day 2358: Team Responsibility

“If the entire Israelite community sins by violating one of the Lord’s commands, but the people don’t realize it, they are still guilty.

For the past month we have read of the horrors of what happened over decades within the gymnastics community.  By association that the doctor was a professor and on the staff of Michigan State University, the entire University became embroiled in the crimes committed, causing the President of the University and their Athletic Director to resign (I expect there will be more).  The entire Board of Trustees of USA Gymnastics also were forced to resign. All, because of the actions of one man who had he never had committed these crimes, none of this would have occurred.  It is a very strong reminder that what members of our team do, day in and day out, have profound consequences on the rest of our company and organizations.  Something was amiss in the values and principles both at USA Gymnastics and MSU that what happened could have lasted for so long without it having been addressed years earlier.  Whenever we have doubts about what is happening inside our organizations, look back at the values stated and be sure that we are living up to those and that they are being utilized.  If our values are  honesty and integrity, but no one ever brings forward a challenge of those being lived up to, then it means that someplace in the organization someone is withholding the actual truth.  Because, none of us, no matter how good we are, has 100% honest people.  If it is all quiet, all the time, then something is too good to be true.

As employees in a company or organization, we own the problem of what is happening around us.  That is because it is us, each one of us, adding up to the whole that makes the reputation of the company and what is truly our culture. When we don’t live up to our company’s values, our own values, or to God’s values, we put the whole team at risk.  It’s bad if any person does this, it is worse when it is us because as Believers on God’s bigger team, striving to bring glory to God through our work, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Reference:  Leviticus 4:13 (New Living Translation)

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