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Register for Catalyst Atlanta

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As I blogged last week, Catalyst Atlanta is coming up  October 2-4, 2013 in Atlanta, GA. 13,000 young leaders from across the United States and around the world will converge for one of the best leadership experiences around.

Some of the speakers this year I’m most looking forward to are John Piper, Andy Stanley, Lecrae, Malcolm Gladwell, and Reggie Joiner.

Today is the last day of special registration rate of $219 (which saves over $100). You can register by calling 888.334.6569 to speak with the Catalyst Concierge team, or online. Use the rate code BLOG or MP.

I’ll be blogging the conference, and it would be great to see you there!

12 Characteristics of "All In" Leaders

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A fantastic post by Brad Lomenick. Nails it. Here are the first five:

1. You don’t look at the clock, and you’re not punching a time card. Your role is not defined by 9 – 5.

2. You get it done no matter how long it takes. You are “managerless,” meaning no one else has to worry about whether you are getting it done.

3. You realize you are part of something bigger than yourself, and humbly accomplish the goals because of a larger motivation than just you.

4. Giving just the “minimum” amount of effort required to get by without “getting in trouble” doesn’t even cross your mind.

5. Your hard work and excellence is done with pure motives. You are not worried about climbing the ladder or impressing anyone.

Read the whole thing.

The Call to Do Good and the Call to Work: Are They at Odds?

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That’s the title of my guest post from yesterday at the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics. I will be guest posting there twice a month on the connections between theology, work, and economics, along with how we can live out the biblical doctrine of work in practical ways.

I am very excited about the work that is being done by the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics. They exist to educate and inspire Christians to think Biblically about issues of faith, work, and economics and “to steward their whole lives in a way that benefits society and glorifies God.” Thus, one of their chief aims is “to awaken Christians to the strategic role their work plays in God’s loving and redemptive narrative in the world.”

One of the reason I’m so excited about the institute is that creativity, purpose, and freedom are three of the core biblical principles behind everything they do. Here’s how they put it on their site:

  • Each person is created in God’s image and, like Him, has a desire to be creative and fulfilled using their God-given talents through work.
  • As we explore a comprehensive Biblical view of work, we understand that our work – whether paid or volunteer – matters to God and is an integral part of His purpose in this world.  For many of us, this is a paradigm shift in how we view work.
  • Indeed, God’s call to Christians is to pursue excellence throughout the week – not just on Sundays – stewarding all that we’ve been given for the good of others and God’s glory.
  • Therefore, if this is true about work, we as citizens must cherish and sustain an economic environment that not only provides us the freedom to flourish in our work but also reflects the inherent dignity of each human being.

In my view, those three principles are precisely what needs to be at the forefront if we are going to truly recover the biblical doctrine of work for what it really is.

You can learn more about IFWE on their website and also read their blog, Creativity, Purpose, Freedom.

Catalyst Atlanta is Coming Up

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Catalyst Banner 393x120-2013_2

Catalyst Atlanta is this October 3-4 in Duluth, Georgia. Speakers include John Piper, Jon Acuff, Malcolm Gladwell, Andy Stanley, Lecrae, and many more.

I attended my first Catalyst in the fall of 2008 — the week before I started this blog. My fourth post on this blog, in fact, was a list of some highlights from Andy Stanley’s closing message.

When people ask me what leadership conferences I recommend, Catalyst is at the top. It serves you both in the short-term and long-term. Some conferences are great energy bursts, but don’t offer much long-term wisdom and guidance. Catalyst is strong on both fronts. It will give you a much needed energy boost and equip you with solid leadership wisdom for the long-term.

And, of course, I especially recommend it this year since John Piper, who I worked with for 13 years at Desiring God, is one of the speakers.

Catalyst is offering a special rate for readers of this blog. If you register by Thursday, August 22 you will get the special rate of $209 (the regular rate is $329, so this is a huge savings). Just register online using the rate code BLOG or by phone at 888.334.6569. You can find all the logistical details such as the schedule, FAQs, and so forth on their site as well.

What Catalyst Is

For those who want to know a bit more:

Catalyst Atlanta is a powerful gathering of young leaders, a movement of influencers and world changers who love Jesus, see things differently, and feel a burden for our generation. We seek to learn, worship and create together with a momentous energy passionately pursuing God.

On October 2-4, 2013, 13,000 leaders from across the United States and around the world will converge—a revolution of ideas where you’ll challenge the process and think unconventionally. Even more than a cutting-edge event, Catalyst Atlanta is an experience that leaves you enlightened, rejuvenated, and ready to embrace the life to which you’ve been entrusted and the journey to which you’ve been called. Expect a fully immersive learning, worship and creative experience, where timely inspiration can come from the thought leaders who grace our stage, or the person sitting in the seat right next to you.

This Year’s Theme

This year’s theme is known:

When you lead authentically, with an inner confidence birthed by your Creator, when you are willing to be true and vulnerable before God and others, you become a leader without pretense. A leader worth following.

You can only know where you are headed, when you know where you’ve come from.

Lead from who you are.

Register at the Discount

As I mentioned above, if you register by Thursday, August 22 you will get the special rate of $209 (regularly $329). You can register online or by phone at 888.334.6569. Just use the rate code BLOG. (Update: you can also use the rate code MP).

I’ll be attending again this year. Would be great to see you there!

Find a Career Path that Utilizes Your Talents and Passions

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Well said by Brad Lomenick in his book The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker:

The next generation of Christian influencers is passionate about finding and pursuing their divine purposes. They don’t want to work thirty or forty years in a job that fails to fulfill their deepest longings. Instead, this generation wants to find career paths that utilize both their talents and their passions. They are locating and living their callings, and we’re all better for it.

Amen. Don’t settle for forty years in a job that doesn’t call on the best of you. Find something that calls on your strengths and passion, and do it with all your heart.

Is it Really Biblical To Love Your Work? A Closer Look at Ephesians 6:5-8

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I’m a firm believer in doing work you love. Not only is this an intrinsic good, it also enables you to be more effective at what you do — and thus serve others with greater effectiveness, passion, and clarity.

But someone might say “Since God can use us wherever we are, it doesn’t matter if we love our work or not. So let’s get rid of this silly quest to actually like what we spend 40 hours (or more) of our weeks doing.”

Sounds a bit spiritual, right? Or, maybe I should say, sounds a bit…over spiritual. Which is the first sign of the problem. So let’s take a closer look at Paul’s core passage on work, Ephesians 6:5-8.

Paul does indeed teach that the Lord can use us anywhere, and that we can find joy in our work no matter what it is (assuming it is lawful). His teaching to slaves here is to “do the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, not that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord.”

So, no matter our work is, we can indeed find a way to take joy in it because we can do it for the glory of Jesus. Specifically for slaves, Paul’s counsel is: “If you are a slave, don’t worry about. Do your work with joy, knowing that you are ultimately serving God. Your ability to make an impact will not be lessened because you are in slavery; do all the good you can in your work, knowing that you will be rewarded abundantly for it from the Lord.”

This is a precious, fundamental reality. So, following from this, we might then say: “So it doesn’t matter, then, if we actually like our jobs themselves. Who cares if you have a job you like? God uses you anyway.”

This is where the fact that Paul is here addressing those who are in slavery comes into play. I’ve always been slightly uncomfortable with how everyone applies this text directly to modern-day employees, as though we can just take it over wholesale. The general principles certainly remain, but the fact that Paul is addressing those in slavery here does mean something.

This flips us over to 1 Corinthians 7:17-24, where Paul addresses the issue in some more detail. Here Paul teaches us that we are to live according to the condition in which God has placed us. Paul’s counsel to slaves is “don’t worry about your condition. I know it is hard, but don’t worry that it diminishes your relationship with the Lord. You can do everything in your condition to God’s glory, and he will be fully pleased with you.”

The thing is this: God pays attention to the specific contexts of our lives and seeks to give us counsel tailored to our unique situations. Whereas those in slavery didn’t have any say over their work and roles, those who are free do have a say. That’s what it means to be free.

That matters. If you notice the argument of the passage, Paul’s point is that it is OK to live according to the context in which we find ourselves. “Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). If you became a Christian while a slave, that’s OK. Likewise, if you became a Christian while free, that’s OK to. You can keep living as a free person. “In whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Corinthians 7:24). And part of what it means to be a free person is that you have control over what jobs you choose and which career path you want to take. You can make those choices — it’s up to you.

So Paul is not saying to free people “just put up with whatever you’re given.” That’s contrary to the nature of being a free person. Paul expects free people to live as free people. Thus, it’s OK to seek a job you love. Again, that’s part of what it means to be free.

Paul’s counsel to those who are free, then, is simple: live as a free person. It’s OK! If you want to work in a field you love and have a job where the bulk of the activities are things you find engaging and which challenge you, go for it. You don’t have to fall for the trap of the over spiritualizers who say that since some people (maybe them?) don’t like their jobs, you shouldn’t either. “Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). For those who are free, that means living according to the fact that you have freedom over what you choose for a job. So if you prefer, then seek a job you love.

It’s OK. Go for it!

Is "Follow Your Passion" Really Bad Advice?

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I see that Cal Newport has a new book out where he argues that following your passion is actually bad advice.

I like Cal Newport and have been very helped by the things he has to say, such as his excellent article getting creative things done. But I think this is, unfortunately, a case of overstating a point in a way that renders it inaccurate.

For example, if “follow your passion” is bad advice, then does that mean “don’t follow your passion” is good advice? Should we do what we hate instead?

Newport argues that what we should do is cultivate skill, and we typically come to love those things we become good at. I think there’s a lot to that (though it’s not everything, and isn’t always the case).

But what I disagree with is why Newport feels like he has to “debunk” the notion that we should follow our passion. I doubt that most people who say “follow your passion” mean that in an unqualified sense. The right way to understand passion as it relates to our careers is as follows.

1. Passion truly is critical. You should follow your passion — but…

2. Passion is one of three things you need to consider. You don’t consider passion alone. Instead, you consider (1) what you are passion about, (2) what you can be excellent at and (3) what meets a real need in the world. Your greatest career effectiveness (and, likely, calling from God) is at the intersection of those three things.

3. To speak in terms of “don’t follow your passion” or “the notion that we should follow our passion is a cliche, and it’s bad advice” is to give a hugely incomplete picture of things because it can mistakenly lead people to overlook the critical place that passion does play (understood as I describe in point 2). It would be much better to say “passion is not enough,” or something like that.

4. Newport is right that passion is not always first. But sometimes it is. Let’s not discourage those people who do have a clear passion by telling them that following their passion is bad advice.

5. The best way to find your passion and gifts is to act. Years ago spiritual gifts tests were common. Rick Warren said when he took one back in the day, he only had one gift: martyrdom. Another guy who went around mooching off of others all day turned out to have the gift of “poverty” — which turned out only to reinforce him in his crazy efforts! In contrast, the way to find out what you are good at and love to do is not to take a test or just think to yourself “this is my passion,” but to do stuff. Then you find out what you love and are excellent at (and what is actually serving people), and build on that.

If that is Newport’s point, that’s great. But then his book would have been much more helpful, I think, if the big idea being used to promote it was “passion is not enough,” rather than trying to make the bold (and wrong) statement that the advice to “follow your passion” is wrong.

I’m all for bold statements, and calling attention to counterintuitive things. The trick, though, is that you have to be right in the statements you make. It’s great to say something unexpected, but that unexpected statement has to remain true once the person has understood the subject more deeply.

In this case, I think that those who have said “follow your passion” are being misrepresented.

However, with this clarified, Newport’s book is certainly worth checking out and I sure will be helpful on many, many fronts. I applaud Newport in the very helpful work that he does. I just think that this particular (very big) portion of his book and its lead marketing themes could have been recast in a much more helpful light.

Henry Cloud: Reversing the Death Spiral of a Leader

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Imparting practical and effective wisdom for improving leadership skill and workplace performance, Henry Cloud is the author of more than 20 books, including the four-million selling Boundaries series.

Here are my notes on Henry Cloud’s session, which was fantastic just like his message two years ago on three kinds of people .

As leaders, you are people who take charge and do stuff.

Leaders take the stewardship God has given them and exert their energy in that space to lead people and take ownership of that.

The hardest thing a leader has to be in charge of is himself.

Some leaders get results, and some don’t.

Some in the middle of here to there hit a block in the middle and start to stumble and fall because they can’t lead themselves.

How does a downward spiral of a leader happen?

The leaders who can stop a spiral: they think, feel, and behave differently than the ones who spiral out.

They put the smart guys who were pessimists, and the no-nothings who were optimistic, and the no-things out performed by 53%. The ones who believe they can will win every single time. The biggest factor on whether you will get from here to there is whether or not you believe it can be done. The number one factor is “do you believe that it can happen.” All leaders believe it can happen when they start, but then something happens—they get into a circumstance (and it will happen to you) where they become out of control (that is, not of their own doing—they are out of control of the circumstances behind them, and that begins to change their brain: learned helplessness).

We are designed by God to be in a cause and effect universe. But when we find ourselves in a circumstance where there are things we cannot control that are affecting us. What happens to the brain in a situation that you can’t control? It begins to change—in some predictable ways. The three Ps.

The brain begins to change in the ways it interprets everything around you.

The Spiral

1. Personal

The brain begins to interpret that in a personal way. “Why didn’t that sale happen? I’m no good.” Or a failed capital campaign. Or whatever. You interpret in a way that “I’m not good enough.” Every leader does stuff that doesn’t work. But the “dummies” don’t take it personally. They say “I guess they weren’t ready, or I need to tweak the presentation.” But they don’t conclude it’s because “I’m not good enough.” And they go on to succeed.

But for those who take it personally, the brain begins to shut down, and goes to the next P.

2. Pervasive

They then generalize from this. “My whole life sucks.” It goes to a different region of the brain and everything goes bad. Then there’s another event. You get an email that’s critical. It reinforces the first to Ps. Then to the third p:

3. Permanent

You think it’s permanent. Once the brain begins to go into this state, even the best performers can get here, but there’s a way out.

Science and the Bible always agree in a place called reality. If they’re not agreeing, you have goofy science or whacky Christians, and there’s no shortage of either.

We see David in the Bible going here. We see great leaders here.

When your brain is going negative, the things you can do to change things—you don’t do them anymore.

How do you get out of it? You have to reverse the three Ps.

Reversing the Spiral

1. Log them and dispute them

Write down the negative thoughts. 99% of will be absolutely false. Then you find the themes, and start to dispute them. You dispute it with God’s word. “What do you mean you aren’t good enough? You are my workmanship (Eph 2:10).” There is a difference between your brain and your mind. Your brain is a physiological organ that can give off false signals.

Dispute the personal stuff, dispute the pervasive stuff. One client might be mad at you, but another one loves you. It’s not pervasive. When you begin to look at the whole picture, life changes. Your life is a movie, not a scene. Every great movie has crisis scenes in it. It’s the people that see it as a scene that make it through. And it’s not permanent because there’s a hope for you.

2. Get back in control

What caused this problem? The loss of control. Write two columns. What you can control and what you can’t control. Obsessive about what you can’t control as hard as you can—for five minutes. Then take action on the stuff you can control.

Some passengers said about an airline: “It’s like they hate us. It’s like they don’t want us to be here.”

Dispute the negative noise and get back in control of what you can do.

3. Connect

Your brain turns to a cesspool of stress if it is focused on things it can’t control. The brain runs on oxygen, glucose, and relationships. So you must connect.

The opposite of bad is love. You don’t start trying to do good to feel better. You connect—relationships. Once you start to feel good in relationship, you forget about whether you are doing good or bad, and you begin to solve problems.

Study: when they connected, the brain changed.

Connect, connect, connect. When you feel the spiral starting, connect and your brain will change.

A can-do attitude is something that will give you confidence. What God wants for you is a “find-a-way” thinking.

 

Vijay Govindarajan: The Innovation Challenge

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Vijay Govindarajan is a Top 50 Management Thinker and Professor, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business

Ongoing operations are at odds with innovation.

Strategy is not about celebrating the past but leadership in the future. And the world keeps changing in the future. So if you want to be a leader in the future, you need to adapt to change. Which is innovation. So strategy is innovation.

Manage the present, selectively abandon the past, create the future. Most organizations over focus on box 1, and think they are doing strategy.

Competition for the present is about efficiency; competition for the future is about innovation. Both are important. So how do you create the future while maintaining the present?

Innovation is more than ideas. People mistake innovation as creativity. Innovation is commercializing creativity. Creativity is the idea; innovation is commercializing the idea. Innovation takes massive work. The idea is only 1% of the process. The bulk of the challenge lays in the execution.

innovation = idea + leader + team + plan

“Effective innovative leaders are subversives fighting the system. “ “Making innovation happen is not just the job of the leader. It’s not just about breaking all the rules. You have to work with the bureaucracy. The role of the leader is not to subvert but to harness the core capabilities of the core business.”

Innovation killers: 1. Assume that innovation can happen inside the performance engine. The performance engine is built for one purpose: to promote efficiency. But innovation is the opposite of efficiency. It is about flexibility. 2. Not constitute the team and the plan correctly.

You need to separate out the team and have them devoted to innovation outside the framework of regular operations. Innovation is a non-linear shift. It’s not just an improvement on the existing model; it’s a creation of a new model altogether.

NY Times digital should not be thought of as a newspaper on a digital platform. You have to create a distinct team. This means you can have different processes, metrics, culture, people. Almost assume you are a Silicon Valley startup. But must be linked to the performance engine, because it has assets that can be leveraged (100 years of digital archives, etc.—a SV startup cannot even imagine having that). The dedicated team is the new logic; the performance engine is the dominant logic. When they interact, there is difficulty!

You have to protect the performance engine and plant seeds. If you want a tree five years from now, you have to start today—not in five years.

Conflicts are not bad in organizations. Conflicts are healthy, provided you know how to manage them.

“Innovation is unmanageable chaos.” Innovation is non-routine. Ongoing operations are predictable; innovations are unpredictable. So you have to go about planning differently.

Zero-based planning. In ongoing operations, you are responding to clear signals. In Box 3, the future (innovation), you are responding to weak signals and non-linear shifts, because box 3 is about the future, and the future is less clear. Weak signals: don’t know size of the market, what the customer wants, etc. So the job in box three is to learn to resolve unknowns. In box 1 you can plan, because you have strong signals. In box 3, it’s very hard to plan because you have weak signals. So it’s about testing assumptions. Spend a little, learn a lot. Low cost experimentation.

How do you track and judge whether an innovation is working and you should keep investing in it? A performance engine you can evaluate on the basis of present results. It’s a known system. Box 3 is an experiment. You can’t evaluate it on the basis of short-term financial results, for it’s a bet about the future. So how do you evaluate? On the basis of the ability to learn. Can you set up your hypothesis or assumptions? Can you set up low cost experiments to test those hypotheses? The way you evaluate the performance of a leader here is their ability to conduct low-cost experiments and continuously learn.