“I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” – Psalm 139:14
It was our semi-annual visit to the home office in New York, my counterparts and I, where we would gather to meet with the boss, be brought up to date on new company policies, performance reviews and goals for the future, and to exchange ideas and best practices. On this particular occasion we were each asked to give a presentation on our best marketing idea. So, one at a time my colleagues dutifully stood before the group with their slick Power Point slides, handouts, and polished presentations. But when it came my turn, I had prepared none of that. Instead, I stood up and stated simply that my great team had developed a unique “personality,” one that projected trust, integrity, and a can-do spirit, and that is what attracted people to do business with us. That was it.
In his acclaimed book The Road to Character, New York Times columnist David Brooks describes how there are two types of virtues, there are resume virtues and there are eulogy virtues. “The resume virtues are the ones you list on your resume,” he writes, “the skills that you bring to the job market and that contribute to external success.” Whereas the eulogy virtues are the ones “that get talked about at your funeral, the ones that exist at the core of your being – whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful; what kind of relationships you formed.”
Unwittingly, my brief presentation about our team’s “personality” had veered into the “eulogy” lane, and that did not go over well with the boss who wanted to hear about specific actions – resume virtues – taken to promote ourselves and our products, and how those had translated into measurable results, something that would make him look good in front of his own superiors. While eulogy virtues such as our team’s personality may be noble and true, and touch on the core of our being, neither did they produce anything quantifiable. Yet it was the one thing that set us apart, that made us unique.
Each one of us, as the Psalmist recognizes, is “fearfully and wonderfully made.” No one of us is like anyone else who ever lived. We may acquire similar knowledge and learn similar skills as someone else, but the differentiator is in our uniqueness in how God created us, which is what my team had figured out. It was the core of what made us successful, in ways not like anyone else. And that was our great marketing secret.