John Piper on Productivity
This a great paragraph from Piper’s article The Marks of a Spiritual Leader:
A leader does not like clutter. He likes to know where and when things are for quick access and use. His favorite shape is the straight line, not the circle. He groans in meetings that do not move from premises to conclusions but rather go in irrelevant circles. When something must be done he sees a three-step plan for getting it done and lays it out. A leader sees the links between a board decision and its implementation. He sees ways to use time to the full and shapes his schedule to maximize his usefulness. He saves himself large blocks of time for his major productive activities. He uses little pieces of time lest they go to waste. (For example, what do you do while you are brushing your teeth? Could you set a magazine on the towel rack and read an article?) A leader takes time to plan his days and weeks and months and years. Even though it is God who ultimately directs the steps of the leader, he should plan his path. A leader is not a jellyfish that gets tossed around by the waves, nor is he an oyster that is immovable. The leader is the dolphin of the sea and can swim against the stream or with the stream as he plans.
(HT: Eric McKiddie)
The Producer, Manager, and Leader
From Stephen Covey’s Principle Centered Leadership (p. 244):
In organizations, people usually perform one of three essential roles: producer, manager, or leader. Each role is vital to the success of the organization.
For example, if there is no producer, great ideas and high resolves are not carried out. The work simply doesn’t get done. Where there is no manager, there is role conflict and ambiguity; everyone attempts to be a producer, working independently, with few established systems or procedures. And if there is no leader, there is lack of vision and direction. People begin to lose sight of their mission.
Although each role is important to the organization, the role of leader is most important. Without strategic leadership, people may dutifully climb the “ladder of success” but discover, upon reaching the top rung, that it is leaning against the wrong wall.
In light of this, let me offer a small (OK, massive) critique of GTD (”Getting Things Done”): I would argue that, by its very nature, it inclines people to think in terms of individual contributors rather than managers or leaders. This is great if you are, in fact, a producer. But as a producer, your efforts can only scale so far–you can only get so much “done.” If your efforts are going to scale, if you are going to exponential increase the impact of what you do, you need to operate as a manager or leader. And to do this, you need to operate with a different mindset, and slightly different approach, than that which is set forth in the GTD system.
(Note: this doesn’t mean everyone should be a manager or leader–be what you are called to be, and want to be. If you are a producer, good management and leadership will also result in your work becoming effective for joint performance that is larger than itself. But those managers and leaders will be more effective if they are not operating according to GTD, as it is.)
Rescuing Ambition
Dave Harvey’s excellent book, Rescuing Ambition, releases next month. Through the end of Friday, you can pre-order it for 35% off at Crossway’s microsite.
Harvey argues that ambition needs to be rescued from a false understanding. We tend to think of it “as nothing more than the drive for personal honor or fame.” And ambition that terminates on ourselves, to be sure, is dishonorable. But ambition directed towards a purpose larger than ourselves — ambition for the glory of God and the good of the world — is not only good and right, but essential.
Ambition in this sense is a God-implanted drive to improve, produce, develop, create, and make things better. When ambition dies or is neglected, big dreams die. And when big dreams die, the world misses out, and we fail to realize the full potential that God has given us.
I think that Harvey is right on in this. We have let ambition lie neglected, and as a result have become too accustomed to dreaming small dreams. By rescuing ambition, Harvey encourages us to dream big dreams that are worthy of a big God, instead of being content with life as usual and the status quo.
(This is very related to the topic of productivity, by the way, because ambition drives productivity. Further, I argue in the about page that productivity is not simply about our own personal effectiveness, but is ultimately about helping to make our places of work, our communities, and society more effective. The kind of ambition that Harvey is talking about fuels the drive to be productive in this holistic way. Without ambition, you are more likely to be concerned merely with your own productivity, which aborts the whole concept and turns it inward. Productivity is really about making things better in all areas of life — especially our work, communities, churches, and society.)
So I’m very excited about Harvey’s book. Which makes it fitting that this is the first book for which I have written a blurb. Here’s the blurb I wrote for the book, which sums up my above sentiments:
Dave Harvey teaches us that God wants ambition back in our understanding of godliness and spiritual health. As Christians, we are to be zealous for good works (Titus 2:13) — that is, ambitious for them. We are to be people who dream and do big things for the glory of God and the good of others. This is a critical book for the church today because it helps us recover the spirit of William Carey, who ambitiously said ‘Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
For more on ambition, let me also recommend John Piper’s sermon Holy Ambition: To Preach Where Christ has not Been Named.
Setting the Leadership Tone is Not Enough
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras are right when they state in Built to Last:
Mechanisms–build that ticking clock! The beauty of the 3M story is that McKnight, Carlton, and others translated the previous four points into tangible mechanisms working in alignment to stimulate evolutionary progress — a step Norton never took. Look back at the list of mechanisms at 3M. Notice how concrete they are. Notice how they send a consistent set of reinforcing signals. Notice how they have teeth.
If you’re a division manager, you better meet the 30 percent new product goal. If you want to become a technical hero at 3M, you’d better share your technology around the company. If you want to receive a Golden Foot Award and become an entrepreneurial hero, you’ve got to create a successful new venture with actual products, satisfied customers, and profitable sales. Good intentions alone simply won’t cut it. 3M doesn’t just throw a bunch of smart people in a pot and hope that something will happen. 3M lights a hot fire under the pot and stirs vigorously!
We find that managers often underestimate the importance of this fifth lesson and fail to translate their intentions into tangible mechanisms. They erroneously think that if they just set the right “leadership tone,” people will experiment and try new things. No! It takes more than that. It requires putting in place items that will continually stimulate and reinforce evolutionary behavior [embodied in the principle "try a lot of stuff and keep what works"].
Mastering Both Ends of the Spectrum
“An effective leader must be the master of two ends of the spectrum: ideas at the highest level of abstraction and actions at the most mundane level of detail.”
That’s from Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in In Search of Excellence. They elaborate in this way:
“The value-shaping leader is concerned, on the one hand, with soaring, lofty visions that will generate excitement and enthusiasm for tens or hundreds of thousands of people. That’s where the pathfinding role is critically important. On the other hand, it seems the only way to instill enthusiasm is through scores of daily events, with the value-shaping manager becoming an implementer par excellence. In this role, the leader is a bug for detail, and directly instills values through deeds rather than words: no opportunity is too small. So it is at once attention to ideas and attention to detail.
What Do Leaders Produce?
Clarity.
Marcus Buckingham:
“Clarity is the preoccupation of every effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.” — The One Thing You Need to Know
Andy Stanley:
“As leaders we can afford to be uncertain, but we cannot afford to be unclear. People will follow you in spite of a few bad decisions. People will not follow you if you are unclear in your instruction, and you cannot hold them accountable to respond to muddled directives.” — Next Generation Leader: 5 Essentials for Those Who Will Shape the Future
The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective Leaders
From Dave Kraft’s Leaders Who Last (Re: Lit Books), here’s his list:
- They spend too much time managing and not enough time leading.
- They spend too much time counseling the hurting people and not enough time developing the people with potential.
- They spend too much time putting out fires and not enough time lighting fires.
- They spend too much time doing and not enough time planning.
- They spend too much time teaching the crowd and not enough time training the core.
- They spend too much time doing it themselves and not enough time doing it through others.
- They make too many decisions based on organizational politics and too few decisions based on biblical principles.
He then adds:
Notice in particular numbers 2, 5, and 6, which have to do with the kinds of people you spend time with. I say it again: the people you spend the majority of your time with can and will determine whether you are an effective or ineffective leader.
The fact is that many people in leadership roles gravitate toward hurting, draining, time-=consuming people because they have a need to be needed. They want to help people, to be there for people. If a leader has strong mercy gifts, leading becomes more difficult. Simply put, if you need people, you can’t lead people. There is an inability or lack of desire to make the tough calls, speak the truth, or do the hard things. Motivated by a fear of disappointing people, this inability will seriously hamper and work against your ability to lead.
Don’t Fill Up Your Calendar
Some good advice from The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success:
When you think about it, absolutely everything anyone does starts with a thought. Becasue the quality of the thought has a large influence on the quality of the outcome, it makes sense to do what you can to think clearly. In a world in which technology provides the capacity to reach out and be reached anytime, anywhere, finding space to think clearly is more and more of a challenge. A lack of white space on one’s calendar correlates with a lack of white space in one’s brain.
The author then recounts a story from his former boss to illustrate this:
I can remember one time talking to another executive who said he was in meetings from morning until night and I asked, “How can you do your job?” and this guy just looked at me. I said, “I see part of my job as leaving enough space to think about what the next issue or problem is that lands on my desk.” He just looked at me like I was nuts. It is very counterintuitive, but I think if you leave some white space on your calendar you tend to get more done.
A full calendar may give the appearance of getting things done, but being able to see that next competitive thing coming down the line or being able to see that we’ve got two groups that are fighting here and we really need to invest in getting them to work together — those are the critical things that executives need to do.
It is about having the capacity to see further out or to deal with that big threat to your bottom line. The easier issues will get managed below, if you are doing your job right. The higher you are in the organization, the tougher the issues are that come to you. You have to have the space and perspective to deal with those tougher issues.
I think a lot of people measure their worth in a corporation by how many meetings they attend. It depends on the culture of the organization you are in, but often it is a huge mistake to fill up your schedule with meetings.
Don’t Miss It
“To every person there comes in their lifetime that special moment when you are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to you and your talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds you unprepared or unqualified for work which could have been your finest hour.” — Winston Churchill
Instead of Seeking to Control Workers, Aim to Liberate Them
That was Jack Welch’s aim when he was at GE, and he was right. Here’s how he put it (quoted in The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make):
“The old organization was built on control, but the world has changed. The world is moving at such a pace that control has become a limitation. It slows you down. You’ve got to balance freedom with some control, but you’ve got to have more freedom than you ever dreamed of.”
5 Key Characteristics of Effective Leaders
Here are 5 key characteristics of effective leaders, from Mark Sanborn’s You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference. Effective leaders:
- Believe they can positively shape their lives and careers.
- Lead through their relationships with people, as opposed to their control over people.
- Collaborate rather than control.
- Persuade others to contribute, rather than order them to.
- Get others to follow them out of respect and commitment rather than fear and compliance.
Leadership: Applying Beliefs to Real-World Situations
That’s what a good leader does, because good leaders are governed by a set of guiding principles and core ideas. In his book Leadership, Rudy Giuliani makes this point well in regard to his own leadership:
Great leaders lead by ideas. Ideology is enormously important when running any large organization.
….
My goal as a leader was to apply my beliefs and philosophy to real-world situations. As mayor, I insisted that everyone on my staff should concentrate on the core purpose of whichever agency or division we oversaw.
In politics, even more than in business, the reply to queries is far too often “Because we’ve always done it this way.” My goal was to move the agenda forward with every action, to back strong beliefs with specific plans of action.
Applying Strengths to Leadership
For an overview of what it looks like to apply strengths-based thinking to leadership, I recommend:
It’s a quick read and goes to the core. It covers the three primary keys in applying strengths thinking to leadership:
- Knowing your strengths and investing in others’ strengths.
- Getting people with the right strengths on your team.
- Understanding and meeting the four basic needs of those who look to you for leadership.
What Leaders Really Do
John Kotter’s classic article What Leaders Really Do is one of the most helpful things I have ever read.
Why Do New Leaders Often Get a Bad Start?
From The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make:
- We replicate the poor leadership habits of others.
- We lead as we were led.
- We aren’t born with leadership skills [note: skills and talent are different]
- We lack good models and mentors.
- We lack formal training.
Timeless Leadership: An Interview with David McCullough
Harvard Business Review has an interview with historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough, author of books such as 1776 and John Adams, on leadership.
You can also read the executive summary.
Here’s a section on why he thinks it critical for all leaders to have a sense of history:
You are passionate about the necessity for history education. Why do you think it’s so important for a leader to have what you call a sense of history?
Leadership, then, partly has to do with luck. And luck, chance, the hand of God—call it what you will—is a real force in human affairs; it’s part of life. Washington might have been killed; he might have gotten sick; he might have been captured; he might have given up. Besides being fortunate, he knew how to take advantage of a lucky moment, because he was blessed with very good judgment. Luck provided the opportunity, but Washington’s night escape across the East River—made possible by the direction of the wind—after an overwhelming defeat in the Battle of Brooklyn would never have succeeded had it not been for his leadership and the abilities of Colonel John Glover. Glover was a Massachusetts merchant and fisherman who, with his Marblehead Mariners, knew how to do the job.
I like to remind people of something General George C. Marshall said. Asked once whether he had had a good education at the Virginia Military Institute, Marshall said no, “because we had no training in history.” He knew that a sense of history is essential to anyone who wants to be a leader, because history is both about people and about cause and effect. The American historian Samuel Eliot Morison liked to say that history teaches us how to behave—that is, what to do and what not to do in a variety of situations. History is the human story. Jefferson made that point in the very first line of the Declaration of Independence: “When in the course of human events…” The accent should be on “human.”
History also shows how the demands of leadership change from one era to another, from one culture to another. The leaders of the past experienced their present differently from the way we experience ours. And remember, they had no more idea how things were going to turn out than we do in our time. Nothing was ever on a track, nothing preordained. The more you study the year 1776 and the course of the American Revolutionary War, the more you have to conclude that it’s a miracle things turned out as they did. Had the wind in New York City been coming from a different direction on August 29, 1776, Americans would probably be sipping tea and singing “God Save the Queen.”
Two Ways to Change the World
Jim Collins states the two ways to shape society in his comments on Peter Drucker:
There are two ways to change the world: the pen (the use of ideas) and the sword (the use of power). Drucker chose the pen, and thereby rewired the brains of thousands who carry the sword. Those who choose the pen have an advantage over those who wield the sword: the written word never dies.
This is from the introduction to Drucker’s Management, revised Edition.
Leadership Advice from Ronald Reagan
Here’s a good quote from Reagan:
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere as long as the policy you’ve decided on is being carried out.
Note three things.
First, delegate authority–not tasks. I’m not saying there’s no place for delegating tasks, but if that’s your focus it won’t scale. You have to delegate responsibility areas and give people the authority to carry them out. (Responsibility in the final sense, of course, rests with the leader–he or she is the one ultimately accountable for results.)
Second, that means that you consequently need to let your people act–if you keep interfering and micromanaging, you haven’t truly delegated authority.
Third, notice that Reagan didn’t simply say “don’t interfere.” Which is interesting because the one main criticism of his leadership is that he was too hands-off. What he said was don’t interfere as long as the policy you decided on is being carried out.
There are defined outcomes. Let the person find their own way to accomplish them. If the policy that was decided on is not being carried out, then you need help the person make some course corrections.
Highly Recommended
D.A. Carson’s The Cross and Christian Ministry: Leadership Lessons from 1 Corinthians.
This is one of the best books on leadership for those in ministry.
Avoid the Gray Twilight
From Theodore Roosevelt (quoted in Built to Last):
Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, not defeat.
What is a Great Organization?
Jim Collins gives a very helpful, succinct, and profound definition of a great organization in Good to Great and the Social Sectors:
A great organization is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time.
So there are three characteristics of a great organization. They are:
- Superior performance
- Distinctive impact
- Lasting endurance
I think we ought to aim to build great organizations, and so it is helpful to have a good outline of what that means. It’s not enough to just say “we should seek to make our organizations great.” We need to know what that means. This is a good start.
Having this before us, though, also leads to more questions — such as “Why should you try to build something great?” and “How do you assess how your organization is doing on these qualities, especially when they are hard to measure?” I’ll address these questions in upcoming posts.
On Eliminating Artificial Motivation
I’m jumping into the middle of a story here from Good to Great (p. 206), but I think you’ll get the point. This has far-reaching implications for many things (including — and perhaps especially — churches):
Of equal importance is what they don’t waste energy on. For example, when the head coach took over the [cross country] program, she found herself burdened with expectations to do “fun programs” and “rah-rah stuff” to motivate the kids and keep them interested — parties, and special trips, and shopping adventures to Nike outlets, and inspirational speeches.
She quickly put an end to nearly all that distracting (and time consuming) activity.
“Look,” she said,”this program will be built on the idea that running is fun, racing is fun, improving is fun, and winning is fun. If you’re not passionate about what we do here, then go find something else to do.”
The result: The number of kids in the program nearly tripled in five years, from thirty to eighty-two.
John Piper on Spiritual Leadership
John Piper has a very helpful but often overlooked article from 1995 called The Marks of a Spiritual Leader. I highly recommend it. Here are three things that stand out from the article.
First, Piper gives a very helpful definition of spiritual leadership, which differs in some ways from leadership in general:
I define spiritual leadership as knowing where God wants people to be and taking the initiative to use God’s methods to get them there in reliance on God’s power. The answer to where God wants people to be is in a spiritual condition and in a lifestyle that display his glory and honor his name. Therefore, the goal of spiritual leadership is that people come to know God and to glorify him in all that they do. Spiritual leadership is aimed not so much at directing people as it is at changing people. If we would be the kind of leaders we ought to be, we must make it our aim to develop persons rather than dictate plans. You can get people to do what you want, but if they don’t change in their heart you have not led them spiritually. You have not taken them to where God wants them to be.
Second, Piper spends the rest of the paper outlining the characteristics a person must have in order to be a spiritual leader “who excels both in the quality of his direction and the numbers of people who follow him.” He divides these characteristics into an inner circle and an outer circle:
The inner circle of spiritual leadership is that sequence of events in the human soul that must happen if anyone is to get to first base in spiritual leadership. These are the absolute bare essentials. They are things that all Christians must attain in some degree, and when they are attained with high fervor and deep conviction they very often lead one into strong leadership. In the outer circle are qualities that characterize both spiritual and non-spiritual leaders.
Third, and among other things, Piper has a great discussion of the outer circle characteristics. Below is the list of characteristics he discusses. I especially love the emphasis on optimism, energy, hard thinking, dreaming, and decisiveness.
- Restless
- Optimistic
- Intense
- Self-controlled
- Thick-skinned
- Energetic
- A hard thinker
- Articulate
- Able to teach
- A good judge of character
- Tactful
- Theologically oriented
- A dreamer
- Organized and efficient
- Decisive
- Perseverant
- A lover
- Restful
Master More Than One Discipline
From A Class with Drucker: The Lost Lessons of the World’s Greatest Management Teacher:
… Drucker went on to tell us that it was essential that business executives master at least two disciplines, and that one of them must be outside of the field of business. He said this was important in the preparation of an executive for higher responsibilities because, like the corporate attorney suddenly elevated to general management, one never knew what future responsibiliteis might be thrust upon one unexpectedly. Expertise in more than one field was good training for sudden responsibilities in yet another field, and was the only evidence that the manager was capable of mastering more than one discipline.
Peter said that mastering at least two disciplines would have a number of beneficial effects. First, the executive would have the self-confidence of knowing that he was not limited to a single field. That he could, if called upon, do something entirely different, and do it well. Moreover, Drucker continued, great advances in any field rarely come from a single discipline. Rather they come from advances in one discipline being transplanted to another sphere, which is totally unfamiliar with these procedures, ideas, or methods which have never been applied to problems in this other domain” (p 74).
This is worth repeating: great advances in any field rarely come from a single discipline; rather they come from advances in one discipline being transplanted to another sphere.
Seth Godin’s TED Talk
Seth Godin’s TED talk on tribes is now online. He argues that “the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change.”
(And for more on this, see also his latest book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.)
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