As a faithful leader seeking to lead faithfully, you face a foundational choice between two starkly different options with profound implications. One option is business as usual — business in "the way of the world" or, more precisely, according to "the kingdom of this world." We call the other option business a better way — business aligned with Biblical beliefs,...
Does faith/work integration require Overtly faithful practices? Leading an organization faithfully through business a better way in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities, requires a continual prayerful balancing of the call to be Courageous through Overtness and the need to be Wise through Covertness. Both the idolization of Overtness and the fear of being Overt may lead to poor...
Integrous Founder Paul Michalski was interviewed by Chad Burmeister on his Living A Better Story podcast. The episode was released on July 9, 2022 and the topic was "Moments of Realization"....
From time to time, we are devoting posts to describing specific actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way. We are calling these Integrity Ideas. INTEGRITY IDEA: Hire a chaplain to be available for employees COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action): Prayer COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): ...
From time to time, we will now begin describing specific actions a leader can consider during the Re-Align step of Integriosity®--actions that will begin to Re-Align the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities. We will call the posts "Integrity Ideas". The Integriosity model organizes "heart change" along six Covert-Overt Continuums, and breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations that...
A life of faith is a life of choices. For a faithful leader, one of those choices is the "O" that drives their leadership. There are two options--obedience or outcome. It is a choice between the kingdom of this world and the Kingdom of God. It is one or the other--business as usual or business a better way. It is...
Faithful leaders seeking to lead faithfully can get detoured from the ancient path toward business a better way. We call those detours Side Roads when they substitute a lesser "good" for transformational heart-change in the organization--transformation of its WHY. In prior posts we identified six: Agonizing, Individualizing, Monetizing, Cosmeticizing, Prosperitizing and Interimizing. We recently encountered a situation that is leading...
We believe words are important and powerful. Words (and disordered words) can either support or undermine efforts to move an organization's culture toward faithfully "doing right" through business a better way. Disordered words can affect how leaders shape an organization's culture and view its WHY--the heart of the organization. For example, "integrate your faith into your work" is just one...
We believe words are important and powerful. The culture of the world is filled with words that blind us to God’s purpose for work--words that reinforce work as a burden to be avoided rather than a blessing of God's creation. Disordered words that embody the world's priorities rather than Kingdom priorities infect our thinking, which ultimately infects our heart. For...
We believe words are important and powerful. The culture of the world is filled with words that blind us to God’s purpose for work--words that reinforce work as a burden to be avoided rather than a blessing of God's creation. Disordered words that embody the world's priorities rather than Kingdom priorities infect our thinking, which ultimately infects our heart. For...
For a leader seeking to lead an organization to faithfully “do right” through business a better way, or a person seeking to "work" in alignment with Biblical beliefs, values and priorities, WORDS MATTER. We believe words are important and powerful. The culture of the world is filled with words that blind us to God’s purpose for work and business. Even...
Integrous Founder Paul Michalski was the guest speaker at the monthly Toolbox Ministries-Galleria lunch held on March 9, 2022 at The Houston Racquet Club in Houston, Texas. Paul's talk was titled The 7 Stages of My Journey To the Why of Work: Understanding the Intersection of Faith and Work....
For a leader seeking to lead an organization to faithfully “do right” through business a better way, eliminating organizational silos must be a priority. In this post, we look at “wisdom” and “information” silos. Organizational silos are bad for the leader, bad for the organization and bad for its culture, which makes it bad for the people in the...
For a leader seeking to lead an organization to faithfully “do right” through business a better way or an investor seeking to invest in alignment with Biblical beliefs, values and priorities, eliminating personal silos must be a priority. In this post, we look at personal faith and wealth silos. The secular "world" view of faith and work is that...
We believe investors of Biblical faith wanting to invest in alignment with Biblical beliefs, values and priorities need to think BIGGER in a new way--prioritizing "significance" over "size". If they don’t, they are at risk of undermining not only the faithfulness of their own investing but also the ability of faith-driven entrepreneurs and business leaders to run their businesses...
In this post we look at some special "culture" challenges that can lead Biblically faith-based non-profits down a seemingly business as usual path. These organizations are born with "faith-work integration" but can have cultures that stray far from God's design for work--good work on the outside with unhappy people on the inside. People tolerate unhealthy cultures in faith-based...
Over the last two years, we have laid out a model for moving toward what we call Integriosity®--faithfully "doing right" through business an better way. It is time to pause, take a breath and look back over the last 101 posts. We believe these last 100 posts have honored our promise to you from post #001. Integrous is here to help...
Integrous Founder Paul Michalski was interviewed by Darren Shearer on his Christianity in Business podcast. The episode was released on December 2, 2021 and the topic was "Moving Beyond Faith As Usual in the Marketplace"....
There are four stages in the process toward Integriosity®, each of which lays the groundwork for the next--RENEW, RE-IMAGINE, RE-ALIGN, RESTORE. Jumping into RE-IMAGINE or RE-ALIGN before RENEW would be like going out on the field before you learned the rules of the game or the fundamental skills. Jumping into RE-ALIGN before RE-IMAGINE would be starting the game without a...
The fifth key "mind-shift" of business a better way through Integriosity® captures a new way of thinking about the WHEN of faith-work integration--it is getting at the PRIORITY of "business a better way" in the organization being stewarded by faith-driven leaders. The critical thing to remember about Mind-Shift #5 is "THE TIME IS NOW". Once a faith-driven...
The fourth key "mind-shift" of business a better way through Integriosity® captures a new way of thinking about the HOW of faith-work integration--it is getting at the PRACTICE of "business a better way" through actually implementing a "heart" change in the organization being stewarded. The critical thing to remember about Mind-Shift #4 is "SYMBOLS ARE SECONDARY". In the...
The third key "mind-shift" of business a better way through Integriosity® captures a new way of thinking about the WHY of business--it is getting at the PURPOSE that flows from, and supports, an organization faithfully "doing right". The critical thing to remember about Mind-Shift #3 is "GREED IS NOT THE CREED". It is the most important--and...
The second key "mind-shift" of business a better way through Integriosity® captures a new way of thinking about the WHO of leaders pursuing faith-work integration--the kind of PERSON needed to faithfully "do right". The critical thing to remember about Mind-Shift #2 is "YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU DO". Mind-Shift #2 is about seeing yourself first in terms of...
The first key "mind-shift" of business a better way through Integriosity® captures a new way of thinking about the WHAT of faith-work integration--the very PRINCIPLE that defines faith-work integration. The critical thing to remember about Mind-Shift #1 is "FAITH CAN’T FIT INTO WORK". Faith-work integration is about integrating work into faith, not faith into work. Integrating faith into work suggests a VERY SMALL view of...
"Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" Guess what--we are done with the bad news, and it is finally time to dig into the good stuff! We have spent the last 30 posts digging through the rubble of "work". It is now time to begin rebuilding toward "business a better way" through the framework of Integriosity®....
The effort to faithfully "do right" by integrating faith and work can get DERAILED by six problems that can keep the organization in the deep hole of "business as usual" and may even push it deeper. The more of "business a better way" is much harder, but getting out of the hole is necessary and worth the journey....
"Interimizing" is putting off "doing right" until the business is "doing well"--exalting a worldly concept of "success" (profit) over a Biblical concept of "success" (human flourishing). A leader that swallows The "Success First" Pill and adopts an "interim strategy"--Interimizing--may never get around to faith/work integration....
"Prosperitizing" is when leaders pursue faith/work integration because they believe it will lead to God blessing their business with worldly success--measured in terms of profit and growth. It is perhaps the most insidious of the various Side Roads because the organization can look like it actually is conducting "business a better way"--but its NOT....
Some faith-driven leaders have been deceived into believing that the integration of faith and work is principally about sprinkling some "faith" pixie dust over the organization to make it look and feel "Godly"--and that leads down the Side Road of Cosmeticizing. "Cosmeticizing" is when an organization adopts overt faith symbols and practices without transforming how it actually does business....
We have explored the five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders to stumble down faith as usual Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. After Agonizing and Individualizing, the third of these Side Roads is Monetizing. Side Roads represent responses to Placebos advertised as the Red Pill that we believe...
We have explored the fivecommon Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders to stumble down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. We have also hinted at the six common faith as usual Side Roads that represent responses to Placebos advertised as the Red Pill but, we believe, actually miss the ancient path...
We have explored the five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders to stumble down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. We have also hinted at the six common faith as usual Side Roads that represent responses to Placebos advertised as the Red Pill but, we believe, actually miss the ancient...
We believe there are five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. The fifth Placebo is The "Success First" Pill, which commonly leads to the Side Road of Interimizing and tempts leaders to delay taking action for the wrong reasons (misunderstanding of faith/work integration and...
We believe there are five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. The fourth Placebo (after The "4-Hour Content" Pill, The "Save or Give" Pill and The "Add Some Faith" Pill) is The "Bless You" Pill, which commonly leads to the Side Road of Prosperitizing....
We believe there are five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. The third Placebo (after The "4-Hour Content" Pill and The "Save or Give" Pill) is The "Add Some Faith" Pill, which commonly leads to the Side Road of Cosmeticizing....
We believe there are five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. The second Placebo (after The "4-Hour Content" Pill) is The "Save or Give" Pill, which commonly leads to the Side Roads of Monetizing and Cosmeticizing....
We believe there are five common Placebos of what we call faith as usual that can lead well intentioned leaders down Side Roads in their effort to integrate their faith and their work. The first Placebo we will explain is The "4-Hour Content" Pill, which commonly leads to the Side Roads of Agonizing and Individualizing....
We started Integriosity #001 by saying that many leaders who are guided by the Bible in their personal lives and sincerely want to live an integrated faith life at work are confused or frustrated or even intimidated. Some have given up. Others think they are doing it, but they are actually missing the mark. We call the problem "faith as usual",...
In the movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus offers Neo a choice of two pills--blue and red. At Integrous, we believe faith-inspired leaders have a similar choice. Like Neo, we hope you will choose Red--the "ancient path" of Business a Better Way....