Andy’s put together a couple of small word of mouth marketing crash courses where he’ll be going into the WOM process in detail. He generally only presents this info to his clients (who have a lot more money than you do) so this is a pretty cool opportunity. He’s actually planning on getting into the nitty gritty work of brainstorming ideas with you - not just discussing the theory but arming you with steps you can take immediately.

Andy’s hooked me up with a $250 discount code - just use code “weloveintentionally” when you register.

The phrase “human resources” pretty much encapsulates everything that is wrong with a traditional HR department. It implies impersonal, cold, calculating. It suggests that a company’s employees are resources to be utilized as much as possible, and discarded when their useful life is up. Kind of like a copy machine, except with dreams and goals and kids.

The ever brilliant Tom Peters long ago suggested changing the name to “Talent Department”. Imagine what would happen if you did that.

True, the typical HR professional would still have to spend considerable time dealing with legal issues, making sure the company doesn’t put itself in a position to be sued or taken advantage of. The necessary contracts and policies would still need to exist. But I’d like to think that a subtle psychological shift would take place.

I’d like to think that the folks in the Talent Department would come to realize that there is a world of difference between a good worker and a great one. They’d figure out that Bill Gates was right, that one fantastic engineer or programmer or account manager or accountant is worth 15 mediocre ones.

Once they figured that out, they’d probably bend over backwards to keep those folks. They’d throw out the talk about pay being consistent with market value and pay those people what they’d pay three of their crappy counterparts. They’d get over the old Prussian-based notions that suggest that people can work effectively in tiny cubes for 9 hours a day. They’d realize that one’s ability to work from a coffee shop or a park bench or a home or Maui isn’t a liability but for the right person is a key unlocking tremendous creative potential.

Tom Peters also predicted that within 10 years, 90% of white collar jobs would either be eliminated (via outsourcing and technology) or dramatically changed. He might have been a few years off, but it’s not hard to see much of that happening today.

The implications of that for a company is that many of those functions lose their competitive advantage. As the technology becomes ubiquitous and a truly global organization becomes a reality, the functions those white collar jobs used to perform become commodities.

What remains is a (most likely much smaller) group of highly competent, highly creative, driven, passionate people doing the imaginative, daring work that can never really be outsourced. And the pursuit of those people will become the most important thing that any HR department could do to.

But if the mindset of the department doesn’t change from one of fitting cogs into proverbial wheels… if it doesn’t decide to focus most of it’s energy into finding the most startlingly talented people and doing what it takes to keep them… then the most buttoned-up contracts and policies in the world won’t make a difference.

In the next 10 years, the Talent Department will likely become one of the primary sources of value generation in a company. At least for the ones that figure it out.

We live in the most powerful country in the world, perhaps in the history of the world. We have prosperity, a massive military, and are the world’s only true superpower.

We call ourselves a Christian nation. “In God We Trust” is printed on our money. Our president is sworn in with a Bible. We say the pledge of allegiance as a nation “under god.” The identity of the church has been grafted into the fabric of America to the point that the majority of Christians have a hard time distinguishing between the two.

But here’s the crazy thing - the story of the Bible is the story of a God who never associated himself with a superpower. He wanted a people “set apart” from the world, a people with no king other than Himself, a people who did not hoard their money, did not fight their enemies, who tried to love people and reflect God’s glory in everything they did.

The early church understood these things, and tried to embody them. They lived during the peak of the Roman empire - a nation similar in might and prosperity. And they did everything they could to set themselves apart from it. Consider the following - how many of these statements sound like anything you’ve ever heard from a Christian or a church?

“The Christians form among themselves secret societies that exist outside the system of laws.” ~ a letter to Origen

“He called Abraham and commanded him to go out from the country where he was living. With this call God has roused us all, and now we have left the state. We have renounced all the things the world offers” ~ Justin Martyr

“You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers wit the Emperor even if he demands this” ~ Origen

“I recognize no empire of this present age” ~ Speratus

“I do not wish to be a ruler. I do not strive for wealth. I refuse offices connected with military command.” ~ Tatian

“All of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools.” ~ Justin Martyr

“The professions and trades of those who are going to be accepted into the community must be examined. The nature and type of each must be established… brothel, sculptors of idols, charioteer, athlete, gladiator… give it up or be rejected. A military constable must be forbidden to kill… a proconsul or magistrate who wears the purple and governs by the sword shall give it up or be rejected.” ~ Hippolytus

“You who are God’s servants are living in a foreign country, for your own city-state is far away from this city-state. Knowing which is yours, why do you acquire fields, costly furnishings, buildings and frail dwellings here? … Acquire no more here than is absolutely necessary. Instead of fields, buy for yourselves people in distress in accordance with your means.” ~ Hermas

“We who formerly treasured money and possessions more than anything else now hand over everything we have to a treasury for all and share it with everyone who needs it. We who formerly hated and murdered one another now live together and share the same table. We pray for our enemies and try to win those who hate us.” ~ Justin Martyr

“The desire to rule is the mother or heresies” ~ John Chrysostom

“Emperors could only believe in Christ if they were not emperors - as if Christians could ever be emperors.” ~ Tertullian

All of this started to change with Constantine, who claimed to be a Christian, slapping crosses on his army’s shields as they expanded the Roman empire. Theodosius later made Christianity the state religion and made it a crime to not be a Christian. Every soldier was soon required to be a Christian. Charlemagne instructed his “Christian” armies to kill pagans who did not choose to be baptized.

One wonders if the last 1700 years have been an enormous, heartbreaking exercise in missing the point. The Crusades, the Inquisition…the War on Terror. Christianity has been so thoroughly co-opted, morphed, twisted that we don’t even realize it. We praise the words of Christ and Paul and then immediately ignore much of what they said.

What if every Christian you ever met was living violently opposed to their God and didn’t even realize it?

BTW, we have an email list to push occasional updates out as well. You can subscribe using the form below:

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

It’s crazy - my first experience with it was actually a couple of days before we had met up in Colorado for lunch a while back. Within a day of putting his first artists up I received an invite from someone completely unrelated to Backstage or Grant - the system did exactly what it advertised. Imagine my surprise when I discovered he was behind it.

Grant understands the concepts of social proof and permission as an asset better than most. More importantly, he’s always operated with a unique mix of purpose, integrity and insane attention to detail, which I’m sure have made the artists he’s working with extremely happy.

It’s really cool to see old friends’ hard work starting to pay off. Congratulations man…you deserve it.

“It’s good to hear her talk about gas prices. They’re killing us,” said Donna Madden, 45, a part-time high school cafeteria employee from Clear Fork. “She’s an American, a real American. It’s just good to know that she has the same ancestors as us, that her family goes back for generations and generations and generations.”

From Clinton compares her campaign to JFKs in 1960