Let’s begin our implementation focus by looking at the leadership practices which Reichheld’s research determined to be common among companies enjoying the greatest loyalty from customers and employees. Loyalty Rules highlights business practices that read like a C12 playbook, including the Golden Rule, pursuing excellence, simplicity, honesty, fairness, respect, personal accountability, and performance pay. These traits were distilled into six ‘loyalty principles’ to help to shape metrics, compensation systems, organizational development, strategy, and operations. As we review each element, make a mental note as to how your company fares.

Six Pillars of Loyalty

 Play to win/win: Profiting at the expense of partners is a shortcut to a ‘dead end’! Focus solely on opportunities/niches where you can become the best. Align partners around overarching objectives to upgrade the customer experience, and insist on win/win solutions. Shed distractions, sharpen plans and processes, and teach win/win behavior. Paul also taught this, saying, “Let each of you ‘look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.’” (Php 2:4).

 Be picky: Membership is a privilege! Loyalty requires making choices. Cultivate business relationships only when both sides can provide special value or you’ll soon dilute your value and be special to no one. Choose employees, customers, and suppliers carefully, through a win/win lens. Invest in their success and stick with them for the long-term… if they earn the privilege through performance. Loyalty is a two-way street!

 Keep it simple: Complexity is the enemy of speed and flexibility! Clarify the values and rules that govern all decisions. Use small teams to maximize responsiveness, flexibility and accountability. Maintain simple, stable, visual scorekeeping. Reduce overhead ‘interference’ by growing your business without growing HQ staff. Focus on continuous improvement and ‘the future.’ Remember, whatever doesn’t add customer value is waste!

 Reward the right results: Worthy partners deserve worthy goals! Align performance targets so that all partners stretch, together, for worthy goals. Share the benefits while strengthening the company. Don’t confuse long-term value with short-term profits, or loyalty with tenure. Measure the right things and fix ‘misalignments.’ Reward loyalty among employees, suppliers and customers with win/win growth and development opportunities.

 Listen hard, talk straight: Long-term relationships require honest, two-way communication and learning! Loyalty is based on trust, and trust requires reliable and accurate information. Deepen working relationships using feedback tools and joint forums to drive improvement. Listen to input, prioritize issues, and act on what you hear. Shared learning and understanding yields clearer priorities, coordinated actions, and superior results. Nothing magnifies the ‘loyalty effect’ like trust rooted in an open exchange of information and ideas. Confront ‘brutal facts’ in a way that exemplifies the truth being spoken in love (e.g., regular report cards, real-time metrics)!

 Preach what you practice: Actions often speak louder than words, but together they’re unbeatable! Clarify your principles and communicate them with passion. They’re the gravitational center for organization focus and loyalty, enabling your partners to understand, buy in, and become truly loyal. Put it in writing, talk the walk, continually teach and reinforce these practices. Celebrate internal heroes, share edifying stories and illustrative case studies. Continually cast the vision of where we’re going and how we’ll get there, based on mutually earned loyalty.

These tumultuous days may be the greatest season of our lives… the most fruitful that we have ever known! It will all depend on how we perceive them. It’s been said that “The circumstances of life don’t make me who I am; they reveal whose I am.” Light always shines brightest in darkness. This is our time! Brothers and sisters, we were created for this day!

Am I just ‘whistling through the graveyard’ or is this for real? Let’s talk about it.

Considering our Reality

If God has a plan for our lives – and He surely does – and if He will judge our performance versus that plan – and He surely will – then, if He is a just God, He must provide all we need to do what He asks. God is perfectly just (Dt 32:4, Dan 4:37, 1Jn 1:9)! Therefore, we’ll never lack His perfect provision to do what He asks. He is never limited by worldly measures or circumstances. Remember, He is the One who fed over three million people for forty years in the middle of a desert! He didn’t need food stamps, businesses, or anything outside of Himself to accomplish this. He is the sovereign and omnipotent Creator and Sustainer of all that exists. He is never limited from doing anything. As His children and joint heirs in Jesus, with daily access to the throne, neither are we! Our only prerequisite is that we’re to be doing what He asks or, saying it another way, walking in His will for our lives.

We do have a problem though. Our culture has been so leavened by the poison of the “prosperity gospel” that we‘ve come to believe that walking in God’s will, or doing what He asks, will lead to a life absent of difficulty or challenge. It’s amazing that in all of our personal experience or knowledge, in all of history, and in all of the Biblical record, not one person has ever achieved or experienced such a life. Think about that last statement for a moment. No one, godly or ungodly, escapes the trials and cycles of life. It is a fool’s errand, created in the depths of hell, to blindly pursue an unobtainable or unsustainable, non-Biblical life! So many are discouraged and disillusioned by chasing unrealistic expectations! God never promised us such a self-imagined utopia. He simply says that He will never leave or forsake us.

The knowledge that (1) our heavenly Father is a good God who always “works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Ro 8:28) and (2) there is no power on earth or in heaven that can stand against Him, is our foundation for living in and through the inevitable up and down cycles of life. Paul’s encouragement in Romans 8 actually follows a discussion of suffering! In amazing ways, suffering draws us closer to God as we learn, first-hand, that “we are more than conquerors” and that nothing in all creation can separate us from His love! Armed with this certainty, we’re able to experience joy and contentment in the midst of the chaos of life in the flesh and the rough and tumble marketplace! Nothing stays the same in our life experience. Struggle always follows triumph, and vice-versa. There’s no way to avoid the reality of our fallen world. The secret is to learn to live above it… in it, but not of it. This can happen only if we live our lives with a true eternal perspective while trusting in a good and sovereign God.

Now, think about this… God knew exactly the environment and circumstances we would face when He sent you and me to earth at this moment to be His Ambassadors! He chose us for this time! It’s no accident that you and I are where we are, doing what we do, just now. He placed us precisely here, in time and space, and planned for us to do things for Him in the midst of the circumstances we find ourselves in right now!! And we’ll always have all we need to do all He wants!

   Throughout Proverbs there are many themes which are repeated for emphasis and presented in different ways to help us see their application more clearly. Examples of this repetition technique are seen in the warnings given across such disparate areas as: the folly of disobedience, sexual sin, rash speaking, laziness and the dangers of debt. The book breaks into 31 chapters, which makes it very suitable for a monthly ‘chapter-a-day’ study. In fact many believers have made it their practice to continuously read through the Proverbs this way for months or even years at a time, employing the repetition technique in their desire to hide these truths in their heart. When such a daily practice is undertaken for any sustained period of time Proverbs’ recurring themes become clear.

A Theme Intended to Get Our Attention

  One theme that is of particular interest to those of us called by God to lead businesses is the call to look for counsel. Counsel in this context means meaningful advice. The most cursory scan reveals more than 20 references to this topic within Proverbs. Here are just a handful:

“A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.” Pr 1:5

“Give instruction to a wise man and he will be wiser still.” Pr 9:9

“Where there is no counsel the people fall; but in the multitude of counselors there is victory.” Pr 11:14

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.” Pr 12:15

“Poverty and shame will come to him who disdains correction, but he who regards reproof will be honored.” Pr 13:18

“Without counsel plans go astray, but in the multitude of counselors there is victory.” Pr 15:22

“He who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment.” Pr 18:1

“For by wise counsel you will wage your own war; And in a multitude of counselors there is safety.” Pr. 24:6

  These are just a fraction of the many Biblical examples exhorting us to pursue counsel which we could cite. The clear emphasis of God’s Word in this particular area needs to be taken seriously and soberly. We truly disregard it at our own peril.

  The reason we need wise counsel is that it is so hard to know our own hearts. The Bible says it this way: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it”? (Jeremiah 17:9) The innate ability to deceive ourselves is resident in every one of us. As humans, self-justification comes as a part of the package. We are able to justify almost anything we want when we are left to our own devices. There is no doubt about it…we need help and protection in this area!

  Of course it isn’t only counsel per se that we need. We need Godly Counsel, God’s very truth and wisdom for application to our life. There are many possible sources of counsel but they are not all equally valuable. In fact, some counsel can be terribly harmful and, in fact, devastating to us. In our culture there are many, often attractive, sources of ungodly counsel. We may not realize it but the devil often works his distractions from God’s purpose for our lives through the suggestions or counsel of other people. Counsel that will be truly helpful to us and guide us into the things of God must originate in the heart of God. Many will speak to us, but not all are of God. It makes an enormous difference whom we seek out and listen to. Ideally, seek unity of response from a number of trustworthy Christ-centered advisors when dealing with important issues.