“I tell you the truth, when you were young, you were able to do as you liked…”

Facebook is going public this week.  It will be the largest market valued internet related IPO in history.  Around the world nearly a billion people who use Facebook will be watching and interested in how the rest of the world (or at least the financial community) values Facebook and its product and services.  It’s a very interesting time for the company and the financial markets as there are many skeptics who are doing their best to temper the market reaction.  I suspect some of the naysayers are those who aren’t able to purchase the IPO stock, but that’s a different lesson.  The day Facebook goes public, they will change as a company.  Those who have never run a public company know what I am talking about, those, like many of the Facebook leaders, who have never done so, think they understand the difference, but they won’t until it happens.  It will be a culture shock to them. Overnight, they have to grow up and that is not easy to do and with growth comes those growing pains that we forget or have never experienced.  The advice I can give to any company or team that is going to go through immediate growing up is to be surrounded by strong advisers, counsel and people who have been there, done that, and have scars to prove it. Youth is a wonderful thing, but it comes with learning by trial and error.  When you are in the public eye and scrutiny of the markets learning this, the hard way, should try and be avoided.

Jesus tells us that we have to put away things of our childhood and youth, if we are going to grow up and become wiser. You’d think it would be easy to do as all of that frivolity and wasted time and effort we’d now want to not only avoid but have never happen again.  But, as human beings we have a streak in us that doesn’t want to let go to those times, thinking, and actions.  So, we hold onto them until some situation teaches us again, the hard way, the lesson, for good. The daily work events that we are thrust into allow us a choice each and every day on how to act, react and speak.  If we are still the same person that we were years ago, last year, last month, or last week, then we might be hanging on too dearly to something that needs to be let go.  Our example that we bring to the workplace each and every day needs to be one of continued growth, developing wisdom, and the look of Christ in how we act, react and speak. A growing up step is first knowing where we are now.  Let’s today, and over the next couple of days as we read about the Facebook IPO and the stories of the challenges of their growing up, let’s reflect on our own lives and what we can be doing to face up up to who God needs us to be.

Reference: John 21:18 (New Living Testament)