What would your leadership look like outside of an American market?

What if you were born into a third world country? There was no hope of a book deal. Your name will never be noticed. You won’t be able to host a conference. You won’t be invited to speak anywhere. You don’t have a boss.

You have a family and a trade.

How would your leadership change? Would you still write? Would you still make an effort to serve those around you? Why would you get up every morning? What would keep you awake at night dreaming?

We forget how motivating culture can be.

Culture isn’t bad. The United States has a great leadership culture. The question is just what’s at the heart of the matter. What’s at the core of why you do what you do?

Accepting the status quo is a accepting a death sentence.

I could stop there.

It’s not insight that sets the leader apart, but the courage to act on that insight… that’s what separates leaders.

Leaders must seaparate from the pack to be positioned to lead.

Without courage all we have is good ideas and regrets.

And failure becomes defined by missed opportunities rather than failed enterprises.

So it becomes a struggle to not live down to expectations, but to be remarkable.

Employers always create the job descriptions for employees. What if it was the other way around? What if you could create your boss’s job description, what would it be?

Try this one:

GET OUT OF THE WAY AND LET THOSE WITH THE COOLEST IDEAS BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY.

What a great work environment that could be. Ideas reign. Not seniority. Not education. Not pedigree.

I think bosses really should only do two things:

1. Bet on COOL PEOPLE and
2. Bet on COOL IDEAS

How about one more… I almost forgot:

IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE… NERVE… TO LET ME REDRAW THE MAP (or even create a brand new map), THEN… YOU SHOULD NOT BE LEADING.

You hired me for a reason and it wasn’t to “follow orders.” So I’ll figure it out. I may even make it up as I go along, but I won’t come home empty-handed.

Just a few thoughts on the ideal boss.

The average American spends 26.3 hours per year continuing their professional education.

TWENTY-SIX-POINT-THREE!

That means the ratio of “training” to “work” for the average worker is 0.01.

Can you imagine 26.3 hours a year for a violinist… sprinter… golfer… pilot… soldier… surgeon… astronaut?

No! They wouldn’t be able to compete/produce/perform in their profession/industry/career in a matter of months.

Peter Drucker made an amazing quote that sticks with me.

“Knowledge becomes obsolete incredibly fast. The continuing professional education of adults is the No. 1 industry in the next 30 years.”

And probably a lot longer after that.

We’re living in the INFORMATION AGE… Information is a premium.

So what’s the next fastest growing industry in America… continuing professional education.

Here’s the message from Sunday at Word of Faith Church. I changed the title to worship. I thought it came off really good, but I would love to get your feedback… even if it’s not good. I promise I won’t cry.

Here are the NOTES.

Here is the AUDIO.

“If things seem under control, you’re just not going fast enough.”

-Mario Andretti

Leading Creatives

I had some thoughts on the plane yesterday on my way to Newark from Columbus about leading creative people. Leading creatives can be challenging. Leading me can be challenging. Here are some thoughts I had on why that is and how to do it.

1. Give Them Laboratories

Creative people need a place to test, research and implement the ideas and thoughts flying around in their head. A lot of my friends are very creative people and most of them get bored easily. It can almost come across as disinterest, but creative people need to be challenged. And the challenges need to be new and constantly changing. I have what I call professional-ADD. I need to be doing different things all the time. I’ve had people point at it as a weakness… I think it’s a strength.

2. Let The Team Create The Vision

The vision of the organization HAS to come from a team. It has to. If it doesn’t, then hire minimum-wage, non-creative people to simply perform tasks exactly as you lay them. out. You will spend less money and have less stress. If you are going to have creative people on your team, then you have to allow the vision to be shaped by their different styles, personalities, perspectives and talents. Which will cost you more and probably create more stress. Learn to operate from a creative team - where input is valued. Because the vision is a journey. Not a destination. And there is a lot of distrust for the one-man, rock-star show.

3. Reward Them

Creative people need to be rewarded. They need to know that their work, thoughts and style is valued. With that said, there is no greater reward than to allow their work to shine. Don’t stick them in a lab for the sake of giving them a place to have fun. Implement it. Allow them to lead change. Push them to the front and say, “Alright, now let’s do it.” Creatives have to have buy-in, they have to be invested. Allow them to work/act/live like everything depends on them. One last note, reward them by budgeting funds for their experiments. Cirque de Soleil puts 70% of their profits back into new shows. There’s nothing worse than investing days and weeks into a something and then watching it die. Reward them by allocating resources.

My second session in Africa is dealing with the subject of coaching. I’m going to develop a sub-section of that on leading young leaders. There’s a stat that says 85% of people coming right out of seminary and into ministry leave the ministry within 5 years. I think the majority of that problem could be corrected with good leadership and coaching.

So I need some feedback from you. If I were to ask you…

How do you lead young leaders?

What would you say?

Some of the things I’ve thought about already were:

1. Opportunities to broaden skill base.
2. Freedom to fail.
3. Constant feedback or coaching - not just once a year at review time.
4. Appreciate their differences. Encourage the uniqueness.

Just think of some things that maybe you wish you had or you wish someone had done for you.

Throw some things at me.

Here’s the leadership thought for the week…

in video form…

and you’ll want to make sure you watch…

there will be a test later…

“Sometimes leadership is like herding cats.”

Get the video at Google Video.

Here is a great visual provided by scaryideas.com on how projects get mismanaged.

We run into this all the time as a church staff. So many times the project involves half a dozen staff members and departments and things get missed or dropped. Which then puts you into what I call “last-minute reaction” mode.

I think there is tremendous value in a project manager that really knows his/her stuff and can see a project through from start to end and be accountable for it. That’s where I think Trump gets it and most organizations don’t.

I read a great article by Andy Stanley over the weekend that spoke to some of the things running around in my head. I haven’t done a good job of this lately. Can anyone else relate?

“When God created leaders, he equipped them with an unsettling urge to unpack, undo, and unearth methods. This explains your tendancy to question everything around you. It’s the reason you have such strong opinions - and such a strong desire to share them. God wired you that way. Deep in your heart you may feel that if you were in charge, things would not only be different, they’d be better. This is not a problem of arrogance or pride. It’s simply the way God wired you. It’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, your zeal for improvement isn’t always appreciated out in the real world. As a matter of fact, your natural bent for leadership sets you up for resistance from virtually all sides - including other leaders. And unless you understand the nature of these dynamics, the very instincts that qualify you for greatness can also lead you to disqualify yourself and sabotage your opportunities. Effective leadership means learning to challenge the process without challenging the organization. There’s a fine line between the two. But it’s a crucial line.

Many talented leaders have “led” themselves right out of a job because their desire to challenge the process was misunderstood, or perhaps even threatening to those in charge. While on the other side of the spectrum, many skilled leaders have resigned themselves to conform to the status quo, squelching and squashing their natural instincts because there’s no obvious opportunity to be who God made them to be.

When you stop challenging the process, you cease to be a leader and you become a manager. And if you cease to challenge, then you have abdicated your true calling and giftedness in the world.”

My friend Bryan Davidson has a great post today on the difference between thinking like a leader and thinking like Jesus. Man, some of them nailed me. It’s so easy to get caught up in progress and mission and all that other stuff.

In the midst of books like “Jesus CEO” and “Leadership Lessons from a Jewish Carpenter” this is refreshing.

Here is a shot of the Catalyst stage. That center screen is 60′ by 20′. They are running motion logos and worship lyrics (using ProPresenter) with motion backgrounds. It is so crisp. They are not losing any resolution on anything. It takes 6 projectors to get that screen (2 stacked, 3 wide); front projected. The two side screens are rear projected and mostly run live video and announcements slides (using Powerpoint).

BigStuf Productions is the team running it. I am going to talk to them later about that center screen.

They opened the conference with Coldplay’s “Fix You.” It was out of this world. We also set the Guniness Book of World Records record for most people to simultaneously sit on whoopie cushions.

We heard Andy Stanley, Louie Giglio (who has to be one of the best speakers any where in the world), Donald Miller (who should be doing stand up comedy) and John Maxwell. All four were awesome. Andy and Louie really spoke directly to my heart.

Today is Erwin McManus, Malcolm Gladwell, Andy Stanley and Bill Hybels.

Here’s some fun.

This is Tom Rinks: the founder of Nooma. The title of his lab was “Straight Talk About Sunday And Why We Don’t Want To Come Anymore.”

Here’s Alex McManus. He spoke on “The Emerging Global Mosaic.” He also has a blog.

These really aren’t good pictures. Sorry.

Eric Brown and I finished making our reservations for Catalyst.
It was definitely my favorite conference last year and I’m looking forward to the speakers they have booked:

Donald Miller
Malcolm Gladwell
Bill Hybels
Erwin McManus
John Maxwell

I think churches need to remember one of the basic phenomena of human attraction: the least likable kid on the playground was always the one trying the hardest to be liked.

The cool kids, on the other hand, were popular partly because they didn’t seem to care if they were liked; they were doing their thing whether or not you were watching. Those were the kids the rest of us openly (or secretly) admired (or envied).

This grade school truism translates very well. The Church will be the most provocative and alluring when it is itself. The Church will be least relevant and attractive and influencing when it is caught in the act of being someone different to gain more friends.

I remember as a teenager in youth group that the easiest way to get me to avoid a Christian event was to promise “cool music and awesome teaching.” That meant that the music definitely wouldn’t be cool and the speaker wouldn’t be awesome.

It’s like Margaret Thatcher said:

“Being a leader is a lot like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you probably aren’t.”

Why does the Church have to tell people that it is “cool” and “relevant” and “awesome?” The Church needs to be strong enough to be itself and be confident that it is “relevant” and “cool” because of the Spirit of God?

Something I’ve been thinking about comes in the form of a tombstone…..

This isn’t a shot at my boss… believe me.

It’s just that I want a shot at it. I want a chance to do the things I see in my heart. I don’t always want to be working for what someone else wants. I want to be the quarterback or the coach. I want to build the team and call the plays and have a shot at putting it in the end zone.

I don’t want to sit and watch it all from the sidelines.

I’m off to Detroit today with the rest of our staff for an RMAI (Rhema Ministerial Association International) regional retreat. The guest speaker is Tony Cooke.

As with any ministers conference, there is a round of golf scheduled tomorrow morning. I’m not particularly great at golf, but I do have a Nike bag and clubs that puts off a good image. I usually tell people I played in the Amateur tournaments for a few years before I accepted the call of God on my life. They seemed pretty impressed by that…. until they see me play.

I thought for fun I might pop 2 Vicadin before the round starts… just to get loose.

Neil put together a message for his church last Sunday title “Brand You.” It was inspired by a post from Terry Storch and a series of posts by David V. Lorenzo. Terry Storch even commented on Neil’s message recently in his blog.

I sat down and watched it last Wednesday while I was doing some work. It is completely worth the time and inspiring. I was literally laughing out loud in my office. Some of our staff came in to see what was going on.

I read two books while I was away in Florida. Courageous Leadership by Bill Hybels is a great book on leadership and spoke a lot to some of the things I’ve been experiencing or thinking through.

The chapter on leadership styles was the most profound. What leadership style or styles are you?

1. The Visionary Leader - Such leaders cast powerful visions and have indefatigable enthusiasm for turning those visions into reality.

2. The Directional Leader - The strength of this leader is his or her uncanny, God-given ability to choose the right path for an organization as it approaches a critical intersection.

3. The Strategic Leader - Strategic leaders have the God-given ability to take an exciting vision and break it down into a series of sequential, achievable steps.

4. The Managing Leader - A leader who has the ability to organize people, processes and resources to achieve a mission.

5. The Motivational Leader - The have the ability to keep their team mates fired up.

6. The Shepherding Leader - These leaders build a team slowly, loves team members deeply, nurtures them gently, supports them consistently, listens to them patiently and prays for them diligently.

7. The Team-Building Leader - This leader knows the vision and understands how to achieve it, but realizes it will take a team of leaders and workers to accomplish the goal. Team-builders have a supernatural insight into people that allows them to successfully find and develop the right people with the right abilities, the right character and the right chemistry with the other team members.

8. The Entrepreneurial Leader - What distinguishes these leaders from the others is that they function optimally in start-up mode. If these leaders can’t regularly give birth to something new they begin to loose energy.

9. The Reengineering Leader - These leaders are gifted to thrive on the challenge of taking a troubled situation and turning it around. Reengineering leaders love to patch up, tune up and revitalize hurting departments or organizations.

10. The Bridge-Building Leader - They have the unique ability to bring together a wide range of constituent groups. They are diplomats that possess a supernaturally inspired ability to compromise and negotiate.

My primary style is a team-builder. But I also have some directional and strategic leadership in there too.