I believe the sentiment behind that helpful but crass phrase is true. As I wrote in my book Called to Lead: Living and Leading for Jesus in the Workplace, an incident took place early in my career at a Fortune 50 organization that taught me to make preparation one of my core values. Our staff was to meet with a few new mid-level managers to give them an overview of our department, with each supervisor covering information about their specific area of responsibility. As I recall, we pretty much all just “winged it”, and it showed. It embarrassed our leader, and he really let us have it afterwards (which we deserved). I learned from that incident to try my best never to “wing it” on anything that was important in the future.
A definition of preparation that I like is “The action or process of making ready or being made ready”. I want to “be ready” for what I have to do in order to best use the gifts that God has given me.
The Bible has much to say about preparation. Here are just a few verses to speak of being prepared in different contexts: Continue reading →