interesting blog post quoted by kottke concerning non-hierarchical business management. one of the opening quotes is:
The word manager makes many people uncomfortable. It calls up the image of a bossman telling you what to do and forcing you to slave away at doing it. That is not effective management.
A better way to think of a manager is as a servant, like an editor or a personal assistant. Everyone wants to be effective; a manager’s job is to do everything they can to make that happen. The ideal manager is someone everyone would want to have.
Instead of the standard “org chart” with a CEO at the top and employees growing down like roots, turn the whole thing upside down. Employees are at the top — they’re the ones who actually get stuff done — and managers are underneath them, helping them to be more effective. (The CEO, who really does nothing, is of course at the bottom.)
sounds very similar to this from JESUS
JESUS called them together and said, “you know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. not so with you. instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the SON OF MAN did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
the problem for me is that i have unfortunately seen churches where the pastor serves more as the ceo of all rather than the servant of anyone. in this view the pastor is the head and everyone else’s job is merely to make him (or her) more effective.
i know of one pastor that has a group of people whose job it is to surround him after the service is over so that he won’t be stopped by any of the church members when he is making his way out. it’s not that this pastor doesn’t love the church members, rather it is that there are too many other things that he needs to do and therefore he must move it in order to make it to them. probably says more about large churches than it does about the pastor.
anyhow, if JESUS told HIS apostles to “lead” in the manner of a servant shouldn’t the rest of us do the same thing?
