Business throws us challenges that require more than morning prayers and a memory verse. Navigating when to persevere or when to pivot is one of those especially refining challenges. As the business leader, your very identity can be so closely tied to your venture that a business failure feels like a moral failure — or that the venture's success is your personal validation that you have what it takes. It's difficult to discern when to press on and when to go in a different direction.
Everyone talks about wisdom and discernment as important virtues, but between market fluctuations, shareholder interests, and employee satisfaction, Christian leaders wrestle with putting godly wisdom into practice when navigating these inflection points. We pray when faced with a difficult decision, and we also look at P&Ls, conduct user research, and run employee surveys. But when things are challenging — like, betting-the-farm challenging — how do you know if you're in a season of faithful endurance, or if you're receiving a God-given opportunity to pursue something else?
We've invited three Christian leaders who each faced make-or-break decisions in their ventures to share their experience and the wisdom they learned along the way. We pray that in these stories, you'll find wisdom that resonates with you and can be applied to the unique challenges you'll face this week.
The question that keeps leaders up at night: what does God want me to do?
But the deeper question beneath that is: who is God calling me to be?
Vineet Rajan: the deal he almost signed
Vineet Rajan is no stranger to pivot points. He spent eleven years as a Major in the Marine Corps before answering God's prompting to attend business school at Stanford. He then started a business, only to feel God say, "No — not that, do this instead." Vineet recalls asking himself: "Am I pivoting because this is genuinely right? Or am I finding an escape hatch to avoid the pain of what I'm doing?"
Now, Vineet leads Forte, the world's first mental fitness platform that builds inner strength for individuals and teams. One night a few years ago, he asked, "What does God want me to do?" It was the night before Vineet and his team were set to sign a partnership contract that had the potential to "make" their company. It had taken over a year to negotiate, and the team was ready. Four and a half years of under-capitalized, grinding work had led to this opportunity. All they had to do was sign.
After tossing and turning all night, Vineet opened his Bible to Genesis 14 — the passage where Abraham defeats the king of Sodom and his allies, rescues his nephew Lot, and recovers all the plunder the kings had taken. After everything settles, the king of Sodom says to Abraham, "Collect your spoils." To which Abraham says, "My men will take their share, but I won't take a thing, lest you say that you made me great."
Vineet could have closed his Bible and dismissed that story as just another strange Old Testament moment. But Vineet walks closely with the Lord and knew this was important — that God wanted his attention. So he listened to the caution he sensed God was communicating. Vineet called his team together and told them the story. And then he told them he didn't think they were supposed to sign the deal.
Sheeba Philip: praying for a miracle in the middle of a pandemic
Sheeba Philip experienced a series of pivot points that began when she left nearly twenty years of executive leadership roles at JCPenney, Kraft Foods, and International Justice Mission. In 2019, Sheeba used her Harvard MBA and her experience building and scaling organizations to join Akola as CEO. Akola was a faith-driven jewelry company with manufacturing in Uganda. They employed nearly 200 marginalized women, many of them widows, and were rapidly expanding with distribution in Nordstrom, Saks, and Neiman Marcus.
Sheeba and Akola's founder navigated the highs of closing an $8M seed round — and thirty days later, the lows of the coronavirus pandemic's impact on department store sales. They made the necessary business moves, like restructuring to eCommerce and changing the product assortment. Throughout it all, their team took salary cuts, Sheeba went without pay for several months, they continued to disciple the women in Uganda, and they regularly met as a team for prayer. They truly believed the Lord would do a miracle.
And then she and the founder waited for the Lord. What does God want me to do?
Andrew Clark: the identity shift that made closing possible
Andrew Clark co-founded and largely self-financed a startup, serving simultaneously as COO, CFO, and product lead. For eighteen months he pivoted the product, added capital, and covered expenses. As stressors increased, he saw that his and his co-founder's faith were not as aligned as he'd originally thought.
The organizational dysfunction was evident early on, and Andrew considered leaving. Instead, he persevered, trying to make things right. He adjusted the product, faithfully investing more time, talent, and treasure into the venture. And each new investment made leaving feel more like failure. In hindsight, Andrew sees that his co-founder's future-looking narrative was expecting success on blind faith: "If we do this, we'll be faithful and God will come through."
Andrew brought in wise counsel to speak to himself and his co-founder, but in the end, he had peace with his decision to close the business. What finally moved him was an identity shift. "I realized this is something I was doing — not who I was," he said. Once he separated his identity from the success, or failure, of his business, closing the business was the wise move.
For Vineet, Sheeba, Andrew, and every leader who faces an impossible situation, the question is: should we persevere through adversity? Or is the Lord inviting us to pivot and go a different direction?
Their stories, biblical perspective, and thoughtful questions provide a framework for the next time you're facing an impossible situation. Even if the situation feels like a no-win, we can take heart because while we're not promised success, or even smooth sailing, we are promised His presence and His peace.