Nehemiah and the Status Quo

As part of our mid-term, we are supposed to read the first few chapters of Nehemiah and the accompanying commentary from John C. Maxwell. As Maxwell points out, these chapters are absolutely loaded with leadership and management qualities. The great thing is that these characteristics are relevant and even taught today in classes - just maybe under different names. For example, when earning my Six Sigma black belt, we talked quite a bit about stakeholder analysis. The need for this step in the define phase of project management is highlighted in 2:1-9 when Nehemiah approaches King Artaxerxes and in 2:18 when he gets buy-in from the people.

Tonight, while painting under the carport, it occurred to me that Nehemiah is also a prime advocate of my latest mantra: SQS. When Nehemiah learned that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins (1:3), he "sat down and wept, and mourned for many days" (1:4). Nehemiah recognized a problem and he was pretty upset about it. When I see problems, I also tend to get pretty upset - maybe not weeping and mourning on a normal basis but there are certainly emotions. Then, I quickly try to rectify the situation - oftentimes without analyzing broader implications. Nehemiah, though, does something different.

He prays.