September 2015 Event Recap – Randy Wilcox

“Our Faith at Work – What Difference Should it Make?”

The September KIROS Monthly Breakfast at Maggiano’s in Bellevue featured Randy Wilcox, the former President of Americas of the Otis Elevator Company.

Otis is the world’s largest manufacturer of elevators, escalators, and moving walkways. Founded over 150 years ago, Otis is located in more than 200 countries and maintains more than 1.8 million elevators and escalators worldwide.

Randy worked for Otis for over 30 years, starting out as a sales trainee and working his way up to becoming the President of the Americas division.

When an accomplished professional like Randy shares about what a difference our faith at work can and should make, people listen, and listen we did.

I especially appreciated how calm Randy was as he shared his story. Right away you could see that he has a rare mix of confidence and humility.

Four Characteristics helped shape Randy’s professional career:

• Integrity
• Courage
• Humility
• Purpose

Integrity had always been a part of Randy’s foundation. Even at an early age he was honest with himself when he didn’t make the high school baseball team. With baseball no longer part of his future, Randy’s moral principles pushed him to study more with an undivided focus on becoming something special.

At the end of the day we as believers need to have Courage. Randy emphasized his point by quoting C.S. Lewis from The Screwtape Letters:

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point which means at the point of highest reality.”

Throughout life we as believers will have our virtues tested. At this point we need to have courage to make the right decision in work, family, and church. Believers live by what they believe and not what they feel. This has never been more relevant than what we are living with in today’s culture. Today’s culture seems to abide by what they “feel” as opposed to what they believe. Even in the church, we are seeing biblical-based principals traded because of how one feels. Courage is needed to ignore what you may feel and stand on the firm foundation of the rock.

“Pride despises Humility,” Randy said and gave more examples from C.S. Lewis, and Jesus. “People with pride were repelled by Jesus.” Randy shared some of the marketing tactics used by the airline industry of promoting the First Class Experience to make you feel as if you are better than others.

The strategy of making people feel as if they are better than others is used by many companies and industries. So much so that if you are humble you cannot help but to get noticed by your coworkers. Imagine that! Humbling yourself will actually raise you up since others don’t practice it. Those that are humble stand out.

Randy addressed the thought that being humble can give the impression that you are a poor leader. This is where confidence comes into play; if we are confident in our abilities, especially the ones we are good at, we can be humble and confident at the same time. If we are in a situation that we are not good at (like high school baseball), our confidence can be shaken, thus impacting our ability to lead others.

Purpose. This was the last characteristic that Randy highlighted as important in his life journey. Purpose is defined as the reason for which something is done or created; to have as one’s intention or objective.

What is your purpose?

Randy closed by admitting it’s very easy to live your life backwards…to not push through and move forward. These four characteristics can help you in your journey to get back on track with what God wants for your life. In addition, a group like KIROS is extremely valuable to keep you accountable in moving forward.