In several projects I’ve worked on over the last few years, I’ve noticed people going out of their way not to make the project great, but to make it mediocre. 

It’s the strangest thing in the world.

I’ve even seen people undo important, great, accurate work and make it worse, when they could have just left it alone.

What is with this?

The strangest things is this: excellence is actually easier.

At least, it’s easier when the strange commitment to mediocrity is not there.

The main obstacle to excellence is not the effort it requires to be excellent. Rather, it’s the effort required to stand up against the strange folks in this world that seem to be utterly devoted to taking excellent projects and turning them into average.

As Churchill said, “The challenge is not winning the war. The challenge is persuading them to let you win it.”

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the classics The Tipping Point and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, has a new book out today: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.

Here’s the Amazon summary:

In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell challenges how we think about obstacles and disadvantages, offering a new interpretation of what it means to be discriminated against, or cope with a disability, or lose a parent, or attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of other apparent setbacks.

Gladwell begins with the real story of what happened between the giant and the shepherd boy those many years ago. From there, David and Goliathexamines Northern Ireland’s Troubles, the minds of cancer researchers and civil rights leaders, murder and the high costs of revenge, and the dynamics of successful and unsuccessful classrooms—all to demonstrate how much of what is beautiful and important in the world arises from what looks like suffering and adversity.

In the tradition of Gladwell’s previous bestsellers—The Tipping Point, Blink,Outliers and What the Dog Saw—David and Goliath draws upon history, psychology, and powerful storytelling to reshape the way we think of the world around us.

You can also watch Gladwell talk about the story of David and Goliath in his recent TED talk, below. And if you are heading down to Catalyst this week, you can also hear him speak on it in person.

I’ve always admired Gladwell’s incredible insight. When I heard him speak at Catalyst the first time a few years ago, I came to admire not only his insight, but also the openness and respect he seems to have towards issues of faith. I’m looking forward to hearing him at Catalyst again this week.

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of interviewing Brad Lomenick, president of Catalyst, on his book The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker.

Brad is a model of the leadership qualities he talks about and it was a lot of fun to talk to him.

And here is also an edited transcript of the interview, in order to provide a shorter summary for people who prefer to read. (Note that the transcript is really a paraphrase of both him and me, because that’s the easiest way for me to summarize things. For any who compare the two, you might have an enjoyable time of comparing what goes in to my head with how I actually understand it and restate it!)

Here’s the transcript:

Brad, tell us first of all what Catalyst is and what you do for Catalyst?

I’m the president of Catalyst. Sort of the key strategist and key visionary. We’re a really small team so I’m really involved in the program of the events we put on as well.

We do leadership conferences. If anyone is familiar with John Maxwell, John is the one who started Catalyst along with a number of other leaders. We really have a heartbeat for younger leaders — for those in the first half of their career life. We are a Christian leadership movement and conference. We have a heart for Christians who are in the marketplace as well as who are working in roles connected to the church.

We see our role as creating an opportunity to connect, inspire, equip, and then release the next generation of leaders who are in the first stage of their career. They are out of college, but still in the first half of their professional life. That’s our heartbeat, and we’ve been doing this now for almost 14 years.

Atlanta is our flagship gathering every October, where we will have 13,000 leaders gathered this year [note: next week!]. But we do many other conferences throughout the year as well, including Catalyst West, a Dallas event, and Catalyst One Day.

Why did you write this book?

That’s a great place to start. I just turned 40, so I felt like part of the stewardship of the role I’ve had for the past several years meant that it was time for me to pass on a lot of what I’ve learned. I wasn’t planning on doing this; at least for me, my perspective had been “I’m just the guy behind the scenes; I’m a practitioner, not a thought leader, not a voice.”

But I had some friends who really challenged me on that. They said “you do know some things and you do have some things to pass on to the next generation. You aren’t just the guy behind the scenes. You need to be a wise steward of the way God has given you the opportunity to be around so many great leaders and you need to pass on what you have learned.”

The ultimate reason for me, though, is that I’m looking around at a lot of my peers who are starting on the rocket ride and having influence very early in life, and are coming up against roadblocks in their leadership because they haven’t been fully equipped. With our generation, so many of us are stepping into leadership roles earlier than in prior generations, sometimes before we are ready. We are leading now, but we also need to lead well. And the way we finish well in life and in our leadership is to lead well now.

That’s the essence of this book. I want my generation to lead well now, and to be able to look back on things 40 years from now and say “we took the baton that was given to us, and we ran the race well.”

[Read more…]

This is one of the best quotes ever. It’s by Theodore Roosevelt and has been put back in the spotlight again by Brene Brown’s excellent book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. Here it is:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;

who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

It seems like the world is full of critics who are not actually skilled at doing anything — other than covering up for their lack of ability by hurling criticism at others. Don’t fall into that trap. Don’t be one of those small people “sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice.” Dare to show up and take action.

Even at the risk of being criticized.

In a research study that he carried out for his book The Catalyst Leader: 8 Essentials for Becoming a Change Maker, Brad Lomenick found that less than one-fourth of Christians feel that “their workplace has a clear vision that is easily understood by employees.” This leads to cynicism, confusion, wasted effort, loss of enthusiasm, and a whole host of negative things.

What’s the solution? We need more leaders, for casting vision is the task of the leader.

It might sound a bit odd for me to say we need more leaders. For sometimes it seems as though everybody thinks they are a leader. And it has almost become cliche to hear people say “we don’t need any more books on leadership. We already have far too many.” Don’t we have plenty of leaders, and far too many resources on leadership?

No.

We have far too few leaders, and far too few good resources on leadership.

The reason people have not noticed the acute need for more (and better) leaders is because we have failed to understand what leadership actually is. 

So the first step in undoing the dearth of leadership in the church and in the world is to get back on track in understanding what leadership is in the first place.

One of the most helpful ways to understand what leadership is comes from understanding what it is not, but is often confused with: management. Brad Lomenick captures the essence of the difference very well in The Catalyst Leader:

Managers work on things that are right in front of them. They manage the e-mail inbox, respond to staff crises, sign checks, pay bills, and then drive home to relax at night before they have to do it all over again. Manage, rinse, repeat.

But leaders are fixated on the next day, the next goal, the next project. While managers are tending the grass, leaders are peering over the hill. Sure, they respond to what is in front of them in the here and now, but they are also brainstorming about tomorrow. They exert energy to invent the future. Unlike a manager, a leader lives in the tension of the now and the next.

If you want to lead, you need to be focused more than just on doing what’s in front of you. You have to set your focus on what’s next — not predicting what’s next, but creating what’s next. Leaders are almost obsessively focused on the future — on creating change by inspiring and motivating (not controlling) people to make that change happen together.

So leadership is not first about good process and creating efficiencies. It is about casting vision, setting direction, creating clarity, and giving people hope that things can be better. Leadership, more than management, taps into the side of human beings that is of the spirit. The realm of inspiration and passion. In fact, leaders are often willing to tolerate chaos and messiness in process when it is necessary to fully understand a problem and arrive at the true, long-term solution.

As long as we equate “smooth running processes” (as important as they are) with leadership, we will continue to have a massive leadership shortage in the church and society.

Real change is often messy, and you cannot manage your way to it. It takes leadership, which is a distinct skill in its own right. (This is one reason the path of redemptive history sometimes seems so all-over-the place: God is not just a manager, but also a leader, and guiding his people to the restoration of all things is a leadership task, not just a management task.)

If you want to learn more about the difference between leadership and management, here are three helpful things worth reading:

• What Does a Leader Do?, a post where I try to summarize the essence of leadership.
• The One Thing You Need to Know, Marcus Buckingham’s book that nails the distinction between leadership and management — and shows you how to be effective in each.
• Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?, Harvard Business School professor Abraham Zaleznik’s article that caused an uproar in business schools by arguing that “the theoreticians of scientific management, with their organizational diagrams and time-and-motion studies, were missing half the picture — the half filled with inspiration, vision, and the full spectrum of human drives and desires. The study of leadership hasn’t been the same since.”

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.

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!