that strength of purpose:
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward
what is ahead, I press on toward the goal. (Phil. 3:12–14)
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting
away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So we fix our eyes
not on what is seen, but what is unseen . . . We commend ourselves in
troubles, hardships, beatings, and in the good. (2 Cor. 4)
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, how-
ever, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.
(Heb. 12:11–12)
The modern leader may not be subjected to bodily harm and threat
of death, as were the prophets and disciples, but there is no shortage of
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
daunting obstacles for a line manager or CEO. Without a sense of pur-
pose, it is easy to be overcome by these obstacles.
Gordon Bethune took over Continental Airlines when it definitely
needed a prophet and a savior. The airline’s on-time performance was
among the worst in the industry. The organization was ‘‘off purpose.’’
Pilots were flying at slower speeds and skimping on air conditioning to
save fuel, making the on-time record even worse, and leaving custom-
ers ‘‘late, hot, and mad.’’
Bethune quickly re-established purpose. He offered every employee
a $65 bonus for better on-time performance each month. This seems
like merely a symbolic bonus, but that’s what the employees needed—a
symbol of purpose, not just ‘‘more money.’’ The employees knew what
to do to make Continental an ‘‘on-time’’ airline, they just needed the
direction to make it happen. Within a few months, Continental had the
best on-time record in the industry.
Bethune maintained that it all boiled down to unity of purpose.
‘‘There is no autopilot for success. You can’t take your eye off the ball.
The good news is that it’s a pretty simple thing to keep doing just as
long as you don’t forget about it.’’14 It may be ‘‘simple,’’ but it isn’t
always easy. Bethune had to let go a large portion of the management
team, overcome a huge amount of negativism and cynicism, and turn
the Continental culture around 180 degrees. Continental became a
thriving airline with an excellent on-time performance record.
LEADERS WITHOUT PURPOSE
The Bible gives us several examples of ‘‘leaders’’ whose sense of purpose
did not extend beyond themselves. A case can be made that despite
their talents and strengths, such people are not really leaders at all. Their modern counterparts are those ‘‘leaders’’ whose main ‘‘purpose’’ is pure
material gain and personal aggrandizement.
Esau, son of Isaac and Rebecca, is one example of a man whose
carnal appetites and lack of purpose disqualified him as a leader and left
the field open for his physically weaker but stronger-purposed twin
Purpose
43
brother, Jacob. Returning from the hunt famished, he traded his birth-
right as the oldest son for a pot of stew his brother had cagily simmered
for him. No amount of rage or revenge could reclaim that birthright.
Samson was a man whose main purpose was pleasure. Here was a
person of great physical strength but of total selfishness of purpose. His
largest pleasures were sex with various women and his ability to best
others in often pointless physical combat. Samson’s first action when
we meet him in Judges 14 is an act of pure lust (an affliction that has
sidetracked many a leader, both biblical and modern). Samson said to
his father and mother, ‘‘I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now
get her for me as my wife.’’ This was not the ‘‘nice Jewish girl’’ Sam-
son’s parents had in mind, nor was this to be a union based on mutual
respect and love. It was the beginning of a series of affairs that led to
Samson’s betrayal and death.
Samson was not a leader of his people. The Bible says nothing of his
organizational or inspirational abilities. He left no legacy except revenge and destruction. He killed 1,000 men with the jawbone of an ass, and
after his betrayal by Delilah and subsequent blinding, he brought down
the temple on the heads of thousands of his enemies. Even his last act
was one of self-destruction, since he also brought the temple down on
himself.
A modern-day Samson is ‘‘Chainsaw Al’’ Dunlap, who specialized in
‘‘saving’’ companies by destroying them. At Sunbeam, Dunlap pursued
one purpose and one purpose only: maximization of the bottom line.
To do this, he chopped personnel with the same enthusiasm that ‘‘Jaw-
bone Samson’’ had knocked out 1,000 men. Like Samson, Dunlap left
no unifying legacy of purpose on which Sunbeam could build and con-
tinue, and no team to carry on his work. He simply moved on to the
next company to pursue his own individual glory and gain.
Michael Milken is a more complex character than Al Dunlap. Al-
though to many of us the purpose of Drexel Burnham Lambert may
have seemed to be based largely on the enrichment of Milken, he was
sustained by the belief that he was increasing the wealth of all who
bought the stocks he was proffering. And when he was found guilty of
insider trading, he paid the financial price and served a prison term,
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
facing the consequences with more grace and contriteness than either
Al Dunlap or Samson. And he also developed a broader sense of pur-
pose that went beyond himself. Upon release from prison, Milken set
up a foundation to combat prostate cancer and also founded an organi-
zation that is dedicated to improving education using the Internet.
THE SEARCH FOR PURPOSE
A great manager motivates others through a sense of purpose. But pur-
pose often takes shape as one progresses on a journey; it’s not always
entirely visible or self-evident at the start. And often, the individual acts that lead to the accomplishment of purpose are rather mundane.
Remember Nehemiah leading the effort to rebuild the wall around
Jerusalem? He wasn’t just repairing a wall. He convinced the Israelites
that they were reviving a nation, preserving their religion and culture,
and protecting the lives and well-being of their families.
We are all familiar with the story of the workmen who were cutting
stone and were asked what they were doing. One answered, ‘‘I am
cutting stone.’’ Another answered, ‘‘I am building a cathedral.’’ One
manager who constantly reminds his employees that they are building a
cathedral and not just cutting stone is William Pollard, CEO of Service-
Master, a company whose ‘‘lofty’’ daily activities consist of cleaning
toilets, killing bugs, and cleaning carpets.
But Pollard sees these activities in the context of a higher purpose
and constantly communicates this purpose to the employees. ‘‘People
want to contribute to a higher cause, not just earn a living,’’ he notes.
‘‘When we create alignment between the mission of the firm and the
cause of its people . . . we unleash a creative power that results in quality service . . . and the development of the people who do the serving.’’
ServiceMaster’s mission statement? ‘‘To honor God in all we do, to help
people develop, to pursue excellence and to grow profitably.’’
That’s a pretty lofty mission statement for a group of housekeepers
and janitors. But they are making the connection between that mission
statement and their daily work. Shirley Nelson, a ServiceMaster house-
Purpose
45
keeper in a 250-bed hospital, still maintains a sense of purpose after
fifteen years on the job because she sees herself not as ‘‘mopping floors’’
but as directly contributing to the health of the patients. ‘‘If we don’t
clean with a quality effort, we can’t keep the doctors and nurses in
business. We can’t serve the patients. This place would be closed if we
didn’t have housekeeping.’’15
Brad Hill, a senior consultant with the Hay Group, structures incen-
tive programs for the most unlikely of populations: hourly workers.
Where does Hill get his sense of purpose? From watching the sufferings
of his grandfather, a coal miner who had a nervous breakdown from
lack of purpose and who frequently commented, ‘‘I’ll never be anything
but a damned coal miner.’’ ‘‘He never had a sense of purpose,’’ observes
Hill, ‘‘a sense that his work and his life were worth something.’’
Hill designs gain-sharing plans to measure and reward performance
for employees at the lowest level of the organization, people like his
grandfather, who formerly were totally isolated from the organization’s
purpose and who were seldom rewarded when that purpose was ac-
complished. Brad Hill is accomplishing his purpose of linking others to purpose. Says a food safety inspector at one of his client companies,
‘‘Now I have the feeling that this is my company too.’’16
Gary Heavin is the CEO of one of the fastest-growing franchises in
the United States, Curves for Women, which was ranked as the third