Epiphany

Resolutions | Goals

The Big Question

BEST

BAD

• Perfect• Top• Supreme• Ultimate

Culture’s idea of Goals:

GOOD

BETTER

King Herod

What they expected…

Find new

king

here

Gentiles/Unclean

Common Jews

Scribes/Priests

King Herod

What they found…

Gentiles/Unclean

Common Jews

Scribes/Priests

Find new king here

Psalm 72Give the gift of wise rule to the king, O God, the gift of just rule to the crown prince. May he judge your people rightly, be honorable to your meek and lowly. Let the mountains give exuberant witness; shape the hills with the contours of right living.Please stand up for the poor, help the children of the needy, come down hard on the cruel tyrants.

Psalm 72:1–4 (The Message)

Psalm 72Because he rescues the poor at the first sign of need, the destitute who have run out of luck. He opens a place in his heart for the down-and-out, he restores the wretched of the earth. He frees them from tyranny and torture— when they bleed, he bleeds; when they die, he dies.

Psalm 72:12–14 (The Message)

Nitin Nohria, the new dean of Harvard Business School, argues that

we need leaders who demonstrate moral humility.

I believe that we need an approach to leadership in which the starting point is our lack of knowledge, a frank admission that we do not know very much about how to build a sustainable system for business and society. 

In this humility-driven vision of leadership, business schools need to shift their centre of gravity away from economics, finance and dreams of individual fortune. We need to teach future leaders to reflect and critique—that there are alternatives to theories that they accept, without question, because they speak to their self-interest.

To do this, business schools need to challenge their own orthodoxy—a crude Darwinian view of business and society rooted in the survival of the fittest. They need to focus on the social consequences of their actions and accept responsibility for the business excesses of recent years.  What is required is a narrative of common interest to combat the mantra of selfishness;

one that appeals to the sense that leadership is for all not for the few. 

Ken Starkey - The Economist

LOVE

ENEMIES

LOVE

NEIGHBORS

LOVE

FAMILY

AS GOD LOVES…LOVESELF

What if our goals looked like this…

The Paradoxical Commandmentsby Dr. Kent M. Keith

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women

with the smallest minds.Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

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