How Now Shall We Work - Faith@Work Summit 2016

It's the final day of the Faith@Work 2016 (#FAWS16) Summit in Dallas, Texas. I am attendng through the gracious invitation of my friend, Devin Marks. What an exciting few days it has been gathered there with about 400 others from around the world to explore the implications of faith AT work with some of the best and brightest minds and most compassionate hearts.This convocation is specifically exploring the Christian faith at work since this is a gathering of Christians or Christ-followers (the identity I prefer.)F@W16  has included plenty of rousing presentations from the stage in aTED-like format of 15-minute talks from a variety of presenters each discussing an “idea worth spreading.”  These talks sparked plenty of stimulating conversations during the breakout sessions, in the halls, and spilled over into dinner and late night discussions.Here am I at 3:30 Saturday morning when I should be sleeping and instead, my mind is overstimulated from the discussions of these past few days and dozens of thoughts running through my mind.At times like these when sleep evades me, I find it best to get up and write. To wrestle these ideas to print.John Beckett, in the opening talk of the Summit, talked about the challenge of Greek dualism from the secular/sacred divide that is a root of the problem for so many when it comes to Faith@Work. I experienced this years ago when I worked for an entrepreneur who was new to the faith and very vocal about it…well, at least on Sundays. Yet as a new believer, his faith had not yet impacted many of his questionable business practices. It was those sketchy business practices the other six days of the week that troubled me most.These issues came to a head, and finally, I inquired about a couple of his most egregious practices. Now, some 30 years later I still vividly recall his response, “Oh, that’s business!”He lived in that dualistic divide and unfortunately, never managed to bridge the gap.Unscrupulous practices like that illustrate another dimension to the dualistic split. We must cross the chasm between right thinking and right doing on the topics of F@W. Right thinking, or what might be labeled orthodoxy and then there’s the right doing or orthopraxy. It’s what Lisa Slayton of the Pittsburgh Leadership Foundation alluded to when she said,

Faith@Work must become a movement of the heart, not just the head.

For the F@W movement to thrive and truly have the impact in the marketplace that we want it to have, we must marry right thinking and right action. We must embrace orthodoxy and orthopraxy.And that is what has me wide awake this Saturday morning. Perhaps, others are still gathered somewhere having these conversations, and if I knew where they were, I could join them. Instead, here I sit in my hotel room, thinking out loud.So, I do what I know to do when thoughts like these lock in head and sleep evades me. I get up and write.If…or perhaps the better way to frame the question is when we are serious our Faith@Work, how does that manifest? [clickToTweet tweet="When we are embracing orthodoxy and orthopraxy about #FAWS16, what is different in our workplaces?" quote="When we are embracing orthodoxy and orthopraxy about F@W, what is different in our workplaces?"]What is different about:

The culture of your workplace?

The way you design compensation and benefits packages?

Your hiring practices?

Your approach to employee evaluation?

Your approach to talent development?

Your approach to leadership and leadership development?

How you handle difficult situations and crucial conversations?

What’s different about encounters with customers and the customer experience?

Amy Sherman of the Sagamore Institute issued a threefold challenge to:

Cultivate the creational purpose and intent about work.

Restore what’s broken in the workplace. 

Imagine what the ultimate future of work looks like and yank a foretaste of that into the now. 

[clickToTweet tweet="When we cultivate, restore, and imagine F@W, we will then know, how now shall we work. " quote="When we cultivate, restore, and imagine a thriving F@W world, we will then know, how now shall we work. "]Fortunately, we are not without exemplars and examples of Faith at Work. There are bright spots from which we can learn.If you are wondering how might your culture be different when faith is at work, what if you too adopted a no-gossip policy as they have at Ramsey Solutions (Dave Ramsey)? That shows up in the conversations over coffee and at lunch.On the topic of customer experience, look at Chick-Fil-A and how they are as relentless about innovation as they are hospitality. They are at the forefront of excellence in customer experience and being the premier restaurant for families. CFA provides free ice cream to award customers for digital-distraction free dining. Restaurant patrons, especially those with young children can order ahead using the app and have their meal ready when they arrive and have it delivered to their table to enhance the dining experience for eating out with your young children.  That is a result of F@W.I don’t know the answers to all of these questions. But hey, this is F@W16, and some of the best and brightest minds, the luminaries of the F@W world are here. As we move forward on this journey, I am confident that we will see companies answering these questions and finding myriads of ways that combine the best thinking and the best doing of F@W.If you are not able to attend in person, you can join in via the live streaming for the final day of discussions.