“The Lord now said to Moses, ‘Send men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to Israel.”

Yesterday we discussed the scouts that go out and look at mergers and acquisitions.  Unfortunately, there are others inside of organizations who not only go out to see what is out there but bring back information that is obtained in not the right way. Yes, there is corporate espionage that happens and we may never know of it until someone is caught stealing a patent, copying a product, or stealing a recipe. Sometimes it is not as overt as we think.  Reverse engineering is common, but should also be watched so that things are not stolen easily.  Even our talent is at risk.  Back in the day, recruiters from competitive companies would enter the lobby of another company and then steal the phone directory.  This was almost as good as getting an organization chart, which also would mysteriously end up on recruiters desks.  There is a lesson in corporate spying. If you don’t want it done to you, then don’t condone it inside your own organization.  When that new hire happens to want to show you the sales presentation or the product manual from their prior employee, do the right thing and have your corporate counsel confiscate it and send it back to her/his counterpart.  Spying is not cool.

Many times the story of Joshua and Caleb is told as “spying”, not as scouting.  That they had to sneak and bring back information, food, plants, etc. technically would make them on the spying side, but that’s not the lesson of the story.  The lesson from the book of Numbers is about not having to be validated by what men can come up with, but instead, just believe in what God says and follow Him to what He has for us.  Of course we are not to just walk around blindly, when there is information available before we make a decision, but let’s not forget that the spies of the world are doing all they can to keep us from following and staying faithful to the Lord.  Today, listen less to men and more to God.  That is information that we can count on!

Reference: Numbers 1:1 (New Living Translation)