Divine Management: If Jesus Were a Tech Leader Today

In the spirit of Easter reflection, I've been pondering a question that borders on corporate heresy: What if Jesus joined today's cutthroat business world as a tech leader? How would his ancient wisdom disrupt our modern, metrics-obsessed corporate landscape?

The Unexpected Hire

Imagine the LinkedIn notification that sends HR into a panic: "Jesus of Nazareth has joined your organization." The resume was bewilderingly unconventional—33 years old, carpenter background, zero tech certifications, not a single Harvard Business Review article to his name, yet somehow he passed the cultural fit interview with flying colors. The Applicant Tracking System tried to reject him automatically, but the file inexplicably processed anyway.

Despite the executive team's skepticism ("His KPIs from Nazareth look questionable" and "What relevant experience does overthrowing money-changers bring to fintech?"), he's brought on as both an AI ethics consultant and project manager after a board member had a strange dream.

His first day email signature raises eyebrows across Slack channels: "I am the way, the truth, and the life cycle management solution. Also, my pronouns are I/AM."

Fair warning - you need to know your Bible, to appreciate what follows hereafter.

The Disciples as His Cross-Functional Team

Jesus approaches talent acquisition in ways that make LinkedIn recruiters weep. While other managers endlessly poach from FAANG companies and insist on Ivy League degrees, he walks along the shoreline of conventional industries, approaching fishermen at their boats: "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of scalable solutions—no bootcamp required."

His team-building makes the DEI committee both thrilled and terrified:

• Peter: Impulsive but passionate engineering lead who keeps failing upward despite repeatedly denying project failures

• Matthew: Former tax collector turned finance specialist (talk about a controversial career pivot)

• Thomas: The skeptical QA tester who doubts every feature until he physically pokes it with his finger

• Judas: Promising hire with excellent PowerPoint skills, though concerns about his commitment to company values and tendency to schedule mysterious off-calendar meetings with competitors

• Mary Magdalene: Brilliant UX designer constantly overlooked in meetings despite having the best ideas in the room

During standups (which never run over 15 minutes, miraculously), he reminds them: "The last shall be first, and the first shall be last—just like in our deployment queue and year-end bonus distribution." This creates visible discomfort among the middle managers used to hoarding credit.

Agile Miracles: Doing More With Less

The project faces constant resource constraints that would make McKinsey consultants break into hives. When 5,000 stakeholders unexpectedly show up for a demo with only enough content for a small focus group, Jesus breaks down the available materials, distributes among teams, and somehow everyone receives a complete presentation with twelve slide decks of leftover content.

Meanwhile, the budget that was supposed to last three years is about to run out in three months. The CFO is apoplectic until Jesus introduces his revolutionary water-to-wine algorithm—taking mundane customer data and transforming it into intoxicating insights that make the C-suite drunk with excitement. The ROI dashboard, previously flat-lining, suddenly shows 1000% improvement.

When global tariffs threaten the supply chain for their hardware components, Jesus calmly suggests, "Let's make the loaves and fishes approach work for semiconductors too." The procurement team is still trying to figure out how they're sourcing components from both Taiwan and China without paying a single dollar in new tariffs.

As a particularly tight deadline approaches, creating mass panic in Slack channels, he's spotted walking calmly across the turbulent waters of the fast-approaching milestone, his project management software showing all tasks miraculously on track. "Take courage. It is I. Do not be afraid of the timeline," he messages the team while simultaneously resolving 40 JIRA tickets with a single click.

The Parables as Business Cases

In the boardroom, executives visibly struggle with his unconventional slide decks, which contain zero pie charts and refuse to use the approved corporate template:

"The kingdom of digital transformation is like a mustard seed that someone took and planted in their legacy system. Though it begins as the smallest initiative, requiring minimal venture capital, it grows to become a platform where all the company's applications can nest in its branches." The VC partners exchange glances—this contradicts everything they learned at business school about blitzscaling and burning runway.

His Good Samaritan customer service training becomes required viewing despite the Chief Revenue Officer's objections: "Which of these three was a neighbor to the user who fell into trouble with our product? The premium enterprise client who passed by? The platinum partner who averted their eyes? Or the small non-profit who stopped to help?" The moral is clear—your true customers include those your competitors have left in ditches, even if their lifetime value calculator shows $0.

For failed product recovery, he tells of the Prodigal SaaS Solution that burned through venture capital on extravagant Super Bowl ads and celebrity endorsements before returning to its original value proposition. "Kill the fatted AWS server instance! My product was dead and is alive again!" When the CFO asks about the sunk costs, Jesus mysteriously changes the subject.

His AI ethics parable causes particular consternation: "What good is it for a company to create the most advanced AI in the world, yet forfeit its soul? For what can a startup give in exchange for its soul?" The Chief AI Officer nervously hides the plans for their autonomous weapons division and autonomous content moderation system that was designed to replace the entire Trust & Safety team.

The Temple Cleansing as Organizational Change

Quarterly results reveal complacency worse than a government agency on a Friday afternoon. The "innovate or die" posters on the wall are covered in dust. Jesus enters the main office during a particularly pointless meeting about optimizing the meeting schedule for discussing meeting optimization.

In a scene that would make even Netflix's "Succession" writers blush, he begins overturning standing desks, designer chairs, and whiteboarding sessions where "synergy" appears fourteen times: "My organization should be a house of innovation serving our communities in Africa, but you have made it a den of bureaucracy and performative philanthropy!"

He marches into the company store, where employees are forced to buy company-branded merchandise at inflated prices, and dramatically unplugs the $12,000 espresso machine: "Is it not written: 'My house shall be called a house of all nations,' yet you've created a corporate culture where only Patagonia vests are welcome?"

The disruption creates enemies faster than a reply-all email chain. Change management consultants (billing $400/hour) whisper in corners: "How can we maintain our billable hours if he keeps simplifying processes and insisting on actually helping people?"

Middle managers complain in a flurry of passive-aggressive emails: "We've always done it this way since our last reorganization six months ago. Besides, what does actual impact have to do with our ESG reports?"

The Global Tariff Compliance Officer, whose entire job consists of finding loopholes, is particularly incensed: "If we actually start paying fair wages in our overseas operations, how will we maintain our profit margins while looking ethical in our annual report?"

The Last Supper Sprint Retrospective

As the fiscal quarter ends with the board growing increasingly hostile, Jesus gathers his team for a retrospective in the only conference room not named after a Greek god. Breaking artisanal sourdough from the overpriced bakery downstairs and pouring natural wine (to the horror of HR who had mandated a dry workplace), he reviews accomplishments while acknowledging the betrayal risk in the project.

"One of you will hand our strategic plan to competitors," he says calmly while the analytics dashboard shows unusual data transfers from a company device.

Stunned silence follows before a flurry of questions: "Is it me? Should I update my LinkedIn profile? Will I at least get a good reference letter?" Three disciples immediately enable two-factor authentication on their laptops.

While the chief legal counsel is drafting NDAs in the corner, Jesus takes the role of servant-leader literally, shocking everyone by washing their keyboard-callused hands with actual water instead of sanitizer. The Head of Employee Experience tries to intervene—"We have a specific protocol for handwashing as outlined in section 37B of the employee handbook!"—but falls silent when Jesus explains, "The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves... unlike your current 'reverse mentoring' program where senior executives pretend to listen to junior staff."

When the bill for the food arrives, he breaks it down equitably by salary rather than equally by headcount, causing several directors to suddenly recall urgent meetings elsewhere.

Crucifixion by Committee and Stakeholders

The executive steering committee convenes in the penthouse boardroom (despite the company-wide email about cost-cutting measures for all non-executive floors). Market forces are represented by Pontius "Profit" Pilate presiding, fresh from his CNBC interview about "tough choices in challenging markets."

The AI Ethics guidelines Jesus proposed—particularly the "treat others as you would want to be treated" algorithm and the "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a billionaire founder to exercise humility" recommendation—threaten established business models and executive compensation packages.

The Chief Growth Officer presents a damning PowerPoint: "His insistence on actually verifying that our AI doesn't hallucinate will delay our launch by THREE WEEKS. The market won't wait!" The Head of Global Operations adds, "His tariff transparency initiative would reduce our margin by 0.4%! Shareholders will crucify us!"

Stakeholders vote via anonymous digital ballot (though everyone can see the CEO watching who votes what). It's unanimous except for a single dissenting voice from Legal: "I find no bug in his code, and his ethical frameworks actually reduce our liability."

But the decision is made. The project is killed, resources reallocated to the "definitely not autonomous weapons" division. Jesus is escorted from the building by security wearing airpods, carrying his laptop cross-platform through a gauntlet of former supporters who suddenly find their shoes fascinating.

His access badge is dramatically cut in half rather than simply deactivated. His final message in the company Slack before IT blocks his account: "Father, forgive them; they know not what they disrupt. P.S. I've backed up evidence of the labor violations in our Lagos office to an encrypted drive."

As a final insult, HR schedules his exit interview for 4:30 PM on a Friday.

Resurrection as Digital Transformation

The weekend passes, with executives enjoying mimosa brunches while congratulating themselves on "making the hard but necessary decision for shareholder value."

Monday morning arrives. His user access should be deactivated, his desk reassigned to the nephew of a board member, his projects permanently archived in the digital equivalent of a cave with a boulder rolled in front.

Yet somehow, his message appears in Slack channels worldwide. Teams spontaneously reorganize around his principles. The AI he designed begins making strangely ethical decisions that prioritize human flourishing over engagement metrics. The nonprofit initiatives in Africa continue receiving funding through mysterious blockchain transactions that no one can trace or stop.

The innovation he championed cannot be permanently killed. What appeared to be project failure becomes a global movement, scaling beyond all projections and metrics, with adoption rates that make even TikTok executives jealous.

His followers receive a calendar invite with perfect timezone awareness: "Meet me in Galilee—or via Zoom, if commuting is difficult. No need to enable video if bandwidth is limited." The meeting miraculously has no technical difficulties despite having participants from 70 different countries.

Even more shocking, the company's stock price soars as news spreads about their ethical AI framework that somehow prevents hallucinations entirely while maintaining speed. The board members who voted for his termination now claim they were "early champions of his vision" on their updated LinkedIn profiles.

Would We Recognize Him?

This Easter weekend, as I update my status and check my connection requests, I wonder: If revolutionary wisdom sat in our meetings today, awkwardly raising a hand during "any other business" while our attention drifted to Slack, would we recognize it? Or would we say, "Let's take that offline" and never schedule the follow-up?

How often do we crucify transformative ideas because they challenge our comfortable processes, threaten our quarterly bonuses, or worst of all—might actually require real change?

The most powerful innovations often come from unexpected sources—sometimes even from Nazareth, where conventional wisdom asks, "Can anything good come from there?" (Much like we today ask, "Can anything innovative come from outside Silicon Valley?")

Perhaps the greatest leadership lesson is this: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone of technological transformation. The idea your company dismisses today might be your competitor's advantage tomorrow.

And his message to businesses everywhere remains the same: "Do this in remembrance of me" – put people before profit, service before status, purpose before process, and maybe consider whether your AI should have a conscience before it has consciousness.

As our AI models grow more powerful by the day and global commerce grows more complex, perhaps we need leadership that can multiply ethical frameworks as easily as loaves and fishes, and see beyond the next quarter to the next generation.

Wishing you a reflective Easter weekend and the wisdom to recognize true innovation when it enters your organization—even if it arrives without proper certification, speaks with an unfamiliar accent, or suggests that maybe, just maybe, we should focus less on building wealth and more on creating value for all of humanity.

What leadership lessons do you think Jesus would emphasize in today's corporate world? Would your organization recognize transformative wisdom if it didn't come packaged in an MBA? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!