The Other Thing I Learned At Work Today

When you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.”
- Dakota tribal wisdom

In business we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
5. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.
6. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.
7. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.
8. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.
9. Comparing the state of dead horses in today’s environment.
10. Change the requirements declaring that “This horse is not dead.”
11. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.
12. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.
13. Declaring that “No horse is too dead to beat.”
14. Providing additional funding to increase the horse’s performance.
15. Do a Cost Analysis study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.
16. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.
17. Declare the horse is “better, faster and cheaper” dead.
18. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.
19. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.
20. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.
21. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

What I Learned At Work Today

Insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting different results.

Unless you are working with a Microsoft product. In which case it is very sensible that you will get different results by doing the same exact thing.

Tamara, can you please start working on Great Plains?

Religion or Relationship

Recently I have been impacted by the dearth of my "relationship" with God. I mean, I'm going through the motions and all, but it has felt more like participating in arms-length transactions with an institution than engaging in an ongoing, interactive relationship. And so, upon receiving some needed exhortation, I am examining this more carefully. I am utilizing this forum to discuss it as I hope that others out there might help me in this process with their thoughts, reflections and probing questions.

I am starting things by turning to a source that has so often helped me in the past, Dallas Willard. In this case, I am re-reading "Hearing God." I was particularly struck by one statement in the first chapter,

"In the last analysis nothing is more central to the practical life of the Christian than confidence in God's individual dealings with each person."

Dang. That hit the nail on the head; that is right where the struggle is for me.

What does the relational aspect of faith look like in experience? When is it safe to say "God spoke to me" and when is it just conscience, circumstance and our own desires and perceptions? I have always been suspicious and wary of people who try to add to the credibility and authority of their arguments by claiming divine authorship of their ideas. Perhaps I am jaded by experiences in which people who have said "they have been praying about it and think this is God's will" typically followed that statement by either breaking up with me or asking for money.

But I have swung to far in the other direction. I found myself being described in unflattering terms by Dallas:

Our need for understanding is clearly very great. We are all too familiar with the painful confusion of individuals who make big efforts to determine God's will for them - people who are frequently very sincere and devout. We see them make dreadful errors following a whim or chance event that because of their desperation, they force to serve as a sign from God. We see them sink into despair, skepticism, even cynicism, often accompanied by a continuation of religious routine now utterly mechanical and dead. They 'know' on the basis of what has happened to them, that for all practical purposes they are simply on their own.

But I was comforted and encouraged by his First Steps Toward a Solution.

I believe we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, cannot abandon faith in our ability to hear from God. To abandon this is to abandon the reality of a personal relationship with God, and that we must not do. Our hearts and minds, as well as the realities of the Christian tradition stand against it. The paradox about hearing God's voice must, then, be resolved and removed by providing believers with a clear understanding and a confident, practical orientation toward God's way of guiding us and communicating with us.