10/30/24 - 2066: A God-Honoring Decision Matrix

Jim: You've tuned into IWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: We are your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What does that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: The average person makes 35, 000 decisions every day. Imagine if you asked, what would Jesus do before each of those decisions? I know that isn't realistic, and most of those decisions are not of a kingdom critical nature, but what about those decisions that you make every day that are kingdom critical? Those decisions that impact your relationship with God or impact your neighbor? What are the questions you should be asking in order to make sure you've taken those two things into consideration? Pete Ochs is here today to share his decision matrix, one that he has used to create successful manufacturing companies and used to advise dozens of other organizational leaders across the country. We're going to catch up with Pete today and learn more about his decision matrix. Pete Ochs, welcome back to iWork4Him.

Pete Ochs: Jim and Martha, it's great to be here. And I'll tell you if I'm making 35, 000 decisions a day, I'm being underpaid.

Jim: Amen, brother. What's really great about that quote - that what would Jesus do? Do you realize that comes from a book from 1895, written by a guy named charles sheldon? It's an incredible book Everybody should get a copy of that book, which is In His Steps.

All right, Pete, it's been a couple of years since you last appeared on iWork4Him. Technically you're of retirement age, right?

Pete Ochs: Wrong. (laughs) No, you are right.

Jim: Okay, but you're 65 or older. Okay. So according to the world, you're 65 or older, but you're not retired. How has God been using you recently?

Pete Ochs: Jim I'm, I am 72. Okay. And I am not retired. I actually like to tell people I'm refired. It's been interesting. Five years ago, I stepped out of the day to day of our operating companies and I turned the Stewardship of those over to my son. And I will tell you, I had told people that for 20 years, I was a steward. But at the point in time I was sitting in the lawyer's office signing the stock certificates over to my son, it was one of the hardest things I had done. And I don't think it was because I was giving up ownership necessarily, but it was because I felt I had no more value. I needed to step away.

And so I will tell you that it was a very difficult time for me. In fact, it lasted several months, but I soon got over it. I think the, I simply began to go back and recall some of the advice that my mentors had given me. And I will tell you, I think the best advice one of them gave me was to say that he liked to talk about generations and the importance of generations and what each generation should do.

And he said, zero to 25 is learning. 25 to 50 is doing and 50 to 75 is passing it on. And I think one of the mistakes I made in life was I didn't start passing it on soon enough. If you go back to Numbers and look at the Levites, it said the young men started being priests at 25, and at 50, you were to stop doing the active work. You were to help the young men, but you weren't to continue on with the priesthood as you had been. And so I think I took that and took that to heart. And for the last five years I have really been pouring in, I've tried to take that to heart as how do I pass it on? So I've really been working with other younger, primarily business people to just tell them and help them however I can.

And what does a God centered purpose driven business look like? And I can, I will tell you that I've never been, I think I've never been as excited about life as I am today. And I'll tell you one last thing here. My life verse for the, for 40 years up until two years ago was Psalm 78: 72. And it's talking about David and it says, so he fed them according to the integrity of his heart and guided them with the skillfulness of his hands.

It's a very workman like very leader, get her done kind of a verse. And I felt a couple of years ago, that was probably not the right verse for me. So I continued to plow through Psalms. And I found a verse in Psalm 71: 18 that says - now don't laugh at me here - but even when I'm old and gray, oh Lord, do not forsake me until I've declared your power to the next generation, your might to all are to come. So when you have a purpose that is really driven into you and is greater than yourself, I think that is a key to finishing well.

Martha: I love this conversation and I'm so glad that you shared that with us, Pete, because Jim actually co hosts a podcast called iRetire4Him, and it's exactly for that purpose, that it really is about refiring.

You don't have all of those years of experience to go put them up on the shelf by the football and the basketball that you have up there in your background, and just say, that was really nice. Now I'm not going to do anything. No, God gave you all of that experience to do something different with.

You don't need to be punching a clock. You don't need to necessarily be doing the same thing you've always done, but use it in a new way. And I love the fact that you just shared that you are more excited than ever because that tells me that you're really living in your calling that you are in right now. And that can give so much encouragement to all of our listeners who think they may be just gonna dredge it out and do the day to day forever but there's so much that God has in store if you're willing to walk in it. So thank you for being transparent and sharing that with all of us.

So the organization that you are now leading or that God has given, inspired you is called Enterprise Stewardship. What is that focus and what is it that you're rolling out through that new - I don't know - project of yours?

Pete Ochs: Yeah, so for, you know, for the last 40 years I've been an entrepreneur and we've owned and operated a number of businesses. And I think the last 20 or 25 years, God has really impressed on me. I would say spent probably my 30s pursuing success, I spent the 40s pursuing significance, and then God took me through a really tough time in the early 2000s and really wanted me to understand what surrender was. Now, I don't spend much time on success, I spend a lot of time being significant, but I think for me, this whole idea of coming alongside business people and having them understand the power of the platform of business. I think in one sense, it may be the last great hope in America for us to have some sanity, some Christ centeredness, some goodness, and just demonstrate the love for people in our communities.

So Enterprise Stewardship really comes alongside people and we help them implement an operating system in their business that will step them through understanding the purpose of their business, the strategy of their business, the operational excellence in their business, and how they should execute. So that's really what Enterprise Stewardship does.

Jim: We're going to hear lots more about that when we get into the second segment of our show, but you've got this decision matrix that you've rolled out that I really want to talk about in the next segment. Why is it that you felt like you needed to roll out a decision matrix? Isn't making a decision just making a decision? Why do you need a matrix? Is that just 'cause you like, PowerPoint presentations or what, what's the deal? Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, that's a matrix. Is this, is this as painful as that?

Pete Ochs: Yeah. I think James Claire really says it well. You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And I think decision making is a system. And too often we make decisions based on feeling or what we ate for breakfast this morning or a whole lot of things that don't really impact or should impact the way we make the decision. So that's why we came up with the decision matrix.

Jim: We fall to the level of our systems. Wow.

Martha: That's so powerful, and we're going to talk more about the detail of that decision matrix in just a moment. But I tell you what, I love the idea of having standards that help me to make decisions. And I also love it when someone else has done the research, made the decisions, and shared those answers with me. And that's really what you'll find when you go to our sponsor page on our website - vetted companies that love serving the kingdom and providing excellent services. So listeners, I just want to encourage you to go to iWork4Him.com/sponsor and find out who some of those companies are. I know you'll be glad you did.

Jim: All right. So Pete, what are the four questions that you ask as part of any decision, and I want to dig into them deeper, but what are those four questions?

Pete Ochs: Four very simple questions. First, first question, does it honor God? That really has to do with the principles of your life. The second question is, does it serve people? That has to do with the second thing of people in your life. The third question is, can we do it with excellence? That has to do with all the processes and the practices you have to deal with. And the last one is are we being good stewards by making this decision? And that has to do with the profit or the price of whatever we're doing.

So does it honor God? Does it serve people? Can we do it with excellence? And are we being good stewards?

Jim: Those are like core values of a company, when you ask those kind of questions. Or an organization. Are these questions that you developed? Capital three investments, you had manufacturing companies that were inside and outside of Prisons, which were incredible. We talked about that in our last show with you. In fact, we should put a note or a connection to that in the show notes, a connection to the last interview we did with Pete as he talked about that. Where do these come from? Did this happen all at once, these questions, or did you figure it out over time?

Pete Ochs: They really started with our four core values and our four core values are honor God, serve people, be excellent, be a good steward. So then we just turn those into questions. So anytime in business, we start with those four questions. And I think the key is they act as a macro filter to get us going. And then the key, of course, is to continue to dive deeper and deeper into each one of those questions and make sure you really understand what the question is all about.

Jim: Okay. So that first question is, does it honor God? Why do you ask this question first? And can you give an example of a time you said, no, it doesn't.

Pete Ochs: Yes. I don't think we have ever made a decision, we've never asked a decision where we said, if we did it, it would not honor God. Okay. I believe most of the time you can honor God in what you do. And in fact, we have the saying, we don't think God really cares what you do, but he cares deeply about how and why you do it. That said, I think if you dig a little bit deeper into that question on, does it honor God, you will find out - let's talk about how do we honor God. And I think oftentimes we honor God with the people that are near and dear to us. So in one sense, we're asking do the principles that we adhere to in making this decision, will they honor God?

Will they allow us to answer the next three questions in a Godly manner? And I think it's just, Jim, it's just this first cut, a question that says, is everything principled? Is what we are about to do a principled decision? Does it truly serve people? Can we truly do it with excellence, and are we being good stewards by doing that?

Martha: So really, it's the first litmus. It's saying, if it doesn't honor God, we don't even need to be having the rest of the conversations, right? Hopefully, people know enough about what honoring God means that they're not even br I think what you're saying is they're not bringing those ideas to the table if they're not going to be honoring God. But if they do, then let's work a little bit further through that litmus test.

So I just have a logistical question. For people that maybe they... you base these on your four core values, but they may not be the core values necessarily that are stated for an organization. But you're saying there's still a really good decision matrix to walk through, even if maybe they, they've never stated that excellence is important to them. We can all agree that excellence is a good filter, right?

Pete Ochs: Yes, absolutely. And while they're based on our four core values, they still go back to the four key questions in life. Why, who, how, and what? Those four questions, and so the why is, does it honor God? The who is, does it serve people? The what is, or the how is, can we do it with excellence? And the what is what's our ultimate impact? What's the Stewardship?

Jim: And really this goes back to how Jesus summarized all the law and the prophets when he said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. These four questions you're asking, bring that all into play. Cause it's, if you can't answer these questions then you're not, you're not meeting that, that great commandment. Love your God, love people.

So Pete, your second question is this. Does it serve people? Don't all businesses serve people?

Pete Ochs: Yes, but I think oftentimes when we answer that question, we're thinking of does it serve the customer? But also we have to, I think there are three other constituents that we need to consider: our team members. Does it serve them? Our vendors? Does it serve them? And lastly, does it serve our shareholders or stakeholders that may have an investment in our business? I also think that at times these questions, while they're outward facing and we want to make sure that we truly are serving people, we also have to look inwardly as a business.

And when we're saying, does it serve people? If I have a product, and this is one of the key questions in serving people, do I have a product that you will buy that you will want? These kinds of things. So it's not just only will it serve you? But will you buy it? Do you want to buy it? Can you buy it? Do I have I priced it properly?

So there are all these sub questions that really, if I have a new golf club and it sells for $5, 000 a piece, I'm probably not going to sell very many of them and I'm not going to serve very many people with that $5, 000 golf club. So there are all these decisions that have to be made regarding the pricing and the kind of the product and how does it work to really serve the person.

Jim: So when you were making a decision about when to take manufacturing out of the country, how did you answer that question about where you took that manufacturing, whether you went to overseas or maybe to South America?

Pete Ochs: 20 years ago, we were in a business and it was, had high labor content and all of our competitors were going to China basically and undercutting us greatly. And we really had a no choice but to look overseas. And we had two options. One is we could go to China. The second, we could go to Mexico. And when we began to, we just started answering those four questions.

The first question, does it honor God? We felt like we could honor God just as well in China as in Mexico. The second question, does it serve people? Certainly we could serve people in China, just as well as we could serve them in Mexico. In some sense, we felt like it would serve people better if we went to China instead of Mexico. And here is why. Back then, 20 years ago, the hourly rate in China was 10 cents an hour. In Mexico, it was $1 an hour, and in the U. S. it was $10 an hour. So in some sense, I could have served you better if I would have gone to China and gotten 10 cents an hour because I could have sold you a product cheaper.

We ultimately decided not to go to China. We went to Mexico. And that leads us to our third question, can we do it with excellence? We decided not to go to China because we would have had to put those wiring harnesses on a boat that would have been on the ocean for four or five weeks. They may have gotten to our customer, the original equipment manufacturer that was applying that harness to the product, and if we would have shut his line down because those products were wrong or poorly made or didn't have the quality they should, it would not have been an excellent decision for us. So you see what we did was we said, we're going to go to Mexico where it may cost a bit more, but we are going to do that because in Mexico we could make, if there was a product issue, quality issue, we could fix it in 24 hours versus six weeks. So you have to begin to massage these questions and answer them all together and not just one at a time.

Martha: That's such a good example and helping us to get inside of that and see how you level all that out. So then using that same example, your fourth question is, are we being a good steward? How would you then determine that?

Pete Ochs: Yes. So being a good steward is really the return on investment question. It's really the money question. Okay? We talked about the principle question first, and the people question, then the process question, what processes were best. Now we're at the profit, and it would have been better for us to go to China. Because we had 10 cents an hour labor versus $1 an hour labor. But at the end of the day, we really felt that it was best for our customer. And we felt that we could have a higher quality product. We're going to have to charge a bit more, but that's the reason we made that decision.

When you get down to the return on investment, it's often a bit of a conundrum because oftentimes, we just simply want to maximize the bottom line. And we are firmly in our belief that if we're going to be excellent, sometimes it may not be the cheapest product that we have to build. So there's this constant tension between those four questions that you have to balance out to figure out where you really are.

Jim: I love this decision matrix as a standard for making decisions and Marth and I have used that, really this decision matrix and choosing those sponsors, those people that support our ministry iWork4Him, iRetire4Him, the podcasts that we produce, and we've on our sponsor page highlighted those, but three of them really stick out heavily. And one of them is SaferNet for all of your, really to protect your technology and keep people from you know sending you links and clicking on those links. SaferNet really makes it so we can operate our business no matter where we are using wi fi and never worrying about it. SaferNet. com.

But we also chose Patriot Mobile because as a mobile company we wanted to honor God and the mobile company we were using wasn't honoring God because they were supporting all kinds of things like, they were supporting a non biblical view of marriage and also supporting abortion. And we didn't want to do that. But also how about our payment company and our checking company and our credit card company and who handles the payments, the donations to iWork4Him?

ePaymints. We found ePaymints, m i n t s because they honor God in how they process payments and give money back to Christian nonprofits from their stuff. So that Decision Matrix really helped us. We wanted to help you, our listeners, so go to iWork4HIM com/ sponsors and see who we've endorsed as people who really hold to very high biblical standards and answer the questions on this Decision Matrix.

Pete, there's a lot of people out there listening today that are facing critical decisions in their life right now. Inflation's causing everyone to pause, tighten their belts. I don't even know what the Fed did today because we're recording this a little bit early, but the Fed was making a big decision today about interest rates and things like that. Everybody's considering trying to lower their debt, yet debt and credit card debt is higher than ever before. How can the decision matrix aid in making personal decisions from a kingdom perspective?

Pete Ochs: Jim, I think the the biggest way it can help is all of the issues that you just brought up tend to drive us immediately to question number four. Am I being a good steward? It drives us to the money question. And without considering the other three questions, we just want to answer that last question because we're all bottom line people, right? And with inflation high, with costs high, et cetera. So I would just encourage people, anytime, particularly as a family, if you're buying a new car, building a new house buying or building a second home, to really say, start working through those decisions.

And for me, I will tell you one of the best things I did was we've been using this decision matrix now for 25 or 30 years. Okay? By answering those first few questions, does it honor God and will it serve people, it helped my wife and I to do one of the things that I think has been the most important and for us in our lives. And that was 25 years ago to really freeze our lifestyle, to cap our lifestyle. Because if we were to honor God, and just as our business grew, the easy thing for those of us who are entrepreneurs to do, and even if we just have good jobs as our salary rises, as our discretionary income rises, we tend to just eat that up and we tend to go right to question number four because we have lots of discretionary income.

It's easy for us to answer, say yes on decision number four. But I think when my wife and I really worked through those first two questions, we said, one of the ways we can avoid this trap of just saying yes on the last question is to freeze our lifestyle. So we are, not artificially, but we have built in from just a self preservation point of view that we are going to cap our lifestyle. So it forced us to say no more often to the last question than yes. And then that allowed, it freed up money to honor God in different ways to serve people and to do things with excellence.

Martha: That's such a great example, and I love that you shared that because a lot of people may have never even thought of doing that. I know that we've talked about it a couple different times on iWork4Him, but listeners, consider what God would have you do in your personal life, like Pete and his wife did.

So Pete, we talked at the beginning of the show a little bit about how you're still working. In an age where people would expect, when you stepped away from the day to day of your organization, that, of course, meant you were going to do more golfing or more whatever. And maybe you have some more free time in your life, but you are, you have clearly chosen to not be done because God has a calling on your life. Speak to our listeners that might be getting closer to what our culture expects of a retirement age and knowing though that in their heart, they're not going to be done. What can you say to them?

Pete Ochs: Yes. So if I go back to the comment I made at the very first, I think 25 to 50 is doing and I think 50 on is passing it on. And I believe that's biblical. Often talk about is there retirement in the Bible? And I haven't found that yet. And I know a lot of people are possibly looking for that. And so I don't think you necessarily need to keep doing and doing the rigorous work of doing, but I think you need to slip into a mindset of how can I pass it on?

And it's really serving, but it's serving in a different way. You don't have all the pressures of raising kids and going to work every day or running your business or doing the things, that you can now begin to give back in a very different way. And do you take a little more time for this and that?

We've got nine grandkids, so I certainly spend more time with them than I did before. But I think I have friends who have just quit cold turkey and they have not had something to go to. And I really think if you are in, if you are over 50 years of age and particularly if you're over 60, you need to be thinking, what am I going to do? What am I going to, how, what are the gifts and the talents that God has given me that I can pass on? And we all have lots of those. I think the best thing we can do is just spend some time one on one with younger people and encourage them. The more I do that, the more encouraged I am with the younger generations and what they can become.

Jim: We say often on iRetire4Him, everybody who's retiring knows what they're retiring from, almost none of them know what they're retiring to. And so you just brought up a phenomenal point.

Pete, people want to check out more about Enterprise Stewardship and what you're doing there and how they can get involved with you in their businesses and some of the businesses that you're rolling out, how do they find you?

Pete Ochs: They can go to Enterprise Stewardship dot com and go to the contact page and just type me in a little note and I'll get right back with them.

Jim: Pete Ochs, Thanks for being back on iWork4Him today.

Pete Ochs: You bet. It's great to be here. Thank you.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers, our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.