yoke, and just keep pushing forward day after day trusting that in the end, it all works out for the best. Is this a healthy way to live?

One day we will reflect and look back over days, years, or decades of being a driven person. We’ve been pushed from behind, compelled to do something that may not be the right fit for us. Often we’re motivated by influences outside of ourselves. Such extrinsic motivation works for a while but it is hard to sustain.

To be called is to answer to a higher power.

It is ours to respond to the calling or ignore it. Most of us think of clergy as having a calling. In fact, every person has a calling, a purpose, a design and gifting that is uniquely fitted into a neat package called YOU!

Purpose CalledWe are not purpose driven. We are purpose called.

Instead of being driven, what if you were leaning into your calling? It may be the same load, but we’re choosing to accept the burden differently.

Here’s a secret about your calling.

You have to be still and listen. It is a calling, not a shout or a holler or a scream. It is subtle, gentle, a small still voice in the wilderness that is never demanding or pushy.

Implied in being called, is being called by name. In a manner of speaking, your 2-word purpose is your spiritual name. So when you hear or recognize it, you know you’re being called and you can answer it.

God calls us by name.

Purpose is one’s identity or name that God uses to call us. We then offer a response of yes or no. When we say yes to our purpose, we are being on-purpose or answering our call.

Here’s a great article on the difference between a job, career, and vocation from Fast Company magazine founder, Alan M. Webber. I remember reading this article in 1998 and nodding my head in agreement.

Watch today’s On-Purpose Minute. You may find it alarmingly disturbing to your “well-ordered life.” Perhaps you’ll find it amazingly comforting as you pursue a calling that seemingly defies logic and reason to everyone except you.

Have you heard about Type A Personalities? These men and women have traits in their personalities that thrive on stress, pressure, multitasking, and … (drum roll) premature death due to heart attacks, high blood pressure, and other stress-induced diseases. Being a driven person and exhibiting Type A behaviors are related but it need not be a death sentence.

Are you ready to begin the cure from being purpose driven?

Here it is: it has nothing to do with your personality—Theory A, B, X, or Y. It has to do with your worldview. You’ve adopted or adapted to a driven personality style.

The cure is to recognize that you are called, not driven. Your purpose forms the words of your identity by which you are called and, once known, you are better capable of recognizing and appropriately responding to your call.

Please let me hear from you. Share your story in the comments section below and you’ll be putting voice to your thoughts and desires. More importantly, others will read your post and glean insights and better self-awareness. You can make a difference this way that can alter the course of another person for good.

Be On-Purpose (called, not driven)!

Kevin

P.S. I’m often asked what I think about Pastor Rick Warren’s best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, which came out many years after the original release of The On-Purpose Person. First, no he didn’t “steal” my stuff. I get that question all the time. Second, we use purpose differently. He uses purpose to describe what are really the five missions of the church. He hasn’t asked me to re-title the book, but if asked, it would more properly be named “The Mission-Driven Life.”

Do You Want A Balanced Life?

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Download A Balanced Life

Do you want balance in your life?

If you said “Yes!” then chances are you’re singing what I call the “Work-Life Balance Blues,” a sad song of addictive striving but never arriving.

In a previous blog post titled Striving for Balance, I shared my thoughts about this misguided yet pervasive notion that you can obtain balance your life.

It is hogwash and the sooner you come to understand this, the sooner you’ll be able to get on with your life.

In today’s On-Purpose Minute, I share “The Balanced Life,” a poem I wrote back in 2004. My hope is you’ll begin to see the folly in living the false ideal of a balanced life. At the top of this post, there is a link to download the poem.

Now, let’s touch on the alternative approach to living your life: integrating your life.

So just how does one integrate life? Integration needs a point of integration. Here is where knowing your 2-word personal purpose statement is essential. If you don’t know who you are, then any old you can show up anytime. A great place to start learning about your 2-word purpose statement is our newly launched online tool that helps you know your purpose. Visit ONPURPOSE.me for more information.

The absence of a unifying identity leaves us at risk of dis-integrating. Very simply, your life is either integrating or disintegrating—being pulled together or torn apart.

Beginning in the 1970s, people would talk about “getting my life together.” Implied in this fragmented existence is the longing to be whole and peaceful.

Balance is a devilish “ideal.” Balance pits two opposing forces against each other to create a fragile momentary emotional truce. Balance is marketed as being so sane and wholesome. Yet it is insanity and destructive.

Seeking balance avoids the deeper questions of life and leaves us thirsting to do more, earn more, and to “have it all.” Sadly, the risks of obtaining balance in one’s life produce just the opposite effect of the desired outcome. Instead, we’re running hard and fast, busy, burdened, always feeling behind, incomplete, and ragged mentally and physically. Unquenched, we press onward in a lost war of static attrition until finally we crash and burn out on the sidelines of life.

Integration is a divine gift, a workable progression rather than an unstable state of frenzied efforts. When you are approaching oneness of body, mind, and spirit, you’re moving toward a more productive and positive state of practical living. Your focus shifts from a fragile existence built on sandy soil to the solid bedrock of your inherent essence.

Integration demands a unifying core — a point that forms, informs, and transforms the realities of the world. This window on the world helps us to make sense of the senselessness and to find meaning in the otherwise absurd.

Purpose is your dynamic point of integration.

Integrate your life around your purpose so you can be on-purpose.

Cut yourself free from the balanced life mantra that kills your energy and spirit with a distracting illusion. You don’t want a balanced life because it can’t be had. Live your life integrated around your purpose, and you’ll inevitably be an on-purpose person in creation.

Humility Matters: Who Is Keeping You Real?

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So you think you have this on-purpose thing mastered in your work life?

Yep, as you’re getting more and more on-purpose you’re being sought and placed into positions of leadership. Your star is rising.

Now for the bad news — there’s a downside to being on-purpose.

Guard against the arrogance of being on-purpose or, ironically, you’ll end up being off-purpose.

Success can breed a winner’s arrogance versus a servant leader’s confidence and humility.

Who is keeping you grounded and real? It better be someone!

Are you a business leader looking for an executive coach to give you a true perspective on your personal self-importance reading? Below are some great referrals for you and me. Tell ’em I sent you.

1. Mary Tomlinson in Raleigh, NC. Email Mary. Mary has a stellar corporate executive background at Walt Disney World plus 16 years of being an independent coach, consultant, and speaker.

2. John Smith (yes, his real name), my mentor. Email John. John has a decades-long career in the ministry of serving CEOs.

3. Dave Vogelpohl is a senior-level business advisor with both big business experience and small business consulting insights. In recent years, Dave has been doing a lot of church consulting—when I’m not bugging him to help me sort out options.

4. Kevin W. McCarthy. Yes, I’m available for business advisory services to help individuals and organizations to be on-purpose.