In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins presents a key principle for building great organizations—building with the right people. This clearly begs the question of how to identify the right people.

One could infer that a way to identify the right people is to use Collins’s hedgehog principle, which combines the markers of passion, capability, and financial driver. Though Collins used the principle as a differentiator of great organizations compared to good organizations, perhaps the hedgehog principle could apply to identifying the right people. In this case, the right people would be those who were passionate about and had the capability to excel in their work. And others would be willing to pay for their services.

While passion, capability, and financial driver are commendable markers, there is a similar but more robust biblical model for identifying the right people. I refer to this model as the C4 principle. C4 is an acronym for calling, character, capability, and commissioning. Calling is the cry of one’s heart, the passion of one’s soul. Character refers to the alignment of one’s moral standards with biblical ethics. Capability denotes one’s competencies. And commissioning is the validation of God’s purpose in a person’s life by authority figures such as parents, teachers, church leaders, and managers. Therefore, my thesis is that a person who possesses C4 to perform a particular work assignment is the right person for that job.

I stressed the idea of the right person intentionally because it implies that God creates each person for specific work assignments. This concept is a corollary of the theological idea of a sovereign, intentional, and strategic God. Sovereign means that God is in charge of his universe. Intentional intimates that there are no accidents. In other words, what seems random to humans is never random to God. And strategic infers that God works everything together for his purpose. Consequently, in a universe created and governed by a sovereign, intentional, and strategic Creator, for each work assignment, there is the right person not simply a right person.

This may sound too idealistic but one must remember that in a world given over to depravity there will be resistance to God’s will. This resistance impacts the development of the right people. Therefore, it is to be expected that organizations will have difficulty finding the right people, that is, people who possess C4 for particular work assignments.

To understand how to find the right people in a fallen world, one must understand human depravity and God’s accommodation for its existence.

Theologians refer to mankind as totally depraved. By this they do not mean that mankind is totally unable to do anything aligned with the will and ways of God. Rather, total depravity refers to man’s inability to do enough good works to be acceptable with God. The fact that mankind has some limited ability to obey God’s principles is an accommodation for fallen mankind. Theologians refer to this God-given human ability as “common grace.”

Common grace is a gift that enables depraved people to exist and, on a rudimentary level, perform some useful work to serve others. Without common grace, the world would not function at all. With common grace, the world can function and even give the illusion of functioning fairly well, but in the end judgment will come and the full consequence of man’s rebellion against God will be realized.

In the meantime, mankind’s rebellion against God continues and is an enemy that seeks to sabotage efficiency and excellence. For any organization to excel, therefore, the leaders should seek to move beyond the performance facilitated by common grace by adroitly responding to sin.

This is enormously challenging in a culture given to the presupposition of Pelagianism. Pelagius (circa AD 360–418) was a British monk who asserted that mankind was not totally depraved. He claimed that mankind was, in and of himself or herself, capable of making right choices. In other words, mankind could choose to do enough good works to be acceptable with God. Pelagianism was debated and ultimately rejected by the church council at Ephesus in AD 431.¹

Notwithstanding this decision by the early church, Pelagianism continued to be embraced by many professing Christians and non-Christians, as well. Indeed, Pelagianism seems to be the common assumption in the workplace today.

But if the church fathers were correct and mankind is by nature totally depraved, then this will impair individuals from developing into the right people and therefore challenge organizations in finding the right people.

Compounding this situation is public policy that covertly presupposes Pelagianism. For example, consider the laws of protected classes in the United States. According to these laws, it is illegal to discriminate against any person based on age, disability, genetic information, race/color, national origin, religious preference, sexuality, or pregnancy.² The difficulty with these laws is the assumption that capabilty is the seminal job qualification criterion. Character is regarded as insignificant. In other words, Pelagianism is ensconced in these laws and consequently character is a non-issue. Therefore, if an employer hires someone outside a protected class over someone in a protected class based on character considerations, then the employer risks a claim of discrimination. Consequently, because of the non-discrimination laws, the safe harbor for employers is to hire someone from the protected classes who has the requisite skills with little to no consideration of character.

Labor laws based on Pelagianism can impede managers—even the most biblically oriented ones—from hiring the right people for work assignments. The risk of applying biblical principles, such as C4, is already high and will probably get higher as the categories of protected classes expand.

I believe Jim Collins is right—a key to organizational excellence is hiring the right people. But public policy ensconced with nonbiblical thinking, such as Pelagianism, is a major hindrance to finding the right people.

This is indeed a sad reality and one that makes building great organizations challenging. Nevertheless, organizational leaders who are truly committed to Christ must engage in the battle and seek to apply the C4 principle to help find the right people. Anything less will prove, in the end, to be ineffective and, at best, only marginally productive.

Christ called us to work with excellence and therefore we cannot accept marginal productivity.³ Notwithstanding the potential impediments of flawed public policy, organizational leaders must seek to find the right people and place them in the right positions so they can do the right things for the right customers for the right reasons. Only this type of leadership and management will produce the right results.

My thesis is that the right person for a particular work assignment will have C4 for the job. And in particular, that person will be in the process of character transformation. His or her character will not be limited to common grace but will be progressively maturing in alignment with biblical ethics enabling him or her to work with increasing effectiveness. People engaged in this process will be humble, submitted, and teachable. These are the right people and the right people can build great organizations.

One of the keys to facilitate building with the right people is the right public policy. Not public policy ensconced in Pelagianism, but public policy that realizes the total depravity of mankind and therefore recognizes the critical importance of building organizations with people who are being transformed, that is, people whose individual characters are being progressively aligned with biblical ethics. This requires public policy that supports the use of biblical principles in finding the right people so that organizational leaders can glorify God by building great organizations that produce excellent products and services. This is the way forward. May the Lord grant us grace to see it and to do it.

1. Shelley, Dr. Bruce L. (2013-12-03). Church History in Plain Language: Fourth Edition (p. 139). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
2. http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/type.
3. Colossians 3:22–24.

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