Feeding 5000 and walking on water with a full stomach

John 6:19 "They saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them, 'It is I; do not be afraid'."  

Our boat on the Sea of Galilee, back in 2008 at our pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

My neighbour Sherine and I talked about my SALT story's moral from my last blog entry - look out for Sarahs and get rid of Lots and Terahs in your lives! And whilst we chatted along I said, "I'm wondering if the Bible could be used as management handbook", and Sherine suggested I should try and find out. And that's what I am doing, finding out about it. 

Last Sunday's Gospel reading was about 2 miracles - feeding the multitude and Jesus walking on water. Quite a challenge, to squeeze any management wisdom out of those 2 stories. Maybe I am getting an idea whilst thinking and writing about it...

Jesus and his disciples were at the Sea of Galilee; and after having performed quite a few miracles before, I think mainly healing stuff, he wasn't alone anymore, but followed by thousands of people. Jesus looked back and must have said something like: "Jesus Christ! How on earth shall we feed them?" His disciple Philip, probably shaking his head in disbelief, replied that even half a year's wages wouldn't feed them. They were basically in trouble. 

Disciple Andrew saw a little boy pass by who carried something like a picnic basket, and inside he spotted 5 barley loaves and 2 fish, probably a week's food supply for his family. Andrew told Jesus about the boy's basket. What is not known from the Gospel is how they managed to obtain the little boy's family's food. Did they kidnap the boy, threaten him to beat him up if he doesn't surrender, steal it from him and beat him up, mesmerize the poor sod, etc... All of this is not known. Also, what happened to the boy after he was "relieved" from carrying his nutritious burden? Did his mother get a hissy fit when he got home empty handed, did the father spank him for having to starve now? All of that is in a biblical grey zone. But then, what's more important, feeding a boy and his family for a week or giving 5000 fans a snack? 

The mosaic in the Church of the Multiplication in Tabgha where the miracle apparently happened. 

Back to Jesus: Once he heard about the picnic basket he probably thought, "okay, it's probably time for another miracle." They "obtained" the food and miraculously managed to feed Christ's 5000 strong fanclub. Hooray, done! Afterwards, Jesus told his disciples to "gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost" and they did and managed to fill further 12 baskets. The multitude saw this and said, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world."

A little afterthought: I just hope the little boy got one of those twelve baskets, even though it would mean those were just leftovers. 

Jesus knew that after feeding the crowd they wanted to "take him by force to make him king" (of course, who else would miraculously feed them all the time?). It probably daunted him that feeding them wasn't such a good idea because he raised unnecessary expectations. The Bible now says, "he withdrew again to the mountains by himself". How he managed to get out of this situation, I have no idea. Maybe it was one of those "Scottie, beam me up" moments that he just disappeared or that he miraculously made them fall asleep so he could sneak out. This is unknown. 

What's known though is, in the evening after it got dark, the disciples climbed onto a boat trying to cross the lake back home to Capernaum. A storm came up and it got pretty scary whilst rowing on the lake. Jesus was still in the mountains and probably just wanted to enjoy some "me time" but him being who he was knew that his disciples were in danger: "Can't I just leave them alone for one evening without them getting into trouble?" he must have thought, and super powers as he possessed he transposed himself from wherever he was in the mountains right onto the lake on which he walked towards the boat. They were terrified, but he said to them: "It is I, do not be afraid". Of course he saved their lives, hopefully telling them off for being stupid. And yet another miracle was performed on that day. Story over.

Can I draw any wisdom out of this for a coaching session or management training? It's difficult. And whilst wondering and pondering, my thoughts are suddenly evolving around whether Jesus was a good manager himself and what would I have told him in a coaching session. 

Of course, for this, one would need to assume that Jesus was more of a human being without adding too much of the divinity factor. It's sometimes bad enough to coach humans, but coaching the divine, I have no idea how successful I or anyone else would be. 

In a coaching session I'd probably discuss his business of performing miracles whilst on his ministry on Earth. What kind of miracles he produces, how "fruitful" they are, why he is doing them and whether they fulfill their purpose. I'd probably categorise his miracles into "healing miracles" and "others". The first are probably easy to explain, the why and how, but the latter need a deeper insight into the matter and probably a one-by-one explanation. An Excel miracle list would be of help.

For his feeding the 5000 miracle I'd ask and discuss some of the following questions and matters:

- Why did you want to feed them? 
- Did you think they would starve if you hadn't done so?
- What consequences did you expect from feeding them? 
- What other consequences did you expect if you hadn't fed them?
- Why did you know they wanted to make you their king? 
- Why didn't you just go for it and become their king? 
- Why did you feed them after all? What are the pros and cons of your actions? 
- Did you explain to your disciples why you fed all those people? 
- And if, did they understand and learn from this? 
- How did you deal with the little boy? 
- Did you steal his food and how did it feel? 
- How did you justify your action towards the boy and his family? 

And similar questions about the walking on water: Why did you do that? Could you have prevented this situation by better communicating to your disciples not to use a boat at night? Was it necessary to walk on water or could you not just stop the winds from blowing, etc? 

Of course, I cannot answer any of those questions. I am neither a theologian, nor have I had a chat with Jesus about it; anything else would be a sheer assumption, and one thing I learned back in the days when I started my career as management consultant - "NEVER ASSUME!" It has been helpful advice throughout my life. 

In fact, the more I am thinking about it, this gospel reading is a great example of showing what management consulting and coaching is all about - dealing with the impossible and unthinkable. Clients often approach me with all sorts of problems I have no clue about, like feeding 5000 from one picnic basket, walking on water, can sheep have copper in their diet; most essential is, to ask the right questions and to listen what the client has to say, and then draw conclusions from it and take action with the client. 

PS: I am wondering how many of those sermons I am going to think about and publish under the header "The Bible a management handbook"...

Watch out for your SALT!

Genesis 12: The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you" - A story from the Old Testament and its relevance for business consulting and corporate coaching. 

Last Sunday I went to the christening of my neighbour's boy, Naziih, at Lewisham's Tabernacle Church. The minister preached about the verse above, where Abram (later called Abraham) was called to leave the city of Ur in Chaldea and venture to Canaan, a trip from modern Iraq to Israel. 

Abraham got his family together, mainly and namely his father Terah (who sort of project managed the voyage), his half-sister Sarai (later called Sarah), who he married at a later stage (yes!), and his nephew Lot, son of his brother Haran. 

The preacher then mentioned their names in a particular order and formed the following word - SALT, an acronym for Sarah, Abraham, Lot and Terah. 

So far, so good, and off they went. Halfway through, project manager and father of all, Terah, got a little sick and tired of the trip and settled with his lot in Haran, a place that bore the same name as his son, Lot's father. 

Of course, God wasn't overly happy about it, to say the least, and after a while reinforced his command to Abraham, to finally make a move and drag his lazy "derrière" to Canaan. Abraham said something like "alright then, let's go!" and packed Sarah and Lot and left Terah behind where he died early aged. And that was it with his early retirement. 

Once arrived in Canaan, Abraham went to the one direction and became, in modern terms, a self-made multi-millionaire, and his nephew Lot to the other direction, where he, after moving around a little, finally settled in Sodom. Yes, Sodom, city of sin, which would nowadays be London's Vauxhall area. 

God looked down to Sodom and Gomorrah and wasn't pleased, not pleased at all. Maybe he was also a little embarrassed about his creation and decided to give them the 'fire and brimstone treatment' and eradicate them from Earth. Before doing so, and since he is a just god, he sent out some angelic investigators to maybe save them, Lot in particular. The undercover angels knocked on his door, told him to leave, and got a "yeah, right, whatever! And if I go, then not without my family" response back from him. Finally, after a long struggle, they managed to set Lot and his lot, consisting of 1 wife and 2 daughters, right outside the city gates and gave God the "all clear" for Sodom (and Gomorrah) to be righteously treated for their sinful behaviour. 

The last words the angels told Lot were that neither of them were allowed to look backwards during the time that God sorted Sodom out, otherwise they'd be up for a nasty surprise. Of course, Lot's wife did, as nosey people do, and as punishment she turned into a pillar of salt. Lot then said to himself: "Well, wife gone; I still have 2 daughters" and did what good old Sodomites did back then, he made them both pregnant, thus founding 2 major tribes - the Moabites and Ammonites. 

In far away Canaan, Abraham led a life as god-fearing person and God rewarded him with financial riches, a long life, and a healthy libido through which he got his sister Sarah pregnant, after God told him so! A lot of incest has taken place back then, it appears, be it divinely sanctioned or habitual. Sarah, also an old woman by then, and rather skeptical about this whole pregnancy adventure, loved Abraham nonetheless, and god-fearing as they were, they tried it. They were successful, she gave birth to Isaac, who then became the 'grandfather' of the 12 tribes of Israel... That's as far as the story goes.

During the sermon the preacher referred back to his acronym SALT and what it means to be a good Christian:

S for Sarah: Be like Sarah, loving and god-fearing. And look out for any other Sarah's in your life, those are the ones you want to have around yourself!

A for Abraham: Be like Abraham, follow God's commands and he will reward you with riches in Heaven and on Earth!

L for Lot: Don't be like Lot, stubborn and conventional. And don't surround yourself with any of those Lots. They will hinder you and slow you down from reaching your divinely set targets.

T for Terah: Don't be like Terah, lazy and deviant. And don't have anyone who is like Terah around yourself, as like with any of those Lots, they will prevent you from ever going down the direction set by God. 

The preacher said: "Go and surround yourselves with Sarahs and kick all those Lots and Terahs out of your lives so you can reach your divinely set destiny". 

Of course, I completely disagree with that, especially in a private and family setting. If we always discarded the ones that slow us down, we'd end up living in a heartless world and I think Jesus himself would be a bit embarrassed about us. 

BUT, and there is a big   B U T   in all of this; in a business setting I fully agree with the moral of this acronym: 

S: Surround yourself with Sarahs, followers you can trust and can build a team with. People who know you and don't always question whatever your decisions are. Those Sarahs are the team members you want, the peers you can rely on, and the subordinates who ensure your area or department moves forward to where the CEO (not God in this matter) wants you to be. 

A: Be like Abraham. Listen to what your targets are and go for them. The earlier you deliver results, the earlier will be your reward. Lead your team towards your targets and enjoy the outcome once you got there.

L and T: Don't be like them and avoid those in your team. In fact, get rid of them! Those traditionalists and lethargic team members slow you down, get you distracted, will prevent you and your 'Sarahs' from reaching your targets. Be ruthless when it comes to who surrounds you and when choosing your team!

Part of my job as Corporate Coach would be to look out for those Sarahs, Lots and Terahs, and also for potential junior-Abrahams in my clients' teams. Together we'd make action plans and form teams ensuring the targets of the company can and will be met. As coach I'd take my clients on a discovery tour enabling them to find SALT in their surroundings and taking action afterwards! 

In the end, it was a good sermon and got me thinking. It was an inspirational Sunday morning trip. For further reading, please take a look at my Travel Blog, where I added a few pictures of Naziih's christening and the party afterwards. Also, go on Wikipedia and search for 'Abraham' 'Terah', 'Lot' and 'Sodom and Gomorrah'. Those are quite interesting articles to read and give a bit more biblical background. 

Visit my website to find out more about Corporate Coaching! Thanks.

What are the right KPIs for my Operation?

That's one of the questions I mostly get when starting a project. And of course the answer depends on all sorts of things, mainly what kind of operations it is, but also, what the exact business model is for that operation. 

Kind of operation: Obviously, KPIs for a production department are different from the ones for sales or R&D. There are a few KPIs out which can be called "Toolbox KPIs", as they are standard KPIs which are applicable for every respective department (i.e. productivity, labour efficiency, machine utilisation, customer satisfaction, sales force saturation, ...). 

Other than Toolbox KPIs, there are also ones which reflect the exact business model of a company. Say, KPIs in a make-to-order production environment are different from make-to-stock. Mass production KPIs can differ from single-unit production; i e. a shipyard has different KPIs from a car manufacturer. 

Another dimension is the hierarchical level. A CEO has different figures from a front-line supervisor. 

It is already apparent, this question cannot be answered in absolute terms. I can even imagine that there are books out there only dealing with KPIs for all sorts of environments. 

Maybe, to answer this, I should elaborate a bit on what the wrong KPIs are, because that can be answered much easier. 

• Absolute figures are not KPIs. I have seen production companies that use volume (tons produced) as sole indicator to measure the whole of the operation. And I have seen sales organisations that only measure turnover in currency terms. Now this is really über-bad, but I have seen it exist!
  
• A next "no" is the dominance of financial figures. In general, many figures which end up in the P&L are operationally not meaningful. They are of course important, but not sufficient. It is also an indicator that the CFO seems to be either too dominant or other directors simply incompetent.
  
• Lack of cascade. Quite often I have seen daily KPIs on supervisory level, which is perfectly okay, but they are not aggregated upwards and the CEO does only get daily figures. This is not so bad, as he can easily add them up and do his own little calculations. What is worse though, far too often there are only monthly and other highly aggregated numbers available and nothing on an operational level. It is good to know what the monthly productivity is, but what exactly does this mean for the shopfloor on any given day or even as a whole?
  
• Dead KPIs are sad. Ages ago, someone decided certain KPIs are needed, so they were produced. Fair enough. This very someone then left his position, but the KPIs did not leave with him and are being produced and produced and produced - and nobody reads and uses them. What is even worse, nobody understands them.
  
• Meaningless KPIs are those that are produced regularly and even looked at, but not used to take action or analyse the operation. Say, an operations department measures stockout situations for production. They look daily at this KPI which tells them how many orders could not be produced due to raw materials not being present on time and in full. This is actually not too bad for a KPI. 
  What one really wants from an ops department is an analysis rather than looking at the numbers and having a common understanding how bad the situation is:
  - Which suppliers are the worst offenders?
  - Which raw materials were affected the most?
  - Which customers did we disappoint the most by not delivering on time?
  - Are there daily/weekly/monthly trends when raw materials are not coming?, etc...

Of course there are more, but these are the worst offenders and blunders in the realms of KPIs. As one can see, I do not differentiate between KPIs or simple PIs. Numbers are numbers, some are more important than others, hence have deserved being of key value, but that's a different story. 

Let's go back to the original question: What are the right KPIs for my operation? Let me answer this with a counter question: Did you have a good day yesterday? Normally I can tell by the answer whether there are good KPIs in place or not. Just think about it for a bit......  

Being fully google-able!

I went on a blind date the other day. We said 'hello' and when I ordered drinks at the bar my date said "Ah yes, trying 4 new gins this year as part of your '45 list'." I looked somewhat bewildered and thought that someone really did some serious preparation for the evening. Apparently, I got googled with my first name, and my other blog, the travel blog, came up, in which one can read about those "45 things to do when turning 45". 

Back home I started to think about what happened. I was not quite sure if I should have been happy or not that I am "fully google-able" with just my first name plus one narrowing description. But then, what should I expect with my private travel blog having more than 500 entries and 100,000 hits? Digging further down in my thought process I realised that actually, I would have been ever so slightly happier if my other blog, this business blog, which I have been neglecting now for so many years, had come up. I parked that thought and life went on till yesterday. 

I met my friend Lorna, a very well established businesswoman with her own company, and we had a chat over a drink after a meeting. After the usual "how are you?" I told her about a coaching franchise that wants to sell me a course, etc, for which I should pay anything between GBP 21,000 to 61,000 upfront. We both agreed it's rubbish and our chat went on to self-marketing, web presence, and you name it, in order to do it all by oneself and not pay such horrendous amounts for a franchise where one doesn't know in advance whether it is good or bad. And there I was again - my neglected business blog, my not so important but successful travel blog, and my poor business web presence. 

Today, I am giving it another go and work on 'The Naked Consultant'; this blog. My target is to throw my name out and get some serious business web presence; and I want to do it by writing about 'coaching being the new consulting' with regular/weekly updates. 

PS: My date two weeks ago went really well. We are Facebook friends now. And let's see what the future has in store.