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Mark points out that a “Kingdom Minded” organization:
- Puts Christ First
- Has a Clear Mission
- Has a Clear Vision
- Has Core Values
He urges all to integrate organization Mission, Vision, and Core Values into your organization’s Human Resources practices. This will:
- Memorialize your standards
- Provide guiding principles in all you do
- Make your values easily understood by employees
- Drive a values-based culture with your customers
Mark is convinced—as am I—that after spending more than 20 years in HR, what we’ve seen tells us that organizations with a well-developed and bought-in Mission, Vision and Values will far exceed those who do not.
7 Premises for “Kingdom Minded” Organization
1. Building Success- Sharing Jesus in the Workplace: Christian Leaders Must Be Modern Day Apostles. Today, all of us who are Christian business and nonprofit leaders are modern day apostles. If your Christianity doesn’t stop on Sunday night, if you build it into your leadership and your organization’s values, you are building a Kingdom Minded organization.
2. Aiming For the Best: Be Diligent to Avoid Mediocrity. Griffin explains, “I don’t think any organization can justify being mediocre. On the contrary, I believe that organizations have an obligation to their people to be excellent, to be world class, to be highly performing.” When we put our trust in Christ and do the right thing, make the right choices and stay truthful in our business lives, we will outlive the others. As he puts it, “If you are killing the mediocre monster, you are winning the battle.”
3. Abundant Life – In the Workplace: Leave Sheaves Behind and Be Rewarded. Allow employees to enjoy the organization’s harvest! Connect with people daily, share objectives with them, and create excitement within your team.
4. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made Employees: Using the Talents From Within Your Organization. In high-performing organizations people play to their strengths. Strengths are those things that give you energy, that get you going, and that make you want to do more. Have you invested the time to identify your employees’ hidden talents? The talents above and beyond their daily job requirements? Knowing the talents of the people working for you and drawing on them regularly will ignite your workplace!
5. Creating a Welcoming Workplace: Creating an Environment of Excitement and Ease for Employees. Leaders need to make sure work is a good place for employees. Employees should be at ease coming to work because they know they have managers who care, and they should be excited to be part of your organization. Work can be enjoyable and meaningful for those you employ.
6. Management Must Step Up: Leading Your Employees into Success. Remember: virtually every single employee will give you 100 percent when they know you care! In fact, 99% of all employees who come to work every day, want nothing more than to do a good job; in fact, most want to exceed your expectations. It really is the American way.
7. Rewarding Your Hard Workers: Good Standing Employees Deserve More Than Fair Wages. Be generous to employees, and you shall be rewarded! Griffin explains that some of the most impactful gestures of gratitude and appreciation that he’s given were the least costly — small lunch celebrations or boxes of favorite chocolates. If you act with kind regard, with generous giving, you are building a strong Kingdom-Minded organization while honoring Christ.
Successful organizations have an established Mission—a Mission that is co-developed by all of their employees and is ingrained into the culture of the organization.Your Mission is simply what you do best — every day — and why. It is simply what your organization collectively — yes, collectively — not top down management, or board of directors to management — developed. It works like this:
Your Mission
- The senior management team develops a framework of what they believe the Mission is and should be.
- Line management then takes the draft document to the line supervision.
- Finally, employees and a good HR rep facilitate a roundtable session using the draft Mission as a guide.
An effective Mission is based on input and commitment from as many people within your organization as possible. Here are some tips for great Mission Statements according to Griffin:
- Keep it short.
- Describe WHY customers will buy from you.
- Define your product or service clearly.
- Identify WHO is your ideal customer.
- Specify WHAT you offer your customer — benefits, services, advantages, etc.
- Delineate what makes your product or service different from that of your competition.
Your Vision
Vision helps guide all employees and supervision to their desired destination and explains why. Organizations with a Vision have a workplace of direction, purpose, and achievement.
Again, the best Vision is one that has been created, or at least contributed to, by all employees of the organization.
The Vision should be inspiring! It is where you want to be. The Vision is what’s occurring as you deliver on your Mission.
Your Values
Core Values reflect the heart of your organization. Values make your organization tick. It is how vendors view your behavior toward them; it is your culture when dealing with customers.
The best Core Value is one that you and your teams identify and create together. Are you sensing a trend, here?
Making Your Mission, Vision, and Values Work
How do you make your Mission, Vision, and Values a part of the way you do business? You integrate them into the practices that are always connected to the people that make it happen — you integrate them into the people who are applying your HR practices.
Job descriptions should remind employees about the overall objective for their positions. Why? Because that objective should tie in to whatever the Mission and Vision of the organization are.
Essential to all job descriptions are: the purpose of the position, position requirements (education and or experience), and physical requirements/environmental conditions.
Performance reviews should be beneficial not only to the organization but to the employee. Key components to a successful process include:
- Built-in commitment to your Mission, Vision, and Values
- Shared goals and objectives throughout the organization
- Employee ownership of career and job performance
- Simplistic but meaningful processes
- Solid guidelines and commitment from senior leadership
When you honor your employees by training, developing, and growing them, they will honor you by giving their best for the organization. When God is reflected in your heart and the way you respect your employees by not only paying them correctly and protecting them with benefits, but truly caring about their development, your employees will see Christ in you.
May you build a Kingdom-Minded Organization, as you shoot for the stars!
Thanks to Mark A. Griffin for his perspective. To learn more from Mark, check out his sites – http://kingdommindedorganizations.com/ or http://inhisnamehr.com.