Page 186 - The Bible On Leadership

172 THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP

those in authority, particularly those who have the power to take away
your job or diminish your influence. Roger Enrico, CEO of Pepsi-
Cola, states, ‘‘One of the things we look for when we are assessing
people on their way up is, ‘Do they have . . . the guts to recommend
what might be unpopular solutions to things.’ ’’ 22
Hershey Foods believes in this type of risk-taking so strongly that
they have established ‘‘The Exalted Order of the Extended Neck.’’ Ex-
plains CEO Richard Zimmerman, ‘‘I wanted to reward people who
were willing to buck the system . . . to stand the heat for an idea they
23
really believe in.’’ Winners have included a maintenance worker who
devised a method for cleaning a machine midweek without losing pro-
duction time, despite other workers’ protestations that ‘‘it couldn’t be
done.’’
One man in the Bible who could easily qualify for ‘‘The Exalted
Order of the Extended Neck’’ is Nathan, a subordinate of the mighty
King David. Nathan not only had the courage to deliver ‘‘negative
feedback’’ to the ruler of the nation (would that Richard Nixon had
had such courageous followers), he also knew how to deliver this feed-
back so that it would be accepted and not denied.
Nathan had watched while King David had sent a man named Uriah
to certain death, assigning him to the front lines of the battle, so that he
could take Uriah’s widow as his own wife. Nathan knew he could not
confront the king directly about his misdeeds (at least initially), so in-
stead he told him a parable:
‘‘There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other
poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, but
the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb . . .’’(This was a
veiled reference to King David’s many wives and Uriah’s one wife.)
‘‘A traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from
taking one of his own sheep to prepare a meal for the traveler . . .
Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and pre-
pared it for the one who had come to him.’’
David, oblivious to the true identity of the rich man (himself ), ex-
ploded with anger, ‘‘As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this
deserves to die.’’