Some notes from John Ortberg’s message on the influence Jesus has had on history. Ortberg gave probably around 100 facts. This is just a small sample.

We are stewards of a movement that has reshaped history more than any other.

Jesus is not just the greatest king among kings, but is the King of kings.

Every world leader and king now has their birth and death marked in relation to Jesus’ birth.

Things did not change by accident.

Wherever you have an institution of self-giving for the lowly, whose recipients will never be able to repay, it probably has its roots in the movement started by Jesus.

92% of all colleges and universities started before the Civil War were started in Christ’s name.

Jesus revolutionized the arts. Dante, Bach, Luther’s hymns, Mozart, all did their work to the glory of God. Modern musical notation an invention of monks.

Separation of church and state, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” This is perhaps the most influential political statement ever made. It had been assumed in the ancient world that religion was the prerogative of the ruler. Jesus separated the realms.

Jesus changed how we think of human rights and dignity. The notion of individual rights, where did this come from? It was not self-evident in the ancient world. Today almost everyone says “I believe in a God of love.” Where did that come from? It was rare in the ancient world. Jesus brought a new way of thinking about God.

Jesus uniquely taught love your enemies. In the ancient world it was admired to help your friends, but harm your enemies.

The real question is not who was this man but who is this man?

His work is not done yet.

At the core of leadership is trust. Do people trust you? Do they trust who you have empowered to lead in your organizations?

To the extent that you are trusted, you are free to lead. To dream great dreams and go from here to there. When you lose trust, it’s game over. You can no longer lead. It all comes to a grinding halt.

Integrity = trustworthiness.

How are you doing? Is there anywhere in your leadership and your life where you are not fully trustworthy?

Is there anyone in your organization with whom you think you need to have a conversation about their trustworthiness? “One of the biggest regrets in my organization is knowing some people are off track and not going and talking to them right away. And then by the time I have talked to them, lots of damage has been done.”

Or maybe you’ve already had the conversation, and it’s time to take them out. They hurt too many people, they don’t tell the truth. Give first warnings, give second warnings. At some point, you have to take action.

Ury is one of the leading world experts on negotiation and conflict. He is the co-author of the best selling Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In and a faculty member at Harvard Business School. Here are my notes on Jim Mellado’s interview with him. 

Jim: How did you get started in this?

William: I grew up during the cold war under the shadow of the bomb, and I could never understand why we were willing to put all of humanity at risk. The question I’ve devoted my life to is how do we live with our deepest differences?

Jim: Why is this relevant to everyone?

William: I see negotiation very broadly. Think of your own lives and who you negotiate with in the course of your day. Your kids, your spouse, your employees, your co-workers, your board. You spend a lot of time each day in the act of back and forth communication, trying to reach agreement on various issues. We are negotiating from the time we get up to the time we go to bed at night. Many of our decisions are made through a process of shared decision making. This is why negotiation is so central. It is a core competence for leadership.

William: Conflict isn’t necessarily bad because no injustice or anything gets resolved without conflict. We need to hear lots of different views that are very different. The question is can we deal with conflict in a constructive way, or are we going to handle it through destruction?

Jim: What is the biggest obstacle to negotiation?

William: It is not what we think it is. It’s not that difficult person out there. It’s us. We are the biggest barrier to us achieving success. It is an all too human characteristic to simply react — to act without thinking. The key foundation of successful negotiation is to get up on the balcony — a place where you can get a larger perspective. A place of clarity where you can see the ultimate goal. That’s key.

One of the greatest powers we have in negotiation is the power not to react.

Jim: What are the most significant skills we need to get good at to negotiate well?

William: You need to focus on underlying needs. You need to be creative. And you need to rely on objective criteria.

So the first is to separate the person from the problem. We often end up being soft on the people and soft on the problem. Or we make the opposite mistake, being hard on the problem and hard on the people. But you find successful negotiators drawing a line between people and the problem. They remain soft on the people while dealing hard on the problem. The harder the problem, the softer you need to be on the people. Soft on the people means listening, putting yourselves in the shoes of the other side, understanding how they feel (how could you change someone’s mind unless you know what it is?), and respect. It costs you nothing to give someone basic respect, and it means everything to them.

Jim: When I first read your book, I thought that was especially significant because one of the fruit of the Spirit is kindness.

William: Yes, this changes the game from face-to-face confrontation. You ought to see yourselves on the same side of the table, side by side, tackling the same problem together.

Jim: Unpack the second principle, focusing on interest, not position.

William: There is often a difference between interest and position. The key is to probe behind the specific position a person has to the underlying aims they have. Sometimes the aim can be accomplished in a different way. So the key is to always ask the question “why?”

Jim: Talk about the importance of developing multiple options.

William: What we bring to negotiation is our ability to be inventive. Once we see the interests, rather than just position, we can see that there are many ways of doing that. Creative options that meet the interests of all sides.

Jim: How about the power of objective criteria and fair process.

William: Often people think in terms of a fixed pie. But in the inventing process, you’ve asked “how do we expand the pie?” But now that’s say you’ve done that, and it is time to divide up the pie. How do you deal with that? In a merely positional process, this tends to be a question of will and ego. The alternative is to use standards that are independent of will and ego, objective criteria. You don’t have to “give in to the other side,” but defer to an independent standard of fairness that is objective.

Jim: What do you do if you aren’t able to reach an agreement?

William: We should go in to negotiations with what we call a BATNA — a “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.” This isn’t negative thinking, but positive alternative thinking. If you have an alternative, you are going to have more confidence. And this also gives you a way to measure the value of your agreement. Many times, people reach an agreement that is worse than their alternative.

“Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in business. It is virtually free and accessible to any leader who wants it, and yet it is virtually untapped in most organizations.”

The reason? “Too many leaders think it’s beneath them.”

What is organizational health?

The best way to understand it is to contrast it with something we are more familiar with?

In order for any organization to be effective, there are two requirements for success. First, it must be smart. Strategy, marketing, finance, technology, etc. This stuff is important. Nobody should ever tell you it’s not important. The problem is it’s only half the equation, yet it gets 80% of the attention. If we are going to maximize our organizations, we also need to make them  healthy. A healthy organization has minimal politics and confusion, high morale, high productivity, and low turnover.

“When I show most CEOs this slide, they say ‘I’d give my left leg to have the right side of that slide — organizational health. But I don’t know how to do that. They didn’t really teach us that in business school. Let’s go to the left side of that slide and tweak some stuff.'”

Many leaders are more comfortable in strategy and finance than organizational health. But if we want to change our organizations, we have to make them healthier.

“Every organization I work with has enough domain expertise to be wildly successful, but few tap into it because they aren’t healthy. There are politics and confusion.”

Southwest Airlines is an excellent company, but it’s not because they’re smarter. They are great because they are so healthy as an organization. As a result, they use every bit of knowledge that they have.

So, how do we make our organizations healthy? There are four organizations you have to master. They are simple, but hard.

1. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team

Trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, results. Leadership teams must be cohesive. [See his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.]

2. Create organizational clarity

Many people this is just about mission statements. But many mission statements don’t work because they try to do too many things. Here’s an example: [Wait, it’s too long and boring — I’m not going to type it! Just imagine the most boring, hard to grasp sentence you’ve ever seen. It’s from . . . Dunder Mifflin! And yet it’s surprising how close to reality it is for many organizations.]

What you need to do is answer six critical questions. If you can answer these six questions, you can create clarity in your organization and the result is true empowerment.

1. Why do we exist?

This is your core purpose. This is not just a restatement of what you do. For example, the purpose of Southwest Airlines is to democratize travel — making it cheap and possible for everyone to fly. Your core purpose helps you make all your decisions. For example, in the issue of whether to charge fees for checked luggage, Southwest asked “would this help democratize air travel?” The answer was no, so they don’t charge.

2. How do we behave?

These are  core values. You can’t list every positive value here, however. That is too much and overwhelming. Get down to the one, two, or maybe truly endemic behaviors. So we need to distinguish different types of values. For example, there are aspirational values. These are things you aspire to, but which aren’t true of your organization right now. When you make these core values, you lose credibility. One of Enron’s core values, for example, was integrity! That was not a true core value for them. A core value is something you are willing to be punished for. You will hold to it even if it would be to your detriment.

When someone asks you to violate a core value, you lovingly recognize that this is not the place for them. This is how you know you believe in something — if you will hold to it even if it wouldn’t benefit you (externally).

Churches really struggle here. This is because they confuse core values with permission to play values. These are the minimum standards. For example: telling the truth. This is more of a minimum standard. Of course you won’t hire people who lie. Minimum standards are critical. But this isn’t what we’re talking about when we talk about core values. Here, one church is often very different from another. Everyone should be able to worship at your church, but this doesn’t mean anybody should be able to work there. There must be a core value fit.

“To work in a church, you should never do it because you have to have the job.” It should be only because you are able to contribute to the mission. [If you are there just to have a job, please leave as fast as you can! I know some people like this and there is no faster way to ruin a church!]

3. What do we do?

Many executives actually aren’t on the same page here.

4. How will we succeed?

This is the issue of strategy. Strategy boils down to three anchors, which become the filter for every decision you make. Every organization can do this. For example, at Southwest: make the customers fanatically loyal, don’t make the plane late, and keep fares low. They tell everyone in the organization these three things, and say: “As long as you do these three things, you can make whatever decision you need.” This empowers employees.

Most employees’ strategy boils down to this: I’m just going to try to avoid getting in trouble. This is why most customer service is so bad.

5. What is most important, right now?

6. Who must do what?

3. Over-communicate clarity

You need to hear something 7 times in most organizations before people believe it.

4. Reinforce clarity through human systems

Do things in creative ways that reinforce and demonstrate the values.

I hope that someday organizational health will become standard in organizations. That will change the world. Until that happens, this represents an incredible opportunity for competitive advantage.