When you own a manufacturing business, nobody else checks the lot codes.
That sounds like a small thing. It isn’t. Lot codes are how you trace a batch if something goes wrong eight months from now, in a store three provinces away, on a product somebody’s child is using. Getting them right takes a few extra minutes on a run that’s already behind, at the end of a day that was already long.
And there is no version of that story where anybody notices you did it properly. They only ever notice if you didn’t.
I’ve stood in that spot more times than I can count. So has anyone who has run anything.
The name
The business is named after Colossians 3:23.
Whatever you do, or whatever your task may be, work from the soul, that is, put in your very best effort, as something done for the Lord.
I’m not going to preach at you, and you don’t have to share my faith for the rest of this to be useful. But I’d rather say plainly where the name comes from than let people assume it’s a street address.
Most translations render that middle phrase as “work heartily”, which I’ve never liked. Heartily sounds like enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the easiest thing in the world to fake for as long as someone is looking.
From the soul is a different instruction. It’s about where the work comes from rather than how it looks while you’re doing it.
Who you’re actually working for
Stripped of everything else, the verse is about who the work is for. And the honest answer most of us give, in practice, is: whoever’s checking. The boss. The board. The biggest customer. The auditor who’s due in March.
That isn’t cynicism, it’s just how attention works. Standards drift toward whoever is watching. Every operator knows which parts of their business would survive an unannounced visit on a Tuesday afternoon, and which parts need a week’s notice.
The verse proposes a different arrangement. Do the work as though the one you’re accountable to already sees all of it, including the parts nobody audits. Take that seriously and the standard stops moving. It’s the same at 6am with nobody in the building as it is when the customer is walking the floor.
I got to the same place from the other direction
Here’s the part I find strange, and it has nothing to do with faith.
I led the sale of the retailer I ran to Calgary Co-op, and then spent three years running it as one of their banners. Two organizations, two sets of habits, and my job was to get ours onto a common standard without losing whatever made it worth buying in the first place.
You learn a lot doing that. The thing I took away is this: consistency doesn’t come from the standard.
You can write an excellent standard. You can put it in a binder, build a checklist, audit against it quarterly, and report the results in a deck with a traffic light on it. It still won’t hold. A standard nobody helped build is a standard nobody owns, and a standard nobody owns needs someone standing over it forever.
The ones that hold are the ones people have taken inside. Where the person opening up does it right because that’s who they are, not because somebody might come.
Which is the same thing the verse is asking for. From the soul, not from the binder. I arrived at it through a merger integration rather than a Sunday morning, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I think it’s something true about people and work, and different traditions have found their own words for it.
What it means if you hire me
Three practical things, and they’re the reason the name is on the door rather than in a drawer.
I’ll tell you the thing your team won’t. Not because I’m braver than they are, but because they have to work for you on Monday and I don’t. My standard for the work doesn’t depend on whether you enjoy the conversation. That’s a much easier position to hold once you’ve settled who you’re actually working for.
I’ll do the unglamorous half. Most of what fixes a business is boring and invisible. The follow-up nobody chases, the process written properly, the difficult conversation had early instead of late. That work only ever gets done by people who don’t need it witnessed.
And I’ll build things you can run without me. An engagement that leaves you dependent on me is one where I’ve quietly optimized for my own income. If it falls over when I stop, it wasn’t finished.
Two digits and a colon
People occasionally ask whether naming a consulting firm after scripture is a risk. Maybe. It’s certainly a filter.
But I’d rather be legible. You should know what someone is working from before you let them near your business, and this is mine. It isn’t a promise that I’ll get it right, because I won’t, and the lot codes get checked at the end of a long day by someone who is tired and human.
It’s a reminder about where the work comes from. Which turns out to be the only thing that makes a standard hold.