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Archives for October 2011

Cape Town Anniversary

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The Lausanne Movement blog has a series of post from two weeks ago in recognition of the one-year anniversary of the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization last October.

What Was the Most Important Thing About Cape Town 2010?

Here’s a key reflection from one of the posts on the most important outcome from the Congress last fall:

In an interview at the close of the Congress, Doug Birdsall, Executive Chair of The Lausanne Movement, said he believes the personal connections made by leaders were among the most important accomplishments of the gathering.  Additionally he said leaders were able to sense the magnitude of what God is doing around the world and that together the Church regained its footing and regained its nerve for world evangelization.

I agree 100%. Making connections and seeing what God is doing are the central purposes of any conference — most of all a convention such as Cape Town 2010 that brought together delegates from almost every nation in the world. And from the results of the past year, it looks like these outcomes have born much fruit — and will continue to bear fruit for a long time to come.

Here’s a closing video that looks back on the congress: Cape Town 2010: Looking back at the Congress

The New Rules of the Internet

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The “new rules” have been around for a while now, but this is still a great summary by Jeff Jarvis in What Would Google Do?:

  1. Customers are now in charge.
  2. People can find each other anywhere and coalesce around you or against you.
  3. The mass market is [sort of] dead, replaced by the mass of niches.
  4. Since markets are conversations, the key skill in any organization is no longer marketing but conversing.
  5. We have shifted from an economy based on scarcity to one based on abundance.
  6. Enabling customers to collaborate with you (creating, distributing, marketing, supporting products) is what creates a premium in today’s market.
  7. The most successful enterprises today are networks and the platforms on which those networks are built.
  8. The key to success is not owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property, but openness.

Should You Upgrade to the iPhone 4s?

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I had the same initial reservations as Michael Hyatt: It seems like you get most of the advancements through the iOS5 software, and the iPhone 4 is already really great. Is it worth it to upgrade to the iPhone 4s?

After his daughter convinced him to give it a try, he upgraded — and is very glad he did. He gives a great summary of the three biggest benefits in upgrading, and has me convinced.

I should add that, with something like an iPhone, it is generally my policy to get every upgrade, because the increase in speed alone is usually worth it. It also helps keep you up to date on the advancements in technology, by experience rather than simply hearing second-hand. I think that is important for keeping our thinking up to date so that we can fully maximize technology for good.

But I was reluctant here, giving slightly higher priority to saving money than I usually do. As is typical, though, I’ve found that the intent to save money often ends up shooting you in the foot when the issue at stake is, as here, an investment in tools that exist to equip you in doing good. So, with this lesson reinforced once again, I will be getting the iPhone 4s.

Respect and Generosity are Governing Principles for Any Effective Leader

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It is so easy, especially in turbulent economic times such as those we are in now, to get focused on efficiency and cost cutting. And those things do have their place.

But they are not the main thing. They are not what’s most important. And leadership should be diligent to never succumb to the temptation to let them usurp what is most important.

After a God-centered passion, two of the most important principles for any leader are respect and generosity.

Generosity — not efficiency. And respect — not efficiency.

Efficiency can, and often does, undermine both. That’s why you have to make it second, not first.

There are few (if any) promises in the Bible to prosper the “efficient” man or woman. But there is an abundance of promises to the generous person.

We know this from the Bible. But often we think that “business thinking” is different. That somehow the realm of running non-profits and businesses and other organizations plays by different rules.

But it doesn’t.

To be sure, people often think it does, and act like it does. That’s why we need to be careful about saying “non-profits need to be run more like businesses” and so forth — not because the principles for running an effective business are always different (though sometimes they are), but because there are many wrong business principles being used to run businesses, and we don’t want to let those infect the non-profit sector as well.

But the things that are ultimately required for running a business and non-profit well are ultimately the same things necessary for living a good life. And generosity and respect are two of those overarching principles.

And we aren’t left simply looking at the Bible to see this (though that should be enough). The best business and leadership thinkers have always acknowledged this.

Take Peter Drucker. At the end of his book The Effective Executive, he points out that his emphasis on making strengths productive “is fundamentally respect for the person — one’s own as well as others. It is a value system of action.” Drucker isn’t detaching executive effectiveness from the realm of morality and decency and sheer humanity. Rather, he sees them as utterly intertwined. A focus on strengths is ultimately a respect for the individual.

Likewise, he points out that the practice of “putting first things first” is not simply an issue of effectiveness, but character. “What is being developed here is not information, but chracter: foresight, self-reliance, courage. What is being developed here, in other words, is leadership — not the leadership of brilliance and genius, to be sure, but hte much more modest yet more enduring leadership of dedication, determination, and serious purpose.”

Drucker does not abstract effectiveness, even in large organizations, from character. They are utterly intertwined such that the core practices of effectiveness are actually manifestations of (and means of developing) character and respect for others.

Likewise, when I was at the Global Leadership Summit the year before this one, Jack Welch made a very significant comment. He said “Top people have a generosity of spirit. They get a kick out of giving bonuses, for example. They don’t have envy. They love helping people grow.” There’s character once again, and generosity. Top people are generous. Generosity is not just something for our personal lives and personal finances; we are to have a generosity of spirit in the way we go about our work. That is biblical, but what we see is that it is also borne out by the experience of the most effective business leaders and thinkers of our time.

So, how do you lead? Do you care first about generosity, or efficiency? About respect — and thus it’s corollary of positioning people according to their strengths — or efficiency?

I’m not playing these things off against efficiency, rightly understood. For ultimately, the best way to be efficient is to value generosity and respect before efficiency.

Leadership: What Not to Do, 3

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Don’t leave it to merely to your advisers. In contrast:

Any good leader must develop a substantive base. No matter how talented your advisers and deputies, you have to attack challenges with as much of your own knowledge as possible. (Rudy Giuliani)

"But Everything is Important"

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That’s why we need to go beyond the common practice of distinguishing the urgent from the important to distinguishing the imperative from the important.

Don’t just think in terms of urgent vs. important. Think in terms of imperative vs. important.

Leadership: What Not to Do, 2

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Rudy Giuliani:

A leader who distances himself from his staff at the first sign of trouble might save a few popularity points, but it’s shortsighted. Eventually, no one wants to work for someone like that.

Leadership: What Not to Do

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Here’s a good example of authoritarian leadership from Hans Finzel’s classic The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make.

The most important thing worth noting here is that the leaders weren’t being authoritarian on purpose. That’s the thing about authoritarian leadership: it’s often a subtle thing that someone doesn’t even know they are doing. This doesn’t excuse it, but it shows us that we need to be careful to reflect on our own leadership styles. For we can fall into an authoritarian approach sometimes without even knowing it.

Here’s the example that Finzel relates from one of his students:

My organization was looking for a new regional leader. Those making the decision had somebody picked out. However, before finalizing it, they were going to meet with different people to receive feedback on the individual they had chosen.

I gave them my serious concerns and observations. Even though they took the time to listen to us, they really didn’t hear what we were saying. In the end, our input and feedback was rejected. And our predictions came to pass.

How did this whole situation make us feel? We concluded that the leaders at the top had already made up their minds regarding their choice, and that, almost as an afterthought, they had decided to talk to us “underlings” to try to get our rubberstamp approval.

It made me feel as if they didn’t really want or need my input. If they would have listened to us, we would have been spared the pain, misunderstanding, and hurt when it became obvious to everyone that this individual was the wrong choice for leadership.

Is it Wrong to Ask God to Bless Your Plans?

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Sometimes it is said that we shouldn’t make our own plans and then ask for God to bless them; we should ask God what his plans are, and align ours with his.

Now, this is good advice if this is meant at the high level — that is, if the definition of “God’s plans” here is “God’s moral will revealed in Scripture.” God’s plan for us, in this sense, is that we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with him (Micah 6:8; Matthew 23:23). That’s our mission in life.

God also gets more specific: in marriage, we are to marry only another believer. In our jobs, we are to have full integrity and work with enthusiasm and skill as unto the Lord. In our giving, we are to be generous.

In this sense, we are to seek God’s plans, not our own. That is, God has defined our ultimate priorities in life. We are to seek what he has revealed for us, rather than just coming up with whatever we want to do.

Now, within this framework, there are many areas that God’s word does not address specifically. Should you seek to have another child or not? Should your company add those 3 new positions? Should you buy this house or that one? What major should you chose, and what are your overall objectives for your career?

In this realm, as long as our ultimate aims are governed by and stem from God’s moral will, we are to make plans. And, the teaching of the Scripture is that we don’t look for some specific sub-plans that God has for us. Rather, he wants us, indeed, to make our own plans (with Scriptural wisdom and prayer) and seek to accomplish them.

More than that, the teaching of the Scriptures is that, in the main, we should look for God to bless our plans. Our plans will change and adapt, because God is ultimately sovereign. But it is striking that, when addressing the subject of godly planning, the Bible emphasizes not only that the success of our plans is subject to God (Proverbs 16:9), but that, when we plan in dependence on him, God seeks to bless what we do. He doesn’t say “you should have done this or that — that’s what my plan was.” Instead, he says: “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (Proverbs 16:3).

Commit your work to the Lord — don’t be godless in your work and planning — and your plans will be established.

Likewise, Psalm 37:4 tells us: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Whose desires will he give you? Yours.

Too often as Christians we almost paralyze ourselves by thinking that our desires and plans don’t mean anything — that God plans on defeating our godly plans time and again because he has some other plan for us different than what we sought to do.

The emphasis of the Bible, though, is that God wants you making plans, he wants you doing this in reliance on him, and he wants these plans to reflect his ultimately priorities (glorify him, love others, seek justice). If you are doing that, the Scriptures indicate that you should look for God to work with you in your plans. He surely will adjust and improve them, but your plans will be established — that is, when he changes them, he will change them for the better.

5 Characteristics of Effective Leaders

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In You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Positive Difference, Mark Sanborn highlights five core characteristics of effective leaders. Effective leaders:

  1. Believe they can positively shape their lives and careers.
  2. Lead through their relationships with people, as opposed to their control over people.
  3. Collaborate rather than control.
  4. Persuade others to contribute, rather than order them to.
  5. Get others to follow them out of respect and commitment rather than fear and compliance.