“The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus…”
Mark 7:1 (NIV)
When I began my career over 30 years ago, I had zero experience in the fields of market research or quality assessment, which are the two primary services our company provides. This was intimidating, to be honest. I was a young man entering a world I knew virtually nothing about. Our company’s founder and CEO explained to me that he was not hiring me for my acumen in research and assessment, which I would learn, but rather for my gifts in communication.
What I learned in those early years is that the research and quality assessment our company provides are complimentary. Our customer research tells a client’s executive team what drives their customers’ expectations and what the company needs to do operationally to improve their customers’ satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. Quality Assessment (e.g. “Your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes…”) helps uncover how the front-line Customer Support and Sales representatives can actually improve and deliver on those customer expectations in their daily conversations and interactions with the client’s customers.
These are two very different audiences.
The executive team members handling operations, sales, and marketing are educated, experienced, and influential individuals. They think about data in strategic and tactical ways on an organizational and operational scale. There’s a certain language they speak and a way that they think.
The front-line representatives who are actually interacting with customers and handling the countless daily “moments of truth” in which customer satisfaction is built or broken, are a very different group. They tend to be among the least paid and least powerful individuals in the company. They have a very different lingo and way they think. They also have the monumental, typically overlooked, task of communicating directly with the customer while applying the policies and procedures that have been dictated down the chain of command from the C-Suite.
And, as Shakespeare famously wrote, “There’s the rub.”
My real job, my boss told me, was the ability to take objective data and effectively communicate the same results to these two very different audiences. These audiences, by the way, typically have little appreciation or understanding of one another. I had to help the executive team understand what the data said and what they needed to do operationally to deliver on those expectations through the company’s policies and procedures. To the front-line sales and support representatives, I had the responsibility to communicate the same data in a way that would help them craft their conversations and communication with customers. Often, that means managing the broken policies and procedures that we had yet to convince the executive team to change.
This came to mind today as I read the chapter, in which Jesus is likewise communicating with two very different audiences who have very different perspectives about everything.
The chapter begins by telling us that an entourage of “teachers of the Law” had come from Jerusalem to hear and inspect Jesus. These are the “big dogs” of Jesus’ religion and culture. These are the execs making a visit to the plant in rural nowhere from the Jewish C-Suite at corporate headquarters. “Everyone be on your best behavior. Look sharp, and busy!”
The big dogs call out Jesus for not following their corporate religious HR policies and procedures. Everyone was expected to wash their hands a certain way, as well as the cups, plates, and utensils they use per corporate policy 4A, sub-section B, paragraph three in the employee handbook. Jesus told his team they could ignore these silly rules. The Big Dogs have come to put Jesus on a corporate Performance Improvement Plan and press Him to get in line with corporate policy.
Instead, Jesus gives the Big Dogs an ear-full about how hypocritical and out-of-touch they are with the day-to-day realities of life for the front-line workers in the sweat shops far from the C-Suite. The policies and procedures are not only silly, but they’re rigged to benefit the corporation and its executives, not the customers or the front-line team members.
This does not go over well.
Not surprisingly, Jesus decides to take some PTO from His base of operations in Galilee. He hits the road and gets out of Dodge for a while. Mark tells us that Jesus first goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon then makes His way to an area known as the Decapolis. These are not places where the Big Dogs hold sway. In fact, these are primarily non-Jewish regions where non-Jewish “Gentiles” live and operate. The Jewish Big Dogs considered non-Jewish Gentiles and their lives to be dirty, base, and unacceptable. They literally called Gentiles “dogs” as an insult. The “Big Dogs” looked down with derision and condescension on the Gentiles. Gentiles were the “Bad Dogs.”
So Jesus, having infuriated the Big Dogs, goes to hang out with the Bad Dogs. While He’s there, a Gentile woman comes to Him begging for Jesus to heal her demon possessed daughter. Jesus trots out the corporate employee HR handbook stating that policy 8C, sub-section A, paragraph two forbids him from talking to or healing a Gentile, especially a female Gentile and deal only with the good Jewish children of Abraham (preferably the men). Why? Because Gentiles, especially women are “dogs.” So says corporate policy.
“But Jesus,” the woman replies. “Even dogs get scraps dropped from the children’s table.”
I can picture the smile on Jesus’ face. This lowly “bad dog” gets what all the corporate “big dogs” can’t see or understand from their corner offices at corporate headquarters. What was intended by the Founder to provide an exceptional customer experience of Life and Love had been lost in a culture of profit and power seeking, bureaucracy, and top-down authoritarianism. Jesus makes the demons leave her daughter.
In the quiet this morning, I’m so thankful for the “real world” experience my career has given me to observe how systems operate and to interact with individuals on every different level of those systems. It’s been fascinating to try and use data and truth to change the thinking and behaviors of individuals at different levels of an organization in order to facilitate change that will benefit the client’s customers and culture. I’ve learned a lot, not only about business, but also about life and human beings. Jesus was dealing with a very similar system because they are human systems. As a disciple of Jesus I’ve learned that systems typically don’t successfully change without human beings changing. If you change the motives and outcomes of enough human beings, there’s a chance to change the systems they’re in.
If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.
