Lucho Llanca

“Sit, walk, or run. Just don’t wobble” (Zen saying) Commission is a brother to principle #1 (Purpose and Placement) and a close cousin to principle #5 (Integrity). In fact, the 52 principles are from the same FAMILY that come out of the character of God. If there is a true definition of commission, it is summed up in the name of Jesus! What ELSE can a person do, than fulfill what John 3:16 says? Can any person give more than the physical life of him? The answer may seem obvious, but it is not if his answer was “NO”.

You will see that more than giving up our physical life, we must also, if we are to be successful, give up our essence. This is where the principle becomes difficult to comply with. Nothing will take the strength out of the commission more than dishonesty. Break a promise to do something, be late for appointments, and you invite your employees to steal postage, work carelessly, and give or do LESS than they should or can. Every organization or entity has to have the full “partnership” of those involved in order to be successful. You can gain a degree of “involvement” by treating them with fear, but that is only effective when you are there, and this will lead to massive and frequent turnover of personnel. There has to be another way. It is done by “modeling the concept yourself to your employees”.

Commission comes from and is born of commission. Do to others as you want them to do to you. Henry Howard Beecher has said, “Hold yourself accountable for holding yourself to a higher standard than what other people expect of you.” That is, people must see that YOU are dedicating your life to THEM! You must see that each is yoke still together, and the whole is dependent on the individual pieces. And then, there has to be the magnitude and the value of the cause. Commission is most easily earned when the goal or cause is not easily achieved, but whose accomplishment is greatly revered. We all need to be needed, to achieve, to produce, and to create. When people can see and feel the HEARTBEAT of others toward accomplishing a task, commission is formed. It doesn’t take long to look at the success of Starbucks Coffee to determine what has established it as one of the most successful warehouse entrepreneurs in the last decade. The title of Schultz’s (the founder) book says it all, “Pour Your Heart Out on Him”. You don’t have to be around men with commitment to SEE and FEEL commitment.

They exude it. Lastly, commission is encouraged when we understand that it is born from “personal relationships. No one is going to trust a THING as much as a PERSON. What this means is that we have to have a sincere interest in the person. It has been said this way, “I always thought I was listening, but now I realize I was just watching people’s mouths move, waiting for them to finish talking so I could speak.” Stephen Covey would say that it is one of his seven habits, “Seek first to understand before you seek to be understood.” I can trust a pint of blood here and there over time. More I can’t trust several gallons of blood more than once We need to remember that the commission has to be distributed in installments over a certain time frame.

” The commission is not a one-time thing, just as marriage is not a one-time historical event. The commission is actually established over many years of trials and tribulations, where our feelings for each other are tested or what is called THE ROYAL COMMISSION!“