If I had a billion dollars…

9/18/13 

Last week I asked Sam Williams: “What would you do if you had a billion dollars?” It was the beginning of a great conversation. The first thing of course is to pay off your bills. But what would come second? We talked about the possiblities–endowing a chair at a university or seminary…donating a building or building your library and having it named after you…giving the money to vetted and worthy charities…creating a foundation and having our kids be stewards over it. Not much imagination there. Here’s what we settled on: We’d use the billion dollars to create real sustainable jobs. We’d be angel investors and funders and let entrepreneurs pitch their ideas. We’d create an X-Prize for job creation…or maybe an X Prize in each country, given to the person / company that created the most jobs for the poor and previously unemployed of their country. Would that be a kick or not?

Three years ago I read Jim Clifton’s The Coming Job War. This book is a game-changer. Clifton is chairman and CEO of the Gallup Association and this work is the product of studying the data from and surveying 120,000 people “from Manhattan socialites to Masai mothers, in 150 countries of the world.” Clifton writes, “Six years into our global data collection effort, we may have already found the single most searing, clarifying, helpful, world-altering fact: What the whole world wants is a good job.”

Clifton writes, “A good job is a job with a paycheck from an employer and steady work that averages 30+ hours / week.” (This is distinguished from, what I suspect the readers of this blog have—a great job. A great job is a job where someone is concerned about your development and you get to engage in meaningful work.) A good job is not part-time selling chickens for your brother-in-law on the side of the road a couple times a week. Something fundamentally has changed in the thinking of people. “Humans used to desire love, money, food, shelter, safety, peace, and freedom more than anything else. The last 30 years have changed us. Now people want to have a good job, and they want their children to have a good job. This changes everything for world leaders…The desire for a good job is the current will of the world, and whether or not you have a good job defines your relationship with your city, your country, and the whole world around you.

Last year I met David Spickard, president of Jobs for Life out of Raliegh. Watch their 2 minute animation of their premise. You’ll see why jobs are so important. So what can we do? Most every church has businessmen and business women whom are usually seen as candidates to serve on the building committee, the finance committee, or the stewardship committee. What if…what if… one of your church’s goals was collectively to create 10 new sustainable jobs in 2012…as part of your God-given mission? What if businessmen and businesswomen were released and empowered to execute that which they do best—create jobs? Not church jobs…but real good jobs. After all, the second command given in Genesis was related to work. Part of the creation mandate is to work and people experience life and fulfillment in relation to them fulfilling their created purpose. What if some business folks were thinking about laying off two employees; what if they were challenged to create two new jobs instead. What would have to happen in the growth of that business to make that financially feasible?

Could you convene a meeting of business owners and randomly connect them to see if new business ideas might emerge? So pairing the owner of a plumbing business with the owner of a optical company; a restaurant owner might be paired with the owner of a storage company; a flooring company owner could be paired with a dentist. What new job ideas might emerge. (Think of Gutenberg combining the technology of the winepress with his expertise as a metallurgist to create the printing press.) Innovation happens in the space of unlikely connections (See Steve Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From ). The Start-up Weekend When meeting with a business owner for discipleship, you could ask, “So how many jobs do you want to create this year?” If he or she protests and says, “I thought we were going to talk about discipleship,” you could answer, “This IS discipleship!” I believe God put you on earth to create jobs.” A good book to read was written by Brad Feld from my home town, Boulder, Colorado, called Start-up Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City. 106 Amazon 5 star reviews. I believe what works in Boulder, also works in Boise, Austin, and Lagos Nigeria.

A few months ago there was a TV program that featured a handful of top business leaders. Each leader was given 20 minutes to talk. And surprisingly each talked for 5 minutes on their business and 15 minutes on their philanthropic endeavors. It’s like they had to justify making money! Of course we need philanthropy (“the love of man”) but we’ll cross a threshold when a business leader can say, “I did not give one dime to charity last year” (and then wait for the boos, hisses and tomatoes to subside) but I did create 300 new jobs and let me tell you what these jobs did in terms of restoring human dignity, saving marriages, creating a tax base, and their charitable giving.” We need those committed to making money…by creating jobs.

There are three sectors of every society: Public—government, Private—business, and Social—churches, human services, and non-profits. It’s important to remember that the Private sector funds both the Public and Social sectors.  The vibrancy of any community rests with the vibrancy of the Private sector.

I’ve been thinking lately that we don’t need more nonprofits…or Christian non-profits that create more dependency when what the world craves is a good job. If your church or a wealthy individual in church had $250K to invest in your community, would the community not be better off if it was invested in creating sustainable, tax-generating, charity-donating jobs? Would a challenge like this ignite the passions of the business domain in your church?

As leaders it is much easier to catch a wave than to cause a wave. How can God’s people take advantage of the world’s collective desire to have a good job. A couple of years ago I was in San Diego at Blanchard Companies. Ken took part in an exercise we did for city leaders on job creation. The next morning Ken addressed our group and said, “This morning I sent a voice mail to each of my 300 employees asking us to think of how we can add new jobs that add real value to Blanchard and Company?” By the end of the week, they had created three new jobs–one percent growth in a week. Not too shabby.

If you are interested in actually learning how to build a start-up company you can enroll in Steve Blanks free class out of Stanford, How to Build a Start-up. I’m having my missional leaders in my Global Connections Leadership Community work through this as job creation is big in mission. Steve started 8 companies and brought 4 of them public. He teached ins 2-4 minute session. It’s a pretty cool learning experience.  Think deeply about this post. What can you do to create jobs locally and overseas? If you’re a missional leader think about being and helping to create missional job creators. You can make a huge difference by helping to create jobs.