*Introduction- Running a business requires making quite a few complex and multi-faceted decisions.

Consider, for example, the task of naming a company. It can be a very tricky task. Any choice made will inevitably carry with it various pros and cons, most of which go hand in hand. Critically thinking through this decision, the task of naming a company, will accomplish two things. It will establish the importance of the subject matter especially as it correlates to my talents and interests. From a structural angle, it will surface several themes that reemerge throughout the course of this paper. In my view, the most common approach is to somehow correlate the name of the company with a specific aspect of the business. For example, if the owner decides to connect the name with cheap prices you end up with Costco, Best Buy, or the Dollar Store. This has the advantage of drawing in customers who obviously want the greatest deal, which will help get the business off its feet and past the infant stage. But one down side is that competitors may force the prices so low that, in order to preserve the integrity of your name, you will lose profit and in the long-term the company will become unsustainable. Moreover, nothing in the name affirms anything about the nature of the products being sold. How will customers know what commodities the store has to offer? If however this pitfall is dodged and the decision is made to name the company based on the merchandise distribution, such as Toys R Us, there is always the potential problem of internal expansion that outgrows the products that are originally sold. In that case, enormous success would only make the name look outdated at best. Similarly, the integrity of the corporation is slain on the altar of narrow-sightedness. Counting eggs before they hatch is rarely a safe decision when considering a business title. Lets move away from big store industries and think about non-profit organizations. Suppose the name is linked to those involved with the program, as is the case with Teen Challenge, a Christian rehabilitation ministry for drug and alcohol users. The strength is that the narrow scope of intended audience, explicit in the name, is likely to draw many of those in that target age group. This helps marketing development because the advertisements can be custom-designed specifically for teenagers. Yet the weakness lies on the other side of the coin. Since its inception Teen Challenge has become so successful that they had to steadily broaden the age group of those involved until not only teens were admitted into treatment but also emerging adults. Eventually everybody including senior citizens was allowed! Once again, the organization has exceeded the parameters of the name. Instead of biting off more than they can chew (as was the case earlier), Teen Challenge underestimated their ability for rapid population progress showing that they suffer from far-sightedness. Counting eggs before they hatch is one thing, but leaving room for rapid reproduction is quite another. The former is presumptuous; the latter is wise. On the other side of things, there is always the possibility of an owner fully taking into account the future growth of a company. Then the owner decides on a broad and general name, such as Hardware Hanks, even though the company has yet to manufacture all products pertaining to the hardware industry. What if a customer strolls in looking for a specific brand name power tool and is disappointed to discover the store does not carry that particular item. In that case, business is lost 1

and reputation is forsaken at the expense of an overgeneralized name. Simply put, customer expectations are unmet because the name sells more than customers can buy. Transparently, the task of selecting a name for a company is not that simple. Enter my story. It was the summer of 2007. I was a sophomore in college. I was unemployed and, like all students, I desperately needed a job. Actually, what I really needed was money. After applying for a few food industry jobs in the area and not hearing back, the entrepreneur side of me decided to take things into my own hands. If nobody wanted to hire, then I would make things happen myself! Then came the bright idea: Craigslist, an online local community network that provides free advertising for services. But what type of services could I possibly offer? I am just an ordinary guy. I cant fix gadgets. In fact, I can barely change my oil. Im certainly not tech savvy. How do you use Microsoft excel? And I dont know the first thing about babysitting kids. I have a hard enough time managing myself! Well, that pretty much rules out all the options But what about manual labor? I have always mowed my parents lawn and even the neighbors sometimes. I occasionally work in the garden. I love to lift heavy objects. And the idea of physical exercise as a job really gets me going. Yeah, thats it! I can post advertisements about my ability to do lawn maintenance like raking leaves and garden work. I could even help move furniture, and shovel snow in the winter. One thing led to the next and the next thing I know, I have a full-time summer job. Amazingly, I could not even keep up with all the work I was offered. Thats when the second aha moment happened. The following summer I realized that I needed to get smart about this. Wasting perfectly good job opportunities by saying, Im too busy is simply not how I roll. What about my friends? Of course! They could help me do the work and I could take a cut since I found the job. And that is exactly what I did. Furthermore, I even stumbled across a section on Craigslist that offers employment for those seeking work. Upon posting an advertisement, my entire mailbox was full of inquires with resumes of those who needed work. Isnt this an interesting reversal? Its nice to be on the other side of things for a change. But then again, being on the other side requires a lot more work. For instance, I had to think through the nuts and bolts of the financial side of business, in reference to both workers and clients. Plus being a leader, especially a Christian leader, requires thinking through various character issues. Concerning workers, what are fair wages to pay my employees? Should I pay them all the same amount? If not, do I pay more for landscape experience? What about how long they have worked for me? Do I let the employees know I am making more money than they are? If so, when should I do this? Why should I do this? Concerning clients, do I charge by the hour or by the job? Should all tasks have a standard price rate? If not, on what basis do I charge more for certain tasks? Should I charge for gas mileage? If so, how far away is my limit? Should I have a minimum number of hours per job site? If so, what should it be? Concerning character, can I make exceptions to these rules? What does that say about my integrity? Is it just being a stickler or is there a purpose for such consistency? Why does God keep his word? Under what circumstances does he make allowances for people? Does this mean I have a right to 2

modify the policies? These are just a sampling of questions I had to wrestle with and still struggle through. I can only mention them in passing here, but more will be said later on about some of my troubling situations in these matters as well as the ethical issues surrounding these questions. Hopefully some light will be shed on the complexities of these quandaries. Now back to the story. A few years passed. Then I realized that I needed to be more professional. This meant developing a website, getting business cards, handing out flyers, filtering through employees with higher standards and gaining a greater competence in landscape tasksto name just a few. Thinking of a name for the business was also an issue. After all, a business is what it became as my original idea snowballed. It gained mass in customer demand, velocity with more employees, and momentum due to new ideas. But what kind of name should be chosen? There are so many possible routes to take. One thing I knew for sure: I wanted it to have a subtle Christian overtone, but nothing too overt like Jesus-Freak Landscapers. After all, a majority of clients indicated that they chose my services because of the religious component. I never exactly knew what that meant, but I would imagine they assumed (rightly!) that my workers and I would be honest, respectful, and responsible. Although handing out tracks was a little too much for some people, the general response to my Christian background was positive. So I definitely wanted something Bible related in the title. Additionally, I did not want the name to be in any way associated with my personal identity. I always thought it was tacky to see a truck drive by with a Matts Lawn and Landscape sign on the side. How unoriginal. So I critically thought through some of the factors involved with naming a company, particularly those described above. Finally, after getting a tad bit frustrated about the tension of allowing the potential for growth but not wanting to surpass the confines of a specified name, I decided to go for something tangentially related to the services we offer. His Workmanship Landscaping. Short and sweet. It had nothing to do with my personal identity, was related to employing male laborers, was specific enough to identify what we do, but broad enough for future progression. And best of all, it is based on a Bible verse. For we are Gods workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Here you have the company slogan too, Doing good workone customer at a time. The company name does carry religious connotations, but nothing too explicit because, after all, who is His anyway? In this way there is no offense toward non-Christian sensibilities. Plus, only someone who is biblically literate would pick up on the allusion to this verse anyway. So there you have it: the short version of how His Workmanship Landscaping got its name and the evolution of its existence. These bits of information are only relevant to this capstone project insomuch as they underscore some of the topics that recur at significant junctures further down the pages. In other words, my hope is that it will serve as a kind of introduction to the literature review section in particular, and for that matter, the whole creative project in general. Regarding the literature review in particular, there is a great need for the 3

owner of a company to get a better grasp on the stage of life the employees find themselves in. What questions do they ask? What struggles do they face? Given the nature of His Workmanship, this comprises knowing more about emerging adulthood. A section on this will certainly help me identify with the workers, but it wont help out much in my need to construct an entire worldview on vocation. Such a vast construction requires exploring a theology of vocation through a biblical and theological framework. What is the overall metanarrative of Scripture? How should it frame my understanding of vocation? Once these questions are handled, the practical application question follows: how can I live out my Christian faith in an ever-increasing secular world. What does it mean to be a Christian in this world and how will the convictions that come from this worldview this trickle over into His Workmanship? This is precisely where the nature of leadership must be factored into the equation. Good quality leadership plays an essential role in running a company and is no less essential for making decisions regarding the ins and outs of how to do things. These questions and more will be probed a bit deeper in the paragraphs that follow. This will be achieved by conducting a broad survey of the relevant literature for each individual topic. Throughout this process, pride of place will be given to themes that have direct correspondence with the present state and future prospects of His Workmanship.