Radio Free JoJo

So far the mayor of Newark, Cory Booker has received the greatest response…amazing speaker.

Lessons I’ve learned from my parents; a story about standing up for something.

You will always face outrageous adversaries; before you can stand tall you must realize that you were born out of radical love and action. A grand conspiracy of love.

What will you do? There are forces that will try to crush you and worse lull and seduce you into mediocrity.

We are the result of people who did not see the world they way others saw it; they had extraordinary vision and the courage of doing something about it. Your attitude about the world speaks to your character.

The world you see outside of you is a reflection inside of you. If you see despair and destruction that’s what’s in your heart and you’ll be worthless, but if you see hope and love then you can do something.

If it is to be…it’s up to me.

Show me first of how you choose to live…about your values, ideals, thought put into action. Infuse truth in that moment.

In every moment you can let life be, or infuse life with truth.

Let us know, stand up. Let us stand and tell our truth.

The basis of business:

1. Find out who your customers are
2. Find out what they want
3. Give it to them

Organizational change: here to there. Be very clear about aspects of “here” that are unacceptable, before you start articulating about “there”.

Entrepreneurship has the power to go a long way for providing for a full life.

When we look at the behavior of successful serial entrepreneurs over time, it turns out that they:

• Have a low appetite for risk
• They spread risk around
• They start out without a big vision
• Distrust projections and studies that forecast the future
• Do create new businesses but not necessary original

Go to war with your business model and reinvent yourself 3 to 5 times in your career

Drucker – Entrepreneurship is a discipline that can be learned

Understand the natural limitations of what we have learned: cost and effect, predictability.

Paralysis – risk-measurable and uncertainty-subjective If you can’t predict the future, create it. Creation-oriented action.

Understand that in the face of unknowability, the only logical thing is to act.

- Take small steps, not big leaps

1. What do you really care about?
2. Pay only what you can afford or want to?
3. Then act…sell or enroll people
4. What keeps people from doing this? Worrying about what you want to do, instead worry about what you want to do next.
5. Fear of failure stops us from acting
   1. failure rate of professional venture capitalist is 60%
   2. If things turn out different, you’ve just learned something that others don’t know

With action trumping everything, you get more times at bat, more chances to win

I am blogging my notes from the Global Leadership Summit of the Willow Creek Association, seen locally in Erie at Grace Church.

Five Critical Questions

1. What’s your challenge level at work?

Dangerously over challenged
Appropriately challenged
Under challenged

Best work…just above appropriately challenged.

If you don’t challenge more – your gifts will atrophy.
If you stay above dangerous – you will break down.
If I live in crazy land I set a bad example

The discipline of replenishment…fill the bucket

Do this test in your departments. Save people who are overchallenged…keep people who are under-challenged.

Your organization can be over-revved or get sleepy. Do the challenge test.

2. What is your plan for dealing with challenging people in organization?

The line exercise: if we lost 50% of our revenue…put people in the order of keeping them or saying goodbye first.

These are not bad people, just people at the end of the line
• Do they carry their weight
• Underperforming
• Off mission
• No longer fit

Key to future is unquestionably tied to the ability to attract and retain fantastic people, and dealing with people at the end of the line

Leading difficult people:
• Fantastic Fred – bad attitude, how much time will you allow Fred to spread his poison (30 days)
• Underperformers – not carrying their weight (3 months) – multiple reasons
• Growth of organization requires someone with greater capacity to perform role – talent elasticity (6-12 months)
If you don’t deal with difficult people, you discourage high performers
Best Christian workplace – build a better culture – engagement survey

3. Are you naming facing and resolving the problems that exist in your organization?

Why can’t we call problems problems? We come from a legacy of leaders who courageously solve problems.

Life cycle diagram – every initative/program has a life cycle:

Accelerating -> Booming -> Decelerating -> Tanking

We are going to address these problems (decelerating) restoration teams with new ideas, fresh thinking

4. When was the last time that you reexamined the core of what your organization is all about?

Are we clear about our core? Churches are in the life-transformation business.
5 words – central message of Christianity
1. Love
2. Evil
3. Rescue
4. Choice
5. Restore

5. Have you had your leadership bell rung recently?

Has anything rocked your leadership world recently? Casting a big vision…fearless and confident…need my boldness back.
Job is to move the organization from here to there…you have to believe that God is willing to help you move. Too much at stake to be defeatist. Why cant your next five years be your best five?

When Leaders Fall

A week doesn’t go by when a leader doesn’t have a moral failure.

Schaffer Institute study: 30% of pastors surveyed admitted sexual impropriety during their ministry

How do we handle this as a church, and why do church leaders fail

We need to reach out to people who are broken as Jesus would.

Not one of us are in the place to cast stones…we want to be a redemptive church.

Five R’s of resisting temptation:

• Remember who you are – child of God, someone’s husband or wife, daddy or mommy
• Recognize the consequences of your actions – will I feel better, more or less human after I do this, who will be hurt by my actions/fantasize the worst possible actions
• Rededicate yourself to God – stop and pray
• Reveal your struggle to a trusted friend – when it’s secret it has power, when you find someone you trst is has no power
• Remove yourself from the situation – erect more clear boundaries, change reporting structures, change churches.

Big ideas:

• We are called to Sanctification – control your body to be holy and honorable
• All of us struggle with this part of our lives, there are consequence when we fall

Remember we serve a Lord that is the friend of sinners.

The Mentor Leader

Job: to Help the players get better. Doing it back building relationships, with loyalty and respect. If they players believe in the coach that he can lead them to win

Stubbornness is a virtue if you’re right.

Life balance – the building is always open. If we are going to spend a lot of time at work, feel free to bring the family in. Let’s be efficient in our time, don’t waste it, and don’t feel guilty if you want to go home at a decent hour.

If you’re looking for a mentor, how do you find someone? First be available to mentor people. When you are looking, find people that you admire. You can get mentor from a distance. Craig: Everyone should have a Paul/everyone should have a Timothy

What does the mentoring relationship look like? The mentor has to find out where we are and building trust. We can have formal times where we meet, but the informal part is more important.

Dad and Mom first mentors, but Jesus Christ is the best mentor…the relationship will never fade or change.

Never, Ever Give Up

Good is the enemy of great.

Greatness is a matter of conscious choice and discipline.

If we only have great business, we will only have a prosperous nation. But we must have great social organizations, schools and churches.

How great enterprises stumble: How the Mighty Fall If it can happen to them, it can happen to anyone. No one is immune, anyone can fall.

You can be sick on the inside and look fine on the outside.

Five stages of decline:

Five Stages of Decline

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success: outrageous arrogance, and neglect. Bad decisions taken with good intentions are still bad.

Three Level 5 leaders: it is not about them, never, ever give up. Humility separates the Level 5 from the Level 4 leader

A passionate ambition to do “whatever it takes” – humility and passion

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More: overreaching, too much growth, beyond their ability to execute with excellence

Regulate growth and reach: do we have our key seats filled on the bus with Fantastic People

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril: warning signs appear. A culture of denial appears. On the outside, you really look great.

The Stockdale Paradox: Vietnam vet, POW. I never waivered in my faith that I would not get out, but this is the defining event of my life and I would not trade it. The optimists did not do well. This is what you must learn: don’t confuse faith and facts…never give up.

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation: The companies that fell were looking for the silver bullet, the outside savior. Greatness is never a single event but an accumulative process. The flywheel, disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action, turn upon turn.

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death: its over, you give up. You squandered your capital, avenues foreclose, game over. Why in the face of all adversity did the 18 Built to Last companies endure the struggle? Because they had a reason. If you measure your success by money, you always lose. We must continue the struggle, we have to endure! Driven by a purpose beyond money and fame. Rooted in core values.

The paradox: core values are not open for negoitiation or change…if we lose our soul we lose it all. The signature of mediocrity: inconsistent effort.

The genius of the “And”: Preserve the Core and Stimulate Progress

To Do List:

1. Do your diagnostics “Good to Great” Diagnostic tool http://jimcollins.com
2. Count your blessings: literally in a spreadsheet! Account for all of the good things that happened that we did not cause, it’s humbling.
3. What is your “questions to statements” ratio and can you double it in the next year. Great leaders ask the right questions. Invest more in being interested than interesting.
4. How many key seats do you have on your bus?
5. Do your How the mighty fall teams up/down diagnostic
6. What are the “brutal facts”?
7. Have a “Stop Doing” list
8. Define results and show clicks on the flywheel/milestones. How do you demonstrate clicks on the flywheel.
9. Double your reach to young people by changing practices without changing values.
10. Might be time for a new BHAG in these times. Drucker: “Be Useful!” Never give up.

To truly set out to be useful, you can never capitulate, never, never, never give in.

I am at the Erie, PA satellite site of the Global Leadership Summit produced by the Willow Creek Assocation. I’ll blog my notes as appropriate.

What is the Summit=Leadership development event that is unabashedly Christian.

Goal=we get 5-10% better as leaders each year, so that in time, you have been revoutionalized as leader

Leadership slump – unsolvable challenges that can’t get head around, stumped

Four points

1. Leaders move people from…here à there //a preferred future that produces passion

What do you do when people want to stay…”here”

1. First play is to make “here” sound awful!
2. Build the case of we cannot stay her
3. Describe where there is and vision the opportunities

Our job is to figure out what God wants done in this world, what our role is, and why we can’t stay where we are.

2. Fantastic People-one of the greatest joys of leadership is knitting together teams

• Character
• Competence
• Chemestry
• Culture (what kind of person flourishes on our team?)

High challenge, servant

The Holy Challenge – assemble a team of fantastic people  - sensitive conversations to have

3. Mile markers and Celebrations

In a journey from here to there, the middle third of the journey between here to there gets really hard

Recommendations:

• Refill their vision bucket (everyone’s leaks)
• You have to put mile markers in and celebrate each one of them
• What keeps people on the journey is a sense of hope that they will get there someday

40% differential between an inspired teammate/church member and one without – inspiration matters

4. Whispers from God

Vital to be voracious reader of God’s Word to open yourself to God’s leading

Do you believe that God still speaks today? I think He trys to speak to you every single day!

How concerned are you on the quality of our antenna to God? Listen to the Spirit…do everything in your power to hear the voice of God and heed it.

The smartest moves Bill made didn’t come from his wisdom but from promptings.

What are the whispers you are hearing?