“our slogan must not be “Burn, baby, burn.” It must be, “Build, baby, build.” “Organize, baby, organize.” Yes, our slogan must be “Learn, baby, learn,” so that we can earn, baby, earn.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
Nguzo Saba Kwanzaa Principle #3: Ujima-Collective Work & Responsibility "To build and maintain our community together and to make our brother's and sister's problems, our problems and to solve them together." “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” ~African proverb.
Look up the roots of the word “corporation” and you will find that it arises from the Latin word “corpus” which means, “body”. Therefore a corporation is a body. If you hope to one day lead a successful corporation, it would behoove you to always be concerned about if your body is alive, healthy and fit. Just as your physical body is made of organs which support the functioning of other organs, so must corporations be organized in a similar state of harmony. If it is to be alive, it must live and breathe as one organism. Where there is disorganization and disharmony, cancers arise which threaten to disintegrate your organization from the inside out. As long as there are people in your organization who are getting their basic needs met through employment, what you have is indeed a living and breathing organism. It is alive through the people.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” - 1st Corinthians 12:12-26
This passage from The New Testament has not been lifted and placed here for any evangelical purposes. Though the way in which the Christian Church has been organized and expanded across the globe to become one of the three major faiths encompassing 2.2 billion adherents in just under 2000 years is remarkable and something to consider in developing your organization. Though politics and egotistical ambitions for power and control within the organized Church has in many ways compromised the integrity of the empirical message of Christ, the faith would not have lasted as long or spread as far without the structure that it has. Perhaps you may have come from a Christian background regardless of the current state of your faith. If so, consider the ways in which it has shaped your life. Maybe you’re not trying to change the world, though if your goal is billionaire, you’ll never attain it without changing the world a little for the better. Your riches will be in direct proportion to the value you serve the world.
So how does one begin organizing a living, healthy and fit organization acting in unison and attractive to investors?
#1 You must have a cause. It took 9 months to organize the foundation of your physical body, but what was its root cause? An attraction between your parents. Similarly, something must capture your heart. The market with which you will be doing business with must have a need for what you will be bringing to fruition. Once these precepts are met, you have conceived a “concept” an idea. Write out your idea answering these two points:
#3 While doing this, you should begin the work of organizing yourself into a CEO. One of the main reasons our course lasts 12 weeks is to allow for this transformation to take place. In the beginning, the best thing that you can do is clean up and organize your house, literally and figuratively and prepare a workspace for yourself. Your workspace should be stocked with business and industry related books and magazines you can turn to during your business planning process. When you organize your space, you will be able to think clearly. Have fun with all of the organizing gadgets and apps now on the market. One which I thank the Lord for is Google Calendar and it's free.
The word “Capital” which is the root of the word “Capitalist” arises from the Latin word, “Capit” which means “Head”. It is also from which the word “Captain” and “Cap” is derived. You will be the “head” of your organization, literally in terms of your organization as a body and figuratively, and in this stage of organizing the brain, the business plan is the DNA. Using the Church, Body of Christ analogy, you will be the pastor, which means “shepherd”. Take note that shepherding was a very profitable business to be in during Jesus’ human lifetime in the Middle East and North Africa. A shepherd had to lead his herd by the best pastures and pools of water, protect them from predators and assist the breeding process and grow his flock. When he cared well for his flock, he had plenty of sheared and healthy woolen fleece to sell in the market place. His sheep provided him with milk, their fleece kept him warm during cold desert nights and the elderly members of his flock could be eaten for meat. He formed a very symbiotic relationship with his flock. As a CEO, the lifestyle of shepherd and a pastor will be very appropriate models to study and model.
The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” - 1st Corinthians 12:12-26
This passage from The New Testament has not been lifted and placed here for any evangelical purposes. Though the way in which the Christian Church has been organized and expanded across the globe to become one of the three major faiths encompassing 2.2 billion adherents in just under 2000 years is remarkable and something to consider in developing your organization. Though politics and egotistical ambitions for power and control within the organized Church has in many ways compromised the integrity of the empirical message of Christ, the faith would not have lasted as long or spread as far without the structure that it has. Perhaps you may have come from a Christian background regardless of the current state of your faith. If so, consider the ways in which it has shaped your life. Maybe you’re not trying to change the world, though if your goal is billionaire, you’ll never attain it without changing the world a little for the better. Your riches will be in direct proportion to the value you serve the world.
So how does one begin organizing a living, healthy and fit organization acting in unison and attractive to investors?
#1 You must have a cause. It took 9 months to organize the foundation of your physical body, but what was its root cause? An attraction between your parents. Similarly, something must capture your heart. The market with which you will be doing business with must have a need for what you will be bringing to fruition. Once these precepts are met, you have conceived a “concept” an idea. Write out your idea answering these two points:
- What is the need?
- What is your passion to serve it? Where does it come from? Why is it important for you to serve it?
#3 While doing this, you should begin the work of organizing yourself into a CEO. One of the main reasons our course lasts 12 weeks is to allow for this transformation to take place. In the beginning, the best thing that you can do is clean up and organize your house, literally and figuratively and prepare a workspace for yourself. Your workspace should be stocked with business and industry related books and magazines you can turn to during your business planning process. When you organize your space, you will be able to think clearly. Have fun with all of the organizing gadgets and apps now on the market. One which I thank the Lord for is Google Calendar and it's free.
The word “Capital” which is the root of the word “Capitalist” arises from the Latin word, “Capit” which means “Head”. It is also from which the word “Captain” and “Cap” is derived. You will be the “head” of your organization, literally in terms of your organization as a body and figuratively, and in this stage of organizing the brain, the business plan is the DNA. Using the Church, Body of Christ analogy, you will be the pastor, which means “shepherd”. Take note that shepherding was a very profitable business to be in during Jesus’ human lifetime in the Middle East and North Africa. A shepherd had to lead his herd by the best pastures and pools of water, protect them from predators and assist the breeding process and grow his flock. When he cared well for his flock, he had plenty of sheared and healthy woolen fleece to sell in the market place. His sheep provided him with milk, their fleece kept him warm during cold desert nights and the elderly members of his flock could be eaten for meat. He formed a very symbiotic relationship with his flock. As a CEO, the lifestyle of shepherd and a pastor will be very appropriate models to study and model.
- Professional Work Ethic & Discipline
- Scheduling and Time Management
- Lifestyle Balance
- Positive/Optimistic Mental Attitude
- The Scientific Approach
- Leadership
- Organization
- Personal/Character Development
- Faith
- Resourcefulness
#4 As you begin ironing out the details of your business, it will begin becoming clear the type of people and skills you will need to help bring your plan into fruition. Begin scouting, vetting and recruiting them at once. At this point, you should be able to sell your business concept in less than a minute with enthusiasm and then begin to talk about it in terms of what’s in it for them. If you do not have the money to pay them, which you probably will not, invite these individuals to join you as your first partners and begin forming an advisory board among them of which you will be the Chair. Each member should have a specific role on the board and while you will be the leader, as partners, they should be expected to be able to lead effectively in the role that they will be serving on your board. As the Chair, your main role will be in providing the overall direction and fostering camaraderie and teamwork among your team and maintaining a healthy morale, inspiration and motivation while you coordinate their activities to successfully achieve the objectives of your business plan. In this, you must keep your shared purpose and mission clear and before your team at all times, hence you should have a mission statement at this point, a moving a compelling one. Other responsibilities of the Chair will be strategizing ways to find money to pay for the next step ahead. Have your team only as wide as it needs to be for the task at hand. Less is more and think quality over quantity.
One of the best ways to begin finding suitable partners is through networking. Make sure you are joining the best network giving you the most optimum opportunity to run into the right people who can help you build your business. In actuality, these are your first investors, though instead of necessarily investing money, they will be investing their time, their skill, their labor and their connections which you do not presently have on your own to have a chance at a piece of the action in your business potential. Make it worth these investments. Because they will be getting in with you on the ground floor, they deserve to be compensated with some significant level of ownership up to equal with yours, if and only if their passion, devotion and loyalty is close to yours. This is why it will be important to treat them as partners while still taking the lead as your role as CEO and to speak of the business in terms of “we, us and ours” and really mean it. Depending on how big your plans are, a board size that fits the mission, sharing ownership will still cut you significant profits and they may be necessary to bring your idea into fruition to begin with. Later on, if you see their roles as no longer necessary, you can always work out an arrangement to buy them out. But for now, get the help you need. Do not be so independent as to think that you will not need the help of others, based purely upon faith in yourself, your ideas and your strong leadership.
As you can see, there is an order to the madness of organizing a business, and skipping steps, missing steps or putting the cart before the horse can cause the fragile stack of cards of your fledgling organization to collapse upon itself. It happens all the time and if you have experienced this, simply learn the order and rebuild again. Take your careful time and focused attention with each step. There is no need to be in a hurry. Nature itself is orderly, though it may seem chaotic and random. It is also never in a rush, though it accomplishes everything in its time. As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Enjoy the process.Though the time span varies, Genesis in The Old Testament and The Big Bang Theory of Evolution actually rhyme along the same pattern. First there was light, then water, then land, then vegetation, then animals and then us. Had we come first, we would have been burned up, drowned or had nothing to eat. Spring follows Winter, followed by Summer and then Auttumn. Mix this cycle and crops will fail across the globe and cause economic upheaval. Should even your heart get out of rhythm, your entire body could trip, shut down and result in sudden death. Order, it has worked for nature for billions of years. I suggest you follow the same. That order is:
The same as with your partners, from the start, school your employees in the principles of your business, provide opportunities for career progress and development and give them an incentive to care about the health of your firm besides just a paycheck. You do this by connecting the concerns of your firm to their individual concerns and get into the habit of making that connection and making it a constant reminder. Here, your pastoral or shepherd skills will come into good use. Make your firm a place where people can join to become more. Always be fair, firm and respectful with your employees.
Organization represents “O” in the G.O.L.D. principles of the The Baldwin Project, LLC. It must be important not to miss. If you do not know your next step, or can not produce any business record without a search and rescue squad, or do not know your business plan like a Supreme Court Justice should know the Constitution or a Chemistry professor can recite the Periodic Table blindfolded, take it as a red flag that you are not organized and a fall is up ahead. You are running with your shoelaces untied. Check your partners and employees regularly on their memory and comprehension of the important parts of your business manual as it relates to your core principles. Everyone should be on the same page and in perfect harmony. Check discord, disharmony and disconnects immediately. If it is you who is disorganized, quarterly make it a practice of taking a retreat, going back to your fundamentals and proceeding from there. It is a good idea to take your partners with you when you do for great bonding time.
As you begin to organize your organization into a living, breathing, healthy and fit organism, remember, uniformity is not a necessity you should aim for. The goal should always be harmony like a choir, not a military battalion. You will always be working with individuals who are as unique and beautiful as snowflakes. At this stage business will become art when you learn how to arrange them in a dynamic tapestry that works where everyone gets to shine in their particular ray of beauty that compliments one another in an ensemble. This will give your organization personality, character and spirit unlike any other organization. Always keep the organism in a mode of growth for what is not growing is dying. Do this by making excellence the order of the day and sharing the praise as you celebrate your wins together while always taking on a challenge to reach the next stage of development. Growth stands for “G” in the G.O.L.D. principles of The Baldwin Project, LLC. Who doesn’t want to be part of the winning team that is dynamic and expansive in its growth and feeling like they had something to do with it? That progress should be orderly, step-by-step, with a chain-of-command delegating your leadership to the base. Everyone should be expected to aspire to leadership by learning leadership by respecting leadership in a team environment which benefits everyone, if only being a leader of themselves as individuals at the bottom of your chain of command while at the same time respecting everyone and the roles each will play in the hierarchy of leadership. This internal growth and career promotion will go hand-in-hand with the growth and progress of the entire organization as your employees grow in their leadership and earn their promotions. Let no one who is reaching for their highest self stagnate.
As always, I end with resources which will help you in the design and development of your organization. For further study, in the Bible read: Exodus through Judges, paying close attention to the organizing strategies of Moses and his successors, 1st Samuel through 2nd Kings, paying close attention to the organizing of the Jewish monarchy, and Proverbs for life wisdom, Matthew through Hebrews, paying close attention to the development of Jesus’ ministry and development of the Church as an organization. The Art of War will teach you how to maneuver your organization to winning against obstacles and challenges. How To Win Friends and Influence People will further hone your leadership skills. As you read these texts, do not read them for indoctrination, but for examples, lessons and models of how something as powerful as religions were founded and organized.
One of the best ways to begin finding suitable partners is through networking. Make sure you are joining the best network giving you the most optimum opportunity to run into the right people who can help you build your business. In actuality, these are your first investors, though instead of necessarily investing money, they will be investing their time, their skill, their labor and their connections which you do not presently have on your own to have a chance at a piece of the action in your business potential. Make it worth these investments. Because they will be getting in with you on the ground floor, they deserve to be compensated with some significant level of ownership up to equal with yours, if and only if their passion, devotion and loyalty is close to yours. This is why it will be important to treat them as partners while still taking the lead as your role as CEO and to speak of the business in terms of “we, us and ours” and really mean it. Depending on how big your plans are, a board size that fits the mission, sharing ownership will still cut you significant profits and they may be necessary to bring your idea into fruition to begin with. Later on, if you see their roles as no longer necessary, you can always work out an arrangement to buy them out. But for now, get the help you need. Do not be so independent as to think that you will not need the help of others, based purely upon faith in yourself, your ideas and your strong leadership.
As you can see, there is an order to the madness of organizing a business, and skipping steps, missing steps or putting the cart before the horse can cause the fragile stack of cards of your fledgling organization to collapse upon itself. It happens all the time and if you have experienced this, simply learn the order and rebuild again. Take your careful time and focused attention with each step. There is no need to be in a hurry. Nature itself is orderly, though it may seem chaotic and random. It is also never in a rush, though it accomplishes everything in its time. As the old saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Enjoy the process.Though the time span varies, Genesis in The Old Testament and The Big Bang Theory of Evolution actually rhyme along the same pattern. First there was light, then water, then land, then vegetation, then animals and then us. Had we come first, we would have been burned up, drowned or had nothing to eat. Spring follows Winter, followed by Summer and then Auttumn. Mix this cycle and crops will fail across the globe and cause economic upheaval. Should even your heart get out of rhythm, your entire body could trip, shut down and result in sudden death. Order, it has worked for nature for billions of years. I suggest you follow the same. That order is:
- Organize your idea.
- Organize your space, your life and yourself into a CEO.
- Organize your mastermind team to develop and carry out your execution strategy.
The same as with your partners, from the start, school your employees in the principles of your business, provide opportunities for career progress and development and give them an incentive to care about the health of your firm besides just a paycheck. You do this by connecting the concerns of your firm to their individual concerns and get into the habit of making that connection and making it a constant reminder. Here, your pastoral or shepherd skills will come into good use. Make your firm a place where people can join to become more. Always be fair, firm and respectful with your employees.
Organization represents “O” in the G.O.L.D. principles of the The Baldwin Project, LLC. It must be important not to miss. If you do not know your next step, or can not produce any business record without a search and rescue squad, or do not know your business plan like a Supreme Court Justice should know the Constitution or a Chemistry professor can recite the Periodic Table blindfolded, take it as a red flag that you are not organized and a fall is up ahead. You are running with your shoelaces untied. Check your partners and employees regularly on their memory and comprehension of the important parts of your business manual as it relates to your core principles. Everyone should be on the same page and in perfect harmony. Check discord, disharmony and disconnects immediately. If it is you who is disorganized, quarterly make it a practice of taking a retreat, going back to your fundamentals and proceeding from there. It is a good idea to take your partners with you when you do for great bonding time.
As you begin to organize your organization into a living, breathing, healthy and fit organism, remember, uniformity is not a necessity you should aim for. The goal should always be harmony like a choir, not a military battalion. You will always be working with individuals who are as unique and beautiful as snowflakes. At this stage business will become art when you learn how to arrange them in a dynamic tapestry that works where everyone gets to shine in their particular ray of beauty that compliments one another in an ensemble. This will give your organization personality, character and spirit unlike any other organization. Always keep the organism in a mode of growth for what is not growing is dying. Do this by making excellence the order of the day and sharing the praise as you celebrate your wins together while always taking on a challenge to reach the next stage of development. Growth stands for “G” in the G.O.L.D. principles of The Baldwin Project, LLC. Who doesn’t want to be part of the winning team that is dynamic and expansive in its growth and feeling like they had something to do with it? That progress should be orderly, step-by-step, with a chain-of-command delegating your leadership to the base. Everyone should be expected to aspire to leadership by learning leadership by respecting leadership in a team environment which benefits everyone, if only being a leader of themselves as individuals at the bottom of your chain of command while at the same time respecting everyone and the roles each will play in the hierarchy of leadership. This internal growth and career promotion will go hand-in-hand with the growth and progress of the entire organization as your employees grow in their leadership and earn their promotions. Let no one who is reaching for their highest self stagnate.
As always, I end with resources which will help you in the design and development of your organization. For further study, in the Bible read: Exodus through Judges, paying close attention to the organizing strategies of Moses and his successors, 1st Samuel through 2nd Kings, paying close attention to the organizing of the Jewish monarchy, and Proverbs for life wisdom, Matthew through Hebrews, paying close attention to the development of Jesus’ ministry and development of the Church as an organization. The Art of War will teach you how to maneuver your organization to winning against obstacles and challenges. How To Win Friends and Influence People will further hone your leadership skills. As you read these texts, do not read them for indoctrination, but for examples, lessons and models of how something as powerful as religions were founded and organized.
This has been another preparatory lesson for those who want to get ready to tackle their business vision head on with The Baldwin Business Institute thebaldwinbusinessinstitute.eventbrite.com and want to get entrepreneurially fit to maximize their results, for these lessons will not be covered in class. Summer Class starts, Saturday, June 24th. Registration deadline is June 10th. There is a 10 student limit. Don't procrastinate.
