Your Most Valuable Asset

Often people think that ministers don't know anything about business. They don't understand that the church is the largest business that there is. They also don't understand that instead of the church needing to learn how to be business-like from secular business, the secular business needs to learn how to operate from the church.

Businesses think that they must have controls in place to assure them that they will operate without graft, embezzlement or theft of any kind. They do not realize that they can never control trust. Trust is the most valuable asset to the employee. It is the most valuable asset to a spouse, child, parent, minister or anything else you may be.

You can't make someone trustworthy. If you try, they will play games.

There are two types of employees that you don't need: those who will not do what you tell them to do and those who will only do what you tell them to do. People who are playing the game of only doing what you tell them to do are not trustworthy. They will blame all mistakes upon you. They will use, "I was only doing what I was supposed to do, " as their excuse for doing something that is obviously wrong. They should be fired, not given more controls.

Many businesses don't understand trust. They write big manuals telling their employees what they must do and what they must not do. They get more and more specific and employees find more and more ways of getting around the rules. In fact, more rules will encourage more ways of doing things to get around the rules.

I heard that a hotel directly above a body of water had signs on the guest rooms forbidding people from fishing from their balconies. They had horrendous problems with the guests continuing to do so after the signs were posted. The guest stopped fishing from the balconies soon after the signs were removed.

A Christian camp had a rule that the children attending the camp could not throw rocks at the horses. However, it didn't say anything about throwing rocks at the cows. The children got the idea from the rule book to throw rocks in the first place. More rules actually increased bad behavior.

Is everyone trustworthy? No, but we need to stop coddling them because there was no rule to prevent them from doing what they did. A guy across the hall from my college dorm room started a fire in his room because he was cold. He opened the window, lit a few books on the floor and went to sleep. He was told to clean it up but was not disciplined because there was no "rule" which said he couldn't start a fire. He was untrustworthy. He should have been kicked out!

Trust is your most valuable asset. You do not want to lose the trust that another gives you. You do not want to abuse their trust in you.

Our country has gotten crazy with lawsuits filed by fired employees. We have to warn them, have rules in place, create a paper trail and a whole lot more stuff that keeps us from doing business. We must realize that we do not need employees we cannot trust. They should be fired rather than coddled.

If trust were given to the employees and protected by the employee, time cards could be in pencil, expenditures could be taken at their word and work completed well would always be expected. This is why the number one job of a boss is to hire people who can be trusted.

Trust is earned by faithfulness and time. Once you have it, you will never want to lose it. It is your most valuable asset.