Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2020-10-04-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time – October 4, 2020
Welcome to the one hundred and thirty-second episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. (Cycle A) In our Gospel this Sunday, Jesus told Parable of the Tenants. He said, “There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey.” (Mt 21:33) The chief priests and the elders of the people would have recognized the setting for the story which came from the Prophet Isaiah, which was our first reading. He wrote, “My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside; He spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines; Within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a wine press. Then he waited for the crop of grapes.” (Is 5:1-2)
Lessons for Cultivating a Winning Culture
Both stories are a beautiful allegory of the landowner (who represents God), his vineyard (that represents the chosen people of Israel and the new Israel, the Church), and the way the landowner cultivated his vineyard (God lavished his love upon his people.) But there is an expectation by the landowner that the vineyard will produce good fruit. This parable and the prophesy that preceded it have valuable lessons for any leader who wants to cultivate a winning culture in their workplace.
#1 Leadership Must Be Committed
First, the landowner was personally invested in cultivating the vineyard. In the first reading, the landowner said, “What more could be done for my vineyard that I did not do?” (Is 5:4) Over the years of working with clients who wanted to develop a positive culture, a key to success is the CEO’s, president’s, executive director’s, owner’s, founder’s or leader’s personal ownership and commitment to the core values and the process of developing the culture. I’ve worked with those who have and those who haven’t, and the latter were not successful in their attempts at culture change.
Healthy, productive organizational cultures don’t just happen. They need to be cultivated. I like having a nice garden. But frankly, I don’t enjoy doing the necessary work. I wish that beautiful flowers would spring up spontaneously. But if I use the “stand-back-and-watch” approach, I know what will happen. No matter how fertile the ground, I’ll simply get weeds. In order to have flowers, I have to plant flowers. And what’s more, I have to keep watering, weeding, and fertilizing the garden so they’ll grow.
Healthy, productive organizational cultures don’t just happen. They need to be cultivated.Unfortunately, many organizations approach cultivating a values-centered culture the way I approach gardening. They rush their leadership team off to a strategic planning retreat where they identify a few core values they think would be good for their organization. Then they hurry back, “plant” those values, and hope they’ll take root. But simply posting your core values on a wall in hopes that people will live them doesn’t work. When organizational culture and core values are not integral components of your overall strategy, the results are always disappointing.
#2 Culture Supports Achieving the Mission
Secondly, the organization’s culture and the mission go hand in hand. We know from the first reading that the landowner prepared the vineyard and “hewed out a wine press” (Is 5:2) and in the Gospel, he “dug a wine press in it.” (Mt 21:33) so the mission of the vineyard was to produce fine wine. The landowner was clear of the mission, so he selected a fertile hillside, spaded it, and cleared it of stones to prepare it to bear fruit.
The reason leadership commits to and personally invests in developing the culture of the organization is because it supports achieving the mission. A toxic culture is an obstacle to the mission. The culture of an organization is determined primarily by its core values. Organizations, like individuals, become what they value, respect, and believe and this profoundly affects all of its activities and achievements. Organizations whose cultures prize excellence will tend to achieve excellence. Organizations with strong “can-do” attitudes will tend to set and achieve ambitious goals. On the other hand, organizational cultures devoid of positive values are almost certainly destined for mediocrity, or worse.
A toxic culture is an obstacle to the mission.Although I believe that honesty and integrity are fundamental values without which no others can subsist, I am not suggesting that there’s one set of core values that’s right for every organization, any more than there’s one right plant for every type of soil. Just as the flowers, soil, lighting, and moisture must be compatible for a garden to flourish, the vision, values, culture, and strategy must be in harmony for an organization to succeed. The perfect culture for a high-tech company will almost certainly be a terrible misfit for a law firm. No one set of core values is right for every organization.
#3 Everyone is Responsible
Which brings me to the third lesson for creating a winning culture that we can take from our readings. While leadership must be personally invested and committed, it’s not just up to the CEO, president, executive director, owner, founder, or leader to create culture change. It requires dedicated leadership by the CEO, with the collaboration and buy-in of everyone within the organization. Collaboration increases commitment because people who share in defining core values are more likely to foster living them.
Successful companies conduct onboarding training for every new employee. But companies that truly live by core values know that promoting core values cannot just be part of new employee orientation. It needs to be an ongoing process, so they incorporate core values into all technical, human resource, marketing, and sales training activities to help employees appreciate their importance and understand how they affect daily activity.
Core values affect the types of people you will hire, the types of business opportunities you will pursue, the types of vendors you will choose, and the kinds of funding and investment partners you will accept. They attract and repel like a magnet. People who share your values will want to do business with you, and that’s good for your business. People who don’t share your values won’t want to do business with you. That’s also good for your business.
#4 Hold People Accountable
The last and probably most important lesson for creating a winning culture that we can take from our readings is the importance of holding people accountable for bearing good fruit. This is what the landowner tried to do. “When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce.” (Mt 21:34)
Accountability means each and every person in the organization is willing to stand up and say “I want to live these values and if I fail, I want you to tell me so I can fix it and make things right again.” And then, co-workers will respectfully speak up when they see a violation. Employees feel empowered to respectfully tell their boss when they have failed. Iron sharpens iron in accountable organizations.
Iron sharpens iron in accountable organizations.But the tenants didn’t want to be held accountable so they “seized the servants and one they beat, another they killed, and a third they stoned.” (Mt 21:35) And when Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders of the people, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants when he comes?” (Mt 21:40) They answered him, “He will put those wretched men to a wretched death and lease his vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper times.” (Mt 21:41) And Jesus responded, “Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.” (Mt 21:43)
Likewise, when holding people accountable for living your company’s core values, a time will almost certainly come when you will need to terminate an employee for violating them. Decide in advance what types of violations of values warrant termination and what types merit additional training or coaching. As Colleen Chappell, CEO of ChappellRoberts, said when I interviewed her for my book, The Value of Core Values :
“It is critical that our employees know, understand, and honor our core values. We allow people to make mistakes, but certain things are not acceptable. We have had to terminate employees when our values were compromised. These were not decisions we took lightly because people and their families and well-being were impacted. They were also difficult decisions because of the disruptive ripple effect the terminations would have throughout the agency.
“When I communicated these decisions at our staff meeting, I would tell them, ‘I want to let you know that I terminated an employee today because he broke a core value. Every one of you has signed on to our core values. When we stand in front of our clients, we promise to live up to them. I, as the leader of this agency, cannot say that we have core values if we don’t live up to them all the time, regardless of whether others are looking.’”
We Will Be Held Accountable
A final thought. In our second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians, St. Paul wrote, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Phil 4:8) When considering these values, we have choices to make. More truth or less truth? More honor or less honor? More just or less just? More pure or less pure? More lovely or less lovely? More gracious or less gracious? More excellent or less excellent? More praiseworthy or less praiseworthy? How now shall we live?
As individuals, we will be held accountable for how we live our lives. We are given talents and gifts and opportunities, at home and at work, to produce good fruit for the kingdom of God. Sometimes we are on purpose and honor God by how we live our lives and sometimes we fail. The question is, are you willing to stand up and say to your family, friends, and co-workers, “I want to live according to these values and if I fail, I want you to tell me so I can fix it and make things right again.” Or do you attack the messenger?
In our world of contemporary secularism that has rejected God and grown deaf to the voice of the Spirit, let’s recommit to honoring the values that have been given to us with how we live our lives. Let’s ask the Lord in his mercy to help us.
Lord, we thank you and you alone are worthy of all our honor and praise, because you have planted us in a fertile vineyard. Thank you for the gifts you have given us to bear good fruit. Lord, as we navigate through this sinful world, keep us from all the weeds and thorns we may encounter so we may remain firm and in all that we do we may glorify you by our lives.
May God bless you abundantly this week and may you glorify the Lord by your life.
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