Happy Wednesday morning, Servant Leader.
Today I'm reminded of how much of a blessing each day brings. Just two days ago, President-elect Trump reinforced that blessing by telling Kristen Welker on "Meet the Press" that he couldn't guarantee tomorrow, let alone that prices wouldn't rise under his tariff plan. If the leader of the free nation can't guarantee tomorrow, who can?
But I digress. Today's topic comes from Exodus and is an often-overlooked passage of scripture. In Exodus 26, God gives Moses the dimensions of the Tabernacle and Tent. He guides Moses to weave and couple curtains, to use gold and brass rings, and to build a tent that houses the Most Holy (NKJV) from which God will speak with Moses. He gives this direction after Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai, where God gave him a vision of the Temple and Tabernacle. But what does this oft-glossed-over passage have to do with today's business development world? A lot, it would seem.
You see, Servant Leader, God didn't tell Moses to go build a temple with any design. He issued Moses an RFP, so to speak, with clear requirements - and He expected Moses to follow it to the letter.
Servant Leader, sometimes business development is like youth sports. We teach foundational skills to our children that they will leverage their whole sports career and then translate those skills to something as adults. In today's business development world, we tend to look with glazed eyes at the new AI toy or TTP for "selling" our proposal. Entire industries are built on "disruptive techniques" that differentiate your proposal from the next team's. But what we forget is that a well written document that fails to build on a basic business foundation is still a losing proposition - poor stewardship of the company's resources.
In God's Tabernacle Statement of Work (SOW), He listed many "shall" statements:
“Moreover you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine woven linen and blue, purple, and scarlet thread; with artistic designs of cherubim you shall weave them. The length of each curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits, and the width of each curtain four cubits. And every one of the curtains shall have the same measurements. Five curtains shall be coupled to one another, and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another." (Exod 26:1-3, NKJV)
And as far as we can tell from scripture and related writings, Moses and the Hebrews used their foundational knowledge, their "baseball 101" to build a Tent and Tabernacle that adhered to God's RFP. That's important because God later demonstrated His willingness to enforce contract's Performance Requirements Summary (PRS) when He struck down Uzzah for touching the Ark (2 Sam 6:7). Before the King David could rescue the Ark from Abinadab's house and return it to the Hebrews, they had to learn goldsmithing, weaving, woodwork - all tasks they learned and matured in the fires of Egypt.
So, Servant Leader, while this has been a creative use of scripture, I hope I haven't lost you in the simplicity of its intent.
Get the basics right, build a useful foundation first, solve the customer's problem within the confines of their requirements, then discriminate yourselves from the pack. And don't slay performance on the altar of a proposal win. We joke during proposals about things being a "winner's problem," but are we setting up our Operations team to be Uzzah?
Have a great Wednesday, Servant Leader.
