What's Best Next

You are here: Home / Archives for Matt Perman

20 Essential TED Talks for Future Leaders

by

This is a helpful list from online universities.com. Here’s the intro:

If you want to get to the top in any field, whether it’s business, science, or even construction, you have to have some pretty solid leadership skills. Unfortunately, these kinds of skills often aren’t the sort of thing you’ll find being taught in your college courses, and may take some extra effort to learn and apply outside of your classes.

While there is little substitute for leadership experience through campus organizations, hearing from experts on psychology, leadership, and business can also be a big help in giving you a basic leadership education. TED is one of the best places to find all of these diverse subjects in one place, and here we’ve collected some of the best videos for anyone, young or old, hoping to hone their leadership abilities

So, You're Restructuring Again?

by

There’s a great article over at WorldChristians called “So, Your Office is Restructuring Again?“.

Here are two good reasons for restructuring:

  • When you notice communication problems are creating mistakes. This often occurs in larger organizations when departments focus on their own projects resulting in conflict or competition with other departments. A restructuring may be necessary to better communicate, coordinate, and unite efforts.
  • When several new staff are added, it is necessary to create new structures for communication, connection, and accountability.

And, here are two bad reasons for restructuring:

Reasons that weak leaders use to restructure; if you are in an organization like this, watch out: weak leadership alert!

  • When you want to show that you can take charge and lead, but aren’t really sure what to do; restructuring gives the appearance of leadership and buys time until you figure out what in the world you are going to do. If this is your main motivation, don’t do it. Better focus on real, rather than cosmetic, accomplishments for the organization.
  • When you don’t have the courage to confront other leaders in the organization; restructuring can get them out of the way without having to confront them personally.

Defer–But for the Right Things

by

Paul commands us to be “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). One thing this means — among many others — is that we should be deferential to others (see also James 3:17; Titus 3:2).

To be sure, we shouldn’t sacrifice matters of core principle, or central doctrines, or ethics of the faith. But when it comes to the arena of Christian freedom, we should have a willingness to defer.

Nonetheless, there is still a need here for wisdom to guide us, because sometimes deferring to others is not the best thing — and it’s not selfish to stay the course.

I made the mistake of “wrong deferring” the other day when I was playing baseball in the street with my kids and some of their friends. They are new to baseball and just coming to understand it. A bit into the game, one of them said “let’s not play in teams, but just individually.”

I thought, “OK, doesn’t sound good, but I guess we’ll give that a try.” And, it went horrible. It wasn’t like a game of home run derby, but was confusing. So about an inning later, I said “let’s go back to the other way,” and I explained some basics of the game that are easy to take for granted. Then it went better.

I think it’s important not to have a “the leader always knows best” mentality. That’s why I went ahead with the suggestion that we change the structure of the game around a bit, even though I had a reservation. But, at the same time, sometimes the leader really does know best. So how do you avoid deferring in those cases, without being a squelcher?

In those cases, you need to ask: “Does this person actually know what they are talking about?”

It’s a simple question. If their suggestion comes from actually knowing a bit about the area, even if it sounds a bit outlandish, go ahead and give it a try if the consequences don’t risk sinking the ship.

But if their idea simply comes from not understanding the area, then be gracious, and don’t defer.

But don’t merely stay on track, either (which often equals discounting the suggestion). Rather, stay on track and do some teaching.

That’s critical, because the point of leadership is not just to go places, but to build people up in the process.

Suggestions are often a time for the leader to learn something. Many leaders need to do a better of job of knowing when it’s time to learn.

And then other times, suggestions and ideas are an indication that the person making the suggestion just might be clueless. In those cases, don’t discount them. But don’t defer, either. Take the time to teach.

 

Slaying the Faith-Work Frankenstein's Monster

by

My friend Lukas Naugle, who is a principal at Marketplace One, has written an excellent, super informative, well reasoned article summarizing some of the main insights he recently gained from reading a few dozen books on faith and work.

It’s called The Faith-Work Frankenstein’s Monster. Here’s the gist:

Those who haven’t gained a full-orbed view of the integration of faith and business are still the majority, and they come in various shapes and sizes. Here are some of the faith-work Frankenstein’s monsters I’ve met, and how to avoid releasing a monster yourself.

And here’s one of the best parts (among many others):

It’s important to affirm that business activity has intrinsic value in God’s world, not just instrumental value. Unfortunately, many faith leaders seem to focus on the instrumental value of business. The boss, the client, the church, and perhaps even the family often can treat the businessperson like a tool. We love to be useful to people, and our instrumentality is meaningful, but it’s not healthy to be a tool. Tools are manipulated, abused, demeaned, and wear out over time. A vision of mere instrumentality often leads to the erosion of meaning and motivation in a person’s work.

If you recognize yourself in one of the “monsters” he describes at the beginning, don’t fear. Keep reading to gain a well-articulated, biblical correction to many approaches to integrating faith and work that have some elements of truth, but ultimately fall short.

6 Characteristics of Knowledge Work

by

Here are 6 great points I recently came across, summarizing Peter Drucker on what makes knowledge work different from (and more challenging than) manual work:

  1. “Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question: “What is the task?”
  2. It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.
  3. Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers.
  4. Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker.
  5. Productivity of the knowledge worker is not – at least not primarily – a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important.
  6. Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an ‘asset’ rather than a ‘cost’. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities.”

Here’s the key point, and the key challenge: Knowledge workers must manage themselves. The manager can only be a source of help, not a boss.

This creates an incredible opportunity and challenge for us as knowledge workers. The challenge is that it means that we need to know how to manage ourselves now more than ever, which does not necessarily come naturally (which is one reason I wrote my book). But the opportunity is that knowledge work by definition presents a great opportunity to unleash your creativity and innovation and unique interests.

This also presents a challenge for organizations, however. Many organizations that consist of knowledge workers still manage their people as if they are doing manual work. This is why you still see tightly controlled leadership and management practices.

The news flash is that these approaches kill knowledge work. Organizations cannot take their management cues from how management was done in the industrial era (I’m not saying even manual work should have been managed in that way, but it’s even worse with knowledge work). Every organization needs to be built on the recognition that their people, especially their knowledge workers (which is most of the workforce today), must be given ownership in their tasks and be allowed to manage themselves.

(By the way, if you are reading this blog, you are a knowledge worker; also, even if your “paid” job consists in manual work, we are all knowledge workers in our personal and home lives.)

Give People Big Jobs

by

Peter Drucker gets this right:

“The young knowledge worker whose job is too small to challenge and test his abilities either leaves or declines rapidly into premature middle-age soured, cynical, unproductive.

Executives everywhere complain that many young men with fire in their bellies turn so soon into burned-out sticks. They have only themselves to blame: they quenched the fire by making the young man’s job too small.”

In other words, you burn people out mainly by giving them too little, not mainly by giving them too much.

If you treat your employees simply as tools — that is, simply as interchangeable parts who are there to do what you tell them rather than to take initiative and ownership of their job — you are are not just being an ineffective manager. You are harming your employees (as all bad management ultimately does).

Where I Disagree with the Total Money Makeover

by

I recently thumbed through Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover book a bit while I was at Kinko’s printing off a large document. I didn’t read a ton, and there are many helpful things in there, to be sure. Further, Dave Ramsey has a very good ministry and is doing a great service.

But here’s something that doesn’t resonate with me. Quite often he would exhort people to save money and avoid debt by appealing to the fact that millionaires are frugal and avoid debt. “Millionaires don’t drive new cars — that’s how they became millionaires.”

The problem is that I don’t want to be a millionaire. That whole concept feels empty to me — “live like no one else now so you can live like no one else then.” I’m just not interested in that. I don’t want to make financially conservative decisions in order to build my own wealth.

What I’m interested in is helping people, seeking to do good, seeking to share, and being “hazardously liberal,” to use a phrase from John Piper, in serving others. Frugality put in the service of generosity — that’s a decent aim.

I’m sure Dave Ramsey would agree. When he refers to millionaires, he isn’t advocating that we should want to be one, but probably appealing to the fact that many people do. He’s not saying it’s good; he’s just acknowledging a desire many in society have, and appealing to it without approving it.

Still, I think it would be better to make clear that the aim in frugality (which I’m not convinced is a biblical virtue) is to serve others. That’s not only a more exciting life; it also keeps us from the trap of superficial frugality where we sacrifice the good of others in the name of financially conservative efficiency.

On Criticism

by

Good words from Marcus Buckingham. Completely right:

Criticism has the power to do good when there is something that must be destroyed, dissolved or reduced, but it is capable only of harm when there is something to be built.

Here’s one application of this: If an employee (or family member!) comes to you with an idea, you don’t first ask yourself “what’s wrong with this?” You first focus on what’s right.

Even when there is something to be dissolved, criticism still has dangers. For example, in his book In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters talks about how studies showed that if employees in a call center were criticized on how they handled customers, the result was not better customer service. Rather, the employees sought to avoid customers (that, is their job!) altogether. 

The point: criticism typically creates unpredictable and strange behavior. It rarely does good, and frequently backfires and undoes the very thing that ought to have been built up.

This is especially worth remembering if you have the “gift of criticism.” If you have that talent, go, bury it right now, as fast as you can. That’s one gift the Lord does not want you to steward for his glory.