YOUR boss might strut around thinking he is the Lord God incarnate, but that may be no bad thing, says a best-selling author.
In his book, Lead Like Jesus: Lessons From the Greatest Leadership Role Model of All Time, co-written with Phil Hodges and which is launched in the US next month, Ken Blanchard says that senior managers should strive to be more Christ-like. He says that we need a new employment ethos: “We are in desperate need of a new role model. I think Jesus would run a very profitable organisation, but it would be amazing what he would do with the profits.”
The book isn’t aimed only at Christians. Its publisher is aiming it at secular corporate chiefs — the sort of merchant class that Christ upset by overturning their tables in the temple. One wonders whether the message will go down any better this time.
Blanchard says that a prime lesson we can take from the Messiah is his ability to create a crack team of communicators out of 12 untrained initiates. It’s the type of thing that has baffled HR departments ever since.
But many of the Jesus stories seem to lack corporate synergy. For example, how about the parable of the loaves and fishes as a model for promotional freebies? Certainly it would gain press attention, but could it actually work as a loss-leader? Accounts might worry about the way shareholders view such flagrant profligacy. As a community-engagement exercise it seems markedly short-termist (no branding and little in the way of take-home messages). And what if someone choked on a fish bone or was gluten intolerant?
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But perhaps the final episode of the Jesus story would hold most difficulty for high-flying corporate chiefs: even the best, most well-intentioned earthly careers can end up with a very public crucifixion — and only a miracle will earn you a comeback.
JOHN NAISH