3 Reasons You Should Have Fewer Goals
In her book Grit, Angela Duckworth tells a fascinating story about Warren Buffett’s challenge to a pilot. Warren Buffett asked his pilot if he had dreams and goals other than being a pilot. When the pilot confessed that he did, Buffett gave him three steps to achieving his goals. Here are Warren Buffett’s three steps […]
3 Ways to Increase Alignment on the Team You Lead
For alignment to be driven into a culture, values must be seen more than on a wall. They must show up in regular conversations and in training.
3 Easy Ways to Burn Out Your Team
The painful paradox of serving on a burned out team: less of an impact while feeling like you are working more.
5 Steps to Simplifying Your Church’s Schedule
For many good reasons, church leaders often desire to simplify their schedules. They know too many programs is paralyzing for new people, as the next step is unclear. They know that it is impossible for their church to do everything well. They see leaders exhausted and they know activity does not equate with transformation. They […]
3 Warning Signs of an Exaggerated Resume
If you are responsible for building and leading a team, you have looked at resumes. The number of resumes submitted for a particular role can be overwhelming. Typically leaders make a first pass, or rely on someone else to make a first pass, to toss some resumes to simply narrow the number down to a […]
5 Ways to Reduce Time on Email
I recently shared a Harvard Business Review article bemoaning the inefficiency of email with my team. The article recounts the story of IBM’s initial intent with email and the surprising and disappointing results. Cal Newport wrote: In the early 1980s, IBM decided to deploy an internal email system. In typical careful IBM fashion, they began […]
Three Essentials in Evaluating Chemistry During an Interview
Zappos famously guards their culture. Because they know each person brought on the team will either contribute to or corrode a healthy culture, they pay people not to accept a job after going through orientation. Even if a person is talented, they don’t want the person to stay if the person does not believe in […]
Two Ways to Create Urgency
John Kotter, Harvard Business School professor, has written extensively about the need for leaders to first create a sense of urgency when attempting to implement change or launch a new initiative. Kotter has stressed that most change efforts fail because leaders are unable to create sufficient urgency. Urgency helps foster both focus and action. Without […]
Three Ways to Starve the Bad Values in Your Organization’s Culture
Every organization, every ministry, every team has a culture. Much has been written about culture, and essentially culture is the shared values and beliefs beneath the surface that ultimately drive the behavior of the organization. This means an organization’s culture has direct bearing on how the organization acts. Terrance Deal, in his book Corporate Cultures, […]
Seven Ways to Fight Mission and Strategy Entropy
The second law of thermodynamics is about entropy: things move to disorder and chaos over time. This principle surrounds our daily lives. A well-ordered garage digresses to clutter; a cluttered garage never becomes an organized one without intervention. Our bodies, without exercise and care, experience muscle atrophy. Left alone our muscles grow weaker, not stronger. […]