Today’s workers were children in days past. As children they were raised and trained by their parents. This is true even of orphans and adopted children. Everyone is raised and trained in some context—home of origin, foster home, adopted home, or orphanage.

During the early years of a child’s life, lifelong patterns are seeded into the child. The above verse provides a clue of the life-defining power of early training. This training instills lifelong perspective, values, principles, and practices. In other words, the worldview of a child is implanted by those providing the context for the child.

Proper training (biblical training) will prepare a child to find and fulfill his or her divinely ordained life purpose, which will lead to a life of satisfaction and contentment (Proverbs 19:23). Improper training will impede a child’s efforts to find his or her life purpose, which will lead to a life of dissatisfaction.

Part of proper training is to discern God’s purpose for each child and provide specific training to fulfill that purpose. Many people seem to believe that all children need is a good value system. While clearly a good value system is necessary, it is not sufficient. There is a divine design for each child (Ephesians 2:10) that is intended to equip the child to play his or her role in God’s meta-narrative.

The meta-narrative is God’s overarching plan and purpose for the universe. Each person has a role to play. Proper parenting is training a child to find and fulfill his or her role in the meta-narrative.

Children grow up and become workers. The vast majority of them are called to be part of organizations. Proper management and leadership should build upon biblically based parental training and will therefore help people find and fulfill their roles in the meta-narrative in the context of organizations. And when individuals in an organization find and fulfill their purposes, then the organization will find and fulfill its purpose.

Here is your business tip: Wise management will build organizations with people who are seeking clarity on and alignment with their life purposes. To do this, management will consider the background of each worker, recognizing that early childhood years are very important in shaping a worker’s ability to find and fulfill his or her life purpose. As a maxim, healthy workers come from healthy home environments. A healthy worker can easily be guided in the process of discovering his or her life purpose. For those workers whose home environments were unhealthy, however, management should look for those who are humble, submitted, and teachable. These are marks of a person who can overcome poor childhood training and be discipled into his or her life purpose. Those who cannot be discipled will need to be released; otherwise, they will become impediments to the success of the organization.