When a Plan Comes Together

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them... maybe you can hire The A-Team.

Sergeant "B.A." Baracus regularly played the hero in the '80s A-Team TV series. He was fearless and relied on brute strength to solve his problems. There were few he couldn't overcome, but the resulting destruction often created as many problems as it solved.

Enter Hannibal Smith, the tactician leader of the crew, who preferred a disguise and a more calculated approach to his demolition-savvy partner. "I love it when a plan comes together" was his preferred catchphrase, demonstrating his desire to outthink his opponents and rely more on brains than brawn.

Wisdom and strength together enabled the success of the A-Team. It is the combination of both that breeds success, but they present in very different ways and with differing outcomes.

Wisdom lives in decision-making, process, planning, strategy, knowledge, and insight. Strength lives in ability, energy, resources, capital, relationships, assets, and action.

On their own, each tends to fall short. Wisdom without strength is insightful theory without traction: a tortured soul, overlooked and discounted, frustrated with understanding dynamics but unable to affect change. Strength without wisdom is ready, fire, aim. A bull in a china shop, frustrated with lots of activity and little to show for it.

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

The Underestimated Value of Wisdom

Strength has long been celebrated in almost every culture above other attributes. Might has been the impetus for admiration and leadership, despite a lack of wisdom in many cases, and the results have been mixed at best.

A cursory look at history (political leadership, the onslaught of pastoral failures, business leaders who've rapidly scaled their companies without concern for fallout) demonstrates that strength alone, though often at least temporarily successful, does not make up for a lack of wisdom. Yet still, we value strength over wisdom. In our businesses, we staff for strength but rarely for wisdom. Wisdom is not baked in but outsourced to external professional services: counseling, coaching, consulting.

Strength is visible and tangible. It draws attention, and we are willing to invest substantially to develop and admire it. Americans spend well over $100B a year on sports. The fitness industry has surpassed $100B and continues to grow. When powerful people endorse a product, we spend whatever it takes to attain it ourselves because we want to be perceived as powerful in the same way.

Wisdom Is the Secret Sauce

Wisdom doesn't get the same screen time. It doesn't create a stir, and our culture doesn't celebrate it in the same way. Strength is accessible, fungible, transactable, and commodifiable. But wisdom is required to build something that lasts, to build something excellent and beautiful.

Strength can plow ahead, break down barriers, open doors, create opportunity, and generate results. Wisdom addresses if, how, and when results should be generated. It informs strength when to plow and which rows, which doors should be opened and how hard they should be kicked, and which opportunities will produce the best results.

History and the ancient teachings implore each of us: if you must choose, choose wisdom before strength.

It takes wisdom to build a house, and understanding to set it on a firm foundation; it takes knowledge to furnish its rooms with fine furniture and beautiful draperies. It's better to be wise than strong; intelligence outranks muscle any day. Strategic planning is the key to warfare; to win, you need a lot of good counsel.

Wisdom puts more strength in one wise person than ten strong men give to a city.

One wise person's strength, gained through wisdom, is greater than ten strong men who lack it. Wisdom not only builds strength; it enables efficiency and effectiveness and helps the wise to succeed.

Wisdom Is Worth the Investment

Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.

Our businesses, churches, and organizations are often built on the backs of the powerful and energetic, whose broad shoulders can carry the weight of the work, create a following, and make things happen outside the reach of others. Every worthwhile effort needs a strong leader to tear down walls and drive through difficulty.

But it is folly when strength works alone, regularly leading to compromise and the vulnerable being run over along the way. Wisdom and strength in partnership together bring justice and flourishing. They bring shalom.

We were not made to go it alone. Collaboration matters. Finding the right team matters. Building the right board matters. Filling the gaps in your organization with great advisors matters.

The Book of Ecclesiastes captures it plainly: wisdom's whispers in the quiet are better than the mighty's shouting to the crowds.

There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. Wisdom is better than might, though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools.

Who wants to be poor, alone, forgotten, and unheard? Yet the poor wise man's words, though free, far surpass in value those of the strong leader.

Like the A-Team, success is found when wisdom and strength work in partnership. Brute strength offers expediency but yields less than favorable results. Wisdom imagines a path forward but gains no traction alone.

Together, they bring justice and flourishing. They bring shalom.