Back in April I did a Saturday morning workshop on What’s Best Next, hosted by Stonebrook Church in Ames, Iowa. Here is session one, where I talk about getting the foundations right for productivity. That means, above all, understanding the purpose of our productivity, which is to do good for others to the glory of God.
(You can also watch it right on Vimeo.)
This is an absolutely incredible deal. WTSBooks is running a sale on 100 of P&R’s ebooks — they are only $1.99 each for the next 72 hours. (And you are able to easily get them into your Kindle.)
Here are the top three I would recommend:
Francis and Lisa Chan have a new book out, called You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity.
Francis has summarized the main point well like this: “It’s easy for couples to get so wrapped up on things here, where they are not focused on the kingdom.” Lisa adds: “We need to remember that we are on a mission.” Marriage needs to be considered in light of eternity, and this means realizing that marriage is also about mission for the kingdom. This, in turn, also leads to the most fulfilling marriage.
You can learn more about the book at its website (which includes a very helpful short summary of the books vision by Francis and Lisa) and also see their humorous rap video for the book here:
This is a great article in the latest issue of Christianity Today on a new approach to helping lift Africa out of poverty through commerce.
My friend Paul Larsen, who is doing great work in this arena, is quoted several times in the article. (You can also check out the in-process website for the organization he is starting, called the 128 Foundation. Its mission is to drive social, economic, and spiritual progress in the developing world.)
Here’s the start of the article:
Three years from now, the largest port in all Africa is set to open its docks in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. But the hands that are building the $10 billion port are not Tanzanian; they are Chinese.
China has emerged as a powerhouse in the global market, and many expect it to surpass the United States as the world’s economic superpower in years to come. But the same growth that has improved the quality of life for millions of Chinese is arguably hampering it in Tanzania, Nigeria, Mozambique, and other African countries where China is buying land at astonishing rates. For example, in just two years (2011 to 2013), China’s investments in Tanzania grew from $700 million to $2.1 billion. “China is very keen on establishing brand-name equity or recognition among African consumers, because the African population is going to double by the middle of the century,” Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent, recently told NPR.
Critics of “land grabbing” say the widespread practice displaces local workers, provides fewer jobs, and extracts natural resources (oil, coal, gold) that skip local communities and go straight to international corporations. “Poor farmers and cattle herders across the world are being thrown off their land,” says investigative journalist Fred Pearce. “Land grabbing is having more of an impact on the lives of poor people than climate change.”
One for-profit corporation founded by Christians, however, sees growth potential in poor people themselves. Part of a relatively new investment category called “impact investing,” the company is tilling fertile ground in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Ukraine not only for economic growth but also for spiritual revival.
From Wired:
It’s easy to think of our digital revolutions—the desktop computer, the Internet—as purely technological achievements. Cheaper microprocessors let everyone have a PC at home. Internet protocols allowed computers to talk to each other. But that doesn’t capture the reasons these breakthroughs mattered so much to us.
At their core, these were also creative revolutions. The PC didn’t truly touch us until the rise of desktop publishing, followed by the rise of multimedia development tools, followed by the rise of web development tools. Its emotional power arrived with the ability to create amazing things on it. Likewise, the Internet revolution really took off when we used it not just to download facts and figures but as a platform to share music, writing, movies, and pictures. The number one site on the web may be Google, but number two and three are Facebook and YouTube, respectively—both primarily outlets for personal expression.
We created the desktop computer and the Internet as tools for efficiency, productivity, and communication. But they came to have real meaning for us when our natural creative drive took them over.
Now it’s the phone’s turn.
Here are two helpful points from Tim Ferriss’ quick, short chapter in 30 Things to Do When You Turn 30:
1. Question the criticisms and even suggestions of people with low expectations, even well-intentioned ones
The reason is that having low expectations is actually unrealistic. People are capable of far more than most people think. To lower expectations is to lower efforts as well, and thus the low expectations become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When the lower expectations (but not, as a result, the higher ones) are met, the person with the low expectations then says “see, isn’t it such a good thing we lowered expectations?” But the answer is: not at all. The only reason you met only the reduced expectations is because you didn’t strive for the high expectations.
Good leaders are like the good teachers that hopefully all of us have had the experience of having — they refuse to let you settle. They have soft hearts, but are tough-minded in their expectations. They refuse to let you settle.
2. Test the self-limiting assumptions others accept at face value
“When people tell you you can’t do something, it’s important to keep a basic question in mind: What’s the worst thing that could happen? If you’re risking a small or transient failure for a potentially life-altering permanent benefit, it’s almost always in your best interest to experiment.”
This doesn’t mean you will always succeed. But it does mean that smart experiments are part of the necessary path to success.
Don’t close off a door because someone says “that can’t be done.” Test things out and give it a try. In doing so, feel free to start small, so if you fail, “it’s a fast and affordable failure.” But don’t let the small expectations of someone keep you from trying.
From Hans Finzel, in his excellent book The Top Ten Mistakes Leaders Make.
How dictators operate:
How facilitators lead:
We often think that the autocratic, top-down leader is a mean person with bad intent. Hence, when it seems that a leader is nice and genuinely wants the good of the people he is leading, we can easily fall into the notion that he must therefore be a servant leader.
But this is actually incorrect. It failures to recognize what autocratic leadership really is and, conversely, what servant leadership really is.
Being an autocratic leader is not first about being mean, and being a servant leader is not first about being nice.
Rather, the difference lies in the way you view the scope of your authority.
The Heart of Servant Leadership: Recognizing Your Limited Authority
The essence of servant leadership is not being in charge but just being nice about it, but rather recognizing the limits of your authority and that people are capable of and deserving of being self-directed. The servant leader thus seeks to empower rather than control.
Autocratic leaders, on the other hand, think they have more authority than they really do. They don’t realize the limits of their authority. Further, they often think that as long as they seek to use their authority for good, that that is enough to make them a servant leader. But it is not, because to think you have more authority than you really do is, by definition, domineering — regardless of your intentions for how you will use that authority.
Here is an example from the world of government. Let’s say the US was a monarchy and we had a king. Now, let’s say the king decided that we could read certain books, but not others. Further, let’s say this king has good intentions in his decree. He sincerely believes that if people are able to read the books he has banned, it will harm them. He has issued his decree for the good of his people.
Is this monarch a servant leader, or a dictator?
He is a dictator, because he has exceeded the scope of his authority. It does not matter that his intentions are good; he is exerting authority in an area over which he does not have any. That makes him a dictator. He may be a benevolent dictator, but he is still a dictator.
From this we see that the essence of being a dictator lies not in your intentions, but in your whole approach to leadership — whether you accept the God-given limits on your power.
Though of course our nation has its problems, our democracy (republic) is a helpful example of institutionalized servant leadership. The president does not have unlimited authority over us; there are limits on his (or her!) power. Further, we believe that these limits aren’t simply chosen by convention, but arise from real natural rights that people have, and which not even government has the right to infringe.
The Corollary to Limited Authority: Respecting People’s Rights
This is the essence of servant leadership, and it applies to all areas of leadership, not just government — organizations, churches, non-profits, and everywhere else. The servant leader respects people’s rights. The servant leader recognizes that all humans are created in the image of God and thus have a certain right to self-direction over which the leader has no right to infringe.
The essence of servant leadership is to realize that having true intentions for the good of those you lead means respecting that reality about people. In other words, truly seeking the good of the people you lead means that you don’t simply have a good end in mind, but also good means in your leadership. And good “means” in leadership means leading in a way that acknowledges and fully respects people’s independence and initiative. It means you seek to therefore lead chiefly through influence and principles, not control.
This brings us back to the benevolent dictator. Though he may have had good intentions, his approach is not even going to have good results. It won’t have good results because it goes against people’s God-given rights. By failing to respect their autonomy, it fails to respect their judgment. It will therefore fail to develop mature individuals. It will create a dependency on him as the leader, rather than growing up people into maturity — which is the true aim of leadership.
I hope to blog on the difference between autocratic leadership and servant leadership more in the coming weeks. But from this, note at least this key point: if we think the essence of servant leadership is simply that the leader has good intentions, we have misunderstood the real nature of servant leadership. That is why autocratic leadership often goes undetected — we too easily think it simply means having bad intentions in leadership (or being mean) and have failed to realize that at its root, autocratic leadership is about leading chiefly from authority rather than influence.
Don’t fall into the benevolent authoritarian view of leadership. Realize that truly seeking the good of those you lead means seeking to lead through empowering them, not controlling them.
My article for Catalyst on The Five Components of Effective Delegation is now up at their site. Here’s the start:
WITH SO MANY THINGS ON OUR TO-DO LISTS AND SO MANY NEW THINGS COMING AT US EVERY DAY, HOW DO WE STAY ABOVE WATER AS LEADERS?
One common answer is delegation. That’s good advice, but it’s often incomplete. The problem is that we often aren’t taught how to delegate effectively. As a result, when we finally overcome the mistake of not delegating at all, we easily end up making the other mistake of delegating in the wrong way. Unfortunately, this mistake can be even worse! Bad delegation results in frustration, confusion, and discouragement for the people we delegate to.
So how do we delegate in a way that works? That is, what does real delegation actually look like, and how do we do it?
From Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just:
If you are a Christian, and you refrain from committing adultery or using profanity or missing church, but you don’t do the hard work of thinking through how to do justice in every area of life – you are failing to live justly and righteously.
